Someone has tweeted a screenshot from Pokémon and it’s all I can think about.
Actually it’s two things they’ve tweeted. On the left, the screenshot: Ethan, a tiny little pixel boy, is standing on the jagged, squared-off staircase shore of an island looking out across the ocean. On the right, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
Now, I know what you’re going to say: do not explain the tweet. And I know! I know you’re not supposed to explain the tweet. I know the power of a tweet, especially this one but actually any one, is that it stands alone amidst the void; that a tweet is good if and only if it is pithy and silent in a sea of noise; that the more you talk about a tweet or comment on it, or try to intellectualise it in any which way, the worse it gets. I know all this! I just can’t help it.
pic.twitter.com/BdWZQahgnR
— Orbital Shark Platform (@MoonstruckTwolf) September 2, 2019
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.
Anyway, this tweet is so good it’s turning me inside out. Wanderer, ostensibly the face of Romanticism – and apparent archetype of open-world, action-game box art – is a scene of triumph and power. Man-as-master, the wanderer triumphant over the natural world.