All I Want Is To Feel A Foot Again.

[rionaleonhart]

Forgotton Anne (not a typo) is an odd little game. When the game begins, a scarf breaks into Anne's home and goes 'oh, I'm just an innocent working scarf' and she goes 'no, I see right through you, you're a TERRORIST SCARF' and then you have the option to murder the scarf, and, to be honest, things don't get much less weird.

At the start, I wasn't expecting to get emotionally invested at all! And then I ended up shipping the human protagonist with an alarming mannequin who has a face on his chest.

Ginger: (seeing Fig) Holy crap, what kind of horrifying character design is that?
Riona: Don't talk about my boyfriend that way, Ginger.

(Horrible conversation while I was playing Spyro in my usual style, i.e. charging near-constantly into walls:

Rei: Has anyone written fanfiction where Spyro gets off from running into walls?
Riona: I... don't know.
Ginger: You should write it, Riona.
Riona: I've got to write fanfiction about Anne and the mannequin first.
Ginger: I hope you write smut that really emphasises the horror of the mannequin's design.
Riona: I'll have him penetrate her with his chest-nose.
Rei: You should use the phrase 'mannequin meat'.)

I personally went from 'that's a horrifying character design' to 'I'm really shipping this' within the space of Fig and Anne's first encounter. Fig ran away, but he kept deliberately hanging back so Anne could catch up in her pursuit of him and they could continue their hostile conversation. And then he called down to check she was okay when she fell off a building, because he'd just wanted to piss her off; he hadn't meant to hurt her.

From that point on, I was no longer making decisions based on morality; I was making them based on shipping. Much less conflict involved!

(That's not entirely true. I'm not proud of it, but towards the end I was invested enough to cheat by looking up how to reach a peaceful resolution at points. There was one point where I made the 'wrong' decision and just stuck with it because it had been the compassionate decision and Anne couldn't have known it would go wrong, at least. The consequences were bad, but I stand by it as the decision 'my' Anne would have made in that moment with the knowledge she had.)

The gameplay is frustrating at points; the platforming is imprecise and your goal in puzzles is sometimes unclear. But I ended up engaged by the story, even if the central plot twist was glaringly obvious from moment one. And the art style is really interesting; it looks a bit like a Studio Ghibli film. (It was hand-animated, apparently!)

Here is the tragedy: I ship Anne/Fig a lot. And it's not canon. So I have to turn to fanfiction. But not only is there no Anne/Fig fanfiction; there is no Forgotton Anne fanfiction at all. It doesn't even have a section on AO3. The last time someone posted something about it on Tumblr was a month ago, and that was to lament the fact there was no content. It's been a while since I last got into something that didn't have any fandom.

Well, it's got to start somewhere.

Time to write that nose-penetration fic.

Comments

[simplecoffee]

I AM INTRIGUED AND ALSO LAUGHING A LOT.

[rionaleonhart]

I like that your icon looks like it could fit right into this game's strange world of living objects.

[simplecoffee]

I did choose it for that purpose 😂

[wolfy_writing]

This sounds amazing!

I Googled images, and Mr. Fig is definitely weird-looking, and now I can't stop noticing his nose.

Go to it! Make a fandom! Start doing fic! Lure other people in with intriguing fic ideas! ...people who play video games, that is.

[rionaleonhart]

It's a very interesting, very strange game! I doubt I'll get massively into writing for it, but I do want to write at least something for it, because it doesn't seem right that it doesn't have any fanfiction at all.

[thenicochan]

I've been curious about this game for a while. It's always on sale whenever PSN has one, and I've put it in my cart at least three times before deciding against it. Maybe I'll pick it up next time there's a sale. The pain of a small fandom is only dwarfed by the agony of a nonexistent one.

[rionaleonhart]

I'd also been looking at it out of the corner of my eye for a while, ever since Square e-mailed me going 'FORGOTTON ANNE IS OUT NOW' and I went 'wait, what, I've never heard of this but it looks sort of interesting'. The occasional gameplay frustrations mean I can't recommend it without reservations, but I did enjoy my time with it and I'm glad I got around to playing it at last. If you do play it, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[alwaysbeenasmiler]

I actually sort of wanted to check out Forgotten Anne, so I may do it-- Thank you so much for giving me such an awesome review to work with!

[rionaleonhart]

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, if you do play it! There's a demo available, so you should be able to check it out and decide whether you're interested. (The demo is just the start of the game, and you can carry your save over into the full version, or at least you can on the Switch.)

[marginaliana]

Everything about this sounds utterly amazing.

I'll have him penetrate her with his chest-nose. - ILU

[rionaleonhart]

At one point you encounter a boot that's trying to fix some machinery, and Anne goes 'well, kicking it definitely won't help' and the boot wails 'BUT IT'S ALL I CAN DO.' It's magical.