#naytile writes

[naytile]

On Andrew’s Favorite Book:

THE APES OF WRATH!

Andrew’s favorite book is “The Apes of Wrath”, according to the N64 strategy guide. I’ve been amusingly haunted by this for years, so it’s time to say my piece.

My first thought was (1) “Andrew reads…?”. My second thought was (2) “That’s totally hilarious. Andross’s army is full of wrathful apes, after all.” My third thought was (3) “Wait a minute. The source material, the Grapes of Wrath, is a sad and soulful tale of poverty, death, and community under struggle. Could the Apes of Wrath be a similar book!?”

It was obviously just a silly monkey joke by the creators, but what if we took it seriously for juicy fanfic/worldbuilding/lore reasons?

We can muse that if the Apes of Wrath is anything like the source material it’s parodying by John Steinbeck, it concerns the plight of simian migrant workers who travel far from home in hopes of financial stability during Some Great Lylatian Depression. Perhaps it’s written by someone called Yohn Steinbock (a Steinbock goat).

Many of these ape characters would be a part of impoverished families who starve to death in hopes of a promised land that never materializes. Perhaps Corneria’s governance promised these people something that it never actually delivered on? Were they deceived in this story? Ignored? Abandoned? Exploited?

Could the Apes of Wrath actually be a hard-hitting piece of literature that helps us understand what led to the formation of Andross’s army? Then we may begin to comprehend how a despotic force of nature like Andross — who has no qualms about mass bioterrorism and genocide — somehow gained a passionate army of followers.

[naytile]

I really love the new bit of lore that states that the Sarumarine captain has a few screws loose and has become mentally unhinged precisely from decades of work at sea. There’s just a lot for the fandom to do with that, methinks. Seriously, what are the meetings with him like, and what do the other generals think of him? What kind of seaworthy stories does he tell, and are they true or are they just hallucinatory fairytales of grandeur? How did Andross convince this weird guy to pollute and frack Zoness after decades of doing other sailor stuff (presumably also on Zoness)? This bit tells us a lot about Andross’s chaotic power structure and the kind of leadership he lets run wild over everything. It really doesn’t matter to him if you’re straight-up BANANAS, just be experienced.

[naytile]

What's your Star Fox 2026 route?

I'll go first!

I think the route of our very first SF2026 playthrough says something about our personalities, similar to the silly fun that is astrology. 😂 So please, tell me the route you ended up taking first, intended or not!

All 25 routes have been unofficially named by this brilliant Redditor. Click at your own risk if you’re a new fan who doesn’t want to be spoiled!

I ended up doing "Red Macbeth". I think this route can also easily be called something like "Land, Air, and Sea" or "Katt's Route"!

CORNERIA > SECTOR Y > AQUAS > ZONESS > MACBETH > AREA 6 > VENOM 2

Spoilers below the cut about this route. :

This route is for people who like challenge and variety: it gives you a rare opportunity to play all three Star Fox vehicles in one campaign. It's for the ocean lovers too, since you get to go to two sea planets.

Pepper unenthusiastically offers to give you an underprepared "research vessel" for the Aquas mission… Oh, please! We're going to need a better boat! Thank God Slippy had other plans.

Aquas is the most UNIQUE level in the game in terms of how you have to play it, for better or for worse! It kicked my butt repeatedly and it was way harder than I remember it being in 64. The Blue Marine is slow and unwieldly, so you need to spam torpedoes and barrel rolls to survive.

Your team makes one major mistake in this route: getting spotted on Zoness because you're more hard-hitting, fearless, and brash than you are stealthy. You fly through the searchlights and miss taking them all out, Leeroy-Jenkins-style! Pepper probably begins to think that Star Fox would make terrible secret agents. 💀👍 Well, that isn't what he hired you for, so it's fine, right? Right. You're the one who's good at blowing things up, not being discreet! And boy, do you blow things up on Macbeth right afterwards! This path meshes well with Fox's "Where's my blaster?" and "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude in Adventures.

This route is balanced story-wise between a distracted curiosity sidequest and a mostly-competent Star Fox team kicking serious ass where there's canonical military importance. Aquas is the random science trip, mainly to indulge your pal Slippy. This is a great outcome for the Lylat War with some roughness around the edges and the real Andross defeated: a fearsome but flawed Star Fox team with proven potential.

