I've been trying to think about /why/ I hate the egg event, beyond the obvious impediments to me playing ACNH the way I want/kinda expect to.

Like, by all accounts it should work. He's a weird cute little bunny dude with a bunch of question marks hanging off of him.

But it doesn't. It's the wrong kind of candy-coated darkness we expect from Animal Crossing. It's too obvious, in your face, and easy.

It's not the subtle suggestion of Isabelle's tax fraud. Or Tom Nook's unseen orphanage. It's not the snow man who is aware and powerless to change how mishapen you have made him.

Honestly, most things about ACNH are too entirely on the nose. That's why the colonialism approach to criticising it feels so unsatisfying. It's so obvious, it's fully bought in, and it's happy to never let you forget how bought in it is.

It's also overstaying its welcome. Animal Crossing works best when if you blink you'll miss it. We're supposed to miss things, to find a comfort in the passing of life and our inability to do everything. To embrace the flow of life, and not grasp at every reed.

This wants to make sure you have plenty of time, plenty of opportunity. It doesn't want anyone to miss it. Like a low stakes AAA set piece.

But really for me, I think it's that it is simultaneously neither mundane enough nor weird enough. AC, at its best, revels in the complications of the familiar. The predictable and pedestrian become destabilizing non-sequitur.

And when it does want to draw attention to itself, it does so openly but quickly.

Consider again the snowman. The mishapen snowman is something most of us know, even if we've never made one ourselves. We've seen and shared the photos. We know what a snowman SHOULD be.

Frosty the Snowman is extremely familiar. And like AC it's cute and friendly and supposed to be heartwarming (even with a strong dark undercurrent). The magic of childhood joy and imagination and the holidays brings this tiered globular friend to life. And we try to replicate it.

But what if we fuck up? What if our innocent imagination crafts a monstrosity? What if we do that intentionally? There's an incredible conflict in this moment with AC. Children make ghastly snowmen and love them utterly, usually don't see the tragicomic horror in them.

But in a game, where we're conditioned by success states? Where we, no longer small children, not captivated by the first heavy real snowfall? We can see the monstrosity we've made. And then Animal Crossing brings it to life and makes it fully cognizant of its mistake-body.

And the tension of that possibility doesn't bolster the achievement of a perfect snowman -- it makes the expectation of that normalcy all the more grimy and complicated.

The mishapen, horrified snowman?

He's going to live.

That perfect, gleeful snowman?

He's going to die.

But the bunny rabbit?

He's just a wackjob in a suit who's probably killed, and will probably kill again. And he exists to serve the function of the holiday event for us.

Yawn.

It's familiar, it's predictable, but it provides no tension, just utility.