PHANTOM FUNHOUSE

Here’s a new post on the blog about Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse. The best way to describe it might be like it’s receiving a random folder from someone’s computer, filled with books they wrote, emails, articles, an atlas program, and other assorted documents.

It’s mindbogging to look through, especially when you consider this person and their social circle and all their in-jokes never existed. And gradually, as you read more, it becomes clearer that maybe that’s the point. Can you create other people’s lives through writing… and what happens when they notice? If you want to learn more, you’ve gotta work for it.

Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (read on The Obscuritory)

Phantom Funhouse recreates the art and the mundane details of an imaginary person’s life, almost like echoes of their life, the liner notes and lyrics from a music anthology you can never listen to. Random details like the movie screening schedule for the sci-fi convention he went to suddenly take on importance when they’re the last artifacts we have from somebody. As he tells it, Uncle Buddy’s life is a collage of references, name-dropping Albert Camus, The Twilight Zone, Let’s Make a Deal, The Sound and the Fury, and Carl Sagan among others. Maybe that’s who he is and how he thinks, or not, but it’s what we can figure out about him.

There’s more happening here, though. Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse has another unsettling layer boiling underneath this, and whether or not it’s worth uncovering depends on how much work you’re willing to put in. It’s a story for people who want a narrative to push back and refuse to give up its secrets. It’s a character study for the folks who datamine games to learn more about them, and in fact, there’s more hidden in Phantom Funhouse if you attempt to hack it open.

Here’s a new post on the blog about Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse. The best way to describe it might be like it’s receiving a random folder from someone’s computer, filled with books they wrote, emails, articles, an atlas program, and other assorted documents.

It’s mindbogging to look through, especially when you consider this person and their social circle and all their in-jokes never existed. And gradually, as you read more, it becomes clearer that maybe that’s the point. Can you create other people’s lives through writing… and what happens when they notice? If you want to learn more, you’ve gotta work for it.

Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (read on The Obscuritory)

Phantom Funhouse recreates the art and the mundane details of an imaginary person’s life, almost like echoes of their life, the liner notes and lyrics from a music anthology you can never listen to. Random details like the movie screening schedule for the sci-fi convention he went to suddenly take on importance when they’re the last artifacts we have from somebody. As he tells it, Uncle Buddy’s life is a collage of references, name-dropping Albert Camus, The Twilight Zone, Let’s Make a Deal, The Sound and the Fury, and Carl Sagan among others. Maybe that’s who he is and how he thinks, or not, but it’s what we can figure out about him.

There’s more happening here, though. Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse has another unsettling layer boiling underneath this, and whether or not it’s worth uncovering depends on how much work you’re willing to put in. It’s a story for people who want a narrative to push back and refuse to give up its secrets. It’s a character study for the folks who datamine games to learn more about them, and in fact, there’s more hidden in Phantom Funhouse if you attempt to hack it open.