I have to wear a CPAP mask because my throat is very crowded. Even if I lost weight and got my tonsils out I would still need to wear it. The problem is that there’s no way to make this thing look cool or sexy.
Of course, there’s something to be said about stigma that when you put it on, you have to admit that you need this thing. Plus it leaves a weird red mark around your mouth. However, it helps me breath and I love it for that.
So now I’m going to make it cool and sexy.
Cool: It looks like a vague attempt to make a dollar store version of those breathing masks that jet pilots wear. If I put sunglasses and a bicycle helmet on when I fall asleep, I’m basically fitted out to fly an F-14. God, that would be so funny if someone came in and saw me sleeping like that, I think I might do that just in case a burglar comes in.
Let’s make it sexy. This one is far easier. Just say this to the person sleeping next to you.
“Hey lover, get ready for me to not snore and keep you up. That’s right, here comes the mask. Prepare for peaceful slumber and when we wake up we’ll have enough energy to make more love or go to the farmer’s market like you want. Hell yeah.”
Also, I think that I should paint some flames on my mask to make it look even cooler and sexier. Plus I need to give my CPAP machine a new cooler name. Let’s see this is going to be difficult because the name lends itself closely to the idea of pap smear. Let’s go with Turbobreather. Oh, fuck yeah.
Welp, done. I’ve fixed CPAP machines for all. You’re welcome.
The trailers for Little Kitty, Big City got me cautiously excited. The reason I was cautiously excited was because I didn’t know if anything could happen to the cat. Once the second trailer was just like “Hey, we got you, we know that you just want to watch a fun cat be silly. Nothing can happen to this sweet boy.”
Still haven’t played Stray because I heard things can happen to that cat. It’s hard but the possibility is enough to make sure that I don’t play it. Can’t deal with sad cat stuff. Not at this point in my life.
Anyway, I immediately thought about comparisons to Untitled Goose Game. I enjoyed the hell out of Goose Game mostly because it was enigmatic. You were a goose that seemingly had beautiful handwriting and a vendetta against this one small hamlet. It had mischief to do and it wasn’t going to let anything stop it. This included bullying a small child, bullying a gardener, destroying and stealing whatever it wanted. Why? Well, look at geese, we all know that they look sinister as hell and would do this given half the chance.
Little Kitty on the other hand, has a plot, characters and a clear goal. You are a little cat and you need to get back home to continue your nap. You need to climb back up but you need the strength to do it and you gain that through eating fish. Eat the four fish and began the somewhat challenging climb. Before all that, you’re going to meet a tanuki inventor, a merchant crow hell bent on getting shinies, a duck family and some other helpful older cats. Humans will pet you or if they’re annoyed, pick you up and walk you out of their place of residence or business. To reiterate, no harm can come to the cat.
The game is beautiful, the music is delightful, the characters are fun and the dialogue is witty. The gameplay itself rewards exploration with a bunch of fresh new hats that all look adorable and getting to see your kitty nap in a variety of places. It’s not a long game only taking about two hours to complete and another three if you want to 100% it. However, it’s going to enter my rotation of cool down games where I just want to relax and not think about things like Powerwash Simulator. Just a nice, cozy game to take my mind off of things.
World building can be a great number of things. Fun, inspiring, difficult and frustrating. It all depends on the complicated nature of your world and how different it is from your normal every day world.
There are a great number of ways to world build and I’ll cover them in this space eventually. Today though, we’ll talk about what I call the Day in the Life method. It’s a simple method, that you take one of your characters and figure out what they’re doing throughout a single day. What it means and how they’re getting through it.
The method involves going through a single character’s day and figuring out things out from a ground level viewpoint. Think about your own life, where would you go for food either a restaurant or grocery store? What would you do for entertainment? For travel? What happens if you get hurt? You know the answers to this so your world is complete. Your characters need to have that same knowledge. It wouldn’t make sense for them to have to figure out where to go unless they were a fish out of water but even then they’re relying on characters who have the correct knowledge.
Okay, let’s take a character from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and go from there. Let’s say, Moist Von Lipwig, the gold suit wearing creator of paper money, a working post office, taxes and steam engines. We’re going to take him through his day and back to bed.
Moist wakes up in the greatest city on the Disc, Ankh Morpork in his bed at the post office. His breakfast is made for him by one of the golems and he eats a pretty normal breakfast of eggs, bacon and coffee. He heads out onto his day and is immediately robbed because it’s Ankh Morpork but he’s given a receipt for his taxes as the thieves’ guild are professionals. He doesn’t report that crime but he does think about picking up a book about karate to help him. He knows the nearest library is the one at Unseen University but it’s run by the Librarian, a wizard that was turned into orangutan and refuses to be changed back. He doesn’t want to deal with that, so he moves on.
Suddenly, he’s struck by a wagon being driven by a number of drunk dwarves. He’s injured and needs to inform the authorities of this. He informs Commander Vimes and the City Watch and they assist him on his way to the Lady Sybil Free Hospital where he’s assisted by some Igors. He leaves, is hungry again so he stops at Sham Harga’s House of Ribs on his way back home. Having accomplished nothing in his day. He returns home to his loving wife.
Now, in those two paragraphs, I can identify a number of things about the world that Moist lives in.
How he would defend himself
Who upholds the laws
Where he would go if he’s injured
Where he would go for knowledge
What kind of food exists in this world
What the dangers of the world are and how severe they are
A number of characters that can serve as focal points for most of these things
Moist is actually used somewhat to create other things for the characters to use. In Going Postal, we’re introduced to the clacks, a primitive email system, and he revitalizes the post office thus allowing for other characters to use it. Ditto, steam engines from Raising Steam. Sir Pratchett is just such an amazing writer that he’s able to turn his world building into stories in and of themselves.
Because that’s what a good writer does, turns the mundane into something extraordinary.
Franklin Cota, an author and podcaster 