megatownac

[megatownac]

I loaded up my town again two days ago so that nobody would talk to me about how I'd been away for so long yesterday or today.

I wanted to see if anything special would happen today, February 29, the only day of the year I'd never played.

Apparently, unless it's a player birthday (in which case the islanders WILL say special things about how your birthday only comes once every four years).... NOPE.

I did see some fun things in the three days of playing again after five months away. So I'll have a few more posts, but I'm not back for good.

Thanks to all those who've been reblogging and liking my posts while I was away. I do see the activity: I have another blog I still use on Tumblr, after all.

#text post #acnh leap day #acnh text post

[megatownac]

Reblogging from my main blog. It's been a rough few months. I know I'm not the only one. I'm sorry to even ask.

https://ko-fi.com/ratralsis

I'm not proud, but I've had to deal with thousands of dollars in expenses in the last four months from emergency surgery on my cat to replacing the valves and faucet on two sinks in my house plus the drain pipe to one and the garbage disposal in my kitchen for the sake of stopping two leaks and preventing a third while the faucet was merely squeaking.

I can recover, eventually, if nothing else comes up, but even a few bucks right now (if you can spare it, obviously) would be highly appreciated.

I don't know what I can offer. Maybe I can write you something if you have a request.

#reblog #self reblog

[megatownac]

@redcraneacnh

This might not be the best thing to use my blog for at the moment, while it's on indefinite hiatus, but what else is there, I suppose?

There's a tag dedicated to Marigold, #acnh marigold the spider, which has three pages of posts chronicling my long history of building this room full of flower crowns and wreaths for her.

The picture above her tank is of a 3d-printed figurine with a design I commissioned from Velrock on myminifactory.com which you can find here. I don't think Velrock was as into the character as I was, but he still did the job, and I still got the print, and I'm happy with it, more or less. I accidentally ordered a bigger print than I'd expected, but she stands proudly on a shelf of such figures still (lighter off to the side for scale):

Marigold the Spider Demon was a character in a story I wrote back in early 2020. She later became a human lady in a story I wrote and rewrote as recently as this year, which I called "Strings" in the most recent telling. I may rewrite it again someday.

And that's as much Marigold as I can possibly offer you: the tarantula, the figurine of her demon form, and the young musician who winds up marrying some dude named Kevin.

I'm still around, even if I'm not posting new Animal Crossing every day. Hit me up here or on my main blog if there's stuff you see here that you're curious about.

What else could I do but craft the cosmos crown, find a spot for it on my wall of crowns (and one security camera), and hang it up for dear old Marigold to look at? Marigold's been in captivity for over three years now, but I don't know how old she was when she was caught. She could potentially live for many, many more years, though, so I'm not terribly worried about her just yet. I just know that, as is the case with all things, I should be grateful for each day.

Because, you know, she's gonna die eventually. As will we all.

#reblog #self reblog #redcraneacnh

[megatownac]

The queue is empty, and it's been a little over four years since that happened. The last time, it's because I was on a two-week trip to Japan. This time, it's because I've quit playing New Horizons.

I stopped playing on September 22, on Ankha's birthday, because I wanted to celebrate that one last time before I put the game down. Since then, I've regained half an hour each day by not playing, and another twenty minutes by not queueing up posts after I got through my backlog on October 1. So it's been about 23 days of having an extra 50 minutes.

I'd been playing for nearly a year for no reason other than to keep getting fuel for posts. It wasn't fun on its own anymore.

I started this blog in September 2013, 10 years and 1 month ago. Since then, I've written over 22,000 posts in just about 3700 days.

When I started this blog, the Animal Crossing world was a lot more active. I made friends with people like @toysleaf and @vivinzenz. I would visit people's towns, and they would visit mine. As years went on, that faded. The blog got a little bit bigger. Just barely, barely big enough that I had to get cautious about what I wrote. I cut out all swearing and off-color jokes. I stopped asking people for things. I made sure never to reveal my political leanings, or my thoughts on current events. It wasn't my place, I thought, and was grateful that nobody asked me to weigh in. I eventually became isolated in my little world, not reblogging anything from anybody, ever, and hoping that maybe eventually some silly joke I made would get viral enough to…

To what, exactly? It's not like I ever made money doing this, and I'd all but given up on making friends. I was just doing it out of habit, out of a drive to see if I could get my follower count to go up. It didn't. I hit the 1500-follower mark back in 2016 or 2017 and never got higher than 1595. My silly jokes, my constant barrage of snarky comments about my day-to-day life, simply weren't popular with some imaginary mainstream Animal Crossing tumblr fandom that stopped existing well before New Horizons came out.

