#THE DEVELOPER

[mice-rats-daily]

Today’s mouse is The Developer from The House (2022)!

[athensart]

"theres three of us, three of us, just us three"

[taintedtowers]

Various DOATK doodles from about the start of this round

[fandumb-thoughts]

I only just finished watching The House an hour ago, but listen. The Contractor is Raymond and Rosa is Mabel. Or, at the very least, the Contractor is the child that continues the cycle and Rosa is the child who breaks out of the cycle.

The first part is the origin of the house, obviously. The House consumes Raymond and Penny, even if they’re not the ones do the physical remodels like the characters in the other two parts. It consumes them so fully that they ignore and practically forget their children entirely. Raymond is the primary one to blame for all this, even as Penny goes along with it, and it’s all fueled by his desire to show their relatives that he can pull them out of poverty thank you very much. 

This motivation is almost identical’s to the Developer’s in part two. The Developer has isolated himself in doing this project---sent away his construction crew, never leaves the house even for groceries, and his only point of “human” contact being the bank that’s harassing him and the dentist that he is harassing. All things that I could see Raymond doing, if he were in the Developer’s position. Or maybe just what Raymond would do if he were attempting to sell The House, in some future where the status no longer comes from such an old place.

I’m most interested in the Odd Couple’s relatives, though. Their whole family comes to enjoy the renovations that the Developer has made. This is the familial validation that Raymond was seeking (especially with the way the Odd Couple treat Raymond like another family member, picking him up from the hospital to “take him home”) and with this validation the Developer is able to lose himself fully to The House, destroying it because upkeeping it and remodeling it doesn’t matter after the validation has been recieved.

Rosa, though, feels like a completely different character. She’s not Raymond or the Developer, but she continuously looks to the picture of her and her parents, still seeking that familial approval. It doesn’t feel like approval for herself, though. Her parents don’t exist in a tangible sense, like perhaps they have already passed away, but in a way that feels like Rosa needs to make them proud. To continue the work that they started on The House---if nothing else, this explains Rosa’s statements of “there’s nothing else” because she were just a version of Mabel, growing up inside of The House and watching her parents try and fail to upkeep it the way she’s trying to. In the picture they’re standing in front of The House, further proving my little theory. 

Raymond and the Developer fail, yet Rosa does not. Partially because she has the support of Elias, Jen, and Cosmos (parallels to Isobel, Penny, and Raymond in context of Rosa being Mabel?*), but also because she’s able to give up on the rigid insistence upon what The House should be. Like a child throwing away values instilled on her by her parents. Something Raymond wasn’t able to do, and something the Developer was unable to do without that being the newest way to recieve validation (from the Odd Couple’s family).

*Elias is obviously younger than anyone else in The House, and acts like a guide to the rest of them, just like Isobel was the guide for Mabel to find their old things in the basement. He is disillusioned with the situation and can see it clearer than Rosa, like Isobel was able to see clearer than Mabel. He clearly cares about Rosa and wants her to be happy---especially with TV, when he pulls Rosa up to dance, and with the gifts he leaves her---like a younger siblings who doesn’t have anything but their own feelings to wave as authority over their older sibling.

Jen is very caring towards Rosa, almost motherly at times. She doesn’t push, though, just gently guides, even though she wants for Rosa to be well. Cosmos is like the opposite of Raymond, while still being him. He can help Rosa with The House with his contracting skills but he, fundamentally, wants to actually help her instead of continuing to feed into her delusions. Like good parents, though, both Jen and Cosmos don’t outright try and break Rosa out (the way Elias tries to). They know that the decision has to be hers. 

Honestly it feels like Rosa was hallucinating all of them, in a way, making tangible what she wanted to remember. Elias was her little siblings, begging her to bail and save herself, and Jen and Cosmos were her parents, coaxing her away because they had been stuck in the exact same loop and new that outright telling her wasn’t going to be what worked.

[ruporas]

don’t worry about me. goodbye, big brother

[prokopetz]

The constant rolling disaster that is Overwatch's game development aside, what really perplexes me about how Blizzard is handling the broader franchise is their continual insistence that a canon narrative exists in spite of their equally continual refusal to tell anyone what it is.

Like, okay, the events of the games aren't canon. Fair enough: the games are multiplayer-only, and you can't account for player actions.

Oh, and the animated short films aren't canon either – they're properly understood as in-universe propaganda, not depictions of actual events. That's a little high concept for you guys, but fine.

But surely the comics are canon, right? Well, no; some of the comics (we're not telling you which ones) were canon at one point, but the writing team has decided to go in a different direction.

My dudes, what is left? The weird Source Filmmaker porn? Is that canon? Well, apparently it's at least as canon as anything else!

[ruushes]

sleeping arrangements (not sure tara would ever actually deign to sleep in the same 20ft radius as shovel but who can resist those big shiny insectoid black eyes 🥺)

plus:

[maplewozapi]

I genuinely feel like I’m going insane sometimes

[interesting-factz]

Python installed successfully 🐍😎

[devsgames]

Just this week in games:

- EA laid off 700 workers

- Sony laid of 900 workers

- Rockstar announces in-person work mandates for all employees (a 'soft layoff' that will force some staff to quit, which likely means that actual layoffs are forthcoming)

In 2023 6,000 games workers were laid off. Now in 2024 over 10,000 workers have been laid off, and there's still 10 months to go.

Not to be hyperbolic, but I think this is perhaps the worst year for video games ever if we're measuring by number of layoffs.

[kittycowboy]

I am actually so serious I think it really messes with a childs creativity and joy to tell them to never make a mary sue OC. Like that unbridaled form of joy where you make a self insert OC who super cool and everyone loves them and they have every superpower in the world SHOULD be something a kid makes, it nourishes their ability to create things for fun and not be stifled by "oh but what if my character is too overpowered and cringey...". whatever

[destined-productions]

I am a solo indie dev trying to overcome my anxiety and actually let people know my game exists. It is a cute physics based game where you are the level.

I love making this game with passion and I am so excited to share it with the world, but somehow I need to let the world know. Unfortunately the way steam works is the more wishlists the more visibility, so if you are interested it is super appreciated :)

Wishlist on steam or visit the website to find out more mightymarbles.com

[taintedtowers]

LUCK OF THE DRAW

[blorbosinmyheadcentral]

Supervised Machine Learning

[seagiri]

very sleep deprived doodles of whatever’s going on inside my brain

[thejournallo]

ME MANIFESTING THAT EVERYONE WHO SEE THIS POST GETS WHAT THEY WANT.

(Masterlists)