New Stream Archive, In Which We Defend The Honor Of Team Scissors! Hey Don't Pit Us Against Both Teams

new stream archive, in which we defend the honor of team scissors! …hey don't pit us against both teams at once that's not fair!!!

last night i finished twilight princess for the first time and i have a LOT to say about it...

i didn't grow up with twilight princess like i grew up with the other zelda games. i don't remember why i didn't pick it up back in the day – some combination of tone and timing, i guess? – but i played every other zelda i could get my hands on, 2d and 3d alike.

it wasn't until college that i picked up a gamecube copy, stopped right after twilight kakariko village, and never returned to it. the pace of the game's opening areas is GLACIAL, and despite me actually liking the twilight areas, i didn't really gel with much else.

so i didn't have strong expectations when i returned to the game a couple weeks ago. i knew the game's tone was extremely 2006, i knew i'd have to be patient with the game's pacing, i'd heard the memes about it being Ocarina But More, and not much else.

now that i'm finished, i'm happy to report that i'm utterly FASCINATED by both the game's strengths and by its flaws. every good thing that the game does is accompanied by a major setback, usually due to sticking too hard to the zelda series's roots in the process.

like how the game's coolest ideas are punctuated by pacing issues – for example, the second dungeon's magnetic floors make for such incredible dungeon design! but they require the iron boots, and walking around the entire ceiling of a room in iron boots is SO FREAKING SLOW

or how hyrule field is scaled up for horseback travel, which in turn makes traversing on foot slow and monotonous... so they added warps, which you can only use as a wolf, which you can't switch to around people, which makes getting around needlessly complicated???

i was really surprised at how much i like the game's tone. i do love majora, it's my favorite 3d zelda, but twilight princess always seemed like it'd be 2006 gritty grimdark to me. far from it; the tone is tasteful and never takes itself too seriously.

but the biggest surprise to me personally is this: every other 3d zelda game is pretty unique in terms of structure, tone, and added mechanics.

by comparison, twilight princess sits almost exactly halfway between oot and botw. it's the missing link i never knew existed!!

so much of what twilight princess iterated or added beyond oot was then iterated further in botw. big things like the expanded overworld emphasizing horses and warps, but also little things like bomb arrows, bug collecting – even snowboarding, which led to shield surfing!

it blows my mind how much these games share dna beyond the obvious zelda tropes; it gave me more appreciation for the development history of the series, how everything led to what we have now. honestly, twilight princess has me more hyped to play botw2 than botw1 itself ever did!

twilight princess also gave me more appreciation for what oot did right that didn't really make it to the other 3d zeldas, things i'd forgotten since it's been so long since i last played – or maybe things that twilight princess leaned too much into that oot did more tastefully.

it may seem like i'm ragging on twilight princess at this point – i'm not, i promise! the game does a lot right, like having some of the best dungeons in the series, some fascinating (if underutilized) new items, and, uh, pretty much everything relating to Wolf Link and Midna

but like light casting shadows, the game's strengths betray its own weaknesses – and in the broader context of the series, it creates a fascinating contrast that shines new light on why i love these games in the first place. a 10/10 experience, even if the game itself isn't.

Give this run a bit to build momentum - by the end it's all about outrunning Thwomps, bouncing on Stingbies, and flying over lava. I love building stuff like this!

Stone Gate Gauntlet | 26Y-0NY-GWF

Dodge falling Thwomps as they crumble the very castle they call home! Maybe you can catch a ride across the lava? Definitely on the tougher side, but still plenty of secrets to find!

Mari0 10th Anniversary!

it's the tenth anniversary of Mari0 today... where has the time gone? i still vividly remember glancing over at the StumbleUpon page my friend had pulled up in our high school computer lab, detailing the portal gun, multiplayer, and most importantly, the full level editor. i followed the game's development like a hawk, eagerly anticipating each new blog post... until its eventual release, forever altering the course of my life.

how much do i owe to Mari0 and its community? let me count the ways.

2012

the very first thing i did with Mari0 was make a New Super Mario Bros. tileset. to show it off, i made a handful of levels under a very simple name – New Super Mario World – mostly playing around with the different structures i could build using these tiles.

once i released the first few levels, i got my very first feedback:

"your level design is really interesting."

that comment was EVERYTHING to me. it springboarded my entire level design career both in Mari0 and beyond! without this little push, i would not be where i am today.

New Super Mario World would go on to be my biggest mappack, as well as one of the few that i actually finished – and it would kickstart years of Mari0 level designs in over a dozen mappacks total. all it takes is a little validation... always be kind to fledgling creators!

2014

i stuck around on the forums – not just for Mari0, but because everyone there was genuinely wonderful to be around. we had our rough patches, but for the most part we were a tight knit community – my first online friends!

one day a new forum thread popped up called "Livestream Thread," that introduced me both to Twitch and to streaming in general. we declared 2014 the "year of streams" and supported each other both with streaming and chatting... i got to know my new friends so much more deeply!

i tried my hand at streaming as well – and that changed my life too! it helped me become far more outgoing, as i learned how to be comfortable speaking in public, both large and small groups. and the community was so supportive... it helped me find my voice!

