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at the "switch 2" nintendo direct on april 2, 2025 they announced street fighter 6 was coming to the switch 2.
i hadn't kept up with street fighter despite loving it as a younger teenager because i didn't like street fighter 5's art style, so this was the first time i'd actually sat with street fighter 6's existence
and it piqued my interest! i wasn't planning on getting the switch 2 (i ""still"" don't have one at the time of writing, or see myself buying one until animal crossing or a numbered splatoon releases on it... something big like that) but the announcement of it coming to the switch 2 sent me down the path of watching videos related to street fighter 6 across platforms. it really made me want to play it, but because i don't have any of the consoles it's on (and my pc isn't powerful enough to handle it) i had to stop watching things about because it felt like a tease.
time passed, cut to earlier this year (2026). i look up to the street fighter 3 games a ton artistically! it's normal for me to look to them for inspiration (and heck, i can play them anytime i want), but this time it evolved to me deciding to see how street fighter 6 is going, they added new characters right? what's it like now!!
i didn't expect to get endeared to a character in the way i did, lol.
at first i was looking at "all costumes" videos (amazing character design), then it turned to watching matches, then it became reading up on the characters.
i'd read up on the characters last year when i was interested, but something was different now? maybe it was because last year i was hungry to play the game, meanwhile now i was looking to it more artistically. whatever the case though, i didn't expect to become endeared to a character in the way i did... that character being jamie siu.
here's the timeline of how that went:
reading up on all of the characters -> "oh jamie has a drink mechanic? how didn't i notice that last year?" -> "oh my god the way his animations change depending on how drunk he is is hilarious" -> "HIS THEME SONG SOUNDS LIKE THIS?"
i knew it was over when i watched a match where a kimberly player landed her third super art on a jamie player. seeing him all silly laying on the ground with his arms up, covered in paint (braid and all) forced me to pause so i could laugh and coo at him... and i only have that sort of reaction to characters i'm especially endeared to.
on one hand i feel like a poser for getting so many feelings about a character from a game i've never played. which yeah! i still haven't played the game. i attempted to play it at a friends house a few months ago (i rented it from the library and brought it over), but it turned out her console didn't have enough space to download it (and haven't been able to coordinate a time to try it again).
but on the other hand... doesn't it speak to the team doing an awesome job that the artistry even divorced from it's intended form grabbed me in that way? fighting games are in a way, pure character driven artistry. there's a material benefit to making a given character unique from the others, oozing with personality, trying new and fun things. so i'd like to explore some of the reasons i believe jamie struck me in this way.
to start, i wanna shout out this awesome video. i already in jamie-fan mode by the time this video came out, in fact i already was planning on making a write-up like this! so when youtube (i suppose out of spying on how many jamie siu related matches i was watching) recommended me this video i was pumped. it's much more eloquently said and made than this casual post, i highly recommend giving it a watch! imagine i'm nodding along, and pointing at the screen like i'm sports fanatic watching football the whole runtime.
piggybacking off of this video, here's a bunch of things i like!
in street fighter 6, every character has four different 'win poses' (animation/voice lines that play upon winning a match that's not the final round), in one of jamie's he says "of course i'd win!" this shows off his overconfident personality, right? well, it does. but also, it's specifically his "low health" win pose. which of the four win poses is played is dependent on how much health the character had at the time of the win (no health lost, some but not much, somewhere in the middle, low).
so him saying his most showboaty line when he narrowly wins adds depth to his overconfident persona.
adding onto this, in the correlating animation he celebrates as you'd expect, but after he poses with his arms crossed he kinda seems to like... catch his breath? huff a little? which makes sense! it was a narrow victory. but he still felt the need to show off just before this.
speaking of win animations, his 'only a bit of health lost' one he hits a pose where he looks surprised, then goes into a dramatic pose (showing off), but then he takes a sip where he puts his whole weight into it... and it makes him look so unguarded, like he's so lost in the sauce he forgot anyone's looking (the way he's up on his toes, the way he just vacantly looks into the distance). it's so funny (and cute to me)! and it shows so many sides of him so rapidly
on this note, his 'draw game' animation; he stomps around all disappointed, and then stares down his opponent with what i'm imagining is his attempt at looking intimidating. this expression is also so funny to me
i could go on forever about animation things, but i'll share one more in detail for now.
