Hey everyone! Conash here! I don’t know about you but I’ve found this year’s Iron Waifu to be quite intense! So I thought that it’d be good to take some time and talk with some of our staff members, and I’ve put together a few questions to ask some of them! Today’s stars will be our musical mistress Moomabelle, our pixel professor Kumiho, and our new hire for this month Romeo Papa! Without further ado, let’s get to what they all have to say!
1. Have you enjoyed your time working with Bad Kitty Games and interacting with our fans and community?
Moomabelle: If I didn’t I would have to call my sanity into question. Of course I have! What kind of question is that? The staff are super lovely and super talented folks and always have been as far as I’m aware. The fans are the right flavor of weird. The community is super supportive and they feed me pictures of cows. What more could I want?
Kumiho: Oh yeah, absolutely. I could gush for a while about how much I’ve enjoyed making pixel art and character designs for BKG; it’s a fun fulfilling time~
I’ve gotten to meet a lot of wonderful people thanks to BKG too, both in work and in the community. I tend to be shyer in interacting beyond gushing about pixel artsy details or technical bits, but thanks to everyone in the BKG staff and community, I’m starting to open up more, slowly but surely. It’s been good for me, I think.
Romeo Papa: Well to preface this section, my actual experience with working “for” BKG is limited. However I’ve been a tester for them as well as a moderator and wiki admin for a while. With all that said BKG is a very forthcoming company, it’s rare to see such transparency and desire to interact with their fanbase, and I believe this is one of the key factors for the very supportive and nice community BKG fosters.
My own experience with them has been really great, for example both Conash and NoMoshing can attest to the fact that when I join testing phases I tend to work for too long and neglect my own sleeping schedule, they are both ready to tell me to put things down and go to bed. Also whenever I’ve asked for information about HC for the wiki I couldn’t easily come across they’ve always been more than ready to provide it. They have also gone out of their to make official mod support for HC, I can’t recall any RPG Maker with “real” mod support anywhere, this shows just how far they are willing to go for their fans.
But one of the biggest examples of my own interaction with them, that shows how community and fan interaction is important to them, has been this month. Without getting into it too much NoMoshing had to take a sabbatical for his own reasons, however it was very important Iron Waifu still went on as usual so he asked me to officially join the team for the month of May, so that his own sabbatical wouldn’t hurt Iron Waifu by being a man down. And having been working on Iron Waifu I can fully understand why he did that now, it’s a lot more work than I ever imagined.
2. How involved have you been in previous Iron Waifu tournaments, and how do you feel about this year’s tournament?
Moomabelle: This would be the first year that I’ve been more than passively engaged. For some reason, it just sucked me right the frick in this year. It might be the cute propaganda I’ve been seeing. Advertisement is mind control, after all, and I’m impressionable. Whatever the reason, I’m having fun watching number go up. Also keep making cute propaganda, please.
Kumiho: I’ve been lurking in previous tournaments since about 2019, and this is my first time actively voting and keeping up with the day by day. I’m seeing a lot of surprise upsets this year, and it’s really fun to see! A lot of difficult matchups to vote on too. I can’t wait to see who ends up in the final bracket. It’s already shaping up differently than I thought it would.
Romeo Papa: I first started voting in Iron Waifu for the 2018 tournament, meaning I missed the first two, I have however been fully engaged ever since then. Now admittedly I haven’t been voting every day this year, but as mentioned before I’ve arguably been more involved this year than previous years.
As for this year’s tournament? I’ve been pleasantly surprised, there was some drama last year that kinda made me a little wary of this year. But the community and tournament as a whole have been very peaceful this year, so good on us! *Pats our collective heads*
3. Have the results of one or more of this year’s matches stood out to you in particular and why?
Moomabelle: There have been a lot of close calls this year and a lot of surprising victories. Never thought I’d see Eulania take victory over Yamamaya. Definitely didn’t see Natya’s victory coming. Miri’s close call got me pretty pumped. Lilac got some well-deserved revenge on Florine. And well, Elaiya is still upping her K/D at the time of writing. Let’s do more of that. I like that.
Kumiho: Oh yeah, quite a few. The ties so early in round 1 surprised me, particularly Yeon vs Miri. I voted Miri thinking she’d be crushed, but she held her own! Followed by Yeon losing in round 2, I honestly expected her to be in the finals.
Then there was Brigandine vs Clementine–I did expect Brig to win, but what I didn’t expect was the crushing defeat on Clementine’s part, oof. I voted Brig, but I still felt bad for Clementine losing by that much.
And lastly, Lilac vs Chimei. This was such a hard one for me to vote on, I really love them both; but I’m a sucker for the maid and shopkeeper girls, so I gave it to Lilac thinking she’d probably be eliminated. And I was totally wrong, she crushed it! This year of Iron Waifu has shown me you really can’t assume who’s the strongest contestant. These girls will surprise you!
