Animal Crossing

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose. I am someone who did not go to art school, but that's fairly unrelated to what we're talking about today anyway. 

Betty: Hi, I'm Betty. I'm also someone who did not go to art school, but I have been working as a gallery guide in an art gallery for the past eight years. Which is also kind of irrelevant to what we're talking about today. But, you know, we'll see.

Quinn: We'll bring it around. And we also have a very special guest. 

Ponders: Hi, my name is Ponders, and I also did not go to school to study art or art history. I studied math and music of all things, but it's also super not relevant to what we're talking about today. 

Quinn: So Ponders runs an amazing podcast called Accession, which everyone should go listen to. And it has really interesting angles into art history and, um, making fine art more accessible to more people. And instead of talking about anything about that, I really just wanted them here to talk about Animal Crossing. 

Ponders: Yeah, for sure.

Betty: Yeah. So just to, so you guys know, um, I am someone who has not played Animal Crossing because I don't have any devices currently that can play the game, but I'm sure that will change very soon.

Quinn: [laughs] That's our mission here. 

Ponders: I should also add that like, in the, in the world of like us not being qualified to talk about these things. I haven't owned a video game system in almost a decade before I bought the Switch so that I could play Animal Crossing. So, you know, layers upon layers of unqualified opinions here. 

Betty: It is actually kind of funny because I—like I'm someone who normally plays a lot of video games. And uh, Quinn and I did an episode exclusively about video games and I was all all like, I played this game and this game, this game, and here I am, the person who has not played this game.

Quinn: The world is upside down.

Betty: Yeah, well, this is true.

Quinn: This isn't just an excuse to talk about a video game we like, there is actually a lot of art content in the new Animal Crossing New Horizons game. And so kind of how we're going to do this is because Betty has not played this game, even though yes we will be trying to convince her to buy a Switch so that she can play it, I figured you can kind of lead this episode. Um, we'll talk a little bit about what Animal Crossing is, and also get really into what these different fine art pieces in this video game are and why they exist there. 

Betty: Yeah, I was, um, I did a little bit of research on like, kind of what this is. So I guess like here, I'll tell you guys my limited understanding of what I know so far, and you can tell me if I'm right or wrong. And then I have some questions for you guys, because there are some things I don't understand. So, um, so from what I've looked up—so this is a game published by Nintendo. There's actually, there's been five iterations of the Animal Crossing games. The first one was released in 2001. And then the most recent one, New Horizons, was released March of this year, 2020. And so it seems like, um, there—you as the player, you're a human I think, you live in a village, there are animals. And all I know is there's like fishing involved and I guess you can have houses and put stuff in it, and you can like change your clothes and your, your appearance. And that's all I know about this game.

Quinn: I mean, that's more or less it.

Ponders: Yeah, pretty much hole-in-one right there. 

Betty: Well, so like my, my first question is actually, um... what is the objective of this game? Or if there even is one. 

Quinn: So there is a little bit of a structure to the game, in that you're—basically the concept is you are dropped onto a desert island. There are some animals there who run businesses and you can interact with, and some are other villagers who are just chilling. Um, and you can kind of like achieve goals throughout the game, by building a better and better island, sort of unlocking new things and getting a better, like, star rating for your Island. Like Yelp exists in this universe, I guess. Um—but you don't have to work towards that. Basically it's a, it's just a sandbox game where you get to run around and make it however you want. So if you want to make your focus like catching all the bugs or the fish, or like having the most flowers, or different kinds of flowers. There's just, there's so many different directions that you can explore, or you can make your focus like making a super beautiful island or a super beautiful house. So there's—it's on one level, like you can kind of explore the game however you want to, and sort of pick a focus as you go. Um, or you can, as some people have, devote their entire lives to making like a five star luxury resort island that makes us all very confused about how they possibly managed to do that in this video game.

Ponders: In the short amount of time. Cause I think the, the other thing about this game that is, that is so interesting to me is it's time locked, that time in the game passes at the exact same rate as time in the real world. So if I were to turn on the game right now, it would be 7:15 on Saturday. If I turn it on in the morning, it'll be tomorrow morning. And so you, you can't—like every single day slightly different things might happen on your island. So like some days you'll have the person who sells plants will come to your island, or maybe the person who really likes bugs and will buy all the bugs from you—for all the Flick stans out there. And then like some days you get—some very, very few and far between days, I'm so upset about it—Redd will come through with his treasure trawler, where you can buy art. And it's my favorite day in Animal Crossing. I check every morning just to see if Redd is there.

