I decided to watch some sunsets in Proteus. Would you like to share them with me?

I just went to go see ‘Frozen’ on impulse. I’d heard it was good. I don’t agree.

HOLY SHIT IT WAS AMAZING.

It wasn’t perfect. It spent a little too much time establishing the usual Disney setups of TWOO WUB and DEAD PARENTS. There were way too many songs. But that TWOO WUB completely fell apart, and one of the songs is about THE JOY OF BEING ALONE where nobody expects you to be anything and you can WORK ON YOUR CRAFT. And there were TWO major female characters, which meant they both actually got to be SPECIFIC people instead of both being The Princess.

And the stressed-out misunderstood witch-queen gets to KEEP HER POWERS AND BE HAPPY AT THE END. There is a HAPPY ENDING FOR THE WITCH in this movie. AAAAAHHHHH <3 <3 <3 <3

please go see this and make it a big success so maybe there will actually be more animated movies that give the ladies some fucking agency instead of just having them passively wait for a man to solve everything.

Anyone who says games aren’t art can shut up right now, because I just played an impressionist landscape painting.

It’s called Proteus. I think I probably got it in one Humble Bundle or another; it was just sitting in my Steam library when I decided to futz around while doing my laundry. The initial start was rocky – I encountered a bug where it takes several minutes to boot, with no loading screen – but once I got past that, it was magical.

I wandered around chasing frogs and scaring chickens. I stood on a lonely mountaintop surrounded by what might have been gods. I listened to the music made by passing standing stones in sequence, which was a part of the slowly-changing symphony of the world. I sat under a tree just beneath the cloudline, watching a shower of rain pass by.

At times I began to feel a little lonely. I could have enjoyed a companion, who wandered around with their own agenda. Someone to throw a ball back and forth with, to chase across the terrain. Maybe a friendly fox who comes and goes as she pleases? That would feel about right, to me.

But the loneliness passed, and I was swept away by the low-res beauty of this little toy world in motion.

I didn’t decide to take screenshots until late in my session, and Proteus has a way of very decidedly letting you know that you have finished your viewing for the day.

I stood before a magic picture, and wandered through the serene world it showed for about an hour. Why is this not a genre of game? Landscape painting. Hell, get something like this running on a Raspberry Pi, put it on a flat-screen, and hang it from the wall.

It cost me like $10. Even if I never play it again I think it was well worth it. People who make games, I urge you: Learn from this. Clone it. Turn it into a genre.

I wonder if part of why I start feeling weird about being in New Orleans after a bit is the familiarity. Every corner of it is a place I’d been for years, since I was born. And more importantly, they’re all places I remember being a depressed, bitter boy. I had to leave town to reinvent myself; every corner brings up a palimpsest of all the previous times I was there, with a tiny hint of the moods I was in every time I passed through there as a young adult.

I dunno. More prosaically I can never stay here more than a week or so because I’m allergic to the place.

I think it’s about time for me to get back to Seattle. My brain keeps playing the title track off of “Trick of the Tail”, and I’m pretty sure that the Fabulous Beast in the song is me, and the distant City of Gold is Seattle.

I grew up here, it’s a charming (albeit run-down) place, but I don’t think I belong here any more.