in his 'continue' animation (countdown before you get a game over), he progressively gets more tired as the timer runs out (as you'd expect) but around the count of 3/2 he strains to flash a smile. i'm not gonna do it justice in still form, but it again really speaks to his personality!
and in less detail: i love in world tour the animation when he looks surprised and then scratches at his neck nervously kinda avoiding eye contact. i love how he plays to the camera in his walkouts.
then when it comes to writing/story stuff, i love that his grandma is who taught him how to fight. i love that in a series that's all about fighting internationally, his arcade mode has the same stage for every fight since his whole deal is being a peacekeeper of his hometown.
i just like that he exists conceptually. the idea of a character who: uses martial arts but also break dancing to fight, but also has a mechanic when you get him drunk enough he gets additional hard hitting moves? that's so awesome.
i could keep going, but i've already gone on for longer than i anticipated, haha!
(spoiler warning for chapters 1-4 of deltarune for this journal)
this came up so much faster than i was anticipating! with the announcement last year that chapter 5 was coming in 2026, i figured that meant late 2026 (like september-december), given that the shortest length between chapters until now has been 3 years.
and also when the release date was announced in the nintendo direct earlier this month on the 9th, i didn't expect for the two weeks between then and this release to go by so quickly! i've had aspirations of getting my save file ready for the chapter's release as i did before chapters 3 & 4 released, but with how quickly it came up, i wasn't able to. i suppose i'll aim to have my save all ready by the next release!
anyways, let's make a time capsule! let's catalogue what's going on in my brain at this moment when it comes to this awesome story
The Roaring Knight
i (as i think most people rn) think dess is the roaring knight. i specifically think that dess got ""gastered"" (lol) i.e. shattered across space and time, and one of these "pieces" is the knight, and that another piece of her is the person trapped in the code.so lemme take a step back, entry 17! back before deltarune came out, the very very interesting experiment gaster is talking about was assumed to be the core, since that was the only thing we knew gaster to have made... but like. he was talking about dark worlds, right? i see people still believing entry 17 is about the core, and maybe it is! but "dark darker yet darker, the darkness keeps growing"
that sounds like it's referring to dark worlds! and the fact that he "fell into his creation and shattered across time and space"... the creation being referred to there could also be dark worlds. so from there, if someone can fall into a dark world and be shattered across time and space, couldn't that be what happened to dess?
so i'm assuming that 'lost where the forest would grow, the children followed the pointed tail', the traumatic experience haunting kris (what happened behind the tree, what happened at the shelter, what made kris agree to the plan), and december's disappearance are all the same event... and it's easy for me to imagine that event being the dreemur and holiday kids making a dark fountain (in the woods, at the shelter), and that causing dess to get shattered across time and space.
it would make sense why asgore would get fired, how can you explain that? how could anyone? of course carol and he need conspiracy boards to even attempt to piece this together lol.
the fell into a dark world part of what i'm saying could be anything though. it's like... maybe dark darker yet darker is instead referring to making dark worlds within dark worlds (the roaring, etc). maybe what happened to dess is a completely adjacent concept we haven't been introduced to! the part i have the most conviction about is dess being in pieces. the lost element of her being a lost girl not just being where to find her singular, but where to find the parts of her.
i know a lot of people believe this. i'm for sure for sure not the first to bring this points to the table, but it doesn't hurt to lay it all out! i thought of it by myself, but i've since seen some youtube video titles gesturing to these ideas. i haven't watched them, because i'm having fun thinking of it by myself, or in calls with friends or whatever else!
the person on the other side of kris's phone call
the person (people?) on the other end of the call in chapter 4 aren't so much a point of conversation as much as agreeing "it's gotta be carol, and/or the knight". and like... yeah i get it. "i'll be right there" and then carol arrives home unusually early, and drops that red text on Us (capital U).
but it is funny how she still comes home unexpectedly early in the weird route. and i don't know how i feel about how at the end of chapter 4 when you're on the weird route, and carol is unambiguously the one who calls kris.
i'm not saying its NOT carol (or that one of the potential few, isn't carol)... but i am saying i'm not sold lol. i feel similar about this to how i felt about "kris-knight" believers before chapters 3 & 4 released.
that being said... uh. can i share my least likely to be real, most fanfictiony theory?