Betty: So it, is it fair to say that it's sorta like a cutesy animal version of like Minecraft?

Quinn: Yeah, I would say there, there are definite similarities. In sort of the appeal of it, although it's less about—you don't like build so much in this game. It's more about like design. 

Betty: Hmm. Okay. Interesting. Um, so who is Redd? 

Quinn: [laughs] What a good question. 

Ponders: I mean, who are any of these animals? They're all so mysterious. 

Quinn: Yeah. Uh, Redd is—did not appear in the game when it first came out. He was like an addition who came about like about a month ago, I think. So for the first couple of weeks, first like month or so that everyone was playing this game, no Redd. And now, now Redd is here. He has arrived. And what this means is he basically rolled up the first day, you just walking around and suddenly there's a fox on your island and you're like, hmm. Interesting. So when you talk to the fox, he tells you that he's got some art, he's got some treasure to sell you. The words that he's given to say, like really make him sound like a, like a used car salesman. And he says that you're like his cousin, so he'll give you a family discount, but it's like obviously just the normal price. And you get to buy a piece of art from him.

Ponders: And the... the two people who are in charge of—ostensibly in charge of the business that runs this island, which is Tom Nook—shady Tom Nook—and Isabel. Uh, I believe when you first get Redd, they say something akin to like, "there's there's a shady figure walking around the island." And like Tom Nook gives you an explicit warning that like, that, that Redd is not to be trusted and this, that, and the other. Which, which is, is a hard sell from a guy who's also like dealing out home loans left and right.

Quinn: It's like, you know, if Tom Nook doesn't trust someone. That's... [laughs]

Ponders: Red flags, red flags. 

Betty: Red flags. Redd with two "d"s.

Quinn: And then from that point after you sort of like get that character the first day, he appears on sporadically—far too sporadically, I will say—Redd will show up on your island. And he has a little boat, it's so dank and dark in there. You can go on the boat and there are four pieces of art that you can examine and buy. You can buy one piece of art per day that Redd is there, which is why this is like such slow going. But the thing is sometimes they're fake. And I think it's supposed to work out that generally, like one of the art—works of art is real, but they can be all real. They can be all fake. You can either like, look up—there are guides out there, that'll show you like which ones are real and which ones are fake. And we can talk about what the fake ones look like in a second, cause they're really funny. Um, or you can just like, test your art, art history knowledge and see if you can figure out what it's supposed to look like just for memory. Cause that's a fun game too. 

Ponders: Yup, that's the game I play. 

Betty: Wow. Oh my God. I just think this, this one characteristic of this game alone, you have sold the game.

Quinn: You know, I find—I'm so fascinated by Redd because his character is pretty different than the rest of the game. Like there are other sellers and there's other like stuff going on in all these different ways, but they're all pretty like, upfront. It's all pretty straightforward. And then there's just like also there's a shady businessman.

Ponders: Yup, yup yup yup. I actually, I mean, we're not really here to talk about this, but it goes for like all the characters in Animal Crossing. There are some that are like super characterized and have the—like you, you understand what they are. And there are others whose whole characteristic is like, "I'm cute" or "I'm excited," but like Redd has this really... I actually think he's one of my favorite characters in the game because of how, how like, you're just kinda like side-eyeing him the whole time. Like maybe he'll reach into your pocket and take some bells while you're not looking.

Betty: I just, I just looked up some of the art that he sells and I just came across a Mona Lisa that looks like she's a Vulcan. 

Ponders: Yeah, the fake art.

Betty: And I was like, Oh wow. This is... like, I would, I would buy that one.

Ponders: So there again with how many, like, different play styles there are for this game, I've seen YouTube videos of people who have set up—like we have one here in Boston, the Museum of Bad Art? They have ignored this whole real/fake dichotomy and they've just set up museums in their own home of all of the fake art and all the like worst art, like, mistakes that they love. Because the, the Blather's museum proper, which we need to talk about at some point, will not accept your fake art. And I believe that, uh, the place where you can buy and sell things, won't buy your fake art for very much. They'll only buy it for like a hundred bells. But, uh, but you can set it up. You could have that Mona Lisa hanging right over your bed or in your science edu-tation studio, like I have built.

