Friday, April 10, 2020 — 6
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
There’s no better time to play “Animal Crossing:
New Horizons” than when you’re trapped at home
with little to do. The same can be said for most video
games, but especially so for “New Horizons”; no
better game could have been released on March 20,
2020.
Animal Crossing is often called a “life-simulation”
game,
but
calling
it
a
“personalization”
or
“customization” game would be just as accurate. The
game revolves around your character transforming
a deserted island into a thriving village from the
ground up, and customizing everything to your
liking: your character, your home and as you
progress, the island itself.
The distinguishing detail is that the game is
played in real-time. A hallmark trait of the Animal
Crossing series, gameplay is dictated by the clock:
You can only catch a guppy during the day, while
tarantulas only appear at night. The main item
shop is only available from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.
in the time zone you live in. Special characters
visit only once per week; one character can only be
found Sunday mornings from 5:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Variety is the spice of life in Animal Crossing, and
that variety is derived from when you choose to play.
For many, quarantine amid coronavirus has opened
the opportunity to play Animal Crossing at any time
on any day, eliciting maximum variety.
“New Horizons” expands on its predecessors with
more new villagers to befriend and invite to your
island, more new bugs and fish to catch and more
new items, styles, fashions and customizations.
The biggest new addition is the ability to modify
the island terrain, raising mountains and creating
rivers to your heart’s content. That’s the core of
Animal Crossing: creating a world to escape to. It’s
a platform for more creativity and self-expression
than ever before in the series’ history.
Beauty doesn’t come easy — building your dream
island takes time. “New Horizons” makes it a
winding journey. The game forces players to take
everything slowly, even down to the most basic
functions. Accessing a shop, store or service requires
going through the same dialog over and over. Picking
up items from the ground or depositing items into
storage must be done one at a time. Advancements
like recruiting a new villager, upgrading your home,
building a bridge or ordering new items all take at
least one day to be fulfilled. There’s very little in
the way of immediate gratification. For some, it’s a
way to slow down, unwind and relax. For others, it’s
unbearable tedium.
Animal Crossing isn’t for everyone. There’s a sense
of progression to the game, but one that’s stretched
out over a long time. The island terrain editor, maybe
the game’s biggest selling point, will take at least two
weeks to unlock, even for the most optimized Animal
Crossing aficionado. For the average player, maybe
much longer. New crafting recipes are tantalizingly
drip-fed, just a few each day. Commitment to daily
play is rewarded with various bonuses and perks,
while your villagers will make sad remarks about
missing you when you spend long periods away.
Many customizations are exorbitantly expensive,
requiring lots of in-game time spent earning money
for sometimes minor changes; if you’re no longer
happy with where you put your house on day one,
expect to shell out 30 thousand bells to move it.
All of this can infuriate some, but for others, it’s
tranquility. The long-winded path to a flourishing
Animal Crossing village creates an organic and
natural feel to the game, encouraging your island
to grow over time and build around early decisions
you made much like a real-world town. There’s no
getting straight to the point — that’s the point of
Animal Crossing.
When I first walked into GameStop to preorder
“New Horizons” the night before it came out, I was
ecstatic to walk out with a copy of the game a day
early. Ten days later I sold it to my brother at a $20
loss. It was too easy to sink hours into the game that
I would never see back. But if you’re looking to make
quarantine feel a little faster, Animal Crossing is an
addiction that could make it go by in a blur.
‘Animal Crossing’ makes life cozy
DYLAN YONO
Daily Arts Writer
VIDEO GAME REVIEW
FILM REVIEW
Your vote in ‘Slay the Dragon’
EMMA CHANG
Daily Arts Writer
At its best, politics is stressful. At its worst, it’s a mind-
boggling maze of rules and red tape. And, as we get older, the
messiness of our current bureaucracy becomes increasingly
obvious, revealing a system that is much more complicated than
Schoolhouse Rock! makes it out to be. The power we hold as
voters is daunting to most, but to a select few, it’s a threat to their
livelihood. Politicians are meant to be held accountable by the
public; any AP US History student could tell you that.