i've always preferred asriel to JUST be at college, as opposed to secretly being dead or whatever (which would only make sense if kris didn't know? given kris's search history). but uh.... what if asriel is one of the people involved in the knight/kris/carol(?) alliance (or otherwise just whoever kris made this promise to).
i will be so honest. i only started thinking of this because of undertale parallels. like... in undertale, asriel has an adopted human sibling chara (or whatever name floats your boat) who wears a green and yellow striped shirt and likes chocolate, and a core part of their plotline is a PLAN they come up with, that asriel grows to question, only for chara to reaffirm their conviction.
meanwhile now we have deltarune, where asriel has an adopted human sibling kris, who wears a green and yellow striped shirt and likes chocolate (at least enough to go through the trouble of making chocolate milk when they're afforded autonomy), and a core part of kris's plotline is some PLAN they promised to follow through, that kris has grown to question, only for someone on a phone to attempt to reaffirm their conviction.
WOULDN'T THAT BE INTERESTING IF IT WERE ASRIEL? or if he were involved somehow.
i don't expect it to happen, this thought has persisted long enough that i feel i owe it the dignity of being shared. after all, oberon smog had more basis in canon than chess theory, it's healthy to go a little out there!
but ultimately, even if this is true i hope for asriel to be okay in the end. he went through enough in the undertale version of events. but i'm a softy in this way, i want everything to be okay for kris, for dess, for noelle, for susie, for ralsei... everyone really, lol. and if the story hurts one of them then i trust this team to make it beautiful artistically, even if it gets to me emotionally.
ralsei, and darkner's connection to the lightworld fictionality
we know ralsei's deal more after chapters 3 & 4. or at least we're not having the "is he secretly evil" conversation all the time, which is indication to me that we know more of his deal! but we still don't know what he is, like what object. we don't know why he belongs in all dark worlds (not turning to stone), etc.a common belief is that ralsei is kris's 'monstersona' so to speak, and i really like this in relation to how kris has seemingly become less wary, and more fond of ralsei over the course of the last four chapters. that feels real. it makes sense for kris, a 16 year old, to have complicated feelings over an oc they made when they were a child being right in front of them, and it also makes sense for them to become fonder when they see his autonomy, his struggle.
over the last year i was instead fond of the idea that ralsei's creation is cyclical in nature. that kris and asriel (or i suppose either could've on their own) created him as their interpretation of the prince from the prophecy (a prophecy fancharacter if you will, lmao). because i like how this would feed into ralsei's ongoing arc. this is fanfictiony too, haha!
separate from this, but related to me, is how at the start of chapter 4, susie can see seam on asriel's computer! and how it's mentioned that kris and noelle played pretend with queen and king and whatnot... but it's not like seam says to kris "hey i'm your brother's oc or something". seam is just seam.
there's times where darkners seem to retain their lightworld relationships, tenna speaks very directly to everything having happened in the dreemur house. ramb seems to have been played with like a toy in ways similar to king or queen, and talks to kris with familiarity seemingly because of this connection. i'm curious to see how things will continue to progress in this regard.
i also really loved this video discussing ralsei!
closing thoughts
writing this journal, and the one i did before chapters 3 & 4, i discuss the mysteries and what i think could be going on. but i wanna take a step back and say that the reason i think these mysteries are engaging is because it allows the opportunity to sit with the evocative writing in this beautiful work.for weeks after chapters 3 & 4 released i constantly thought about how beautifully deltarune speaks to living life, a coming of age story. the way the dark worlds mirror fiction, and how they mirror "that thing that not everyone understands" or can know about. how kris and susie's friendship feels so real, how noelle feels so real, how hometown evokes my own hometown to me.
the way kris's trauma aligns with growing up, the way dess's disappearance can be read into so easily by the eensy bit of information we do have.
and the mysteries come from beautifully written lines. things like "copies are monochrome, but you colored each of us in with care", "right, this is where we draw pictures, and don't kill each other!" imply a context that has yet to be given. they evoke so much with so little, and we have all the reason to believe in this team's ability to make an amazing payoff.
another example that's less mysterious but no less evocative is in chapter 3 when doing the parental lock puzzle, where when you enter the correct code you get back "(you entered the numbers knowingly)", all the while you're listening to "glowing snow"... it got to me!