Quinn: Yeah I don't even think we explicitly said that every single piece of art that you can buy is based on like a real famous piece of art, like the Mona Lisa. And it's either like an actual recreation in little Animal Crossing form of that piece of art, or there's something different about it. Sometimes it's super noticeable, like the Vulcan Mona Lisa or something like that, or it's like a completely—there's like, I think one, the statue of David, the fake one has a watch on it. Or sometimes it's pretty subtle and you would actually need to like have a pretty—you'd have to like really know what that painting or sculpture actually looks like to be able to pick the real from the fake, which is quite interesting. And yeah the whole thing in the game is that there's a museum that actually is beautifully designed in game. And you—that's where like all your, you can donate all your like, fish and fossils and stuff that you find into the museum. And then they opened this art wing that you can donate your art to, but they will not accept the fake art. You cannot sell it. If you have—if you get a fake art, you could only like either put it up in your house search, I guess maybe you could try to give it so one of the other villages or something, but yeah. Eventually—I'm trying to get the real art first, but eventually like, I'm sure I'll play long enough that I will have a complete fake art gallery as well. 

Ponders: Yeah. There's a—to the point of the subtlety... there's a Velasquez, I believe, where like the differences that one of the characters isn't wearing a big black hat where it is in the original. And it's like a real, the thing is it's a really dark painting. And when you go into the treasure trawler, it's a dark like musky sort of room, and you can look at the painting and you can zoom in, but you can't zoom in too close. Which makes me feel like Redd's standing there, like, hey, hey, back it up from the painting a little bit, you know? But yeah, there's some that are pretty subtle that you would not catch if you weren't, if you didn't know what you were looking for.

Betty: Well, that's so fascinating and yeah, I just, I also googled a picture of Redd and he looks... like... really interesting. [laughs]

Quinn: He's up to no good. 

Betty: Yeah, exactly. Um, well I guess what one of my other questions is kind of like, why do you guys think this game is so popular?

Ponders: I mean, I'll, I'll take part of the heat, which is that like, we're currently in a global pandemic. And that has made a very intense situation for a lot of people. Um, and it's... I mean, there's a million think pieces that are already out there about how like, you get to go to other people's places and not be social distancing and not be quarantined. You get to build a life where you get to interact with other people. Like it's a game about community and connectedness that came out at a time where those things may be harder to find resources for individuals. But there's also, there's also certainly other elements. Like, it, it's hard—we will never know, but like, I'm pretty sure if this game did come out not during a pandemic, it would be equally as popular. I just think it kind of got launched into the stratosphere because of our situation.

Quinn: Yeah. Animal Crossing has been a successful game series for many years. And so it was always going to be a big deal, but it just like is so intensified by having less other things to do. And like I've gone to multiple birthday parties over Animal Crossing. Like it is, it's a fun way to, to have like the social interaction, and to just like show off your game. It's so much fun to build something cool in this game or to like collect all your pieces in the museum. And being able to show that off to your friends is a really fun activity. 

Ponders: And it, it kind of... man, it's hard to say how much of it is designed into the game and how much of it is just a circumstance of how the social internet looks in 2020, but like, it's an immensely shareable game. Like you, you get to design all sorts of like outfits for your person, which can be as simple as buying them, or can be as simple as literally making the outfits yourself in the outfit editor, which we can talk about later. Like you get to build spaces. So you get to do some urban design. You get to do art museum collecting, you get to fish, you get to collect all those things. And, and so there's, there's an element of... it's like the element of creativity that everybody engages with when you post on Instagram. Which is to say that like—and not like whoever on Instagram, but like, have you ever seen those, uh, those Instagram pictures that are like, everybody takes the same photo on Instagram? Like all the influencers like lean, they stand out—they put the camera in the tent and they go stand outside of the tent, and then they hit the shutter so that it looks like they're standing outside of their tent. And like a thousand people have taken this photo. And it's almost the same thing with Animal Crossing, that like you get this little degree of creativity and this little degree of design thinking in the outfit that you've chosen to put on, or the way you've arranged the houses, or whatever small element you've added that to your personal brand. But ultimately what I think is so interesting is you're still working within the same confined set of tools that everybody has. Uh, unless you're cheating, of course. But I, I think it's really interesting. 