This is also one of the two routes that have the most female character screentime (which sadly isn't saying a lot for this game, but still...!): Katt helps you twice in a row. A fun detail is that her Catspaw shows up flying around beside the team in the credits!

Falco's a bit annoyed with Katt after the Zoness fail, but he warms up to her again after the successful Macbeth. This route really shows that they have a complicated, hot-and-cold friendship (or...?) with some past drama: a very FBF-adjacent route.

[naytile]

WIP sketchdump for Part 7

[naytile]

Me? Turning an obscure one-panel background character from General Pepper’s past into an OC? It’s more likely than you think.

I named him General June. I had an idea about him for awhile: he was the one in leadership before General Pepper. June is a strategic type who’s willing to be cruel to a few to benefit the many. Pepper felt differently but could do nothing about it. He plays the long game... 

June is really competent, and underneath that mellow grandpa-face, he’s rather scary... String-puller.

[naytile]

Fara’s Arc - Storyboard 1

[My primitive sketches entertain me a lot. I want to play with dialogue-less/universal storytelling for this plot. I like the viewers to clue things in themselves here with my text description being a bonus.]

Part 1: Fara being taken as a hostage by the Androssians still applies, like in the Itoh comic. I diverge from here: she gets kidnapped independent of the Star Fox team. With her combat training, she fights her way out of trouble on her own, and fortunately encounters an Androssian who betrays his post. 

[naytile]

Andrew Oikonny or Andross plz :;3

Thanks Marti! This is fun! I’ll do Andrew Oikonny first (I’ll get to Andross after work!).

Send Me a Character

[Andrew Oikonny]

·       First impression

I was a kid, so I just relished in blasting him out of the sky and mockingly going “Unccleee Andross!! Myyyeeeehhhh!”

·       Impression now

I think the Star Fox fandom totally carries the team for characterization in general, and I LOVE the way this fandom interprets Andrew to give him a more humanized view and much more depth. Y’all are the real MVPs with Andrew, because his canon personality was not very developed beyond being a spoiled and incompetent kid. 

Actually, I think Andrew has a lot of potential for people to sympathize with: he is underappreciated—even loathed—by the one person he idolizes, not to mention by his own family member. He is young and an underdog, and so he sort of lives to impress his elders before he’s confident in his own identity. He’s so dead-set about his ideas of Andross that he can’t see how much he’s being eaten alive and made a fool of by literally everyone around him. It’s tragic as much as he’s meant to be entertaining. His voice has also always been hilarious to me. I love it.

·       Favorite moment – That hilarious and cowardly “aAaaAeeeAHhh” noise he makes in Star Fox Zero. The voice actor nailed it. Nailed it!

·       Idea for a story – To me, the one way for Andrew to survive is to break free. Otherwise, he’s doomed to die young (like in Assault – he was what, 27-30, if we believe he was 17 in Star Fox 64, but he could always be aged-up to ~21-25 at that time of the Lylat War to be a little more realistic IMO). 

I would give Andrew a redemption arc if I was the writer. I would make him become jaded with his uncle and his regime after a few significant events. I don’t think Andrew is meant to be a fighter as much as he desperately wanted to be—he never was very good at it. I think Andrew could become some sort of peace-loving hippie who leaves combat entirely, but only after he matures, gains a little more common sense, and loses his naivete about what he’s been through. 

Not only would this be funny given his history, I think he would finally be appreciated for things he’s actually good at: something non-violent that doesn’t rely on the macho-man posturing he simply never had.

·       Unpopular opinion – I don’t think this opinion is unpopular, but I think he is a victim of some kind of abuse or neglect by Andross, as annoying as he appears.

·       Favorite relationship – Slippy. They fight like the youngest siblings in any group while unsuccessfully trying to kill each other and it cracks me up, I just love it.

·       Favorite headcanon – I haven’t really thought about writing for Andrew so I don’t have HCs for him, but I guess my favorite HC is that he abandons being a pilot and becomes some sort of farmer, or smoothie-maker, or other “granola-guy” sort of venture when he finally starts living for himself.

[Thanks for this @martincart, I had lots of fun answering! 🐵]

[naytile]

I’m thinking of making an alternate version of Fara’s Arc Part 7 / Panel 1 for the Tumblr audience. I will probably put the original on Instagram. Since there’s no way for me to put a content restriction for Teen and Up audiences on here, I’m considering. It’s not even depicting anything inappropriate and it’s supposed to be tasteful, I just... Hm. This is when I would really benefit from a beta-reader for my comic.