There's still an Animal Crossing fandom out here, of course. Just not one that follows blogs like mine. Do something impressive: create some art, or crochet something, or even design a cool home. Things I was not doing. Things I did not want to do.

I'd like to get back to enjoying Animal Crossing. To playing the game for fun. To playing it with other people, and making friends. But that won't happen right now. It can't.

Remember, I've been doing this for over 10 years. I was in my late twenties when I STARTED this blog, and I knew very well that I was one of the oldest people on Tumblr posting Animal Crossing content. My forties are not far off. I'm old. I feel out of place and weird posting my silly little jokes here when I know that most of the people reading them, and there aren't many who do, are probably quite a bit younger than I am. It's a kid's game, and that's fine. But I'm not a kid, and I'm not posting anything truly creative. Just blogging. Just starting up my game each morning to run around and gather fossils and hit rocks and talk to any islanders I see and snapping dozens of screenshots so I can post them on Tumblr at a rate of 4 or more posts each day.

This isn't goodbye forever. I'm just going on break for now. When something changes, I'll be back.

In the meantime, my main blog, @ratralsis, was active before this one started and is still active. I'm going to try to write there a little more often now that I'm not posting here each day, but we'll see, I guess.

As for here, I don't know what I might be posting here in the next few months. Maybe nothing. Maybe I'll start reblogging things again for the first time in, what, six years? Seven years? I don't know. A long time.

I'm not saying I will. Just that I maybe will. Maybe I won't!

Either way, take care of yourself, and remember that I'm still around and, one way or another, will continue writing on the internet until I am physically unable. I've been doing so since 2001 or so and have never stopped. I've been Ratralsis since 2002 and I needed a name to write on a friend's website (the website is long gone now). As far as I know, I'm either the only Ratralsis out there or the other people with that name don't show up on Google, so, as of today, at least, if you see a Ratralsis out there complaining about Best Buy on Twitter or leaving comments on YouTube videos or posting in the forums on Flight Rising, that's me.

That's all for now.

#text post #long post #non ac #not ac #goodbye for here and for now

[megatownac]

Just like I did yesterday with Henry's birthday, I decided to make Ankha's birthday a single very large post. Sorry if that's a problem. It won't happen again, I don't think.

While I've given almost nothing but clothes to islanders for their birthdays for, like, over a year now, I decided this time to give Ankha some of her favorite food: cherries. It's kind of obscure knowledge now, but back in the GameCube days, Ankha was allergic to apples and loved cherries, which was relevant when she lived on your island and you used your GBA to feed her whatever fruit you wanted.

It was kind of a trick for a long time that you could bundle up two foreign fruits into a single gift and hand that over to an islander and it was considered a good enough gift to eventually earn you their photo, that is, if you did it many days in a row. So I figured it was good enough to do that for Ankha's birthday, handing over two cherries in a package to have it count as a great gift.

Anyway. She was fine with it, and I'm fine with that.

I do wonder if any famous celebrities with the same birthday as Ankha know about it and feel as blessed as Ankha thinks they should. Like, I don't know, Tom Felton?

(I looked for famous birthdays on September 22, I didn't, just, like, KNOW that one)

Anyway, again. She had a birthday, I enjoyed visiting her for her birthday, and that's all that I want to say about it.

#acnha ankha #acnh tybalt #acnh villager birthday

[megatownac]

Some Moon-Viewing Day items that were on sale in the special items section, so here are all of their descriptions. I like how they kind of describe it vaguely as, like "Celebrated in parts of Asia," but also looking at the moon is "a long-held tradition," and there's one specific item from a Korean custom. Just feels like three wildly different levels of specificity there, though it's not like I'm going to go putting this bit into my tight five or anything. It's mildly interesting to me, that's all.

#acnh catalog #acnh moon-viewing day

[megatownac]

I decided to make this one extremely long post instead of splitting it up, because I'm trying to condense some of my days lately.

But anyway, Henry's birthday was September 21, and the guest of honor was Ankha, whose birthday is the very next day. I guess she wanted to celebrate two birthdays in a row, and who can blame her.

Anyway, I decided to get Henry a shirt in his preferred style and color WITHOUT wearing a copy of it myself, because I've gone twinsies with so many islanders at this point that I'm not really curious what they say anymore.

I liked a lot of what Henry had to say, which is why I included it. Like him saying that he's keeping his age "mysterious." Or that sometimes he says things without punchlines, which is, let's face it, an INCREDIBLE reveal.

Anyway, that was Henry's birthday! I enjoyed it! I hope you did, too!

#acnh henry #acnh ankha #acnh villager birthday

[megatownac]

I put this outfit together, and yes, it did totally pass Label's test and was considered to be very theatrical.

Also, I remember that I was once able to completely fill my list of clothing items so that I had ten different things showing in that "Remove what?" list, but I haven't been able to manage it lately, even with the wet suit on.