Betty: Yeah. You know what, in a way it kind of reminds me of, um, a couple of things, one I think, that creativity and customized customizability and doing like houses or your outfits—you know, that, that also reminds me of games like the Sims and that, you know, sort of similar thing you get to do and share with other people. It's just like, you know, I think the Sims probably first came out before there was like social media as we know it today. But then the other, like more scarier thing that it reminds me of is, have either of you ever see the show Black Mirror?

Quinn: Yeah.

Ponders: I've seen parts of it. I haven't seen all of it though.

Betty: Have you seen the episode where there's a bunch of people and they're riding like what looks like an exercise bike? And they're like, looking at a animated road and there's like a, um, avatar version of themselves, like animated in the TV screen in front of them?

Quinn: It's Peloton. [laughs]

Ponders: I don't think I've seen this one.

Betty: Well in any case, there's like, there's an episode sort of where it seems like everybody is living in this like, jail almost. And you all have your own room, which is this like 10 by 10 box. And there's screens everywhere. And like you have a, like you're—you have an avatar, which is like a little animated 3d person of yourself. Um, and then like you can buy clothes or hats or whatever, like in the game to customize it. Um, but the, the episode is like—I won't spoil it, but basically it ends up being just really, really screwed up. And like, it just kind of shows you this post-apocalyptic world where nobody's really interacting with each other, everybody's interacting with each other through like the, the like avatar, whether it's a game or something, or like YouTube or whatever video platform, like people are watching each other on the screen and not really interacting in person anymore. And obviously like every episode of that show just kind of makes you—I mean, for lack of a better word, --s you up. And you're just like, oh my God. This is just kind of, this is another example of how like the world is literally Black Mirror.

Quinn: In a way though, I think there's a more positive way to look at that. Where sort of the Black Mirror dystopian idea of that is that... it sort of implies that we all have the option to hang out in person, but instead we choose to live in avatars. Whereas I think this is—like everyone would rather be hanging out in person, but when we don't have that option, aren't we lucky to have this technology that allows us to simulate it for a little while?

Ponders: And coming at it more from a technology side I'm like, there's a, there's a part of me that's so thankful that this is a Nintendo product on a Nintendo game. Because like, you know, of all the major tech companies that are out there, Nintendo and Apple are up there near the top in terms of like user privacy and, and making sure that your data stays your own. And I'm so glad that this isn't like an Amazon product that has been manufactured. We would be in a totally different camp if this were, uh, Amazon's New Horizons.

Quinn: And also essentially Animal Crossing is a game that is for kids. Like it's for everybody, but it's aimed to be in all ages game that kids can enjoy. So it's like, it's so positive and cutesy and all of these different ways where it's like—it's not, it's not—I love the Sims, but it's not the Sims. Um, and it's not trying to like approximate any kind of realism in these ways. It's just like, here's a pastel world where everyone's cartoony and you're friends with an octopus. 

Betty: I do personally, from what I've seen and read and heard about, definitely see Animal Crossing as more of like a positive thing as opposed to dystopian Black Mirror type of thing. And I would say, yeah, like it, it does seem like everybody I know is playing it except me basically. Uh, that will change soon. [laughs] But it really actually does seem cause you know, like I've been playing video games all my life and video games traditionally have been very, you know, gendered or, um, you know, have specific target audiences. And this game, it really seems like it's for everyone. Like whether you're a kid or an adult, whether you're male or female, like it's just seems like everybody... It appeals to everyone in some way, 

Ponders: Man, as a non-binary person, this game is my dream. It's so good. There, there is a question at the beginning that asks if you're a man or a woman and I just ignored it and it hasn't affected the game at all. And I—my character gets to be whoever I want it to be and I get to dress it however I want to dress it. It's amazing. It's great. I love it.

Quinn: Yeah. There's, oh man. There's so much good stuff out there about like, the ways that the sort of the ability to express different genders in Animal Crossing so easily has helped people in quarantine. I'll try to find a good article for the show notes, because there's a lot of really interesting stories out there. 

