Hit "Y" Repeatedly! (Patreon)

Because I beat Mario RPG recently and had to draw something for it, especially when the game's chibi art style is perfect for a shortstack Peach, for what a work in progress it was. It ate up a solid chunk of my summer between sixth and seventh grade, but I sucked at games as a kid, got stuck on the final boss and never beat it.

And how appropriate that this time around when I finally did it, that it happened in the early hours of the morning after being up all night trying to get it done, since playing that game was the first time I was ever up all night. Maybe nowadays that doesn't seem like such a big deal. At some point you hit a certain age and it actually becomes easier to stay up all night than it is to go to bed early, but as a kid it was the reverse. As a kid with basically no perspective of anything but your own small slice of the world, staying up all night seems like one of the hardest things a person can do, kids I went to school with would brag about their "record" of how late they've stayed up, like it's their high score. It's like one of those universal bucket list items for any kid to be awake as the sun comes up, without just getting up early cuz that's not impressive, we were made to do that just to go to school. But to be awake as the sun comes up because you just never went to bed, that was the ultimate goal, that was when boys became men and girls became women. Why that is, I have no fuckin' clue. Kids make no sense. But because of that I would spend countless weekends and vacations staying up as late as possible trying to finally get that notch on my belt, once in a while beating my "high score," but never quite making it to sunrise.

Only to one day get to the Valentina boss fight, be amused as hell that every time you attack her her boobs jiggle while the rest of her body barely reacts, they knew what they were doing, and then hear my dad's voice from the hallway go "Are you STILL up?" And just as I'm about to say "What do you mean am I still up? It's not even-" it just became that meme where all the math is flying around my head and I realize that it's not dark in the room anymore.

I beat Valentina, saved my progress, and went to bed that morning, having been enjoying the game plenty so far, but now with a meaningful metric on its quality; it was so good that it kept me awake all night without even knowing it, like if caffeine was a video game, but replace the irritability and anxiety with bitchin' music and shortstack Peaches.

And now that I've finally beaten it in the early morning hours, also without really trying, it's become full circle...like Peach's butt cheeks.