Here Comes Niko! - The friends we made along the way...

[Rixithechao]

As someone who absolutely does not gel with SR2B’s controls, Demon Turf’s default controls didn’t feel great but you can configure them in the settings beyond just input remapping. I haven’t played much of the game myself and it’s been a while (mostly just never got back to it, aside from bingeing pokemon gen 9 my gaming’s been kinda slow and sporadic lately with massive gaps between play sessions even for games I get completely sucked into like Sonic Frontiers) but from what I remember I was able to tinker with things to the point it was decently comfortable.

Gotta say, all these cameos of protags from other games have been cute, even the obligatory Hatricia. It fits the whole making friends thing, and Hat Kid aside it doesn’t really feel like they were added for cynical reasons? Just camaraderie among indie collectathons (and Underhero, which, as far as I’m aware, is more of a Valkyrie Profile-/Indivisible-like? I’ve only played a tiny amount of the former, back when my PSP still had a battery.)

[EllenHouraisan]

Since the spotzone doesn't actually exist and I was the first one to point out the lock block in the Youtube comments last video, I'll take full credit for raocow being able to find that last seed. Where's my one dollar, raocow? This ain't a charity.

[KobaBeach]

Where's my one dollar, raocow? This ain't a charity.

please pay her one dollar because one canadian dollar is like a billion reais in brazil, trufax

[Catabo]

I love that the trumpet frog does a doik when you bump into him.

[Crow]

i remember someone saying demon turf controlled like ass but i love srb2 so how bad can it truly be

probably me because i hated that game, like, a lot

...i also tried and subsequently hated sami roll which rao is going to be playing in the not too distant future so that's unfortunate

[Catabo]

A capital gains tax is a mild extra headache on a US tax return that you have to add when you've sold stocks, mutual funds, or a few other types of investment in the previous year. It usually comes up if you have a company stock purchase plan and have sold a few of your stocks here and there for a little extra bit of money or if you just got introduced to the world of stocks, bought a bunch of them, then realised "wait this is gambling" and sold most of them back. If your case is more the latter than the former, you'll probably be reporting capital losses rather than gains.

[KobaBeach]

wall street kid for the nintendo entertainment (same people as casino kid 1&2)

[SAJewers]

[Catabo]

Closer to a decade ago than not, the town i live in had a 17-year cicada event and those things were absolutely everywhere. On trees, on houses, dead on the ground, etc. I have decided that if i ever experience another Great Cicada'ing, i'm going to attempt to cook and eat one.

But i'll move out and be living in a much better place before the 17-year cycle hits again, right?

edit: do not look up cicadas and read about their life cycle when you've decided to possibly eat one
edit2: after a bit of research, it would seem i have until 2025.

[KobaBeach]

edit: do not look up cicadas and read about their life cycle when you've decided to possibly eat one

im sorry but this is so funny

[Grounder]

Niko was arrested two weeks later under charges for the second-degree murder of community pillar Koopa Koot over poor wages.

They are currently awaiting trial.

[EllenHouraisan]

So, uh. What was the big problematic thing that was supposed to happen?

[Grounder]

So, uh. What was the big problematic thing that was supposed to happen?

I was under the (likely mistaken) impression that Niko was an actual child and their dad was enabling them to just run away instead of going with them.

I honestly cannot tell how old Niko is supposed to be, now.

[EllenHouraisan]

Hmm, makes sense. I guess the overly cutesy artstyle makes them look a bit like a child, but they're probably in early adulthood if they're getting hired for a job.

(Unless it's in America, amiright. )

[Catabo]

"i have asked professionals" —rao "professional video gamesman" cow

"I organized this party to welcome you to the family": Damn, huge red flag. Poor Niko got theirself into one of those jobs where the manager keeps going on about how "we're a family", which somehow covers for all the manager's shortcomings but means that everyone underneath them isn't sacrificing enough for the team.

Sometimes you gotta pay the bills above all, tho, and the bills being paid is a happy ending.

[KobaBeach]

I was under the (likely mistaken) impression that Niko was an actual child and their dad was enabling them to just run away instead of going with them.

I honestly cannot tell how old Niko is supposed to be, now.

I mean personally I've seen a lot of the aforementioned (by myself) "cutesy uwu soft twitter bitches" draw themselves and others as these chibified homunculi (/positive) that honestly I feel like a character being short and cute does not automatically equal child like 60% of the time. I also play JRPGs a lot and am a furry and Digimon enthusiast, so.

If I had to guess from like the thumbnails alone, Niko's probably late teens, early adulthood. I'll try to watch the LP later, I thought this was gonna be a small millennium long.

[BobisOnlyBob]

I honestly cannot tell how old Niko is supposed to be, now.

