Raindrops on Roses (Part ?): Journey

(trailer)

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. I wanted my next bit of media criticism to be for Kentucky Route Zero as part of the Nostalgia series. For the record, I haven’t forgotten about it, but that series was always interested in criticisms of American systems versus the promises those systems make and that was easier to make before many of those systems started more visibly struggling. But I do want to keep doing media criticism, just as a distraction from writing about the real world. I don’t have film and book companions to this one or anything, it’s just a nice game I wanted to talk about.

I’ve talked before about how wishing to experience something for the first time always seemed kind of off to me, but if there is one counterexample to that, it might be the first experience playing Journey. thatgamecompany doesn’t make the most technically demanding experiences from a controller standpoint -- Journey uses two joysticks and two buttons, while their previous games, Flow and Flower, used even less -- which means that with responsive enough controls (which these games have), it’s very easy to become associated with your little avatar. The experiences in Journey turn from the little Journeyman’s into the players.

Another reason this is important is that the story is also intentionally basic. The “journey” in Journey is the archetypal Monomyth straight out of Joseph Campbell, with each segment based on a certain step in that process. It’s abstracted, to be sure, but it also creates a sense of familiarity; the player already instinctively knows the story.

So a familiar story well told with easy immersion would already be worth talking about, but these aren’t the only qualities the game has. The game is also cooperative, two players at a time going through the story. Unlike most cooperative games, though, the interaction between the players is inherently limited (again, there are only two buttons). The point here was to strip away potential negative interactions, so only player bonding remains. The minimalism might seem like it removes interaction entirely, but without negativity, emergent positive interactions remain. The classic example is the potential to draw a heart at the ending, but there are examples to be found all throughout.

What inspired this post, though, was the soundtrack. It was nominated for a Grammy, but I only mention that to preface its pedigree; that’s not why I wanted to mention it. I got some of the songs stuck in my head out of the blue recently and immediately had something akin to a madeleine moment, immediately thrust back into the moment of running through the sand or riding on one of the fabric creatures. One might even call it synesthetic, where hearing “Apotheosis” or “Road of Trials” becomes unconsciously associated with the moods of the levels by themselves.

So would I want to play Journey again for the first time like I said I might? I’m not sure. My instinct is no, actually, because of how intense those associations are. All I would really need to do is listen to the soundtrack again and experience it again. And if I did want to replay it, it’s right there and I’m ready to relive it.

-F

Seasons of Change

 It’s fall now. Autumn, whatever you want to call it. There’s always an air of change, I think, with the equinox seasons, not just in palette (though that’s certainly there too) but in the general mood as well. And maybe that’s because the palette informs the mood. I’m certainly not calling that out of the question. I don’t know, that’s not something I’ve thought about. But autumn also seems like it’s normally “the bad change.” It’s a lead-in to winter, which is typically this symbolic psychopomp (unless it’s holiday season but we’ll leave that aside for now).

At the same time, though, fall’s supposed to be this season of plenty, right? Harvest festivals and stocking up a surplus for those upcoming winter months. And the new colors on the trees aren’t treated as the trees dying or even hibernating, but the marker of this specific atmosphere.

It’s a weird dichotomy. I thought it might be a glass-half-full/empty situation where it depends on how you look at it? And you have to choose? But that doesn’t sit right with me either. What might work, though, is a synthesis of these two ideas, like, you need to prepare for hard times, but that doesn’t mean you have to be sad about it. The act of preparedness is promising enough, or something like that.

I don’t know, it’s just something I think about.

-F

Masks and Mask Acessories

 I feel obligated to look at other people’s masks. I wrote before about how there’s this silent judgment that happens when you spot someone not wearing theirs (or worse, wearing one improperly), which is probably why that happens, but, at the same time, I haven’t seen too many unique ones? I have friends who wear some, sure, but the vast majority I’ve seen are just common cloth masks. They might be a nice color, but not much more than that. No designs, no fandom markers, nothing.

Maybe that’s a product of demographics? A lot of the other people I see are at least one generation above me, and expression is (at least stereotypically) a youth thing, so maybe that’s it? There’s also the fact that many have not worn these sorts of masks before, and so this sort of fashion is going to have to build itself from the ground up.

I speak of fashion like I know what I’m talking about, of course, and I don’t really. Maybe everyone else is like me, because while I have a mask with a design on it (a Guy Fawkes mask, for the curious), I never really wear it. I always feel like it draws more attention than I want. I mean, what I want generally is to not draw attention unless I start vocally looking for it, but that feels like another topic for another time.

The last possibility is that there just aren’t that many, and that the internet has only amplified the ones we do see. I could believe that as well -- the internet certainly amplifies so many other low-lying areas, why not what masks exist as well? But in all these cases, I see hope that they’ll become more widespread. I’d love for one more reason to check what’s on everyone’s faces right now.

-F

Drilled Into My Head

Every Wednesday at noon there’s a siren that goes off throughout the area, the weekly test of the weather warnings that’s not too hard to tune out once you get used to it. It only lasts about a minute anyway, so even if you don’t, it’s still not big a deal, to the point that it generally doesn’t get remarked upon at all outside of the joking question, “What happens if there is severe weather and it’s also the scheduled test time?”

And like, obviously there are serious answers to this question. “They don’t have a drill when there might be an actual threat,” is the actual answer, though my particular favorite is saying “Well, when you hear it, what’s the sky look like?” in a particularly smarmy tone. But the joke answer, “we’ll all be doomed,” still seems to permeate. And this isn’t just a local thing, either. I’ve seen the joke made in entirely different states to the one I’m in.

I wonder if the joke has turned into a memetic device of sorts, reminding people to pay attention to the siren in the first place. Sure, that instant recognition also comes with hearing it all my life, but the additional association makes it harder to ignore when things matter.

-F

See You At The Movies(?)

I wrote a little bit about this a month ago, about how, yeah, I missed movies and going to the theatre to see them and all that, but also, like, I understood why places were closed and I was content with being patient, with even perhaps a bit of moralizing judgment towards people who wanted them open. Circumstances have changed now, and I’d like to revise my stance a little bit.

The biggest change was my preferred theatre reopening. It’s a lot easier to make decisions when the riskiest option is inherently off the table, after all. I can understand the impetus to reopen, by the way. I’m not blaming anyone involved in that particular decision-making process. It’s near a pretty big college campus, one that’s welcoming back students right now, so of course they would want to be there for that. And the precautions look reasonable in terms of trying to keep people safe.

So I should want to go now that it’s open? Well, I guess I’m still hesitant about going out into the world for anything I would deem unnecessary. Things like groceries are fine, maybe even going to a cousin’s first communion, but movies? I won’t say every outing I’ve done has been strictly necessary, but it still feels like a wide gap. But at the same time, the fact that the option is there feels like a temptation. It means I can sympathize more with people who do feel like they have to do these things, at the very least. A casual want (“I can’t wait until I can go see a movie.”) has become an active consideration (“I can’t wait until I’m comfortable seeing a movie.”)

It’s weird, that’s all. Like a lot of these blog posts, I don’t have a solution or anything. Maybe I will slip a mask on and sit two rows away from anyone else. It’s a closer possibility than I realized, but it still feels like so many things are holding me back.

-F