I'm trying to cut down on some of my monthly subscriptions to services, primarily to free up money so I can sign up for an audiobook service that operates in conjunction with my favorite indie bookstore. So over the weekend, I added a bunch of custom designs to my Animal Crossing game before canceling my Nintendo subscription. (I'll probably reactivate it at some point, but I don't need a monthly influx of new clothing designs. Really. I don't. I swear!)
Mostly I got some cute outfits, which is one of the chief appeals of AC for me--changing my clothing daily. But I did get a couple of designs for things like custom paths and little patches of mushrooms to put around trees, that sort of thing. Oh, botanical prints to hang in my house, too, couldn't resist those. Inevitably, pulling up the codes for these involves seeing at least some screenshots of other people's islands. And they're incredibly impressive! So meticulously designed around one theme or another, inviting, elaborate. Just lovely.
It did make me realize, though, that I...do not have whatever impulse makes people design their islands like this. And it's not just an Animal Crossing thing--I'm much the same way in Sims, since time immemorial. I fling flower seeds everywhere, basically, and I keep things tidy, and I'll put some nice things around town. But it's not what you would call organized. Planned. Designed. This, I will freely admit, is a case of art imitating life.
(In Sims, I consistently create houses that are basically boxes, chuck a bunch of trees and flowers on the edges of the property, and fence off an area for an inevitably life-consuming gardening project. If video games are fantasies, my fantasy is to live exactly my same life, just with more resources for buying comfortable beds and plant seeds.)
Having noticed this tendency, I now think of it as the dragon hoard approach to possessions. My stuff is not organized. My planting beds are not themed or staged or even particularly well-defined at the edges. Things I like just accumulate around me, piled up in lovely lumps of goodness. I don't have any particular impulse to organize them further. I can see this stuff I love, spread out around me, and that's good. I recreate this tendency in games, apparently, though I've been doing so quite without conscious effort.
Needless to say, the words "formal garden" will never exist in the same plane of reality as me, virtual or otherwise.
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