reader discretion implored

Well, this is awkward.

In any case, while I’d want to apologize yet again for yet another stretch of silence around here, I feel such would be somewhat disingenuous at this rate—especially given some of the stuff I have slated to take first share of my time in the coming months, for better or worse…

…Which actually brings us to the real purpose of this post; on that note, no, I did not flub the title or tags on this one! Indeed, rather than apologies, I figured I’d at least start this month off with some announcements-of-sorts—as to what I’ve wound up getting into, what I plan on putting out, and some third thing to smooth out this sentence!

So, (thankfully) without further ado:

Horse girls hit different, huh?

It might come as a minor surprise that I’ve had a minor fascination with the Umamusume franchise for a while now—I do mean minor, though¹; for all the inherent moé appeal of racehorses-turned-idols, I’ve never felt much inclined to truly sink my teeth into much of its media…partly thanks to the inherent baggage of turning actual racehorses into idols as a premise, but I digress.

The sole exception to more potently snag my interest, however, wound up being Cygames’ Pretty Derby production as of 2021—as a perpetually burning-out gacha player who’d also had a short-lived obsession with Gone to the Dogs back in the day², what I could string together from some gameplay clips wound up bringing an itch back to my psyche’s surface that I soon enough yearned to scratch…albeit, not enough to go to the effort of navigating the ever-nefarious language barrier.

I could always cross my fingers, though; that said, when it was indeed announced that Pretty Derby would be getting an official global(™) release—and published to Steam as such, no less—I promptly began brimming with anticipation.

As to whether it was worth the wait…

Well, at the very least, that itch has indeed been scratched so far.

On a more thorough note, I was taken a bit off guard by the gameplay loop—on one hand, given the gacha model, I should’ve expected something at least a little roguelike-adjacent; on the other hand, I didn’t expect it to be so accommodating, aggravating, and addicting in roughly equal measures. Whether screaming at Daiwa Scarlet to use all those damn skills I had her learn, or sighing in stunned relief when Gold Ship somehow pulls off a neck-and-neck lead, I’ve found myself more emotionally invested in my runs of this blatant moége than I am in my current playthrough of RAIDOU Remastered—and the latter is, in theory, pretty damn close to being my dream game…

…All that being said, I’m not exactly sure how long this enthusiasm will last on my end. I wouldn’t quite call my current elation a ‘honeymoon period’ as per gacha game tradition—partly since I’m already saving my F2P currency for future prospects, and partly since I don’t plan on spending much of it in the long-run—but depending on how quickly I sober up to (or even tire of) the tropes and conceits adorning this game’s narrative sleeves, I can see myself falling off of the grind soon enough no matter how many new trainees I draft for it. I’m not sure if this release’s accelerated schedule (which I just came across a sampled elaboration of as I was writing this)³ hurts or helps in that sense, regardless of my resignation to avoid PvP P2W hell for the most part…

…However, I can certainly say these past few days have piqued my interest more in the larger franchise—I’ve already put watching the Beginning of a New Era film on my bucket list, for instance, given how enamored I am with Agnes Tachyon and Manhattan Cafe based off of character design alone (much less what little I’ve seen/heard of their personae already). Only time will tell as to what I end up making of all this IP, though.

Of Pins and Corkboards

Hey, speaking of “making [stuff out] of […] IP”, that’s a thing I still do! (Better than segues, anyway.) On that note, any longer-time tuners-in might notice the brand-spanking-new sticky post up there—much less what it links to. Indeed, as of now I have a convenient little kanban board with which to give and get an idea of what I’m ideally working on at one time or another! With that much in mind, though, I want to point out a few labors in particular that I’m hoping/expecting to bear fruit sooner rather than later:

• BaKemono is something that I’ve been sitting on way too long, I think—especially considering how fairly few words I wound up wringing out for it over the better half of the past year. That being said, it’ll be nice to get it off my chest with a release date for the first chapter that I’m actually, genuinely committing to: July 13, to coincide with the global anniversary of Kemono Friends Kingdom and definitely nothing else; no, not at all…
  • On an obviously related note, expect “Beasts, Burdened”—the (probably-not-that-)much-anticipated follow-up Dev (Back)Log entry to “Burdensome Beasts”—to release as a tie-in with BaKemono’s first or final chapter!

• As it happens, the other part of that ‘not-quite-sprint’ I mentioned a month or so back was spent on my submission for the Thousand Roads Pokéfic forum’s annual one-shot contest—which I don’t expect to win, mind, but figured I’d shout out all the same.⁴ I of course, then, have even more incentive than usual to not define my entry in further detail (not that I figure any of the judges would realistically even be reading this anyway), but just know that the version of it I eventually publish to AO3 will feature an epilogue all to itself⁵ as per…other affairs…

Then, Christmas; Now, July

Finally, on the topic of shout-outs, something I’ve been tentatively anticipating for a hot minute is this year’s sunshine_revival—such is in part, in fact, the reason I somewhat serendipitously decided to pick today to announce my not-quite-comeback, which I hope the challenge’s coming prompts past this one will serve to bolster in turn (while also wiping over my shameful performance in the snowflake_challenge earlier this year). In any case, for anyone finding me from over there: Hi; thanks for giving me a shot, and I hope you don’t regret whatever you come to see of me!

While I wouldn’t say that’s all of what’s on my agenda for now, I hope it’s at least a substantial enough proposal that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass and brooding about stuff all this time. Either way, though, I’ll be back soon!

¹ er, at least in the latter instance↩
² Honorable(?) mention to Evolution, too, for how little I ever understood it↩
³ Also as I was writing this—or rather, putting the assets together—did I just now notice that Rice Shower’s racing fit includes a whole-ass dagger…fittingly enough, I suppose???↩
⁴ And since there’s even been a two-week extension for submissions, I don’t feel sleazy for only bringing it up now!↩
⁵ that is, if I don’t just decide to append it to the actual submission—given the aforementioned extension↩