Maybe a custom umbrella would also show up there? I'm not sure, and I won't check, so feel free to let me know if that's it or if it's something else entirely. But I'm PRETTY sure I was able to wear 10 things at once at some point in the past.

#acnh fashion #acnh label

[megatownac]

She literally walked in on me while I was on the toilet.

#acnh francine #acnh visiting villager

[megatownac]

This morning, I finally had enough rusted parts to build my fourth Robot Hero. I decided to paint it green, since I still had five colors left that were unaccounted for, and, you know, I'm happy with it.

Does it really do me any good to have four robot heroes on my island? No. Does it hurt anything, though? Yes, probably. They take up a lot of space, after all. But there they are, and I'm not removing them.

I mean, I did move them. I put the red, blue, and pink ones back where they were. I left the green one here, near the flowers, though. Because I wanted to.

#acnh robot hero #acnh diy

[megatownac]

Dom has to train hard at tennis so that he can still win while watching Chrissy do break dancing, which is still a thing.

It's kind of sweet, actually, although the one break dancer I was actually pretty good friends with told me very soon after I met made it extremely clear to me that I was to never, ever call it that. It was b-boying, and it would be a deep insult to him if I called it anything else.

I don't know exactly how common that view of the practice is, especially since it's been many years since I knew the guy, but I haven't forgotten it!

#acnh dom #acnh chrissy #acnh villager conversations

[megatownac]

As someone who spent several years in their twenties using one because real furniture was too expensive, lemme stop you right there, Drago!

It's not neat at all!

They're not built to be comfortable!

They're built to FOLD!!!

#acnh drago

[megatownac]

I'd have loved to have posted a bunch more photos of Henry looking at all the other furniture in my house, but he left right there in the second room. This is all the talking we did! All of it!

He was really in a hurry to get out of there! It was a little hurtful!

#acnh henry #acnh visiting villager

[megatownac]

Supertown Popularity Poll Results

So. The polls are over. All 90 of them. You can still find the list here if you want to see the breakdown of each individual poll, but what you need to know is that each islander was pitted against each other islander in every one of the 90 ways that can happen, so each islander showed up in 18 polls. I decided early on that nobody got a point in the event of a tie. Here are the final scores, in order from highest to lowest:

First place: Ankha, with 11 points Second place: Chief, with 10 points Third and fourth place: Dom and Phoebe, with 9 points Fifth and sixth place: Chrissy and Drago, with 8 points Seventh place: Tybalt, with 6 points Eighth and ninth place: Francine and Henry, with 5 points Tenth place: Cally, with 4 points

Out of curiosity, I decided to see what the scores would be if a tie gave a point to each contestant instead of to neither. These were the results:

First place: Chief, 14 points Second place: Ankha, 13 points Third and fourth place: Phoebe and Drago, 12 points Fifth place: Dom, 11 points Sixth and seventh place: Chrissy and Francine, 10 points Eighth and ninth place: Henry and Tybalt, 8 points Tenth place: Cally, 7 points

So the rankings did shuffle around a little bit. Chief, it seems, was in 4 different polls that tied.

Despite what I said in the initial post on the subject, most polls did not end in ties or have zero votes. There were 15 that did. So 75 polls had a clear winner.

I could play around with the numbers even more if I wanted to. For example, what happens if ties gave half a point to each islander? But I won't. I also won't say what the results would have been if I had voted in the polls that ended in a tie. I was tempted. I really, really wanted to vote in some of these, just to do it. Just to let my own opinion influence things. Given how few votes each poll had, I could have really swayed things, I think. That's why I didn't ever vote. I really wanted to know who people liked the most.

And it's Ankha, of course.

Every so often, someone will find my blog through one of its tags and mass like a couple hundred of my posts that feature a certain character. This year, that happened at least three times that I noticed with Ankha. I wound up having to block one person who kept messaging me over and over about Ankha. I've never blocked anyone before this year. It was upsetting. I'm still upset about it. It kind of tarnishes the fact that she won this whole popularity contest for me.

I should be happier about it. This was a grand experiment that lasted nearly eight months, and I saw it through. And I've said before that Ankha is one of my favorite islanders, and that I had her in my Population: Growing game decades (literally, two decades) ago. So I like Ankha. She's a cute little yellow cat with a funny hat. What's not to like about her?

I'm also glad Chief did as well as he did. Chief is new to me. I only had him in this game on a whim: I liked the fact that his design made me think of certain middle-aged gay men I've known who are doing their best to age gracefully but are, undeniably, aging anyway. That's as much thought as I put into it. I'm sad Cally didn't do well. I had Cally early on in my New Leaf days, and I gave her away to someone who promised I'd be able to visit her again someday and then removed their blog from Tumblr and I never saw Cally again. It was sad. I think about that from time to time.

