This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Natalie’s Sexual Binary
• TSF Showcase 2024-02 Ellie Skinsuit by Imp Undernearth
• Switch 2.0 Insanity + Natalie Rambles Some More (The Switch 2 Content Mill is Getting Bonkers)
• Dead End Rehashes (Natalie Complains About No Frills Re-Releases)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie’s Sexual Binary

Something that I’ve had to consider while writing a story as sexually charged as Verde’s Doohickey 2.0 is character sexuality. What are a character’s sexual preferences, how do they react to certain sexual situations, that sort of thing. This should represent a broad playground for me to play around with, a place to explore diverse sexualities. …Unfortunately, ‘diverse sexualities’ are something I have historically struggled to really present or intimately understand.

For those who have not picked up on this bit of Natalie.TF lore, I am asexual and aromantic. I never had sex with anyone. I’ve never gone on a date with someone. And while I had light crushes on people when I was younger, those faded pretty quickly, and it’s been a very long time since I felt that. This makes me a strange candidate for writing a story filled with so many sex scenes (and romantic relationships) in general. But what makes me an even stranger, and worse, candidate is how I tend to view sexuality as a binary.

When I say that, I don’t mean heterosexual and homosexual, which I’d imagine is how a lot of older people think of sexuality. I tend to view sexuality as an on/off switch. Either someone is interested in sexual activities with other people, or they just aren’t. Or in more useful terms,pansexual or asexual.

This is a highly limited way to view something as diverse and complex as sexuality, something that can represent the cornerstone of one’s identity and something that people spend decades figuring out. Yet when I think about making a character androsexual, gynesexual, straight, or gay… it just feels like I’m applying artificial limitations on characters. 

A good example of this are the characters Vivi Gaimz and Anita Neukar. A pair of characters who, a minute into writing dialogue between them in The Dominance of Abigale Quinlan, I decided that they must be lesbians. That was originally the plan for Verde’s Doohickey 2.0, but after I kept writing more of them, I struggled to see why they would be adamant about limiting their sexual experiences when they had so many possibilities. 

They have a magic game console that lets them become men, so why the hell wouldn’t they try male X female sex or male X male sex? The only reason, as far as I could imagine, was that they had some mental inhibition, something in their heads that made them unable to enjoy sex that way. And one of the overarching ‘themes’ that I stumbled into in writing VD2.0 is… fuck inhibitions! Try everything! And don’t be limited by yourself when there are 20+ people you can try being!

Okay, then why does asexuality get a pass, and why don’t I consider it an ‘artificial limitation?’ Because I’m asexual and it just makes sense to me. My asexuality is founded on the idea that sex is a gross thing and being exposed to another person on that level is deeply uncomfortable. It is a blanket rejection of sex as an activity, rather than being picky about only having sex with people who have certain physical characteristics. 

However, asexuality is something that I don’t really include in a lot of my recent work (excluding these ones), and does not really ‘exist’ in VD2.0. None of the cast are asexual, because it would deny them the opportunity to participate in sex scenes (which double as romance/bonding scenes). 

Akumako: “What about Terra?”

Obviously there aren’t going to be any sex scenes involving an 11-year-old. Terra’s mind and Terra’s body cannot be in the same room as someone having sex. Does she masturbate in other bodies? Of course she does! She’s not dumb! But I don’t show that shit!

Akumako: “Okay, if you say so. …Going back to the sexuality thing, do you just not understand why people have sexual preferences?”

No, I understand why. It’s a preference. People like and don’t like a lot of things for thousands of different reasons. I’m not talking about people, I’m talking about characters. And when writing characters, I can give them any sexuality I want. So why wouldn’t I give them the sexuality with the most options, the most opportunities? Especially when writing a story that’s averaging at having one sex/masturbation scene per chapter.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have sexuality-based tension in the story. Characters do grapple with their internalized homophobia and heteronormative upbringing to an extent. I just do not think it is a particularly interesting avenue to explore in this context. I would rather see these characters conquer this hurdle quickly so they can enjoy the crazy body swap and transformation shit thrown into their laps. Which, in turn, offers ample opportunities for bodily dysphoria and euphoria. A concept that I think is… way more interesting than sexuality. One is your preference on who you have sex with. The other is about physically embodying a different form and identity. 

This isn’t meant to be a diss or a dig to any story that centers around a character coming to terms with their sexuality. Hell, Zach’s reluctance to fuck their best friend leads to some of the best scenes in re:Dreamer. But when writing a story with no central main character, and with an ensemble cast of, like, 15… it’s just more fun and easier to make everybody pansexual.

Akumako: “Hey Natalie! If you could, would you press a button that made everybody pansexual? Then everybody would have the most sexual options!”

Shit, that’s a really good question… On one hand, that would solve a lot of social problems. On the other hand, that would straight up fuck some people for life. Maybe even me? Maybe even me! So, yeah, I’d press it. Though, I’m inclined to always press the magical button that changes the world!

Akumako: “This bitch would press a button that killed every White person on Earth.”

But not one that killed every Black, Asian, or Hispanic person. ONLY THE WHITES! They know what they did!