the text could've said "the code was correct", that way it'd tell us only what's necessary gameplay information wise. and that's why what is in the game is beautiful, it tells us that this isn't just a puzzle for the game, there really was a parental lock on the family television at one point, and kris learned the code to get passed it, and got passed it often enough for it to be committed to their memory to this day.
i feel like i could go on so long, i spent today hanging out with some awesome friends, one of whom is in from out of town, and every once in awhile we'd just go "wow, deltarune tomorrow". i had such a great time, but it's tired me out, and now it's the wee hours of the morning, my blinds are barely blocking the morning sun flooding into my room despite the fact i haven't slept for the night. that being said, i'd regret it if i didn't take the extra time staying up to write this journal out. the chapter is coming out in a bit over 4 hours, but i won't play it for many more since i'll be asleep... but i'm so excited. see you all on the other side
i couldn't choose which arc from the first half of the kodocha manga is my favorite, but the second half? it's the kazuyuki arc. easy.
but the arc from the second half of the kodocha manga that i think about the most is the mansion of water arc. and that says something, doesn't it?
the part i'm remembering tonight is how chapters 26, and 27 frame sana's emotional state.
in chapter 26 (technically the end of 25, but we see the impacts in 26), she's attacked, resulting in a broken leg. she urges her manager to downplay it's severity because she's determined to continue working as if the event never happened. this is what we're used to from sana! we've read 25 chapters of her persevering through situation after situation. we're directed to see this as unusual. that the normal, healthy, expected response would be for her to take a break. and are therefore directed to see sana smiling (a very genuine) smile as she works through it as a manifestation of her resolve.
and then going into chapter 27, she's able to contact her friends back home, and learns that akito (she hasn't put the words to it yet, but she loves him romantically) has started dating her best friend. and she just BREAKS.
i'm showing the anime adaptation here despite talking about the manga iteration because it's 1 to 1 with the manga panel, but has color!
and the contrast between her persevering with her broken leg (a broken leg she got through the traumatic experience of being attacked by three people!), to her composure breaking, being unable to work for days, when she hears this news is stark. it highlights sana's character beautifully, but also like.... isn't that just so real? no matter how strong of people we are, there's always something that can get us, and the way these two events were crafted to be one after the other highlight it in a way that feels like it gets to the root of that aspect of the human experience.
even though i came here to talk about chapters 26 and 27, while i'm here i may as well mention that the mansion of water arc also has my favorite comic page! only one chapter later, in chapter 28.
it's after sana has sorted out her feelings, she's started working again thanks to her emotional state stabilizing. her leg is still broken, having not received recent meaningful attention thanks to her insistence on keeping it a secret. she's working in a scene where she has to leave a real actual burning building, but when she stands to leave on her cue, she gets a pain in her leg and falls over.
she can't get up, so she lays there thinking of all the hardships in life, of how tired she is, and how if the fire just consumes her she won't have to deal with it all anymore.
the pain of an ember hitting her snaps her out of it, allowing her deep rooted beliefs about life overtake the exhaustion from the hardships she's recently endured.
the page before my favorite she says "i'm not as strong as everyone thinks i am..." she closes her eyes, having been able to struggle to her feet. "but..."
ignore tokyopop's "it's 2003" english translation lettering (english reprint please please please please please)!! i love this page!!! the manifestation of her deciding to keep trying! to persevere! the determination in her eyes! the way that this moment is given an entire page to breathe. the way that she's shown (remember, it's read right to left) to take a moment before she GETS that determination in her eyes.
i've considered getting this page as a tattoo, i love it so much!
let it also be known that (imo) the anime adaptation butchers this scene. the kodocha anime is (aside from a few horrible episodes, and the anime original arc which-shall-not-be-named) in my eyes a "two cakes" situation. but the way they adapt this moment? egregious.
sana's songs are such a fun edition to the series (and are almost always the reason kodocha breaks containment), i love them :D! but they need to be placed appropriately, and they add one right before she falls and can't get up... almost implying the fact she was singing dancing and goofing off to be the cause of her exasperating her injury.
the kodocha anime typically shifts between a silly tone, and a serious one very skillfully..... this isn't that.
at least the subsequent scene of sana leaving the burning building looks awesome animated. you win some, you lose some!
i wrote a journal the day before deltarune chapters 3 and 4 released, but i never followed up in any way. needless to say my socks were blown clean off like everyone else's, i could wax poetic for a long time about the experience of playing through it but for now i'll share one memorable part.