I mean personally I've seen a lot of the aforementioned (by myself) "cutesy uwu soft twitter bitches" draw themselves and others as these chibified homunculi (/positive)

not to get too deep, but I think there's definitely been a thing in the past few decades where the boundaries of childhood and adulthood have become blurred in a different way to how they once were. Rather than teenagers being forced into adulthood early, teenagers are being treated as small children past the point where they can vote and have agency in the world, and some young adults paradoxically feel both childish and unready for adulthood but also like their childhood was either denied to them or taken from them by the very same society that denied them agency due to their age. We're both exposed to the wider world to a far greater extent than ever before, and insulated from it (for better and worse). I've seen a huge number of people depict themselves in the resulting liminal state of looking like a child while having all the problems of being a young adult often cut off from parents and working a grindy min-wage job.

Here Comes Niko feels like that, only with the fantasy of being paid for being a professional friend (

does that sound euphemistic to anyone else? Like I don't think it's meant to be it just sounds off

) who just does fun odd jobs against the backdrop of leaving home due to parental harrassment (another thing I see a lot of). And like, the mother's comments in the game to me make it blatantly clear it's one of a handful of things, but it basically boils down to either Niko is autistic or Niko is queer (and if I'm drawing from my friends who are like this then it's probably both). But yeah, this game is basically a bright and optimistic and colourful version of those depressed furry possum comics about living in a shitty apartment with questionably fucked up roommates and doing awful jobs, only Niko acts as a fishhook and fixes anthropomorphic arcade machines instead of the realistic "dirty" jobs from comics like that.

Is that a weird take? I think I've kinda crossed over into the koba dimension writing this but like, something about this game does have an extremely odd vibe and it's not just the contrast/whiplash of the two major story threads (helping funny animals/leaving home and an abusive parent), it's that put together they tell a complete story but one that really doesn't have an ending, just a "I guess this is what Niko does now!" sort of hanging continuation.

I'm glad it exists and I'm glad it tonally runs counter to where the same themes have led dozens of other creators. But also it is still undeniably weird.

[KobaBeach]

i hate touchy feely shit but wow i vibe with this so hard now wtf

not to get too deep, but I think there's definitely been a thing in the past few decades where the boundaries of childhood and adulthood have become blurred in a different way to how they once were. Rather than teenagers being forced into adulthood early, teenagers are being treated as small children past the point where they can vote and have agency in the world, and some young adults paradoxically feel both childish and unready for adulthood but also like their childhood was either denied to them or taken from them by the very same society that denied them agency due to their age. We're both exposed to the wider world to a far greater extent than ever before, and insulated from it (for better and worse). I've seen a huge number of people depict themselves in the resulting liminal state of looking like a child while having all the problems of being a young adult often cut off from parents and working a grindy min-wage job.

insane rant here do not click

i kind of feel this but like im in a state where i just want to be an adult already and yet i feel like im consistently the same crybaby child i was when i was in elementary school because i have no concept of adulthood beyond the fictional characters i like a lot and use as fucked up emotional support due to serious childhood trauma.

anyway im not gonna trauma-dump here. but like. this shit is real and a serious problem and it's part of why a lot of modern generations are just lashing out constantly and rebelling against oppression super hard more and more, and why communism is becoming more and more in vogue.

the entire society, especially children and the queer and the neurodivergent are just being abused repeatedly, and no one in power gives a fuck, we have people goddamn trying to effectively outlaw trans child medical aid, and abortions, and pornography, and sex work, while those exact same right-wingers in america pushing those laws, fucking (cw: mind poison)

get off to child pornography and such

, with no remorse whatsoever

im not gonna force everyone super hard into the koba dimension. i could go more into detail... but i could also just play lunar silver star story instead and not collapse from depression and despair

anyway fuck cops, fuck laws, do hard drugs, dont go to school, steal from big corporations

I think I've kinda crossed over into the koba dimension writing this

you can never leave thomas,, /sonic

[thatguyif]

not to get too deep, but I think there's definitely been a thing in the past few decades where the boundaries of childhood and adulthood have become blurred in a different way to how they once were. Rather than teenagers being forced into adulthood early, teenagers are being treated as small children past the point where they can vote and have agency in the world, and some young adults paradoxically feel both childish and unready for adulthood but also like their childhood was either denied to them or taken from them by the very same society that denied them agency due to their age. We're both exposed to the wider world to a far greater extent than ever before, and insulated from it (for better and worse). I've seen a huge number of people depict themselves in the resulting liminal state of looking like a child while having all the problems of being a young adult often cut off from parents and working a grindy min-wage job.

If there's one thing I can shorthand this to, it's "2008 affects us all."

Longhand:

The Great Recession fucked a lot of shit up. People my age and slightly younger got thrown under a bus because there were simply no "entry-level" jobs, and we were holding on to debt-riddled college degrees. A lot of people went home to their parents. Some like me actually stuck it out...and well, I was homeless for a while, to give you a hint on how that went. Let's focus on the former group though.

