We're playing Animal Crossing. The little town is sadly overgrown with weeds, and most animals have moved away. He logs on and explores, it's all new to him. He talks to an animal, who chirps about a resident named "justy". Oh. My ex-boyfriend. We used to play the game together, of course.
Strange how his presence remains here, on this little memory card, in the the memories of my neighbors who rhapsodize about his letter-writing skills or the fact that they used to play and play and play all day.
Like in my real life, among friends who remember him fondly. There's no sense of competition or comparison, but still - there was someone before, and that will never change.
We start a new town - Pariset, named after the city we visited last summer together. But Gaston the grumpy rabbit quickly moves in, bringing with him justy's letters. "I wonder what happened to that cat?" he asks in his grumpy way. He's not here anymore. But the animals still remember him.
I consider demolishing justy's house. But it seems wrong! What about all his furniture, his letters - would they all disappear too? The thought makes me sad.
The new boyfriend marvels at how patiently I write letters to each of our town's inhabitants, flattering them and telling them how much I'd miss them if they moved away. After two years of intermittently playing the game, I understand their simplistic little souls. And in spite of myself, I am fond of them, assigning them equally little tiny pieces of my heart. Perhaps someday the recipients of my letters will convey them elsewhere, taking with them traces of me...
I like that many of my animal friends still use the creative profanity that my roommate told them to use years ago when they asked for something new to say.
Posted by: Mike | 02/17/2005 at 03:36 PM
I think Animal Crossing is something special. It's a subtle game and the extreme persistence of the world and the timeline really captures the feeling of an alternate life.
The way the characters move between towns and remember things is amazingly well done.
I wonder how it will feel to play it ten years from now.
Posted by: chadm | 02/17/2005 at 04:49 PM
I think Animal Crossing is something special. It's a subtle game and the extreme persistence of the world and the timeline really captures the feeling of an alternate life.
The way the characters move between towns and remember things is amazingly well done.
I wonder how it will feel to play it ten years from now.
Posted by: chadm | 02/17/2005 at 04:50 PM
My GOD I love this game.
Posted by: kathunter | 02/18/2005 at 02:03 AM
My friend had a similar experience - she used to play this game with her mom before her mom died.
She didn't play Animal Crossing for about a year and when she finally did, she noticed that her mom's town was all overgrown with weeds and bugs.
What should she do? She didn't know. It seemed somehow wrong to let the town continue to succumb to entropy. So she cleaned the place up, got rid of the weeds, and so on.
She knew it was a silly game, but it made her sad.
Posted by: John Booty | 02/21/2005 at 09:08 AM
tworzenie stron tworzenie stron ; ogoszenia nieruchomoci ogoszenia nieruchomoci ; reklama w internecie reklama w internecie ; sm ; ma ; mpa ; apteki warszawa apteki warszawa ; jiddu krishnamurti jiddu krishnamurti ; stomatologia warszawa stomatolog warszawa ; opony opony ; mieszkania warszawa mieszkania warszawa ; jk ; freud
Posted by: outsider | 08/17/2006 at 09:53 AM