Papo & Yo: A Video Game That Teaches Us How to Deal With Trump
A lot of people are linking to Andrew Sullivan’s piece about the Madness of King Donald. If you haven’t read it, go there and do so - but only if you’re in a Happy Place or have an emotional support dog/kit/lemur nearby.
In the wake of this, and so much more in the past week, people are starting to talk openly about the exhaustion we feel. That living, trapped in the Hell of Trump’s irrational fits of rage, unable to escape, unable to do anything other than try to figure out how to survive from moment to moment …
… feels like being trapped in a house with an abusive, alcoholic father.
This is what the next four years are going to be like.
If you are in need of figuring out how to process all the emotions, if you are triggered or traumatized or PTSD’d by this situation, then you might want to check out the video game Papo & Yo. It starts will a terrified little boy, huddling in his closet, hiding from his raging, violent father.
And then somehow, a magical realm opens up … it’s told from the child’s POV, where the Monster goes into rages when it eats “frogs” until the little boy can get him a “fruit” medicine that will calm him down.
Quico eventually comes upon a giant lumbering creature, simply known as Monster. Alejandra and Lula warn Quico about the dangers of Monster, but Quico finds the creature docile and playful. However, when Monster eats a frog, it becomes enraged, chasing after Quico until he can calm it with a rotten fruit. They proceed through the dream world, but during one episode when Monster is enraged, it damages Lula. Alejandra directs Quico to a temple where they can use the anger from Monster to revive Lula, but this requires luring the creature into giant traps meant to hurt it. Quico completes this task, and Lula is successfully revived, but the three are now chased by Monster. Alejandra is eventually caught and eaten by Monster, but not before she directs Quico to go to the Shaman to help cure the Monster.
During these scenes, there are brief periods where Quico awakes in a dream and witnesses a past memory: that of his father accidentally running over a person with his car in a dark rainstorm. One such scene shows his father’s shadow as that of Monster.
Quico guides Monster to a sky-tram like device but Lula is forced to stay behind to operate it. The tram ends at the Shaman, but Quico finds there is no Shaman, only the memories of his father, and showing that he had fallen into his alcoholic and abusive state after the accident; Monster represents Quico’s imagination of his father, while the frogs are a substitute for his father’s alcoholism. A voice warns him that Monster cannot be cured and Quico must let him go. After calming Monster to sleep, Quico reluctantly pushes Monster into an abyss, and then follows a path that returns him back to his closet in the real world.
Shoved into the blackness of a bottomless abyss.
If that’s the endgame here, that’s not so bad. As long as the Monster doesn’t drag us down with it.