Ponders: We could also like, talk about fashion in this and how the fashion world has intersected with this. I know sometimes fashion and art bleed together and sometimes they're very separate, but the high fashion world has taken to Animal Crossing like a fish in water. It has been a huge explosion of, of content and of things. There was a, there was a popup fashion sale by a designer from New York. I can't remember the name... what is it—oh, Sandy Liang. She made a bunch of Animal Crossing designs, because you can design your own clothes, and did a pop up sale, where people were waiting in line for almost two hours to get on her Island to download the code so that they could get these pieces of Animal Crossing fashion from her design shop. And like, uh, and then there's—oh yeah, there's also the other thing that I found that I thought was super interesting was this Instagram account called Nook Street Market. Where designers from New York City have been designing—they design their clothes, and then they go to Harvey's Island where you can take photos in front of different backgrounds, and they've been doing photo shoots with, with their Animal Crossing avatars in all the clothes that they design. And then they, they give you those codes. You can go and download the latest fashions. So it's just, it's very interesting to me that like... how important clothing is to people and, and in a time where like, you know... I think a lot of people are not going out of their house too much, and so you wear the same clothes maybe two days in a row, or you, you know, don't necessarily do your makeup, or you just wear, you know, tee shirt and sweat pants and stuff like that. It's really cool to me that, that there's still a, like a push to connect with fashion in this way. I found that really interesting.

Betty: Fashion designers and, um, fashion retailers can't really do much in terms of business these days. So. They will find the alternatives. 

Quinn: Yeah. And it's—considering that every Animal Crossing avatar is just kind of like the same cartoony person, and ostensibly every clothing item is like one of like three shapes. Um, but people who are good at this kind of design have really made that work and, and done a lot to like, make it look like they're wearing clothes that are differently shaped than they actually are by matching skin tones and stuff like that. And really embraced the form. So yeah, as—I haven't gotten super into sort of the fashion side of it, just because I... like, that's just not a world I've tapped into yet, but I've always, I've admired like people posting on Twitter and stuff where they're wearing like, they've somehow imported Gucci into the game. Like things like this where I'm like, all right. And I love that the actual, like high fashion designers who are using their designs in Animal Crossing. I just think it's such a creative way to sort of shift that expression. Um, and in a way to kind of model... like in a hypothetical future world with more high intensity avatars, what does that kind of thing look like?

Ponders: Right.

Betty: I just found a picture of someone in lingerie, sorry. [laughs]

Quinn: That's what I'm saying! There's no—you can't just wear lingerie at Animal Crossing. It's not something in the game, but people are like, making facsimiles of it somehow.

Betty: Yeah, I think this person like just made the shirt look like, the colors of it looked like skin tone and then use some shading of like, darker skin tone to accentuate the boobs. And then over top of it is some very minimally covered, um, laces.

Ponders: People do it all.

Betty: Yeah. I mean, that's amazing. Yeah. I've been enjoying just like looking at.. like I'm, I'm on Reddit a lot. And I, you know, I follow a lot of like fandoms and anime and just like a TV show subreddit, and people all the time are posting like, um, designs of either characters or clothing that look like it's from like a TV show or movie or something, or, you know, some show. And I'm just like, I want that, but I don't have this game.

Ponders: Oh man. Someone made Uncle Iroh kneeling by the tree, singing Little Soldier Boy in Animal Crossing. And I was weeping the other day.

Betty: Oh my God. I need to watch this as soon as, as soon as we're done and I will be weeping as well.

Quinn: I also wanted to ask, speaking of the custom designs that you can make and import. Have you done any, um, importing of art pieces into your game outside of Redd? 

Ponders: I actually have not imported anything yet. I just did, I just exported for the first time today. So I'm—in addition to all the other hobbies, I'm a flag nerd. And designed to the flag for my Island and really loved that design. And my partner wanted a flag design that they weren't able to make in the 32 by 32 pixel area. And so I took to it and I made the design and exported it to them. And they were able to go into the store and you just type in a code, and it downloads that piece of art onto, onto your Switch. And you can have it in your walls. It's really incredible, but you've, you've done the pieces from the Getty?

