#thedery

Just off the top of my head:

Free ice cream and frozen yogurt

Very cold weather

Mountain goats

Lots of good skiing

Mountains

Lots of interesting things to do, most of which are outdoors

Hello!

i hope you're doing well frank

So, it's like the classic joke:

A man goes into a butcher shop to buy an animal. "How many animals do you want?" says the butcher.

The man thinks for a minute. Then he says, "Well, let's see. I'm going to give one of them away for free, another will be put down, and the rest will get killed."

The butcher says, "Which ones will be killed?"

The man says, "Let me tell you something about myself. I once saw a movie that was so horrible I still haven't recovered from it. It was called 'Schmuck,' and everyone hated it, but in a weird way that made me feel really good. Now, how would you feel if I were to tell you that I will give this animal to my girlfriend, who I adore?"

The butcher nods. "You got it. I'd do anything."

The man says, "Good. You know what else I'm going to do?"

The butcher nods again. "What's that?"

"I'm going to kill the next animal in this row of animals."

"What next one?"

"The one over there."

The butcher goes back to his work.

The man comes back a minute later with a rabbit dangling from his hand. "Is this the animal I gave away?" he asks.

The butcher shakes his head. "No, not yet. I'm making some alterations."

The man turns around, horrified. It is a human head on a pole. "Wait a minute! You're not making any alterations. You didn't need to kill anyone to get my head. You just went into the butcher's shop, asked for some meat, and then gave it away."

The butcher looks sheepish. "Well, we don't have very much meat."

The man is horrified. "Why didn't you just kill the one I chose instead of making this whole situation about me? I'll never forgive you!"

"Hey," says the butcher, "it's only a head."

I have thought a lot about why the butcher is the wrong place for a story about Sonic the Hedgehog (or me for that matter). "In the real world, the people that are killing you are making you more dead" sounds bad, no matter what.

In a world with no death, though, the butcher's actions have less moral value than Sonic's (because there was no point in killing the human head as a hedgehog, but there was a point in killing the hedgehog head, and that point is that Sonic the Hedgehog's life).

(Of course, one could also say that Sonic the Hedgehog's life has less moral value than someone's life. But what's important is that the two have the same moral weight.)

In a world with no death, even Sonic's life seems kind of like a meaningless collection of "spikes that stick out and make me look cool." But, with all the deaths in the world, Sonic and his friends do something much less pointless when he dies – they make another life. ("The hedgehog lived by itself, which was both strange and sad.") The butcher is still just buying and selling meat, and when Sonic dies, he buys and sells even more meat. He can't undo what he's done. He still makes the world deader.

So, "a butcher's shop" has become the logical setting for me to tell a story about Sonic the Hedgehog dying. Because a butcher's shop is already full of dead things, without having to kill any living animals.

(This is a bit of a throwback question but oh well, my thoughts are still fresh)

I honestly don't know very much about any of them? I saw Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 4 when I was like 11 or 12, and that was about it. I don't think I've read anything else by Kazuhira Miller and Frank is, I think, the only thing I've read by Miller. (In fact, when I was looking it up a little while ago to check whether Frank was an actual real person, he was the only writer of anything ever by this guy.)

Kaz is the least interesting I guess. He's a bit like the protagonist of some kind of Japanese horror/action movie: he's a big ol' dude with a huge muscle guy physique and a giant knife, but he's also the only one with any character or narrative significance at all beyond the fact that he happens to be the bad guy and has a giant muscle guy physique.

As I said, Frank isn't interesting either. He kind of seems like a generic male character design, just a guy with a big muscular head with various scars and an odd-looking face. I guess I would have preferred if he didn't have such a generic name (which is probably because I read most of Miller's work as a kid and didn't care much, but still). I would have been fine if Kaz were his protagonist, but again, not much of a difference.