Enter the convenient practice of gerrymandering — a district
drawing technique that takes away the threat of public opinion.
Both political parties are guilty of dividing voting districts in a
way that ensures them seats in state legislatures and, though
a little bit of innocent gerrymandering might be considered
part of the rat race of the government, such is not the way of
politics. If your hands aren’t dirty and your inbox is clear of
incriminating emails, you’re not doing it right. But what happens
when citizens are fed up with the system? Is there capacity for
change? The newest documentary from Magnolia Pictures,
“Slay the Dragon,” answers these questions with a captivating
story about those working to fight the corruption rampant in
our governing bodies.
Before considering the political connotations of “Slay the
Dragon,” however, it’s important to note the actual storytelling
ability of a documentary like this one. Often, these films toe the
line between informative and boring, intriguing and emotional.
Most run the risk of losing their audience’s attention, especially
in these streaming-heavy days of quarantine. But “Slay the
Dragon” weaves a fantastical tale about gerrymandering
beginning with impressive visuals and graphics that highlight
the strange nature of strategic redistricting.
As the opening credits roll, “Slay the Dragon” forces its
audiences to consider what it actually means to “re-district”
with an animated line carving its way through a city. The
image establishes the concept of gerrymandering as something
concrete, setting up the intimate relationship between an
audience and a major character of the film. As the story
progresses, the visuals become ever more important in showing
the increasingly questionable practice of gerrymandering. At
one point, watching “Slay the Dragon” was similar to trying to
find the constellations — the audience stares at indiscernible,
odd shapes that take on no meaning until a detailed drawing is
put over it. But the effect remained. “Slay the Dragon” was able
to emphasize the absurdity of gerrymandering with a few well-
placed examples of specific districts.
Beyond the graphics, “Slay the Dragon” also provided an
excellent story. There were many beginnings to this story — 2016,
when Katie Fahey started her quest against gerrymandering;
2010, when Project REDMAP began flipping state legislatures;
even 2020, the first census year since many of these anti-
gerrymandering laws were put into place. However you decide
to define the start, it’s obvious what “Slay the Dragon” is about:
the rise and hopefully coming fall of gerrymandering in the
United States.
But is it really that simple? In an age of political unrest, “Slay
the Dragon” provides a hopeful message for those of us just about
to come of age in this important election year. In a speech after
the anti-gerrymandering proposal was passed in Michigan,
Katie Fahey is seen telling her campaign team how important
every one of their actions is. The underlying message that every
action, every vote is essential to the success of democracy is one
that we could all stand to remember, regardless of what year it is.
The eye-opening moments of a documentary should be
few and far between — a good documentary should make its
audience reflect and question what’s presented to them. The
immediate nature of an “eye-opening” moment is the opposite
of conversation-sparking. “Slay the Dragon” understands
this and, though it is very left-leaning, it still manages to
present its audiences with a strong and informative message
about gerrymandering. It highlights the importance of every
citizen’s participation in democracy, making it one of the better
documentaries to watch.
LITERATURE COLUMN
EMILY YANG
Daily Literature Columnist
Witches, spinsters
and lesbians
Sylvia Townsend Warner, “Lolly
Willowes”
The cover of my copy of Sylvia
Townsend
Warner’s
first
novel
is decorated with a drawing of a
witch by August Neter. Neter was
an outsider artist, one of Hans
Prinzhorn’s “schizophrenic masters,”
whose art was an attempt to capture
his hallucinations. The image depicts
the profile of a short-haired woman
covered in plants, roads and animals,
an effect that suggests a map. It’s an
apt choice on the part of the publisher:
Warner’s style resembles Neter’s
double image in its porous curiosity
and naturalistic oddness. It’s also apt
because the novel is about a witch. The
witchiness here is less Shakespearean
and more ordinary, spinster-ish;
Warner suggests that the closest
relative to the witch is the unmarried
tradeswoman or the country wife who
prepares her own dandelion wine.
Written in the 1920s, the novel seems
to suggest that someone can become a
witch simply by refusing the trappings
of polite society, by “politely declining
to make the expected connection with
the opposite sex,” as John Updike (of
all people) puts it on the back cover of
my copy.