Quinn: Um, so... [laughs] I actually haven't. But so, the Getty Art Museum did this push where they made, like, really nice Animal Crossing versions of their art available—easily available to download by people. But I actually decided to just go my own direction and just to download JPEGs of art pieces and then import them into a generator that creates, like, little Animal Crossing versions of those images. Which I've been playing with a lot. It's, uh, I'll also link that in the description if anyone wants to play around with that. And... I'm a little iffy on the strict legality of this, because... I think most of it is in the public domain where it's okay to like display images of it where I'm not profiting off of it, like that kind of is fine. It might not be 100% fine, but also like, who cares what I've got on my Animal Crossing Island that's not for public consumption? Um, so I've just been doing this and I first set up like a little outdoor art gallery. You can just make—one of the things that's built into this game is being able to just put custom designs on canvases. Like you just say, like, I've imported this custom design now it's on a canvas in front of me. And that's just something that exists, uh, built into the game. So I had a little outdoor gallery with all these canvases of different paintings that I liked. And then I decided to focus in and be a curator. So now on the top floor of my house, I created an art gallery. It's like all white, it's got a little chair for a guard to sit. And then I have been, uh, I've decided to like display different artists with a focus. So right now I have a Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit in my home gallery. The only annoying thing about it is you kind of are limited by size. They're just these squares and I try to make it, I try to make a bigger painting. So there's this Georgia O'Keeffe painting called Sky Above Clouds IV that I really like.

Ponders: Oh! Yeah yeah yeah, I love that painting.

Quinn: It's so good. And it's huge, so I tried to make a really big version of it by like, dividing the painting into sections and making them individual designs to like make one big wall design. And it kind of works, but the way the game is set up, there is a gap between each image. So I have created deconstructed Sky Above Clouds in my home gallery. Just not ideal.

Betty: That painting's in the Art Institute of Chicago, right? 

Quinn: Yeah.

Ponders: Yeah, it's right there, actually two doors down from the Seurat that you just talked about.

Quinn: There you go!

Betty: Well, it is in the Art Institute as well as the top floor of your house.

Quinn: Yeah, exactly. It's a beautiful place. I'm going to recreate the Art Institute in my Animal Crossing house. [everyone laughs] That would take a long time, but maybe I should.

Ponders: You could—I'd say recreate a couple of rooms from the artists that you...

Quinn:  Yeah. You can't make your house that big, unfortunately. Continual expansion!

Ponders: Yeah. No, I haven't, I haven't done any importing yet, but it's on my, it's on my to do list.

Quinn: If anyone out there listening has done some fun things, either with their art from Redd or like importing art pieces or fashion pieces, I'd love to see them. 

Betty: Yeah. I would love to see pictures and screenshots of what everyone's created just to give myself some inspiration. 

Ponders: I've also, I've tried to make the Accession show art in... but the Accession show art is very busy and very colorful and very hard to express in 32 by 32 squares. So maybe, maybe I'll try this JPEG uploader. That might be a little bit easier. 

Quinn: Yeah. Using the uploader is helpful because I don't really have any, um... design skills at all. [everyone laughs] So this way, and then the uploader, and then you can edit it to—it'll automatically generate something and then you can fine edit it past there to make sure that it looks exactly how you want it to look, but definitely skipping quite a few steps. Take a little shortcut by doing that. 

Betty: Well, I guess my only other question for you guys is what is your, your favorite part of the game? If you haven't talked about it already, or if you have, if you want to reemphasize. 

Quinn: Okay. I... honestly, if I—this would probably change in time. My favorite thing right now is the flowers of this game, because you can grow, you can like—grow different colors of flowers and hybrid flowers. My island is named Rose Isle and it—my island does not naturally grow roses, but I've decided it does now. I just have bought so many rose seeds and I have crossbred as many colors as I can. And I'm trying to cross breed all of the rose colors, and just cover my island in like blue roses and these beautiful colors. Um, and so, because that's kind of what I'm focusing on right now, it's my favorite part. They're so pretty.

Ponders: I've gotten super into the flower gardening. Me and my partner both are like, oh, did you get the, did you, your cross breed work for this? We're both trying to get the blue roses, we're working on it.

Quinn: I can't wait to get the blue roses.

Ponders: It's going to be so good. My personal favorite part of the—I mean, it... I sound like Hugh Brandity, but my favorite part of this game is the museum. 

Quinn: The museum is so good.

