- It’s a brain teaser game. You have to line up the numbers one through nine.
- Line up the numbers, huh….? Sounds easy enough.
- Watch out, though! You can only have each number appear one time in each row, column, and box! You have to use them wisely if you want to solve the puzzle!
- Hrnngh, a game of strategy… I’ll have to give it all I’ve got, huh?
- Don’t worry, Snake, I know you’ve got what it takes! Otacon out!
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Let me tell you a story.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a “master-planned community,” constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don’t exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
somehow instead of saying “as a treat”, I’ve started using the phrase “for morale”, as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.
and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.
I’m not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me
General rule of thumb for positive self-talk: If it entertains you, it helps!
Hold onto your butts everyone I’m gonna wash my fuckin dishes
The thing about washing dishes is that you always think it’s gonna take sooooooooo much time and be so annoying. But then you find something to listen to, you get settled, you get started, and you realize that you were correct holy shit the cheese is glued on
see i could be a different kind of autism blog because i’m real good at identifying magic: the gathering cards from crappy photos but there just isn’t that many opportunities for that except me scouting ebay
I joke around a lot about how I would pay So Much Money for a Pokemon: Eevee Version where the entire selling point is finally giving us an eeveelution for all 18 types and also some dual-types.
And then I saw this:
And I am no longer joking.
With 171 potential combinations, it is entirely feasible to make a Pokemon game centered around Eevee.
Why? Because Eevee deserves it. And because we have had an egregious dearth of new Eeevee content since Sylveon dropped.
Here’s my pitch:
The region you live in is an island where Eevee basically became the endemic dominant organism. (If Gamefreak really wants to fuck around and find out, they could play around with real-life evolutionary theory concepts. They’ve used recent games to teach kids about stuff like environmentalism and conservation and energy/power production, so why not?)
The Pokemon Professor in the game will be a distant relative of, idk, Professor Rowan or Professor Sycamore, who decided that studying Pokemon evolution is too broad and decided to focus on what really matters: Eevee and Eevee-Associated Phenomena.
The player is tasked with filling out the Eeveedex.
The gym leaders still specialize in particular types, but they still only use Eeveelutions, of course. A fire-type leader can have Flareon as their signature ‘mon, sure, but for the rest of their team it’ll be dual fire types. Which might actually add to the difficulty level, especially if you get some weird type combos like fire/grass, because then you can’t just walk in and annihilate their entire team with a single not-overleveled water type unless it’s got some appropriate moves.
The Elite Four follows the same trend but with trickier type combos. The Champion has a six-Pokemon team full of the most seemingly contradictory type combos, like fire/water and normal/ghost. And lots of unexpected movesets, like the absolute badass that is Cynthia.
In the post-game Professor Oak will show up to give you the National Dex and you can have access to other ‘mons, as a treat, but until then? You get Eevee and its various -eons. It’s Eevee’s time to shine, which means Eevee and -eons only.
(I might make one (1) exception. There can be That One Fisherman with an entire team of Magikarp, if Gamefreak insists on carrying on that trope. Or he could just have a team of six Vaporeon that only know Splash. I’m willing to compromise.)
being uncomfortable becomes easier when you realize that’s literally the point. it’s like working out. if you work out & it becomes easy for you, you already got all you could out of that workout. your body adjusted & is strong enough to handle it now. you’re not improving anymore. that’s why you up the ante with harder workouts, where you’re uncomfortable & not quite strong enough yet. bc eventually you will be strong enough. but if it’s not a challenge, there’s no gain. & that’s exactly how it is with situations out of your comfort zone. the more you put yourself in them, the easier they get—but that in-between phase where you’re struggling is still completely valid and ok and natural. it’s what’s supposed to happen. it’s what’s going to change you as a person. and you should keep doing it
Some tags I found in notes that I feel are a very, very important caveat
A new research group used machine learning to track color changes in common materials and items, below is their findings for all color changes over time, they used 7000+ items from the 1800s to now to determine color changes in the most common items.
