My thoughts on the news of Nintendo 3DS going offline soon.

It's, at best, two months until the online functionality of many DS games will become useless with the shutdown of online 3DS servers. 

Realistically, I know this is an inevitable consequence of time passing - old things are less profitable and tougher to maintain against new technologies, and it's only natural that Nintendo would take this step. But there's a part of me that yearns for the online functionality to never end! I'm 100% tinged with a deep nostalgic love for the 3DS (specifically ACNL online) and it probably just skews my view... maybe I look at the 3DS online functionality the same way a mother lovingly looks at her ugly baby but I just can't help it.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf was one of the best ways Nintendo ever implemented online play and it's appeal has been so great that many current ACNL players cite this online functionality as their reason for still playing! Tortimer Island and the mini-games were (and are) phenomenal; the appeal of playing these games with friends and earning medals to buy special items is seemingly timeless and it's just such a shame to know that soon this will become impossible. For many, including myself, the online functionality of the 3DS created core memories. I have countless memories of whole days spent online on ACNL, hoards of messages me and my online friends sent to each other and it's also where I discovered my love for online trading - in the years since that discovery I have traded with 500 people across three AC games. For a generation of players, the 3DS connected us and fostered deep bonds so this farewell is going to be bittersweet but I think somewhere deep down we all knew it was going to happen eventually. The warmth its given us in its lifetime will live on forever in a fuzzy ball of nostalgia waves, I'm sure.

A letter to the former me

You are a 4-foot-six void of wonky smiles and auburn hair. You are the source of my soul, your origins and unwinding meticulously organised and redacted into 1287 pages - just for me and my future eternal wonderment. In each page, gathered together for me by a man I will never meet, I learn about you and the secrets you keep from me. 

I am a child of chaos. I am disobedience in a bottle, pressurised by a decade of what the faxes call 'Neglect'. These little stories in their hundreds detail a shameful history - it reads as a tired and boring situation. But it was real for you, wasn't it? You are an amalgamation of emotions you were never taught about, the ugliest part of both the people who held you. You are the solution you created for unsolvable problems. I flick through your emotional biography and highlight my biggest surprises - how was six years supposed to prepare you for the challenges I read about? Its a fair question, but you didn't raise it. Every thirty pages tells me of the same dreadful upbringing, devoid of stability in every area bar the documentation of it. You are suffering in human form - or so I want to claim... but the truth is we dont know each other. I think I know you, but you exist as a sort of nothingness in the back of my mind, and Im satisfied that you couldn't have expected I would be the outcome of your misery. So... all I can do is make an educated guess.  

You are tan and boisterous. You like crabbing at the beach and were jealous when Sophie learned how to do a cartwheel but you couldn't. You're six years ahead in maths and recently started taking a separate class for top-performing students, you even became a big sister. Every description of you shows how happy you are despite your circumstances, you can only come across as relentlessly optimistic. I wonder if it was optimism or a case of just not having any other option but to march on. 

I have to admit that people urged me not to ask for these reports about you. It was a worry that you may bring unrest to the family again. But I wanted to understand why we ended up so far apart - who could I have been if we were still connected? Were you worthwhile? Questions I could never answer. You are 1,287 pages of bad luck and dubious role models. I try to reach in through the paper; I fill in the redacted names that I know myself and it brings me a little bit closer to you. It changes things... Its never enough, and Im glad Im not you, but I hope that somehow you know your misfortune is not forgotten. 

  

''TO PLYMOUTH CHILD SERVICES, 

  

Maria has been moved to Aunts house and is now classified as a Looked-After Child. A Child Protection Plan review has been requested. 

  

[Redacted], Social Worker'' 

132 Freckles - Short writing piece.

 I see you every night. We’re no more than five feet apart each time we meet, so close I could describe you freckle by freckle - but the freckles are becoming inconsistent. Each time you visit me I try to paint your picture in my mind so I’ll never forget it, but I am forgetting. I’m forgetting the flecks of green amongst the blue in your eyes and I’m loosing track of the exact shade of auburn to best describe your hair. I try to reach out across the layers of time, through the thick haze, grasping desperately for your hands. I blink, and your there - I blink again and you’re gone. The natural response is to spin around and check behind me, but all around I ever see are blues and greys that would never come from your vibrant soul. It’s a vast nothingness. I reach up in the hopes I may breach another layer, another memory. Maybe I could grab your feet and pull you down to my reality, but I never see your shoes either. What do you need for me to bring you to me again? Your laugh is in the distance, each time I chase it though I realise the pitch changes, the frequency is shifting as we become more distanced. I see you less and less these days. If only I had more time, I would count each freckle on your face once more. I would sweep you away off your feet, and we could slip away into another reality where I can still be beside you. I would brush you hair and tell you how every sunrise was made for your eyes. Every October you visit me. You hold my hands, you reassure me that this is better than the other option. I want to disagree but I don’t think I can. By the time you were 11 you were more tumour than human, it was only natural that this was the outcome. But you’re crossing a threshold where I fear I’ll lose you, even in my mind. This October was coming for many years but it’s now in my horizon and I can’t avoid it - October 26th is when you will have been dead longer than you were alive. It happens to all of us eventually, but when it comes to you I linger on that fact. I question how it’s real, every day I wake up and hope somehow that you simply decided to move on from me. That’s why I never hear from you. You just decided we weren’t meant to be in contact, and so you carried on with your life, achieving every dream you laid out in your youth. We both know better than that. I reach through again, hoping your hand will fall into mind, but that happens so rarely now that I’m forgetting the exact softness of your palms. 

You appear before me again. The haze is a warm yellow and pink and your innocent eyes lights up the nothingness. I see you and your 132 freckles, a gappy and childish smile taking over your face; a mature and worn grin appears on mine. I can once again articulate the softness of your hands - comparable to perfectly fluffy clouds, the scent of your Nivea Rose body cream lingers and I feel your heart beat slowly on my fingertips. But as soon as my hand touches your chest, you vanish as quick as you appeared. I shoot up out of bed, lucid and aware in half a second and pull out a notepad from under my bed.

‘’ 132 freckles ‘’ ... In her 11 years she had 132 freckles.