Akumako: “And this is why nobody should ever take Natalie seriously. She gets bored in the middle of a mini-essay about queer characters and starts talking about genocide buttons!”

The revolution is yet unknown, so we gotta try it out! So grab a big sword and chop the Earth in two! For science!

Akumako: “Also, sorry if you don’t like Natalie using pansexual. She knows that bisexual is preferred in some circles, but likes pansexual more.”

Fuck the binaries and enjoy some dickgirls in paradise! …Shit, that should be a chapter in VD2.0! I already got three dickgirls for that!

Akumako: “One of them’s a robot!”

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TSF Showcase 2024-02
Ellie Skinsuit by Imp Undernearth

Hmm… I’m still playing fast and loose with the rules of TSF Showcase, but my plan is to limit it to one work per artist every year. And since Imp Underneath started this year with another hot banger, it’s time for them to shine again!

Ellie Skinsuit is Imp Underneath’s longest running and most ambitious work. A multi-chapter story following Ron, a high school bully who uses a magical skinsuit gun to steal the body and life of Ellie, the older sister of his go-to victim, Henry. It started back in April 2022 and over the years it has gradually grown into a skinsuit epic that, with the release of chapter 6 last week, now exceeds 200 pages. Meaning that we have a lot to cover, so let’s break things down chapter by chapter.

The first chapter promptly establishes the core relationships of the comic, seeing Ron coerce his way into Henry’s house, only to be quickly met with scorn from Ellie. Ellie is effectively established as a protective older sister type who cares for Henry and sees Ron as the aggressive loser he plainly is. Yet before she can fulfill her threat and kick Ron out of the house, Ron pulls out the skinsuit gun and fires a red light at Ellie’s neck. Henry panics, Ron shoves him away, and with a fearful final few words, Ellie is reduced to a mere sheathe of a person that Ron promptly slides into. Henry is, naturally, horrified by this, but all he can do is gawk as the rules of reality are so frivolously broken. 

Ron roughs up Henry, uses his new form to tease him, mockingly calling him brother, before debasing Ellie in front of him. And by debasing, I mean masturbates her body with the veracity of any good TSF pervert protagonist. Henry tells Ron to give her back, yet Ron refuses, parading around her body like it is his own while informing Henry of the consequences of snitching to his Mom. It’s typical bully scare tactics, threatening the victim to make sure they remain hopeless, while not strictly resorting to physical violence.

This all seems bad, but Henry has a flicker of hope that his mom will see through Ron’s disguise, except she… doesn’t. Despite acting nothing like her earlier, Ron pulls off a flawless Ellie impression, enough to make him doubt if any of this is real, or if he imagined all of it. Henry wistfully asks his ‘sister’ to see if she is back, only for Ron to reveal that, no, he was just putting up a front, and goes back to tormenting Henry via masturbating, ending chapter one.

It’s a strong, albeit conceptually standard, opening to this kind of bully possession storyline. (It’s a bodysuit story, but functionally… Ron may as well be going ghost.) Though, there are two things that I want to address. Henry’s passive characterization and the artwork of this first chapter.

While there is something to say about Henry’s passive nature throughout the first chapter, and this entire story, that’s effectively the point of his character. He is a non-confrontational person, and that is the reason he is Ron’s target in the first place. He does not have the conviction to stand up to others even as they are actively harming him. So when those harming him resemble his loved ones, he lacks any recourse other than… to grit his teeth and bear it. 

You could criticize him for not being more proactive, not stealing the skinsuit gun, or threatening Ron when he has the chance. Except… all of those options have just as much likelihood of blowing up in his face. Sure, he might be able to hurt Ron and get back his sister, but he might also wind up being seen as too much of a threat, get turned into a skinsuit, and stay that way. Hell, Ron’s crazy enough that he might just chop up Henry’s skinsuit and flush him down a toilet or something. That’s how I would kill people with a skinsuit gun! Being passive and hoping that his tormentors get bored is what Henry knows, and when faced by this impossible threat, it’s all he can resort to. 

As an artist, Imp Underneath underwent a lot of stylistic shifts early on, drifting so much that I initially thought they were a prolific commissioner or collaborator. Kind of like the notorious TSF Showcase staple Marialite. Just looking at, say, Asuka Possession and Revenge Possession of a Cheater, I don’t think I need to explain how I thought that. In recent years, Imp’s style has stabilized, though you can still see their style drift from work to work, with even last year’s Professional Possession having a notably different look than Ellie Skinsuit 6.

With the first installment, Imp was still working away from the more cartoonish proportions of Magical Girl Possession, and going back to it is a bit jarring. Everybody has these pudgy hands without defined wrists, while their feet are basically hooves except for when they are not. It’s a strange stylistic approach when pretty much everything else is refined. The page layouts are dynamic, the visual language conveys a large amount of information without feeling suffocating, and titillation is balanced well with plot progression. The characters are highly expressive, and make for some absolutely lovely panels, as you can see with the provided snippets. 