Romeo Papa: I think that May 6th Miri VS Yeon came as a surprise to all of us. Everyone expected Yeon to be the favourite of Q2, but our sleepy bunny girl showed that just because you are lazy doesn’t mean you can’t fight, she put up a valiant fight and fought our white mage to a draw. This made it clear that maybe Yeon’s path to victory wouldn’t be as unopposed as we all thought, a fact Natya later proved, which again came as a surprise to me.
Lilac also surprises me, the Maids have never been the most popular ones in Iron Waifu, however she made it to the Quarter Finals, is this another example of how a little extra content for a girl can shoot up their popularity that Quinta so elegantly displayed back in 2019? Who knows. Also as a Brigandine fan I have to mention May 13th, that Clemstomp was something else.
4. Of the remaining contestants who do you hope wins and why?
Moomabelle: Well of course I hope Elaiya wins. I always hope Elaiya wins. Even if Elaiya doesn’t win, she still wins in my headcanon. Because she’s just nice, because I like melodrama, because vengeance is virtue, because gunpowder smells nice and is tied to more childhood memories than I care to admit. I would like very much to sit quietly with Elaiya at separate workbenches in the same room. Since that would be insane to attempt, I’ll settle for a trail of smoke to the top!
Kumiho: Oh no, don’t make me pick only one!…Well if I had to go with a single favorite waifu vote, Elaiya. Cutie gunslinger waifu will always have my heart. I love her 110%. I need a poster of this super cutie, okay–
My inner pixel artist vote would go to Eulania. Ghost girls are fun, and additional Phantom Knight content means I get to make fancy Phantom Knight armor that much sooner…and I’d like that very, very much.
As for who I really believe deserves the IW win? Brigadine, easily. She’s been cursed with coming so close to victory–semi finals or finals–only to be just out of reach of the crown. I learned of Brig through IW before I got to know her in-game, and I have a soft spot for her as a result. I would be thrilled if on this last Harem Collector Iron Waifu, Brigadine got the crown. She deserves it after all these years.
Romeo Papa: Well I’m sure it comes as no surprise I’m rooting for Brigandine again this year. First let’s go over a more practical reason for it. She offers the most content for a win. She is the most lacking girl in terms of actual content, she offers recruitment, a new party member, all the chat dialogue every other girl would get, and a Love Quest, but previous years one of her prizes has been a quest into Inferireux the Dwarven Nation, so there’s no reason to believe this won’t be the case this year either. So not only does she offer a lot of characterisation she also offers world building
As for my own personal reason why Brigandine is my waifu? I like what she promises and her attitude. You can see it in how she interacts with Hero, she knows what Hero wants from her yet she helps him get stronger, why? She knows she’s stronger than him and can take him if she was so inclined, so what harm would there be with training him? But still why do it? She could just as easily turn him away and be done with it, she lives in the noble district and gets invited to noble parties, she’s clearly not hurting for the cash. No Brigandine wants to join us, but she doesn’t plan on going easy; she wants Hero to show her how strong he really is first and take her.
There’s also her “archetype”, I am not a fan of cookie cutter archetypes but Brigandine doesn’t slot easily into her archetypes. She’s a noble but isn’t pampered and unsure of how the world works. She’s a highly accomplished warrior, yet she spends her time in a small house in the noble district instead of out adventuring or fighting wars, why? There is a rich backstory there, and it’s a backstory I want to learn, and her ability to stand out in her archetypes speaks to me
5. Is there anything you want to say to the fans, community, or voters?
Moomabelle: To the fans, you’re pretty much what makes it worth it to me. Hearing that my creative input makes a difference to y’all it’s just.. I can’t even really explain it. So I won’t! To the community, you’re what makes this possible, makes this grow. You’re super important and your support is so essential! Plus y’all are a bunch of goofballs and I’m into it. To the voters, vote with your hearts! It is the only way! Brains can be dumb but hearts can’t!
Kumiho: Thanks for supporting us all this time! Seeing everyone all excited for their favorite waifus gets me that much more psyched to make the cutest sprites and designs I can. You’re all beautiful people, and I hope to do the chatting thing with you more~
Get out there and vote for your favorite lovelies!
Romeo Papa: First I just want to say that this community is probably one of the most peaceful and welcoming porn communities I’ve ever met. I have nothing to follow up with this, but it bears repeating ^^
I do have a small ramble about the votes so far. This Iron Waifu have been weird, with so many close calls and upsets. It’s really hard to tell whether this is a result of a shifting fanbase or the fact that a lot of the heavy hitters are now gone and so people’s votes goes to girls that wouldn’t normally get them? Whatever it is, I am really happy to see less popular girls getting attention this year. Oh and also as of the moment of writing this our highest vote total is 81 on day 23, which is the highest votes total of any year. The highest voted girl is Brigandine with 57 votes on day 13, which is also the highest voted girl out of any year. So keep up the good work everyone! Let’s set even higher records!