lafayette

in the process of reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnets on love, I think I'm incapable of writing anything that scales more than half the page

Been obsessed with pokemon since receiving a copy of white from my uncle in 2011, probably a large section of my brain reserved solely for type matchups, stat distributions and movesets, but I digress. I found out about emulating ds games around a year ago and one of the first games I played was white, (whose collective story including the sequels could be the subject of a whole other project but that's besides the point) and after some time I decided to give the sequels a shot.

I feel like an in-depth explanation of a pokemon play through isn't really necessary, you catch battle evolve blahblahblah, very standard. But then at some point throughout the game you reach Village Bridge. From what I can recall, there isn't actually much to do outside of a few battles and items you can pick up, but the layout allows for a straight cut leading right into the next area:

The linear design of the map discourages the exploration often required to get through certain areas, which I think makes Village Bridge a lot more special. At its core pokemon is a very tedious, grind-heavy game, and when you have such an easy path straight to progression, it's tempting to just fly straight through in lieu of exploring. As such, I feel like the significance of Village Bridge goes over a lot of people's heads, which is the subject of what I'd like to start working on:

Within Village Bridge resides certain NPC's that you must talk to in order to get them to play a certain instrument. That's it. There's 4 of them, one in each corner of the map, each with the ability to produce music with their own respective instruments: the flute, guitar, cappella, and vocals. I know that this doesn't sound like much, but going through the trouble of finding each musician, talking to everyone you see in hopes that they're the one you're looking for, all that effort just to hear a goofy song that sounds more of pixels than anything, it stuck with me. It felt tranquil, beautiful, somewhat intimate. Strangely, the gimmick of Village Bridge showed me the beauty that resides in talking to people. Yes, the children's game about fighting magical creatures with your own magical creatures gave me a new perspective on life. It meant a lot to me, being a shy kid I was always horribly inconvenienced by reaching out, starting conversation. Even as this issue persists, it's a little easier nowadays because of this experience, however silly it sounds. Rather than anxiety, there's some excitement at the idea of getting to know somebody you've never known, their interests, what they have to tell you.