Though the coloring is definitely weaker than later parts, feeling muted in spots, and inconsistently reflecting the tone of the comic. I don’t mind the single color backgrounds, but if you are going to use them, they should either be colored consistently, or be colored to reflect the tone of a scene. Ellie’s bedroom alone goes from dark green to red to gray to lavender and it’s just… mildly befuddling. The comic still looks good… but the later chapters look way better..

Chapter two picks up the following day, reestablishing the hostile relationship between Ron and Henry as Henry is left unable to do anything out of fear of Ron’s counterattack. A fear that plagues Ron even as he goes to school and only gets worse when he sees what Ron was doing last night. Sending pornographic photos and videos to students throughout school, saying that he is actually Ron. A chaotic stint that really speaks to just how brazen Ron is with his newfound power, and the levels of psychic damage he wants to inflict on poor Henry.

Skipping over classes, Henry sees Ron in the parking lot, talking to the girl’s hockey coach, Ms. Rey, where Henry makes the mistake of accosting Ron in front of someone else. Ron uses the situation to bruise Henry’s already wafer-thick ego as he effortlessly spreads lies that Ms. Rey believes without question. Because why would a good girl like Ellie ever lie? 

At this latest low, Henry realizes that Ron is in sweats and should still be at work, leading to a flashback section where we get to see Ron in his element. At Ellie’s workplace, using her body to get what he wants. First by sinking his talons into the office boytoy with a bathroom handy— a classic— and then by using the skinsuit gun on Ellie’s female boss. He then steals her body, naturally, and arranges a meeting with Ellie’s manager (I think) where he demands that Ellie be given a six month paid vacation… while masturbating.

This is partially a form of vicarious revenge, as Ron does have Ellie’s memories, partially a way to get freedom as he settles into Ellie’s body and life, but also just a complete goblin play. It is at this point in the story that Ron establishes himself not only as one malicious dude, but someone with such a penchant for chaos and a disregard for others that… he’s pretty much a sociopath. 

He deliberately enjoys watching others suffer and carries himself with a level of confidence surprising of a teenage boy. I’m not sure if this is just a residual high from using the skinsuit gun, the result of gaining an adult understanding of the world, or if Ron is just that bad of a dude. Or maybe a bit of both! Either way, it makes him an incredibly interesting protagonist. A force of destruction that you want to follow just to see what insane crap he pulls next. 

He drove into a school parking lot with a skinsuit in the back seat of his car, just splayed on the seat, buck-ass naked. You cannot teach that type of brazen main character confidence! And seeing him call in his posse at the end of the chapter is both as exciting as it is worrisome. Because you just know these boys are gonna get up to some 6-star sex crimes.

Despite coming out less than three months after the first chapter, the art here took a significant step up. Hands and feet are more realistic (barring a few instances). The background designs and coloring are more detailed, though the color choices still feel a bit arbitrary at times. Ellie’s hairstyle has evolved to feature her signature anime girl hair vents, while not quite getting its banana yellow color. That’s an addition for the next issue. And the comic continues to feature Imp’s effective, dynamic layouts, cramming a lot of story across just a few pages, while using the sexy fun times to progress the story.

Chapter three… is a bit messy. It resumes on Ron’s friends showing up, with Ron trying to earn their trust by letting them molest Ellie’s body. During this scene, we get more insights into Ellie, revealing that she was not only the former hockey team captain, but the prom queen and a general role model, adding to the sense of corruption throughout this story. 

This realization emboldens Henry, inspires him to try to overpower Ron, only to swiftly prove why that is a bad idea as he is slapped and then thrown into a sports equipment shed. Or a fuck shed if you prefer. After a weirdly elaborate perspective shot, Ron reveals a skinsuit he prepared for this occasion, that of Dawn, the office intern at Ellie’s workplace. The story could have just progressed from here, but Imp got too enamored with this concept, and this 50 page chapter is extended with an 18 page flashback. 

In the flashback, Ron uses Ellie’s status to lure Dawn to the backroom, where he skinsuits her and uses her form for some skinsuit penial masturbation. Because I guess he just had to feel what it was like to spunk the monkey with a female hand. He nearly gets caught, fails a charisma check, gets fired, and just walks away from this job before calling up this body’s ‘honeybunny.’ This gives way to a ten page date sequence that, from a timeline perspective, feels pretty sloppy. While I will say that a lot can happen in eight hours, this section is really pushing it. And, as part of a broader story… this entire diversion feels like another story idea that Imp wanted to explore, but they shoved it into Ellie Skinsuit instead. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun concept that appeals to the universal human fantasy of being a spoiled hot bitch. It just doesn’t fit here.

After introducing Dawn, Ron gives her husk to one of his buddies, and the two sinisterly comprehend just what sort of chaos they could get up to with bodies like this. All while Henry… looks on with despair, fully aware that someone just lost their body, mind, and soul, stolen and twisted as part of a sick game for sick people. Ron then had sex with one of his friends, debasing Ellie’s body yet again. But the sex (and torment, don’t forget about the torment) comes to an end when Ms. Rey moseys on in.