We first see the titular Laura
Willowes (called Lolly by her niece,
a nickname that sticks) moving in
with her brother Henry and his wife
Caroline after the death of their father.
It’s a move from the countryside to
London. Caroline describes Laura
in passing as “a gentle creature” and
then turns to logistics: a writing desk
has to be moved, a bureau that another
relative wanted is allocated to “small
spare room” in which “aunt Lolly”
will live. The rest of the novel is, in
part, an elaboration on what Caroline
missed. Laura won’t become a witch
until the last third of the novel, but
even before then she has a strangely
textured inner life and a tendency
to feel out strange essences from
ordinary surfaces. We next see a very
young Laura stealing into the room
where her great-aunt’s disused harp
collects dust and plucking the strings,
which “answered with a melancholy
and distracted voice.” She then dwells
on the lock of her great-aunt’s hair
that was embroidered into a picture
of a willow tree as something of a
memento mori.
Hints of morbidity and the occult
are common in Warner’s evocation
of English country life. Laura’s
childhood with her father is quiet
and practical, to be sure, but there’s
suggestion of rural magic everywhere.
She helps her father out in his
brewery, gathers medicinal herbs
from the forests, climbs trees, absorbs
traditional remedies and age-old
practices from the “country servants
of long tenure.” While her brothers
Henry and James get shuttled off into
professional life, Laura stays with
her father and notes how one servant
makes traditional beeswax polish
and fills the house with “a resinous
smell” and how another recommends
infusions of nettles and mugwort for
longevity. She’s content to continue
living like this, and has an antipathy
toward marriage that she never loses.
Her father doesn’t push the point. She
becomes instead the mistress of the
house with “an easy diligence.”
When her father dies and Laura
moves to Henry’s house in London,
she brings her preternatural intuition
to bear on the rhythms of life in the
city. Henry and Caroline are people
with customs and routines in place
of personalities, but Warner still has
a flair for catching the shadow that
follows each gesture. At one point
she describes Henry winding the
grandfather clock in the hall — “first
one and then the other the quivering
chains were wound up, till only the
snouts of the leaden weights were
visible, drooping sullenly over the
abyss of time wherein they were
to make their descent during the
seven days following.” This image,
at once bleak and Carroll-esque,
captures well the feeling of dullness
that starts to weigh on Laura as she
settles into her new life. Even so, the
satire is even-handed and just. Laura’s
relatives aren’t caricatures, they’re
just ordinary middle-class English
people, and that’s the problem. We get
a sense of Laura’s strangeness, not the
uniqueness of her quiet subjugation.
Laura is twenty-nine at this point
and it’s 1902, meaning her prospects
for marriage are increasingly unlikely.
Caroline and Henry occasionally
host Eligible Bachelors, but Laura
determinedly ignores them or says
eccentric things to them and after a
while everyone involved stops trying.
Laura
then
becomes
something
like an unpaid housekeeper to her
brother’s family. There are long
passages that list her duties, which
range from the arrangement of
flowers to embroidery to looking after
her nieces. After nearly twenty years
of this Laura starts to long for more,
starts to feel tempted to leave. She is
finally persuaded to do so after seeing
canned fruit and homemade preserves
in a “countrified” shop while running
errands: she has a sudden vision of
herself staring up at an apple tree
late in the season, reaching up for
the fruit outlined against the fading
grey sky. That night, she announces
to her relations that she’s moving
to Great Mop, a small town in the
Chilterns. She ignores their indignant
protests (“now Lolly, what you want is
absurd!”) and sets off the next day.
Just as Warner avoids generalizing
about her characters, she also avoids
panoramas and self-conscious theses.
It would have been easy to write this
book in a manner that presented
opposites — the stiflingly domestic
world of Caroline and Henry’s house
and the totally free world of country
life. When Laura arrives in Great Mop
her newfound independence is rather
vexing. She spends her days exploring
the area on foot for hours and ends up
exhausting herself. “She knew in her
heart that she was not really enjoying
this sort of thing, but the habit of
useless activity was too strong to be
snapped by a change of scene.”
Read more online at
michigandaily.com