The island of the day after.
Oh gosh, those weird, terrifying days!
In this way, I think Nintendo provided one of those once-in-an-era services for their audience.
They opened a virtual window when people needed to feel a breeze, even a virtual breeze.
Of course we played it through lockdown.
We continued playing it long after that too.
I remember checking into Animal Crossing after getting my third - my fourth?
I’ve been playing it long since the cars are back and the birds can no longer be heard.
Now I’m starting to wonder what Animal Crossing has become for me.
It is very unlikely the game will be getting any updates.
But I also walk around knowing that this is still virtual life, this is still experience.
This is what Animal Crossing is like now.
What do I do?
What have I learned?
My last days on my island!
My last days are surprisingly cosy.
They’re cosy because Animal Crossing is a deeply cosy thing, sure.
Speaking of that, not a day goes by in Animal Crossing without a visit to Brewster.
A few thoughts, from the perspective of the end of the world, on Brewster.
I love the fact that Brewster, like Daibo, understands that coffee is barely a beverage.
I have read about pigeon milk and my advice to you is: do not read about pigeon milk.
Even so, if Brewster asks if I want it, what can I say?
I have to say yes.
I have to say yes to everything.
On that day I will not blink.
I will say: fine, no problem.
The floors will flood and shimmer and we will both be floating in pigeon milk.
The game will be absolutely screwed - perhaps this is how it dies - but I will be fine.
Brewster is a lovely synecdoche for a lot of Animal Crossing, I think.
And I go there to watch some perfectly judged minimalistic animations and moments.
The pause after Brewster places the cup on the table, before he prods it towards me.
The way he cleans the cup afterwards and stows it away with that lovely evocative domestic click-clack of crockery.
The bingo win chance that on my way out the door he will have something special for me.
This kind of stuff happens all over the island.
I’ll go to Nook’s in the evening to hear the special shut down music.
That brings me onto something else: the things I no longer do.
By and large I do not fish anymore.
I don’t really buy anything from Tom Nook anymore.
I will never, ever open my mailbox unless I have something from Redd on the way.
I’m not lazy - look at all that pointless, time-consuming coffee I’m buying!
What’s happened is a kind of emotional triage.
I know my time here is short, and with that awareness has come a fierce unspoken clarity.
The lines have been drawn for me between what’s intrinsic and what’s extrinsic.
I don’t care about the dinosaurs in the basement.
I go to see the butterflies so rarely that I always get lost.
Here’s the thing about the gallery.
It is not remotely complete.
Here at the end of the word is something that remains to be done.
So I will keep coming back.
That thing I just said: the creak of wood.
Floorboards squeaking and bending is something that will forever take me back to art galleries.
I think of that whenever I drop into Animal Crossing to visit my gallery.
And sometimes I think of a dream I had during - hey!
Unable to go out.
Distant London had become a fiction.
Another vision of the end of the world?
Thank you, Animal Crossing.
Thank you for everything.
