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meliecho · 7 years

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ANIMAL CROSSING: The Dr. Shrunk Theory An Animal Crossing game theory

By Windryder1

-------------- You have no emotions in Animal Crossing until the nerdy-looking axolotl comedian comes to town and starts telling you jokes. After each one, you can feel something. Why? Here, let me explain... --------------

ANIMAL CROSSING NEW LEAF: DR. SHRUNK

You arrive at the village feeling nothing - no sadness, happiness, worry, fear, ect - and you don't know why, but you don't care enough to find out. Thus, you live your life, catching bugs, going fishing, shaking trees, whatever. So, this is your town, huh? All right.

When Club LOL opens up, you wander in during the day to find a balding axolotl calling himself Dr. Shrunk roaming around. He tells you how he used to be a comedian. In exchange for food, he'll entertain you with one of this jokes. So, you listen, figuring why not? You have to wait until the afternoon to catch beetles anyway, so his joke can't be that bad. When the joke is over, Dr. Shrunk gives you a book with the joke written down. Let's say the first one is the 'worry' joke. He says to come back every day for a new joke, but he'll only tell you if you bring food. You shrug, pocket the book, and go about your day as emotionless as ever.

Then one of your villagers tells you they're feeling sick. You've been told this before, and apathetically suggested medicine, or gave it to them if you happened to have some. But this villager strikes something different within you. A flare of concern for their well being builds inside you. Is this...worry? ...It is. You're worried about your.... yes, this is your favorite villager. They're sick. So, you run home, grab your last bag of medicine, and give it to them.

The next day, you repeat what you did the day before with Shrunk, only this time it's a joke of showmanship. Later that day, one of your villagers compliments you on a rare bug you caught, and you feel pride, so you show it off in a little dance of....showmanship.

Curious about why you're starting to feel emotions after all this time, you go to your cafe and talk to Brewster. Since you're the only one at the bar, Brewster lowers his voice and tells you a rumor he'd heard about Dr. Shrunk from another village. It seemed that he was, indeed, a comedian back in the day, but he wasn't very good. He was boo'd a lot. So, using his medical background, he used his stage name of "Dr. Shrunk" and figured out a way to 'steal' emotions. As soon as his audience entered the night clubs he would perform at, he would take their emotions. They laughed when he wanted them to, they cried, worried, feared, and guffaw'd when he wanted them to. His audience was putty in his sticky little hands.

Seeing an opportunity in new, unknown small towns, he left the big city with this bag of tricks to open up Club LOL. Sadly, his trick only worked on Humans. When he got wind that a new Human as moving in to an Animal village, he would set up his device to steal your emotions when you crossed the boarder onto their land.

In order to get your emotions back, you have no choice but to go see Dr. Shrunk every day, give him food, and listen to his jokes.

You're intrigued and disturbed by this.

However, Brewster imparts one more important element upon you as he pours you a second cup of coffee: If you arrived at this village bearing all of your emotions, your ability to acclimate into a a town of bipedal, talking animals would overload you. By the time Dr. Shrunk arrives, you're already accustomed to seeing walking bears, adorable squirrels, singing koalas, grumpy wolves, and an insomniac dog (Isabelle.) Receiving your emotions back slowly means you will have time to adjust. By the time you get them all, you'll be fine.

So, even though Dr. Shrunk's initial reason for taking your emotions --to have a captive audience that thinks they're getting something good every time-- he's doing you a favor. Once you have all of your emotions back, he will likely play it cool, and eventually leave for another town to start over.

You spend the rest of the evening in the coffee shop thinking it over as you sip your coffee. You've only received four emotions so far. What harm could it to do wait it out and see how it goes? You didn't have 'fear' when you caught that tarantula. Maybe this is a hidden good-thing. You wonder what life in this village will be like once you have all of your emotions back.

After gaining your emotions back, you confront Dr. Shrunk with this theory. Shrunk shows genuine concern and sits you down. For the first time, he's serious. Very serious, and this worries you. He tells you one thing you didn't expect to hear: That the rumor Brewster heard is incorrect. Well, the first part of it anyway. Yes, Shrunk is a Dr. - a psychologist to be exact - and he was a comedian. But he wasn't stealing the emotions of Humans. He'd figured out a way to return their emotions once they came to town, and deliberately did this in a slow manner to keep the Human from being overloaded. He, and other comedians like him, are part of a team to help you acclimate. They don't want a captive audience --although that side effect was nice--they all want to help. When you ask him how, he repeats what he told you the first night you walked into Club LOL.

"Do you like the gyroids I set up? I was very picky about them." These are his personal creations. When you hear a joke, the gyroids don't just emit music and goofy sound effects, they also send out a frequency wave that 'revives' the emotion being told in the joke. That's why you get one at at time. He has to control it, and he has to be extremely careful about it.

He sneezes. "Achoo! Achoo! Achoo! Must be my Human allergies acting up again."

Now you know.

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This element is in the “Nightmare of Aika” story

Read the “Villager Theory” on tumblr.

All links to stories on other writing sites are on my page. :)

#animal crossing #game theory #animal crossing game theory #isabelle #villager #animal crossing new leaf #dr shrunk theory #dr shrunk #windryder1 #and that's why you can't feel a damn thing until you give him food.#the nightmare of aika

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