Ms. Rey is straight shook by what Ron has gotten up to in her shed, and rather than defend himself, Ron aims for the nuclear option. Supposedly fueled by Ellie’s memories, Ron admits to having always hated her, that she is the reason the hockey team is going downhill, and at her lowest point… he put her out of her misery! Now turned into a skinsuit, one of Ron’s friends slides inside Ms. Rey and immediately slides into a flawless impression of her. He has her memories, her demeanor, and mimics her convincingly in front of two hockey team members. 

This scene does a great job of selling the power of the skinsuit gun and having access to one’s everything. It adds legitimacy to Henry’s early comments about how skinsuits let one steal a person’s soul and mind, and makes Ron out to be a more grounded threat than he originally was. He’s still one preposterously fucked dude, but it shows that he really isn’t a mastermind or anything. Just drunk on adult confidence. 

Using this confidence, Ron’s friend then kicks a ‘queen bee’ off the hockey team because she was mean to him in class. A move that should be petty, yet he sells it. He takes the intimidation flaunted by Ms. Rey last chapter and cranks it to the next level, coming across as a chilling figure.

A little while later, after the quartet of skin thieves do more sex stuff, this chapter is brought to a close, teasing that next chapter they will continue this body thievery… with Ellie’s mom! 

In the author’s notes at the end, Imp acknowledges that this comic ballooned out of their control, and… that definitely is true. While nothing added here is bad, it lacks a certain level of focus and was drawn away from the main plot with the introduction of so many characters. As a critic, I see this as sloppy, while as a creator… I know that this just sometimes happens. You get on a creative roll and just stop caring if something belongs, because you want to do it, damn it!

Artistically, Imp continued to shift their style throughout this comic. The coloring on characters is more saturated, skin tones have more hues, the eyes underwent another redesign— actually, eye designs change with every chapter. Things overall feel a bit looser, with character faces and bodies condensing more for expressions. And while I think it makes better use of background colors and exaggerated shading to sell the tone, it still has some odd choices for background colors. Particularly whenever the backgrounds are a dark forest green. It still looks great, and the sequential storytelling, conceptually bloated though it may be, continues to impress with its effectiveness and efficiency.

Alright, part four! Henry immediately tries to warn his mom (Maria) about Ron when he makes his plan known. But Ron snags his phone and puts on a naturally flawless Ellie impersonation. Ron nails it and Henry is sent running home as quickly as possible. Henry thinks that he made it in time, his mother comforts him, he starts to explain… and right when you think he might finally have a W on the board, ‘Ellie’ shows up. Henry learns he is too late, that Ron and his friend, Tim, stole his mother’s body and soul 15 minutes ago and he is left to sink back into despair yet again. He has no allies, no recourse, and now lost both his mother and sister to these cretins. He is utterly helpless. Unable to do anything except hide in his room as Ron and Tim have incestuous lesbian sex on the living room rug. Like a bunch of animals.

Henry eventually sulks out in the aftermath, where the two skin thieves remind him of his position in this relationship. How unless he behaves and lets them be, they will “do something that can’t be undone.” Henry is then left to stew between the two during a call with his father where they, effortlessly, fall into their roles. In fact, they are so convincing, Henry almost falls into the fantasy. …But he can’t. Because these two aren’t his family. He doesn’t have a real family. Not any more. All he has left is his resolve. All he can do now is… endure it. Endure it and hope that somehow, some way, he will be able to save them. (So far, he doesn’t. You’ll need to wait until at least chapter 8 for that.)

Moving to the artwork, this comic came out three months after part three, and while the style drifts yet again, the changes are less pronounced. Well, beyond a new donut-shaped eye design that I don’t care for. The dual colors add more expressiveness, but there is too much white and not enough iris most of the time. Aside from that, it can be sufficiently moody and atmospheric when it needs to be, and Imp has gotten very good at making characters look adorable and twisted at the same time.

Chapter five breaks the timeline by having Ron leave the country, meaning Henry is stuck at home, with Tim still stuck in his mother’s body. In prior chapters, Henry has been locked into a state of misery, regularly tormented by someone who was his de facto aggressor, and knew how to push him in the worst way. Here… Henry has pretty much broken. Instead of getting upset, he just stews in frustration and disgust over what his life has crumbled into. A life of servitude as he is constantly exposed to the relentless debasing of his loved ones by instruments of a breadthless id.

The chapter sees him mull through a day in his life, accepting that Tim will be fucking men in the living room at any time of day, and that he must care for him. He does the dishes, the laundry, food prep, and even cleans up Tim’s piss and shit— because Imp’s a gross fucking dude like that. All while watching him lay on the fuck couch, eating junk, getting drunk, using his tits as a table, and ramming clunk up his cunt. If Henry disobeys, he gets a firm talking to and a firmer foot on the dick. It’s not even with the heel. It’s like they’re just trying to muck up Henry’s sexuality until he snaps and becomes a real hentai protagonist. 

After this chapter establishes Tim’s love for destroying this beautiful body he had been given, we are given two… vignettes I guess you could call them. One where Henry plays the role of pack mule at a grocery store where Tim effortlessly slips into his Maria impersonation when talking to another housewife. She brings up how there are nudes of Maria floating online, to which Tim promptly blames Henry, saying that he stole them and sold them for ‘some video game items.’ 