Ponders: It's so good. So it started out with just, I think we mentioned this before, you can put your fish there. You can put your fossils there, which you dig up, and you can put insects there. Although Blathers is not very insect friendly, and so it's, it's a little, you know, there's contention on the Internet about whether or not you should give your insects to Blathers. And then there's the art museum section. And, um, they are all really well—well, mostly well—but very well designed spaces. The fish section has really cool, like places where you can actually look at the fish that you've caught. The bug section is really well designed and the museum—the art section is a little bit small, but it's fairly well-designed as well. But there are... there's actually, like—that's my broad favorite thing in the game. My actual favorite thing in the game is the music that plays when you're in the museum. Um, they've done something really, a really lovely choice with the sound design is that when you walk into the museum, there's a very simple theme playing and it's just the piano and the oboe. And it's [sings tune] dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. It's like a very soothing, repetitive loop. But then that same theme is played differently in every single room. So when you go over to the fish room, they've transferred that theme over to a synthesizer that gives it a sort of reverberation that makes it sound like you're underwater. When you go down into the dinosaur section, it's played on the marimba. So it sounds like you're hitting bones, right? When you go into the bug section where there are spiders and other like buzzy winged—winged, uh, insects, it switches over to the guitar. And so it has a very like natural buzzy kind of sound to it. And then when you go up into the art museum, it switches over to a Baroque style. It's play it on a clavichord, uh, with a string quartet backing it. But the, but the music continues throughout. And so I just love being in the museum with my headphones on and like enjoying the sound design of the space. And you know, it, it's one of those things where... you know, like enjoying any museum, it has its problems, right? Like, the museum—I mean, the game is, is a very America and Japan focused game. And so almost all of the art is, is Western or Japanese, with maybe a few here and there that come from other cultures, but maybe to the same extent that most museums have. But it's, it's just such a nice space to be in. And I've really, I've really found a lot of comfort in watching the fish swim around in my aquariums or looking at my giant, giant dinosaur skeletons or looking at the art that we have.

Betty: That's fantastic. I can tell you're a music major. [laughs]

Ponders: Yes. A music major, and a sound designer. Those, those are my keys. 

Quinn: I think that is a beautiful way to end this. 

Betty: Yeah, lovely. Um, I have just placed an Nintendo Switch into my shopping cart on Amazon. So yeah, I will, uh, I guess figure out how to find you guys somehow on there.

Quinn: Add us! We'll visit your island.

Betty: Oh my God. I'm so excited. 

Quinn: Ponders, thank you so much for joining us today. 

Ponders: Of course, anytime. 

Betty: Thank you so much. I'm yeah, I'm just, I'm so going to play this game. 

Ponders: Good, good, good, good. It's, it's uh... it is a really beautiful game. Like I'm, I'm really, I can't begin to express all the things that it's given me. Not just like, you know, the museum space, but also, you know, having a place to visit people who I don't get to see, my partner especially, who lives in a different country. There was a moment where I was like having a really tough time in the middle or early April. And I fell in love with the mechanic of the, um, the net in animal Crossing. And how this, this net that you use, you get to use it a number of times to collect the bugs, but at some point it breaks. And then you have to build a new net. And the net is the easiest thing to build an Animal Crossing. It requires five sticks, um, and it has these limited uses. But I really, I actually took a minute and I retrained my brain to think about hope in the real world like this net in Animal Crossing. Which is, you use it and you have occasional uses for it. And you, you go collect the things that you need with that hope, you use hope where you need to use hope, but hope does break and that—and that's okay, because it's also very easy to use the small pieces to build a new net, to like, have that to carry forward with you. And it's all these little subtle ways of looking at the world that are, that are carefully woven into the design of the game. It's a very special game for me right now. So I quite love it.

Betty: That is the most beautiful metaphor I've ever heard. 

Quinn: I'm just going to go cry now. 

Betty: Yeah, so I'm going to go cry because of your metaphor and I'm going to watch the Uncle Iroh video. And then tonight it's just going to be a sob fest and my boyfriend's going to be like, "what... happened."

Ponders: I may break quarantine to go get some Ben and Jerry's after this.

Quinn: "It was the net!" [everyone laughs] Thanks everybody out there for listening. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram at @PictorialPod, or our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsV. I'm also on YouTube at ARTiculations. 

Ponders: And I'm on Twitter and Instagram as @thponders. Um, I'm also on Twitter and Instagram as @AccessionFM. And you can find my show at accession.fm where I tell stories like the net story, but for pieces of art. They are very hopeful and very soppy and, um, and a blend of fiction and nonfiction, and a lot of fun. Uh, we have an upcoming episode about Graciela Iturbide and the Desert Angel I'm very excited about. 

Quinn: Yeah, check it out. And thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!