My 100th submission to Planetminecraft!
It's been about 4 years since I joined this website, and I've seen so many trends, so many people come and go. In reality I've only really spent a total of ~2 years interacting on the site- the other 2 years I was inactive, and that's why I say I've seen so many people come and go- most if not all of the people I remember from when I joined have since moved on. From incredibly humble beginnings (it's hard to believe my first submission was an unauthorised edit, not my proudest moment for sure) I've built my way up to here- I'm no celebrity, but my skins have come miles and so has the tiny Fire Emblem sub-community surrounding them as well as other creators' FE skins.

What things have changed?

Well, for a start, my taste in Fire Emblem. Having first played Awakening, I was totally blind to most of the series' history. in 2016 there was no Heroes, no Cipher cards of characters from the untranslated games (for the most part)- the older games seemed scary and inaccessible, not approachable at all to fans getting into the series. Since then, we've had Echoes, an amazing remake that took one of the least played games even among Kaga fans and brought it to the attention of a new, different FE audience, paired with beautiful art and music (even if the maps were just as vast and empty as Gaiden's originals). We've also had Heroes, which carried the selling point of featuring characters from across the series, and while at first its roster left a little to be desired, soon enough even the most obscure of Kaga series characters began to see the spotlight (yes you can pretend i mean reinhardt here). While Heroes might not be the most ethical FE game, it's undeniable that it gives new FE fans a great insight into the series' history and characters- providing new characterisation for games that are now over 20 years old! Speaking of which, in 2016 there was no Project Naga translation for FE4, no Project Exile translation for Thracia 776 especially- people were still told to play incomplete, buggy translation patches full of translation oddities and inside jokes. I know BIG IRON, Tf? Rurururu and Kempf saying 'Those fools have fallen right into my trap! In America!' are memes to people who had to deal with them, but they do nothing to make Kaga's games seem any more approachable to newcomers. The best sources we had for character names were official romanizations from japanese websites (which are hardly expert jobs) and Awakening Spotpass characters. Nowadays every single FE story is reasonably accessible in English, and even the original versions of games which have been remade have decent translations if anyone really wanted to go back to them. This could not be fully said 4 years ago, hell 1 year ago.

Minecraft has seen itself fall out of popularity, being painted as 'cringe' and for 'dumb kids', only to rise back into the spotlight through nostalgia and the admittance that it had always been a lot of fun for many people, its old labels passed on to the next fad video game. When will Fortnite have its own silver age? Do you believe it will ever have one? Only time will tell. It's undeniable that Minecraft has had a large impact on video games. It could be said that it carried the torch of games such as Cave Story in bringing modern pixel graphics and indie development into the spotlight. Think of all the games of the past decade which came from one-man teams or small independent studios, especially those using pixel graphics. Minecraft got people talking about pixel art again, as well as voxel graphics particularly. Any voxel game that comes out today is automatically compared to Minecraft, and while it may be tiring sometimes it shows the impact this game has had. Will we see Minecraft keep up its current popularity through 2020 and onwards? It's tough to say, and I'm sure some people will get bored of the game fairly soon, probably the bandwagoning youtubers first of all (although nowadays it'd be tough to call many youtubers bandwagoners at all) followed by the meme crowd as some other game becomes the focus of nostalgia (i wont say my money's on lego star wars but it's coming up a lot recently). No matter when Minecraft 'dies' again, I think it will be in a better spot than it was when it 'died' the first time, that's for sure. The awkward days of Minecon Q&As are long behind us, and while there will be inside jokes that just don't click anymore, i hope we will look back on the game in a more favourable light than we did in the decline years.

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So anyway, yes, this skin. I picked Shannan for the 100th submission because I wanted to do something from the Jugdral games, but ultimately my 99th submission crept up on me and I had no profound ideas to speak of. Shannan is a supportive figure to Seliph in a few ways, one of precious few remnants of a time long gone, and so in a way I don't think he's such a stupid choice after all. Maybe something profound and unique will come for my 100th skin, although I wouldn't count on it