This is the only time Henry looks truly hurt in this entire chapter, shocked that Tim would go to these needless lengths just to hurt him. And he cannot make an objection, as it would just make his mother look worse.

Afterwards, the chapter ends with a quick check-in to the skin thieves wearing Ms. Rey and Dawn, who have both gone the club slut route, and Tim is quick to join. He blows $1,300 on a dress that will be destroyed in the throes of sex, leaves with a faceless man, and his parting words are… the type of shit that only a comic writer has the balls to write: “Mommy’s gonna go party and waste all of Daddy’s hard earned cash on drugs and prostitutes.”

When faced with this… Henry is left just glad that another day’s over. It’s an amazingly complacent and depressing note to end this chapter on. Chaos has melted down into something viscous and rank, the insanity has decomposed into depravity, and hope is off slurpin’ goblin piss— straight from the dick— because it was that desperate for something warm.

Chapter five is a beautiful example of body theft despair. It captures and builds upon the unabashed disgustingness that I adore from similar stories, and renders it in an image devoid of shame. The writer completely gets the fantasy they are dealing with, and the only way they could have nailed it harder was with a time skip!

Visually, what stands out to me about this chapter is how it is not afraid to show anything. A grown woman pissing on the floor, scarfing down trash, getting beer in her cleavage? Sure! No problem! That is exactly the sort of thing an artist should be using their metahuman powers to draw! And the lighting took a notable step up, using colors to better convey the tension at the grocery store, the nightlife billowing in the background, and the sustained lazy afternoon debaucheries of Tim.

…I’m like 3,400 words into this and I’m just getting to the latest chapter. Damn it! I guess this is legally a review now! 

Anyway, chapter 6 of Ellie Skinsuit is… honestly more of a side-story than anything. Rather than continue the soul death of Henry, the comic instead follows Ron on his aforementioned bangin’ vacation. But rather than see him do Europe with Ellie’s breastest buddies, this chapter sees him head to Italy two weeks early to engage in some skinsuit shenanigans. So, in my mind, this isn’t truly part 6, as much as it is Ellie Skinsuit Gaiden: In Italia con Lussuria (To Italy with Lust). I mean, it’s such a side-story that Henry isn’t even mentioned during the characters page.

So… the thing about this chapter is that it feels more like an idea bucket than anything else, and it can be divided into three parts. The first half sees Ron, as Ellie, venture to the fictional medieval city of Caggero. There, Ron enjoys the sights, the freedom of physically being Ellie without socially being Ellie, before deciding to make the most of this maze-like city and become a skinsuit bandit! …Or rather, more of a skinsuit bandit! He snags young mothers, lesbian lovers, police officers, office ladies, a veritable vertical slice of the 108 breeds of humans out there!

He is such a prolific snagger that he becomes known as The White Ghost of Caggero, and rather than view this as a sign to cool it… he decides to veer into it with the second part. Where Ron slithers his slimy self into the skin of the local mayor, Andrea Bruno, and does a shirtless interview where he addresses the urban legend directly. It is such a bold move that really shows how confident and full of himself Ron has gotten at this point, and how powerful of an impersonator he had become. Slithering his way into the skin of anyone on his radar, using them get get precisely what he wants, and knowing when to be an all-American horndog who fucks his way out of a bind.

However, about halfway through this 60 page chapter, this focus shifts into its main story as Ron happens across a shy, innocent enough, woman by the name of Alexis. It starts out as yet another one of Ron’s skinsuit flings, only to quickly learn that she is an Italian princess. Ron views this as an opportunity for mischief, but rather than continue to follow along his perspective, it instead shifts to one of Alexis’s butlers, Charles. A diligent young man who had devoted his life to protecting and serving his Lady, a real noble sap, who Ron chooses to use as his plaything during his tenure as Lady Alexis. 

He dresses provocatively around him, flirts with him only to, like a bully, push him down and mock him for thinking that he had a chance with a princess like them. …And at this point, it was clear to me that Imp really just wanted a ‘possessed ojou-sama becomes a seductress brat’ type story. The comic takes ample time to illustrate the decadent life of Ron as Alexis. Having an army of maids waiting on beck and call. Lounging in elegant bathrooms and gardens. Receiving a pedicure while sipping champagne and eating tiny cakes. Getting lesser lords to swear fealty by kissing their feet. It’s the rich life front to back— the best life.

Charles eventually gets suspicious about his Lady’s sudden change in demeanor and goes to check on her in the middle of the night… only to find her in the throes of bodily pleasure. The peg finally falls into the hole and Charles realizes that this cannot be the princess he has served for years. Ron congratulates him for seeing through his wafer thin facade, but even with this conviction, even knowing that this is not the Lady he has sworn to serve… Charles can’t say no to that royal pussy! Especially when it’s glazed in crazy sauce!

From this climax (intentional double meaning), the chapter wraps itself up, getting Ron out of Alexis’s body before ending on an open note, with Ron, as Ellie, meeting Ellie’s buds for a European vacation.