Below are the colors of cars by year, notice how the majority of cars are grey, white, or black compared to twenty years ago.
These aren’t data points, but they are comparisons between the ‘modern’ homes of the 70s and 80s compared to the modern homes of today.
Carpets have equally had the same treatment of grey added to them! The most common color of carpet is now grey or beige.
Even locations that used to scream with color for decades have now modernized to becoming boring minimalist (and I love minimalism) personality-less locations.
you can look at any folk culture around the world, past or present, and find the use of the entire color spectrum. humans are drawn to color, it holds emotional symbolism but it also reflects the land we live off of. I consider it like a celebration of life and our place in it
the problem is that we aren’t actually allowed to belong to the places we live. houses and entire towns are shells meant to be as plain as possible for the next renter, buyer, or investor. the more generic it is, the more consumers it can be sold to. And when you have a country that’s biggest population doesn’t have a distinct sense of cultural identity it will be reflected and mass produced without much complaint
people getting joy from the minimalist gray aesthetic is not the same as the estrangement this country is making between people and place, one of the most fundamental relationships humans need to survive (and be happy while doing it)
Films depict middle ages as devoid of color but it’s the other way around.
When I was buying my house, people were telling me not to paint it this or that color because it would be harder to sell later. Like, I haven’t even bough the house and you’re already telling me to sell it! I’m buying a house because I need a place to live! I want to live here until I die or manage to move to Europe! We are not supposed to actually own anything anymore. Not our houses or cars or furniture. We are supposed to be perpetually replacing these things, paying more each time around, until we break and die and our bones are the color of the walls around us.
I feel like so much slur discourse could get solved by discussing intent. “I’m okay with faggot but don’t like when someone yells it out a car at me.” Yeah no shit. I like physical touch in the form of a hug but don’t like it when it is in the form of a punch. People have said the word “gay” “lesbian” “trans” what have you with the most hateful vitriol they can muster because they MEAN it like a slur. So many of us have heard the tone that may as well make the word a slur.
If I saw a sign that says “I hunt members of the LGBTQIA+ community for sport” it wouldn’t really feel different from “I want to kill faggots.”
Additionally, I LIKE that it makes people cringe. It used to make me cringe. Those words have history for me too. But they also are not able to be sanitized by corporations. Shitlibs who would never rock the boat to protect me are never going to NOT shrink away at me calling myself a dyke and I do not care.
MY intent IS vitriol back, sometimes. A bold statement of attack. But sometimes it’s a joke. “His faggy mannerisms have captivated me.” Sometimes it’s a badge of honor from older queers. Sometimes it’s not that deep. What’s behind the words, what the intent is is everything.
as my own direct immediate list of game grievances i hate that stardew valley expects you to side against a wheelchair user who is upset that he was moved without his consent. i hate that the mass effect trilogy gives you visible scarring as a direct result of choosing mean dialogue and heals it if you’re nice. i hate that the vampire the masquerade ttrpg has a monstrous player class that can appear as horrible vampiric monsters or as visibly disabled people and both of these appearances are mechanically the same. i hate that dark souls games have a difficulty level implemented in a way that cannot be adjusted for disability. i hate that i can play as a mermaid or a werewolf or a horse in the sims games but can’t use a wheelchair. i hate that the ace attorney games have so much flashing and not all of the games can disable it. i hate that disability is constantly something that happens to teach a lesson, i hate that disability is something that happens as a punishment, i hate that disability is either compensated perfectly with no drawbacks or something that is endlessly sought to be cured. i hate that no character customization will ever include the mobility aids i use, that the player avatars that represent me will never look like me. i am so goddamn annoyed and so goddamn tired.
She/Her They/Them, 29. This blog is basically just me reblogging things I like. I'll occasionally post my own stuff, but I don't make a habit out of it.
