The Monthly Report: Not an April Fool's Day Joke
I know this day has you on guard
Welcome to the Monthly Report feature of the Warthog Report, where I go over what I published here in the past month and plans for the current month.
First off, the poll for which Battles Beneath the Stars fighter gets their story told next is at a three way tie currently, with two days left to vote. Now is a good time to swoop in and push your candidate to victory. And you can refresh yourself on the candidates by reviewing the story’s opening chapter.
And of course the reason for this poll is because Erlingr’s story concluded, with a fight against a secret character you won’t find anywhere else. His was one of the stories I was most interested in getting around to, so I’m glad I was able to tell it.
On the topic of fake games, my piece on UFO 50 was a success in terms of getting a friend who skimmed the article at first to repeat to someone else that UFO Soft was a real company. This is my favorite installment of Let Me Talk To You About for that reason, it was fun to play along with the frame narrative and blur the line between kind of review and fanfiction.
Then in contrast I wrote about an undeniably real part of video games, their controllers. Writing it has given me an urge both to ensure I play certain games with their original controller, and to look into playing Street Fighter 6 with a N64 controller to see if it can be done. Relatedly, Nintendo is revealing more information on their new system tomorrow, and I’m keen to see if certain rumors about its controller turn out to be true, and what design space it might open up for Nintendo’s developers.
Lastly, I am still at work on the short story I previously teased. It took a bit of time to find the actual story in it beyond a certain set of characters interacting, and also time to write it. Thankfully it is also simple enough that I believe it should not take much longer.
For now, have this teaser for the story, though I reserve the right to completely rework everything about it prior to publication. This will have the most impact if you’ve been keeping up with the Miscellaneous Fiction section.
Aeneas took a seat next to the Abrams. “You have my sympathy for what you suffered. Troy, my homeland, was destroyed after a long siege of ten years. I desired to stay and fight amongst the flames until the end of Troy, yet the gods commanded that I escape. My own father was able to flee with me, but he did not live to see us reach our new homeland.”
“Our home was also burnt to the ground, it’s haunting how similar we are,” Abram the human said. As he spoke it ocurred to him that it made sense. His father had described empires as conformist and repetitve, and he assumed they were the ones who destroyed Troy. It fit with what he knew that the empire would destroy a single home and an entire city in the same way. “What of you, Obsidian Cross?”
“Oh me? I’m not one to tell stories of myself.” Obsidian’s glasses concealed his eyes. “I’ve known tragedy and fire as well, but I know many other things just as well. You can find me on both sides of anything. But I’d rather not go into detail when the third guest is about to arrive.”
The Abrams and Aeneas both looked to the door. Right as they began to doubt, it opened, and in slithered a man whose lower half was that of a snake, wearing a rainbow crown and holding a rainbow sword. “Humans?! No, this must be an illusion.”