As previously stated, a big allure of this chapter is the Alexis subplot and how much one clicks with this type of possession body takeover story. I think it is appealing from both the perspective of Ron and Charles— the joyriding interloper and the one in on this forbidden secret. The story has ample time to illustrate and build up the details of these relationships, getting the reader to care about both of them, even in isolation. And it does not leave any significant scraps of potential behind. It is an effective execution by someone who knows damn well what they’re doing.

That same sentiment carries over to the story visually, though it does mark a considerable departure away from prior chapters. Eyes are now all black and shorter than before. The proportions are more realistic, with the characters having less of a cartoonish stoutness and smaller heads. While the backgrounds are more striking and detailed, with Imp clearly using the Italian inspired scenery as an artistic challenge to see how well they could bring these sights to life. …While also not being insane and knowing when to use a gradient or plain color. It was about 7 months between parts 5 and 6 and I have to say… Imp got better in that time.

Since I found them a few years ago, Imp Underneath has consistently impressed me with the quality and ambition of their work. And going through such a large segment of their catalog with this showcase has only reminded me why. They are diligent in their storylines, regularly push the creative envelope, and have shown a consistent desire to improve their already impressive craft. Ellie Skinsuit is a wild ride, an excellent example of escalation in a serialized multi-chapter TSF narrative, and a delightfully indulgent narrative that, barring a few divergences, keeps its story at the forefront.

…Is that it? Well, that was (over) 4,500 words so I’m going to say… yeah, that’s it.

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Switch 2.0 Insanity + Natalie Rambles Some More
(The Switch 2 Content Mill is Getting Bonkers)

Crap, it’s Wednesday and I still don’t have any news stories so… let’s just do this schtick again.

Despite choosing to no longer financially support Nintendo as a company, I still diligently follow the broad strokes community of Nintendorks and their fixations. And their fixation the past week has been rampant Switch 2 speculation. They know that it’s 2024, the year that every major publication is saying the Switch 2 will launch, and are desperate for news and information. So they talk to people for affirmation and engagement, hoping to generate some sort of event by simply talking about it, because Nintendorks operate on that logic. …Actually, that might just be human beings.

Now, I know that the Switch 2 will be an inevitability and I will be interested in everything about it leading up to release. But after an entire generation of seeing rampant speculation about the next iteration of Nintendo hardware… this just upsets me at this point. Nintendo is in a great spot at the moment. They have had success after success and as a developer, they have had their best and most consistent output of titles in about 20 years. Sadly, Nintendorks simply do not know how to enjoy the moment, as they have spent too long worrying about what’s next. Rather than just rejoice over how good games are and celebrate the now, they keep looking into the future, and that’s what they want to talk about, what they want to hear about. It’s all so frustrating… yet I think I know the reason why. 

A game is something specific, and a lot of Nintendorks only care about a handful of games. Which is fine— I grew up on a diet of pizza and bologna sandwiches, so I intimately understand the essence of what it means to be a stupid picky bitch. However, most people interested in Nintendo as a broad concept, in the Nintendo Switch, care about what comes next. Because what’s next has the potential of being something they like. And the thing about something you cannot play, that you can only see snippets of is… it can be as good as you want it to be. 

There is no game in existence that can be as good as what someone imagines to be a perfect video game. Because things that exist in one’s imagination don’t need to follow rules, or logic, or even design laws. Imagination is driven by emotion and feeling, and if someone wants to imagine the best *insert thing here* they can. Hell, they barely even need to try!

In the end, Pretend is the best game ever made, and it’s frankly insulting that anybody even made video games when we always had Pretend right there. With the power of Pretend, you don’t need games, you don’t need entertainment, you don’t need new things, and you don’t even need friends. Truly, it is the mother of all life hacks. And that’s why I’m a writer. Because when I write, I just play pretend and squirt out the juices of imagination onto my keyboard. (I am clearly taking the piss with this paragraph. Don’t take this seriously, please.)

Also, my Nintendo take of the week is that I’m really bloody sick of how Nintendo keeps handling the pricing of their remakes. It was garbage when Link’s Awakening, a game that I bought for $8 in 2011, was remade as a $60 title. It was dumb when Super Mario RPG went from a game I bought for $8 in 2008 to a $60 game in 2023. And it’s wild that Mario vs. Donkey Kong, a GBA game that I bought for… whatever GameStop was selling it for back in 2006. It was later sold for $10, while the HD remake is going to be a $50 video game. Even though it’s a basic-ass puzzle platformer. If anybody else dared to make a game like that for more than $20, they would be laughed out of business. Sure, it has extras, but piss off with that ish, bud. 

I’d let them get away with charging $50 if they remade the superior Donkey Kong (1994), which I bought in 2011 for $5, and merged the games. But no! Nintendo’s modern model for these remake projects is to do the bare minimum plus a few extra things. Well, unless it is a passion project that should not exist according to Grandmaster Capitalism and the Furious Suits, like Another Code Recollection. I wish they had more of an incentive to design all their remakes as collections to justify charging $60 for a 25-year-old game. Except they don’t need to, so they don’t.