Something a bit similar happened with Henry: I had him in my New Leaf town, and I gave him away to someone whose blog is no longer active and who didn't post about him. Oh well. I didn't mind that as much. I like Henry alright, but he's never been one of my favorites. I'm fine with how badly he did in the polls.

I don't have any big conclusions here. This went, well, it honestly did go better than I expected for it to in a lot of ways. I kept holding out hope that maybe this blog would finally, after about ten years on this site, pick up a few followers and get me over that 1600-follower mark (I've had 1500-something followers for over six years--every time I gain a few followers, I lose a few), but I'm not willing or able to do what it takes to go viral. These are the kinds of posts I make.

I'm very grateful to the followers I have who stick around, liking and occasionally reblogging my stuff on a regular basis.

@vanilla-owns-chocolate @92explorer @zane275 @averygamin2 @schtroumpfalunettes @anch-vaviel @ozai @thebigjawpokemon @pie-bean

Those are in no particular order. I just went to my blog's activity page and scrolled down through a week or two's worth of notes until I saw all the usual folks I remember.

But, even though we don't talk, I appreciate you for being here for so long. It's easy to say that I don't do this for the notes, and I don't, really, but it's nice, you know? To see that there are folks out there who like what I put out there.

I'm going to be honest with you. I've given this a lot of thought. I think it's time I stepped away from Animal Crossing for a while. Focused on other things.

This isn't goodbye. It's just a hiatus. There are a few days of posts left in the queue, and then this blog will go silent, and I'm going to write some kind of actual message a little while after that sorting out my thoughts after ten years and one month of running this blog, which started on September 8, 2013. That's too long. Too, too long to have written anywhere from 4 to 10 posts a day. My activity page says 22,643 before I post this. Probably more than 22,000 of those were original, written by me, that is, not reblogs.

I'll be around. I have a main blog. @ozai has even liked a couple of my posts there, so I'm pretty sure they know about it. It's mentioned at the top of this one, even on mobile. So it's not a secret. It's right there. I write about other things there than Animal Crossing. Lately, it's been mostly about the novel I've spent the last three and a half years working on. I might actually have it done in another two years or so! Won't that be exciting? Then I can shut up about it and start writing about the next one.

I also wrote a few thousand words about Frog, from Chrono Trigger, once. It's not exactly surprising to me that my main blog has never even made it above 70 followers, is my point.

That's enough of this. I'm getting dangerously close to depressing, and I don't want to do that.

Here and now, this experiment, these 90 polls, was a triumph. I stuck with it. Ankha won. Chief came in second. Those are good things. It's good. I'm happy with that. It's the culmination of ten years of work. And it's time for a break.

Have a great day. Please continue doing your best, and I promise that I will, too.

#text post #long post #i've been considering this for over a year it was not sudden or brought on by any one thing #one way or another i will not stop writing until i am dead #and if i can think of a way to keep writing after that then i promise i will

[megatownac]

I see islanders use this exercise equipment so, so rarely.

I'm still not seeing one use it now. He's just... sleeping on it.

Also, yeah, there was a meteor shower the night before. I did pick up the star fragment later, honest.

#acnh henry

[megatownac]

Another tight closeup of some food.

Despite how it looks all angular and low-res when you zoom in, I have to admit that this does make me feel kind of hungry when I look at it for too long.

There used to be a restaurant in this shopping district in a specific city in Japan that I visited for breakfast every time I had the opportunity. We're talking, like, ten days in a row the last time I spent two weeks in Japan. The gimmick was that if you got there in the first half hour after they opened, you'd pay a flat fee to get a cup of coffee and then you could eat as many of their hard-boiled eggs and as much of their bread as you could eat, because it was the stuff they made the previous day that they were going to have to throw away before they opened again for lunch. So I'd just sit and eat like four hard-boiled eggs and a plate of whatever random bread they had and listen to the music they played, which was always always always the Beatles. I loved that place.

Ah well. It's not like I couldn't just buy a few dozen eggs each week and some cheap bread at the Wal-Mart bakery and do something similar at home, but it wouldn't be the same.

So it goes.

#acnh food

[megatownac]

Is this really "volunteering?" I feel like it's just kind of, like, being a decent person to your neighbors. Like if you find someone's lost stuff and bring it to them, are they supposed to say "Thank you for volunteering to do that"? "I know you didn't have to, and you aren't being paid, so I guess that technically you choosing to do this without reward makes it something you volunteered to do, and I appreciate that"?

I dunno, it feels like a weirdly low bar to clear to consider something to be volunteering.

#acnh francine