I dunno if you guys read the news all that much during the pandemic, but one big thing reported was how children regressed, not just academically but socially, because of the lockdowns. It made me think about the 2008-2013 time period, where a lot of people my age were living with their parents for extended periods of time. In the US, there was and still kind of is a massive stigma associated with living with your parents after a certain age, especially if you're living there because you can't live by yourself (at least based on the class expectations that come with a college degree). Even when the recession was bad, people were still harping on people my age to "get a job," even when there were no jobs of our supposed paygrade around. I knew a friend who got dumped because all he could get was freelance work and he made a joke about working in his pajamas. So the stigma, mixed with the inability to actually get away from that stigma, led to severe social regression for a lot of people my age. And where did they go? To social media, where their regression was rewarded due to the mechanisms of virality that is the foundation of such media, and their behavior became a product.

So we have these people who have severely socially regressed operating in spaces where they are both (as you said) insulated and exposed. I would say that, due to their nature of their regression, their insulation was from the reality of their existence, i.e. the physical world that they actively avoided. They were definitely exposed to the world to a great degree, but only in the abstract sense afforded in digital spaces. Given the nature of social media to amplify just about anything and everything, there is this highly exaggerated view of what's happening in the world that colored people's view and made it seem far more overwhelming than it really is. Because of this, they tended to conflate and/or replace the real with the abstract. Such things made them regress further, and suddenly you have 20- and 30-somethings acting like they they're 13 or 14. While eventually things got better on an economic standpoint, the scars of such regression run extremely deep. Just look at people's behavior: Even now, they go out of their way to use services that avoid social interaction as much as possible, whether it's buying goods on Amazon or ordering groceries on Instacart. Anything that avoids having to face people? There's something awfully childish about that, even when we account for mental trauma.

And shit like that...it only rolls downhill.

I could go further, but I've said enough.

[KobaBeach]

Longhand:

The Great Recession fucked a lot of shit up. People my age and slightly younger got thrown under a bus because there were simply no "entry-level" jobs, and we were holding on to debt-riddled college degrees. A lot of people went home to their parents. Some like me actually stuck it out...and well, I was homeless for a while, to give you a hint on how that went. Let's focus on the former group though.

I dunno if you guys read the news all that much during the pandemic, but one big thing reported was how children regressed, not just academically but socially, because of the lockdowns. It made me think about the 2008-2013 time period, where a lot of people my age were living with their parents for extended periods of time. In the US, there was and still kind of is a massive stigma associated with living with your parents after a certain age, especially if you're living there because you can't live by yourself (at least based on the class expectations that come with a college degree). Even when the recession was bad, people were still harping on people my age to "get a job," even when there were no jobs of our supposed paygrade around. I knew a friend who got dumped because all he could get was freelance work and he made a joke about working in his pajamas. So the stigma, mixed with the inability to actually get away from that stigma, led to severe social regression for a lot of people my age. And where did they go? To social media, where their regression was rewarded due to the mechanisms of virality that is the foundation of such media, and their behavior became a product.

So we have these people who have severely socially regressed operating in spaces where they are both (as you said) insulated and exposed. I would say that, due to their nature of their regression, their insulation was from the reality of their existence, i.e. the physical world that they actively avoided. They were definitely exposed to the world to a great degree, but only in the abstract sense afforded in digital spaces. Given the nature of social media to amplify just about anything and everything, there is this highly exaggerated view of what's happening in the world that colored people's view and made it seem far more overwhelming than it really is. Because of this, they tended to conflate and/or replace the real with the abstract. Such things made them regress further, and suddenly you have 20- and 30-somethings acting like they they're 13 or 14. While eventually things got better on an economic standpoint, the scars of such regression run extremely deep. Just look at people's behavior: Even now, they go out of their way to use services that avoid social interaction as much as possible, whether it's buying goods on Amazon or ordering groceries on Instacart. Anything that avoids having to face people? There's something awfully childish about that, even when we account for mental trauma.

And shit like that...it only rolls downhill.

I could go further, but I've said enough.

yo wtf this is actually a good post. good job

i vibe with the "suddenly you have 20- and 30-somethings acting like they they're 13 or 14" when you see the amount of weird neo-puritanism and other unhinged shit in social media when really it could just be kept to "if they're not pushing uncomfortable stuff onto other people or children without consent, then don't bother them". it's very much why i flat out avoid people who are way into activism, they sound like a ticking time bomb. trauma response ig

im actually very afraid of people, social anxiety and all, but i feel like talking to like the 40 year olds around me irl is much easier because there's so much of me that kind of seeps out online, which is actually very funny. the only thing that sucks is just trying to keep my homosexuality undercover for the most part unless im sure the person is safe, but that's just the struggle of the queer commoner.

i legit have more fear of like talking to, what some people consider "popufurs" and "influencers" than like, a supermarket cashier or a doctor, aside from the occasional trauma regression, and even then that's mostly just psychotic delusions

anyway buy digimon survive