…When I finally get to writing Psycho Shatter VN: Vice Novus, there is just going to be a 50,000 word fan fiction codex imagining a better games industry. …God, I can’t wait until I get to write about that sex-powered whale with the power to move, flip, and Great Shift nations. Glorious Nihon is gonna experience their Diamond Years. Taiwan and Mexico are going to become best friends. And GUN America will be the best America.

Akumako: “Yeah, this Natalie has gone bad. Let me get the hammer and iodine…”

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Dead End Rehashing
(Natalie Complains About No Frills Re-Releases)

So, this past week I saw that Limited Run Games was working with Konami on two of their boutique classic game re-releases. The first was Rocket Knight Adventures: Re-Sparked, a collection of ports of the three Rocket Knight Adventure games that people care about. There was an attempted revival with Rocket Knight (2010) developed by Climax Studios, except they wound up making one of the most mediocre 2D action games of its era. (Also, it hasn’t been delisted, when I thought it was…)

While the second was Felix the Cat Collection, a pair of ports of the Hudson published Felix the Cat games for NES and GameBoy. The NES game came out in 1992 and was developed by a white label enigma named Shimada Kikaku and the GameBoy was developed by Hudson. I initially assumed they were the same game based on the fact that… they are listed as the same game on MobyGames. Though looking at longplay footage of them, the NES game is twice as long as the GameBoy one. 

Just like how Sparkster and Rocket Knight Adventure 2: Sparkster are completely different games despite having the same cover art and name in North America! …Even to this day, I forget which is which and which is supposed to be the ‘good one.’ I’m not gonna rewatch that Happy Video Game Nerd (or was it 16-Bit Gems) video to figure that out…

Normally, this would be a nothing story. Rocket Knight Adventure was a good game, but its sequels were more mixed and… I forgot that there was a Felix the Cat game on NES. I know the Nintendo Power cover was featured in an AVGN episode or something, yet I never saw footage of the game… so I assumed it did not exist! 

So, why am I bringing this up? Because I view boutique re-releases like this to be part of a larger trend that, quite frankly, I’m none too pleased with.

We are living in a wonderful age when it comes to retro game revisions. ROM hacks have only grown more powerful and better as creation tools have matured and information has become more accessible. The decompilation movement of the past few years has led to a wave of versatile ports and heavy revisions of classic games. Dedicated hobbyist programmers and designers have routinely been making stellar projects well worth celebrating. Emulation has entered into a new era as emulators themselves evolved. And there has been a wave of cheap yet versatile gaming handhelds that I get shoved in my face once a week, when I don’t actually like portable game devices. I only want a phone and computer, dangit!

However, despite all these advances, despite it being easier than ever to create an enhanced port of a classic game… there is still a deluge of no frills, unambitious, boring, repackagings of classic titles like this. I think that preservation is a massive issue in the games industry— more than all the rampant layoffs and constant disrespect thrown toward the people who make games. But this… this isn’t a solution. A ‘collection’ of two or three games is a nice gesture, yet it does not address the issue of gaming history being inaccessible through legal means. If you want to find an old album, movie, comic, or TV show, some stuff might be hard to come by, but there’s a better chance than not that you can find a legal copy of it. 

What this industry really needs is digital marketplaces that… just sell ROMs. Make it similar to how people can just buy MP3s of albums, PDFs or image files of comics, and… well, you cannot just download official MKVs, because movie studios are evil. They managed to get into the streaming and encrypted download game early and, just like ebooks and audiobooks, customers are just eternally boned.

Akumako: “Yeah, because big corporations want perpetual revenue and if they could destroy the concept of media ownership, they would in a heartbeat! If Apple thought they could just stop selling MP3s or M4A or whatever with no backlash, they would!”

Exactly, my hype girl! Just don’t get it twisted! This is not something new or unique to the digital era. People seem to forget this when talking about the era of physical media, but things were constantly going out of print and getting out-of-date back then. You could own something, yet it would always be replaced by something more advanced. 

Records lasted a few decades before being phased out with cheaper, portable, and more compact cassettes, which were replaced with CDs… 15 years later? And then people went back to freaking records because FLAC just isn’t good enough for some people. Movies went from VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray. DVD was only the best format for, what, a decade? And now 108p Blu-Rays are glorified frisbees next to 4K discs! While books… books are fragile and super easy to destroy. I was a pretty careful kid, I never broke a disc, yet I wrecked some books because I would flip through them so often. 

Also, my copy of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen: Official Nintendo Player’s Guide fell apart when I was reading it for the first time back in 2005. The glue went bad and the pages all fell out! Which sucked, as that was a great guide! Way better than the crummy Prima one! …Which I still have a mini version fo, without the Sevii Island content. I think it was a purchase bonus at Target or something. 

Akumako: “Focus, you aspie cunt!”

Sorry! I just really love strategy guides. They taught me how to play video games! (Also, I would do dirty deeds for high quality PDFs of every Versus Books guide. They were the best! Followed by Nintendo Power, then Prima, then Brady Games. Sandwich Islands was probably the worst, but they were one of the only things I read when I was 5. I should by GameBooks.com.)

