I was NOT expecting this level of commitment/compromise when I walked in for my first culinary lesson, nor when I started working in restaurants, nor when I downloaded this game (that is grotesquely similar to how a real restaurant works) just to see what it is about. It is funny that these three experiences sucked me in so abruptly that I found myself obliged to hurry to get things done and learn everything as fast as I could.

The kitchen experience blows me away, always will, and when I say kitchen I don’t mean only the cooking itself, I mean the physical kitchen, this white, bright, full of chemistry and mysterious micro explosions, hyper sanitized and simultaneously desperately messy space - the underlying philosophy of the whole place is to physically contain any type of chaos, be it contamination, disorganization, fire (literally and figuratively), so the layout design of every restaurant kitchen tries to emulate this accident-proof room where everything has a correct place, position, moment, which backfires in being a tense, explosive, often careless experience. This dynamic is cleverly translated in chronometers and queue lines, step by step, conciliating tasks - a pretty amazing job imo.

And of course, the cooking, maybe as a spiritual activity, as in connecting with ancestors and humanity through the smells and textures and the (many) feelings that I feel for food, maybe as a profound cultural deep dive, understanding the many ways to build even the most simple and classic recipes - and why their traditional blueprint work so well in the first place - maybe as an art form even, an expression from the soul of the deep abstract desires of not survival but living, and also an obvious scientific exploration, because it is awesome and scary how far we got from picking fruits from a tree to cultivating yeast and then having the resources/the control over the land/time to prepare enormous feasts for many people to enjoy together abundantly, to baking pink biscuits and using liquid nitrogen to build beautiful shapes of taste. And the restaurant aspect of it is a complex manifestation of the crave for oneness, the want to be together, to provide, to share, and to love, which is: though destructive and passionate and sometimes too much of a proud control freak, it only wants you well served and happily digesting.

Chef Life is careful with every detail of this bittersweet, humane infatuation.

It also has a wholesome approach, offering the challenge to rush and memorize every recipe and focus on the mise en place to get the michelin star (30+ hours in and still didn’t) or if you want to play it laid back, unpressured, creatively, it is also an option. I was impressed with these accessibility options, makes the whole experience so beautifully welcoming.

Often you will see people ask what makes The King of Fighters 'different', and typically they will use Street Fighter as a base for comparison, there is many detailed mechanics focused answers to this question, but having ruminated upon the subject for a little while, I have determined the fundamental paradigm: In Street Fighter, characters wear costumes, and in The King of Fighters, characters wear outfits. This paradigm can be applied to the entire genre, for example: Virtua Fighter is a costume fighter, and Tekken is an outfit fighter. Mortal Kombat you might think is a costume fighter but actually it's an outfit fighter. Broadly speaking Costume Fighters are more common, but outfit fighters almost always become a long running series. I have absolute confidence that this intuitive system will be a universal tool for fighting game categorization within a year.

1. imagine being a triple a videogame developer, you know what Fromsoft is capable of- the phrase "the Dark Souls of ... " rings in your heart; it is the tinnitus of your soul. But Fromsoft stays in the corner, gurning, keening, laughing at the end of sentences, this grants you a measure of peace. One day you come into work, and they're sitting at your desk. they own your fucking desk.
2. the greatest videogame adaptation of the works of Hieronymus Bosch
3. little guy in the foreground of landscape concept art simulator
4. the definitive answer to the question "would the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich be improved by letting you throw fireballs at skeletons"
5. did Hidetaka Miyazaki come up with "The Loathsome Dung Eater" or did George R R Martin, or did they simply both announce the name out loud at the same time at their first meeting, before offering so much as a "hello"
6. with Bloodborne, they came for the shield guys, with Sekiro, they came for the dodge guys, with Elden Ring, they came for the Fox Only No Items Final Destination guys
7. Elden Ring is a 100 hour game that feels like a 200 hour game that feels like a 50 hour game

todo mundo achava que a segunda narrativa criada na história da humanidade seria o (ou durante o) pós-modernismo, se a primeira foi a tragédia grega e seu destino como personagem principal - mal sabiam os estudiosos que o pós-modernismo é a terceira, já que a segunda é bravely default e sua tese sobre a coragem de fazer o que é esperado de maneira consciente, tomando a decisão padrão por brio e não por conformidade, trocando a fenomenologia hegeliana (outro ato de coragem) pela fenomenologia hegeliana (outro ato de omissão).

escrevi mais (em inglês) aqui: https://www.superjumpmagazine.com/bravely-default-as-ergodic-literature/

talvez a quantidade descomunal de vezes em que passei pelo processo de mudança na vida real tenha me impedido de verdadeiramente relaxar neste divertido joguinho - contemplando (reprisando!?) questões macabras como "eu vou ter que me mudar de novo mesmo, que importa onde vou colocar esses cadernos dessa vez?" ou "quando é que vai chegar a casa que vai ser uma Casa pros meus objetos?", uuuuuu, o processo de acomodação é duro, e ressignifica à força cada uma de suas tralhas a cada organização, eu que optei pela funcionalidade nos últimos dez anos me estressei tendo que colocar tantas pelúcias em cima da cama, e a distribuição de objetos por compartimento estipula sutilmente sua relação consigo então tome cuidado pra não tirar conclusões fechadas sobre essa esteira de yoga embaixo da cama há 3 casas seguidas...

que alívio crescer, que alívio aceitar que vamos sempre nos mudar (interna e externamente), que alívio encontrar um lar; se permanente que abençoe a longuíssimo prazo nossos pertences materiais e imateriais, e se temporário que possamos aprender o suficiente pra fazer melhor no próximo! e todo dia poder deitar a cabeça em sossego porque a mudança de hoje acabou.

ps: videogames... se podem transformar em diversão uma atividade tão enfadonha como desempacotar... quais teus limites?