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[uzdailjam]

[uzdailjam]

[uzdailjam]

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[uzdailjam]

Wish I could make audible for ya this owl call. Can hear it clean and rich through the walls. Outside it's not loud but carries through the canyon as if everywhere at once but nowhere in particular. Recording yields only static but listen if you were here it's murmured starlight.

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I think about how Obi Wan left Anakin, how hurt and confused Kenobi had to be. Did he leave Anakin thinking he would die? Was he physically unable to get him off that lava slope? Could he just not process anything at that moment, in grief and doubt and regret? This was Obi Wan's flawed moment, his true sin and I don't blame him for it and it absolutely makes sense But everything he did before was just foibles harmful blindnesses that added up. Not blameless but not culpable. This is the first time he made a real choice this is it ten minutes before the end of the damn trilogy and it's simultaneously the fulcrum and convergence of his tragedy. I mean how wild is it that the tragic structure is chronologically inverted here. All the bad inevitable shit happens and then in just about the last scene of the last act his decision of tragic doom is that he accepts it! and becomes the last person to give up on Anakin Skywalker I think about if Obi Wan hadn't left him. You are my brother Anakin. I love you. Had brought him back, broken and raging and fallen, but not abandoned. Chosen not by the force or by prophecy but by the people who refused to give up on him. Padme and Luke proved it was right, & what if Obi Wan had too, had been one of the people who kept caring for him even or especially at his most monstrous and truly lost.

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This is a good game that unexpectedly hit hard. It didn't give me what I anticipated or wanted but it gave me something valuable. It takes a half hour to get through, has very simple mechanics to the point where it's more experience than game, has very pretty and complementary art and music (the soundtrack is a crucial part of the experience and it's an impressive technical achievement the way it adjusts what's playing to match your pace), and discovering the game's content & arc for yourself may give you some unexpected stuff to feel about. you can pick it up for a dollar right now and it's worth it very spoilery thoughts below

here's a full playthrough & interview with the creators https://youtu.be/VET-f4mgZ-M When it turned from summer to autumn I was hooked, the art is gorgeous and I was excited to see a full 4 season cycle of gameplay. I like those whole-year-timelapse videos of nature that people put together, but often they start in winter or spring and end in fall or winter. I don't want to end in fall or winter, that's a bummer! So the thought that this would conclude in the beauty and optimism of spring was a welcome thought, enough to make me satisfied and eager to see the rest. But this game is not so idyllic as it first seemed. There's a lot of open ended symbolism that unfolds, and the effect it makes on you is a reflection of the sort of thoughts you bring with you. It confronts you with some harsh stuff but in an honest and kind way and never loses its beauty or fun. A hawk divebombs your flock and you feel pretty powerless to dodge or escape and you must just endure, keep up the frantic heat of your own wings as winter turns into deeper winter. There are playful and curious artistic elements to the game that you can interact with as much as you want but ultimately it's about the flock; the flock is everything worth fighting for and in time even that too will be transient. But for now you can keep your flock together if you choose to; you wait for them, you risk for them, caught beyond their walls or islands or sent off by the tones of willowisps and if you seek them out and are patient and your flock stays with you, or you with them. There is a chapter that is peaceful in action but the landscape below is just a vague blur completely obscured by grey clouds. This is a hell of an effect because of its precision timing and context, and just one more example of how the game presents a series of very simple premises to provoke an emotional introspection but in a fair and generous way, without dictating or sermonizing or playing tricks. I yearned to see the landscape beneath the clouds but we never do in that chapter. In the next chapter your birds leave little trails in the clouds and you can faintly see the landscape below. There are breaks in the clouds so can just fly through those and see it clearly, but you might choose to look through these little easy to miss glimmers given to you by the beating of your own wings. Again, it leaves the impression of a mentor showing you something hard about the world but lovingly and honestly and without diminishing its potential for beauty and joy. Before the game enters its final chapter you already know bittersweetly that there will be no spring. You enter a thunderstorm and the wind that used to bring you together scatters you apart. For a time you can fight even these winds even something as big and uncaring as nature itself you can sneak past hard won still somehow along with those who have flown with you but at last in the darkness between crashes of lightning you are split apart and left alone. You leave the storm but your world is still and dark and solitary, even though your wings still flap. And then oh man holy wow that moment. When you are rejoined from the edges of night slowly by ones and twos your flock comes gliding back to your wing or you come back to theirs. That's the good stuff. And the place you finish is not the earth maybe not even the sky, it is strange and pretty and aches. Your flock leaves you but not violently this time, in sweet clear notes and it's not that they're gone. They have all been somewhere on winds of their own. I mean their flight and yours are both real even when they are not together. Now they are there ahead of you on the tree and you will join them there & you can fly again, to spring

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time travel now please just a little just a year just to step from the flame water on our lips 

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imagine a schoolyard circle around you chanting "fight! fight! fight!" but in a loving way. they want you to be safe and happy. go on, they mean, it's our fight too. when you stumble they reach out to lift you gentle and steady. and so too at this very moment you are part of such a circle for someone else even or especially at your weakest when you are held up in their arms they are held up in yours too

[uzdailjam]

Listen spring came sleet-drenched, sodden at the doorstep. every songbird out there darting now like thaw drips raucous from the thicket to mark wingprints in sunlit snow bright as your 1 a.m wishes every one of them is a tough bastard who survived winter every one tiny soft red-throated and each has a heart sharp as the blazing morning

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what if magic was like fire was for our oldest ancestors. before they even knew how to make it, maybe. it would strike the earth in a cataclysm and leave behind something that could take or give life. and if you were very wise or very foolish you could capture a little residue of that magic, a smoking brand, a hot coal and carry it with you and keep its spark alive next to your own breast even or especially through rain and wind and every day stoke it into something powerful. something wretchedly dangerous that you give to the people you care about most because you want its warmth and light to be theirs too.

they carried fire. they carried it. and it smokes in your hands, the coal is smoking and your skin is smoking and maybe underneath your flesh and bones too are crackling with rivers of things that want to become flame, that would blaze up if you let your lungs fill, like embers in a wind. but you carry it because it's a sweet ordeal to carry warmth. i don't just mean that you need the fire. the fire needs you.

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If you're already awake there's a moment when the very first ring of the alarm is so quiet that your ears can't say for sure if they really heard it and so that's a sweet sound, one where your mind fills in the possibility, and recalls even sweeter ~ to barely hear the first waking murmurs of rain, of the new season, of one you loved beside you

[uzdailjam]

"87 % waning gibbous" me too pal