Some people assumed that the digital future was going to let people build these vast libraries of files they own, and to an extent, it has. Except corporations never intended on letting people keep their digital libraries forever. That was never the end goal. They have been selling and reselling works like this ever since home media became a viable concept, and will always look for more ways to resell things to people. Things that do not last because they are not meant to last. Nothing is meant to last nowadays!

Before, the technology to store and distribute the high quality lossless version of these things did not exist. And now… it does. People have the ability to have an eternal digital library that follows them their entire life. They just need to be willing to break laws that only protect corporations to do it.

Akumako: “Natalie… why must you go on this rant every quarter? The words are different, but your conclusion is always the damn same!”

Because I want things to change, and they don’t. So I bitch about it and vent by doing dumb shit. Like writing a fanfic of a better reality.

Akumako: “Natalie, that’s called alternate universe fiction…”

…In Psycho Shatter VN, ViceWorks Ltd. should be a games preservation and remastering company. I should just secure that name as an LLC while I can and use it to protect me from libel. They can be an in-universe company and an out-universe company! That will definitely drive someone nutso in the buttso!

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Progress Report 2024-01-14

Mathematically correct type charts are bad… Why did I spent several hours working on this? Because Pokémon brings out some of my worst, most obsessive, traits…

2024-01-07: Wrote 200 words to finish off CH 6-19 of VD2.0. Banged my head to figure out 1,800 words of outline for CH 6-20 and wrote 2,100 words for it before collapsing. Would have done more, but I think I’m developing creative fatigue for this project at this point. So many ideas are being juggled, and it takes so long for things to happen… while things are constantly happening.

2024-01-08: Wrote 6,900 words for CH 6-20 of VD2.0. I got to the point where I had to come up with outfits for the adult characters, and I just was not in the mood for that kind of thing at 11:30. So I went phew, I’m tired! Time for a break! Is that lazy of me? No. That is more than you would expect a professional writer to do in a day, and I do all my shit for the love of the game! Also, that’s still over 9,000 words in two days. Shaddup!

2024-01-09: Wrote 3,300 words today for CH 6-20 of VD2.0. Work, bank stuff, and lunch kept me busy for the morning and I decided to play 2 hours of Metroid Prime in the afternoon, because I wanted a breather. But then my sister came over for a visit and that ate up 4 hours. I made some perogies for her, figured out how sales receipts work in QuickBooks, and basically redid her non-profit’s bank activity for a year. I was at 2,400 words… then a client sent me emails at 00:20. He’s bad with email replies, so I got back to him ASAP. The related work took 30 minutes and at that point, I was ready to throw in the towel. …Except I wanted to write the alley sex scene, so I went in for a final 900 words. Thanks for the motivation, Shakatak. I really should listen to more than The Coolest Cuts. That’s what ModeSeven recommended back in the day! 

2024-01-10: Wrote 1,000 word preamble, the 800 word Nintendo fixation tangent, and made the header image for this Rundown. Wrote 3,000 words for CH 6-20of VD2.0, finishing off the main story. Sadly, I had a creative crash when it came to the Posse Logs. I came up with the general ideas for what they will all be, but I also decided to make this one extra long.

2024-01-11: I started work at 9:30 (technically 8:40, but that’s a different job) and while taking breaks for dishes, meals, and small breaks, I wound up working until 21:00. So… yeah, no real progress on stuff today. I wound up writing something for this Rundown, which wound up being 1100 words. After that, it was midnight, so I decided to just proofread this Rundown before going to bed, and didn’t get to the TSF Showcase because I got distracted by strategy guides.

2024-01-12: I wound up being a dirty lazy girl and did my Pokémon hyperfixation thing again, this time going through all the items and determining which ones fit with my dumb game design topic. That’s not me dissing my idea, CaptainCaption calls re:Dreamer a ‘dumb gender bender VN’ all the damn time, and re:Dreamer fucks trucks for breakfast! I wound up getting a late start and only wrote 2,600 words for the Posse Logs for for CH 6-20 before deciding it was bedtime. I’ll finish it and start the next one tomorrow…

2024-01-13: Wrote 650 words for the extended Posse Logs of CH 6-20, FINALLY finishing this chapter with a draft word count of 18,819. I spent the rest of the day working on additional outlines for this chapter because… I decided the daddies needed more love! Wrote about 1,800 extra words for the outline of the next chapter, and probably replaced a lot of old stuff, I dunno, and spent the rest of the night getting started on CH 6-21. I wrote 650 words and then realized I forgot to read the TSF manga I had been accumulating the past two weeks. So I did that before becoming bread.

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Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp
Acts 1, 2, and 3 Progress Report:

I’m starting to doubt if I can get Act 3 ready in time. Act 2 has ballooned to something bigger than expected, as chapters are frequently becoming double chapters and the Posse Logs are adding WAY TOO MUCH! Fortunately, most of Act 3 will be told with one storyline per chapter, the Posse Logs will have a reduced scope, and I have a good idea what they will all be. Except for the Mexico trilogy. Just that there will be a cyborg and a car chase.

Current Word Count: 247,558

Estimated Word Count: ~450,000

Total Chapters: 48

Chapters Outlined: 41

Chapters Drafted: 24

Chapters Edited: 0

Header Images Made: 0

Days Until Deadline: 136