@wigglytuffitout i don't even know how i got from billionaire magazines to the ship of theseus but here we are

@InspectorCaracal nope as sadly i just got done saying this all on discord but i CAN say EXCELLENT choice in thought experiment we are on some sort of wavelength let me know if you get a big whopping mood of This next (see picture)

@wigglytuffitout normal brain: mid-life crisis

galaxy-brain: cyclical life crises

@InspectorCaracal listen you can't look me in the eye and tell me that botw link is not just in a continuous existential crisis of one point or another

there he goes, hero of hyrule, disassociating his way across the plains,

@wigglytuffitout i mean i haven't ever played a single green elf princess game but that sounds legit

@InspectorCaracal see this is the first one i've played and it literally starts with him waking up in a bathtub of healy goop 100 years after he tried to defend all of hyrule and couldn't quite hack it, so got chucked in magic healy juice after being 99.9999% of the way dead,

and now wakes up with zero fuckin memories of this past life

but it's 100 years of the entire country going to ruin

it's just endless screaming. we all know what's in his head. just. endless. screaming.

@wigglytuffitout OH

I WANT TO PLAY THIS

@wigglytuffitout YO FOR REAL THOUGH NO ONE TOLD ME THIS PREMISE THIS IS SO TOTALLY MY BULLSHIT

@InspectorCaracal IT'S A REALLY FUCKING GOOD GAME.

gameplay wise like. i never really understood people who were all "omg i can play skyrim for HOURS" because it quickly loses its shine for me.

breath of the wild tho.

botw is what skyrim wants to be when it grows up. they have done really canny gameplay shit to make exploring be addictive and rewarding.

also there's this sort of... quiet melancholy to it all that's very tender and emotional.

@wigglytuffitout skyrim is boring

@wigglytuffitout also I get really annoyed whenever a game tries to implement being able to steal but having to not get caught because they never get the bugs out

@InspectorCaracal after all, the environments are basically "the kingdom got all but wiped out 100 years ago, so now there are lots of ruins. but there are still villages, and even in the ruins you can see how nature is rising up to reclaim them, and life goes on." there's that line of like... comfort yet loneliness, loneliness yet comfort in it all.

also you get a hang glider which means climbing up shit and jumping off is fucking rad

also you can tame horses

@InspectorCaracal AND. UNLIKE SKYRIM. your horses won't run off without you to kill something. AND if your horse dies you can go revive it at a special shrine. but honestly none of mine have died yet.

the one black mark against botw is there are dogs and you cannot pet them. but you can feed them treats and then they follow you around happily or maybe show you where some treasure is, so it all works out

@wigglytuffitout i bet you could make up some angsty headcanon about why link isn't allowed to pet dogs

i have faith in you

@wigglytuffitout but like imagine his existential crises ebbing and flowing in like a circadian rhythm cycle linked to some metaphysical bullshit involving whatever the time loop or reincarnation shenanigans involved here are

@InspectorCaracal honestly the awful fic idea is already tied to the moon cycle, which in-game means every time there's a full moon all the enemies respawn and the princess is all LINK WATCH OUT

i feel like between that and majora's mask, the inevitable conclusion is that a small elf muscle twink goes out to scream at the moon a la https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7_pVrIshxA

@InspectorCaracal is it majora's mask where you're stuck in a time loop trying to get the moon to not crash into the earth? i think so

anyway, link is screaming at the moon At This Moment

@wigglytuffitout I didn't know about the time loop but that makes a lot of sense, I just knew there was a hard deadline