(i'm gonna be discussing spoilers for deltarune, up to the very end of chapter 4. so here's your spoiler warning)
deltarune saying it will only have one ending has been a big point of discussion. the dream that inspired the game, what that means for the weird route, etc. it's on my mind while i'm playing through chapters 3 and 4, so when chapter 4 is exploring the prophecy in the way it does, it feels like it goes hand in hand with that external piece of information. yes only whats in the game is considered canon, but i found the chapter 4 egg room on my own because of the spamton sweepstakes. these things can still effect one another.
so anyways, i get to the titan fight. importantly before the chapters released i had so avidly put in safeguards to ensure i wouldn't be spoiled that i had 0 spoiler going into it.
and suddenly, as i'm losing against the titan time after time, and as susie is talking about how this can't be the end, they're a part of this prophecy! they have lives ahead of them!
i got really scared imagining a possible direction the story was heading.
i pictured that... oh my god. what if it's like really avant-garde. this was the paid release, what if there aren't any more chapters?
what if this is the end? what if this is the one ending? and that the supposed existence of chapters beyond 4 were just a way to mirror how the in game characters feel. to the characters, they were lead to believe the prophecy means they have this whole journey ahead of them... and yet it's cut short. and to us, the players we were lead to believe the game would be much longer than this... and yet it's cut short.
i got so scared of this creepypasta version of the ending i imagined that my ability play the game well plummeted. i kept losing against the titan. i realized i wouldn't be able to finish the game like this, so i had to look up and read the plot synopsis on wikipedia, spoiling myself, so i could be reassured that wasn't what was going to happen.
and it's funny right? that ending would be very shallow, it'd have left so many threads hanging. but it felt like such a real possibility to me in that moment, and it instilled such a real fear in me lol
the project i've been focused on for the last few months (rebuilding my website) has had the soft deadline of april 16, because i wanted it's weight to be off my shoulders while i booted up tomodachi life living the dream for the first time
and thankfully i was able to fulfill that! it went live yesterday (there's still work to be done, outlining what's new, and patching oversights, but it's nothing compared to finishing the whole thing!) so i'm really excited to enjoy the game to it's fullest tomorrow!
i feel so spoiled to have most the things i hoped would be in the game... be in the game!
gay relationships? yes! (in spades with the option to be aroace, nb, pronoun options, specify whether characters dress feminine or masculine to scripted events... we're literally so living the dream)
a way to introduce miis to eachother? yes!
way to make miis related to eachother? yes!
more specifically manage how a mii acts? yes, little quirks!
very reasonably something i wished for wouldn't come true, and that's the miitopia customization being in the game. though, the customization is still awesome. i especially love the hair and ear options (as funny as the latter sounds), it is different from miitopia... but i can't say i miss too much. i suppose i miss the way you could link certain decorations to features, for example linking something to the eye so when a mii blinks, it responds appropriately. but the facepaint system is hard to complain about. if i had to complain it'd only be.... could they please add heterochromia? otherwise i'm so content.
i was caught off guard by the demo dropping. it happened to release on a day i had suffered from unusually horrible insomnia, so when i logged into discord, all sleep deprived and out of it... and was immediately greeted by messages from my friends of their guys in tomodachi life i was like why did mario himself give my friends the game early??? (i quickly realized what happened, lol)
i played through the demo in that sleep deprived state, in the end i'm thankful it released that day because it gave me something pleasant to do. most my screenshots are of delia because the expression i gave her cracked me up
when i showed the screenshots to my best friend Lexi, she jokingly said delia looks like she "witnessed a murder in cold blood from start to finish" and i smile every time i remember that, what a compliment! this is true of delia's soul, the essence of her being. <3
i spent some time trying to make their miis look more like how i draw them, 'witnessed a murder' delia will always be in my heart (and hopefully that energy shines through regardless) but if i can try to make her look more similar to how i draw her, then i'd like that!
i'm sure they'll change as i play the game more, but they look enough like themselves that i feel i'm starting the game off on the right foot! i'm chomping at the bit to add all my other characters. if i were buying the digital game i'd be able to get it in only a few short hours, but unless i cave last second, the plan is to wait until tomorrow and buy a physical copy. eek! so exciting. we're so lucky to have this game exist.