2016

i heard about discord and started a server there for our community, hoping we could use it for streams and the like. we were already entrenched on steam, irc, and the forum – i didn't expect anyone to move from what they were already comfortable with.

today the server has over 400 members, both old and new, with a thriving community keeping Mari0 alive even after ten years... even though i didn't make the game like Maurice, or run the website and forums like Sašo – i was just in the right place at the right time to start this server.

i learned a lot about managing a community in such a short space of time, and i've made my fair share of mistakes... but i'm so humbled to play a part in fostering a new generation of our community, and i hope it's helped them grow as much as it's helped me grow over the years 💙

2018

Mari0: Special Edition's beta releases had already come and gone, but a select few of us kept maintaining it as a Community Edition, keeping interest in the game afloat. i was between jobs at the time, and had some time to add to CE as my first open source contributions.

i worked on porting Mari0 to Löve2D 11.x, fixing controller support from a previous port to 0.9.x, optimizing animated tiles, and other bugfixes... then, when it came time to look for another job, i listed CE on my resume as a moonshot, hoping it would attract some attention.

during my interview, i got TONS of questions about my work on CE... and then, i got the job. working on Mari0 helped get me hired!

it was far from the *sole* reason, of course, but i doubt my application would have stood out nearly as much without it. i still work there today!

2020

as if everything else wasn't enough, this community even helped me discover my identity – i came out as genderfluid, completing a five-year-long journey of acceptance and self-discovery that started on the forums.

i won't beat around the bush: i didn't "get" gender at first, and i had so much trouble trying to understand it. anytime somebody explained it to me, i would be reductive or dismissive in response.

but one day, somebody met my impatience with kindness... and it planted a seed.

hindsight really puts my answer in perspective, but it took a LONG time to understand and come to terms with – tons of research, asking about others' experiences, doing some hard introspection. all starting with this little spark that got me to think about it in a different way.

2022

what else does the future hold? i could make bold predictions about the state of the community, or bolder claims to finish my magnum opus of a mappack (Retrush) – but i could never have predicted any part of the last ten years, and so i shall make no attempt here.

instead i simply want to thank everyone for changing my life for the better.

Maurice, for making such a wonderful game. Sašo, for fostering such a wonderful community. and all of the friends i've made along the way, for touching my life.

i can only hope i've touched yours too!

no matter where the future takes us – whether Mari0 is part of it or not – i hope i get to be there with you, learning and growing alongside friends new and old, just as we have so far. so here's to ten years, and perhaps even ten more! let's go into the future together 💖

today i decided to start posting some of my favorite twitter threads from over the years on my blog, backdated to when i first posted them. why? because they should've been blog posts in the first place, full stop. time to fix that!

i'm tagging them all #backdated so you can view the collection at any time, but i'll update the front page with each new batch too. speaking of which, here's today's batch, loosely sorted by category:

Creative

The Missing Sketchbook, a piece of my childhood and drawing history that i thought i lost

Long Desk

spontaneous creation with toys

Gender

how my oc Rivers helped smash my own gender identity

a reflection on repression, from just days after i came out

Gaming

Mari0 10th Anniversary: how the game and its community changed my life

beating Twilight Princess for the first time and putting it in the broader context of the Zelda series evolution

100 followers!

wow, this is something i'm legitimately surprised about! i certainly didn’t think when starting out that so many people would like my posts so much ✨ it's an honor to provoke thought in and entertain such a large—

wait a sec. what? am i in some kind of time loop?

nah, here's what happened: tumblr had a big account purge sometime in the last year or two! a bunch of old, deactivated, or (mostly) bot accounts were purged from the system all at once, and with it, follower counts dropped across the board – so i dipped back below 100 followers again. that's okay though, considering the circumstances; the new number is more accurate!

i don't have any proof of this because at some point i stopped celebrating follower milestones, but i peaked at 249 followers just before the purge – and dropped all the way back down to 87. that's a lot of bots!!

i know i shouldn't obsess over numbers too much but there is one weird thing: just 3 years ago i was hovering around 240 followers here, and barely holding 100 followers on my twitter. now i'm hovering around 240 on my twitter, and i just made it back to 100 here!

anyway it doesn't really matter where or when people follow me, i'm just happy that so many of y'all like what i say enough to stick around. thanks for reading my nonsense 💖

100 followers!

Wow, this is something I’m legitimately surprised about. I certainly didn’t think when starting out that so many people would like my posts so much! It’s an honor to provoke thought in and entertain such a large–

WHOOPS. I might be a little late to the party ^^; Then again, the other day I checked and had 98, but today after I was notified of a new follower, it’s 103? That makes no sense???