patchouli KNAWLEDGE

they had an opportunity to give us a superpowered being who didn't hold the same respect for human life that clark did engaging with the same unjust political, economic and social systems that the first movie revolved around!!!!.....but instead they gave us a very boring generic superhero action movie. i guess lightning doesn't strike twice

i should preface by saying that i don't engage super heavily with fandom in general. i don't know if this is a boring take but i don't really see patchouli as either of those things from the canon appearances i've seen her in. i think fandom likes to narrow characters down into hyper-specific and exaggerated archetypes, i guess because that makes characters predictable and easy to understand. yes, patchouli is reclusive, but the term hikkikomori comes with certain cultural connotations which are in themselves actually reflections of a deeply broken society and economic system that the anime industry has, in its own lack of maturity and understanding of the world, taken and reduced into something that's observed as an individual personality trait. calling patchouli one is embracing that terminology and accepting it as such imo. and yes, patchouli is inactive, but that's because she has a lot of physical conditions such as asthma, anemia, etc. so i think fanon that portrays patchouli as either of these things doesn't get the character or doesn't want to get the character.

my favorite official art of patchouli is from 12.3. take a look. the relaxed eyes, the slight smile. her in-battle expressions are this way as well. does this look like a flat hikkikomori or a chubby lazy person to you?

that's not to say patchouli is the MOST nuanced character ever, but i do think ZUN himself tends to write some fairly nuanced characters when it comes to personality and motivation and even goes so far as to very explicitly write characters against these narrowed-down archtypes and disprove fandom seemingly deliberately. so yeah i guess its boring but i just kinda imagine patchouli as a person. she reads a lot and she probably coughs sometimes.

THIS IS SO FUCKING COOL AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

i'm so happy!

All my DS games (like $1200 worth, not that it matters) got stolen last year, and I can't and will likely never be able to replace those cartridges. I tried an R4, but it was a time bomb. And this thing looks really promising - it should be delivered some time this week.

So I've been putting together a folder of all the games I want to play. This is primarily a project I wanted to do because, when I become a cranky old man with memory loss, I think that one thing anyone who is taking care of me will be able to give me to entertain myself is a DS. I can replay Renegade Platinum, Explorers of Sky, Crystal Chronicles EoT, Digimon Dusk, Animal Crossing - the list goes on and on. The DS had some truly great games.

And I also downloaded some I've never played! I'm particularly excited to try Phantasy Star Zero, Ghost Trick, and Solatorobo.

But for now, other than Renegade Platinum, I decided to make a small little Explorers of Sky Hack of my own - since I've always wanted to play through the game with Cherry, my favorite Pokemon and a shiny Buneary, as my partner. But I ended up going a little overboard - I got to thinking, I can make every single partner result exciting for old man me. I will likey forget some of these decisions and end up giddy as a child upon seeing some of them, too.

Imagine I get surprised by my personality quiz results and get a Popplio!! Or even a Bagon I think could be really cool. I grew to love Girafarig through PMD (because it was the first mon I was able to clear one of those super hard lv 1 dungeons with), so she felt fitting to add - all the other choices explain themselves. They're just my favorites. And Swablu and Altaria have some truly amazing portrait art courtesy of Emmuffin, gromchurch and tawnysoup. So a huge thanks to the PMD Sprite Repository for the sprites necessary to make this happen.

There's a small chance SkyTemple-edited roms can't actually be played on DS hardware - hopefully, that's not the case.