8. tomodachi life: living the dream
apparent lie: i did not play this video game to completion in 2026. i watched my roommate play it.
absolving context: miis i contributed to the island, to my memory, include Kim Kitsuragi, Morgans, Badtz-Maru, Maya Fey, Slender Man (later Slender Woman), Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, Frieza, Smiley Bone, Otacon (later Otaconita), Amy I Guess, Zyrtec, and Mk. 3, in that order. i watched an estimated 95% of my roommate's gameplay, and took some part, albeit often minor, in the bulk of decisions made.
informed review: this game is bad.
i played the original tomodachi life, sequel to the japan-only tomodachi collection, twice in my life. the first time was as a kid.
i added my friends and family. i vented to a friend of mine about how the game had no systems to restrict my uncle from falling in love with my grandmother. he said "at least your miis are doing stuff." i didn't see it that way. that grandmother died a few years ago. we were never really close. there was a language barrier.
my exceptionally small middle school hung portraits in the hallway of, now that i think about it, i guess every single person who graduated from the school? one of these ex-8th graders caught my friends and i's attention: t. coffey. we thought it was impossible for someone to be named something as funny as t. coffey. rotating in our heads the potential shapes this bit could take, we chose maybe the least creative: a band called t. coffey. we wrote no music, obviously, but we made an instagram page. we were positively obsessed with making instagram pages for all of our stupid ideas. we would ideate in xbox live parties and over facetime on concepts for our pretend band without any songs, t. coffey. i recreated t. coffey within tomodachi life, using the feature where you can write lyrics and watch miis recite them to a handful of instrumentals. i chose "hip hop," which to my memory was more of a nu-metal thing. it is, i guess, the closest thing to a t. coffey song there is. i don't have the cartridge anymore. t. coffey's only single is lost media.
one member of my band t. coffey, which comprised 2 of my lifelong best friends, is doing a medical residency now, or is about to start one, or something. the other lifelong friend in t. coffey turned out to be more of a quite-a-whilelong friend. we don't talk anymore, as of recently, but, i think, permanently. the last time she reached out to say she was doing good and missed me, i basically told her to fuck off, or that i didn't care about her, or something. the last time i reached out, to say i was doing bad and needed an emotional pack mule to unload my all my problems onto, she had someone else call me to "make sure i was safe" and then informed me that she was still hurt and needed more time. i took stock of the situation and figured, i have a therapist now, i don't need to contribute any more to the amount of emotional abuse in the world.
the second time i played the original tomodachi life was just around when the estradiol was really sinking its claws into me. i was going through a manic episode. i told people i loved them, a lot. my closest friends were 2 women of varying dysfunction who i'd only ever spoken to on the internet. the rest of my circle of day-to-day close friends were also all on the internet.
i stopped going out with my irl friends. i would go to work, come straight home, immediately get on my computer, and babble about love and understanding with my discord besties while i played stepmania until my index fingers started twitching. by then my other friends would be online and they would all watch me stream tomodachi life, ask me to do funny things, agonize over which of their miis had fallen in love with each other, demand i give a certain mii a certain item, laugh, be my friends, et cetera et cetera.
i was really excited for living the dream. it was tomodachi life again, but they put nonbinary in the game! and gay! wow! i had promised my friends, long before living the dream was revealed, that, were there ever a new tomodachi life, i would be there on day 1, streaming it in the discord server to the large cast of internet characters who had become more important to me than anyone else. only 3 of these people remain in my life today.
the 1st was easy. she was just too mean, and didn't take well to being confronted about it. when i cut her out, she went around trying to slander me to basically everyone i knew. i was misgendered a lot in those texts. nobody took her side, except 1 person. guess who.
the 2nd was even easier. sex pest. didn't like me very much to begin with. see ya.
the 3rd, and 4th, and 5th, and 6th, and 7th, i agonize every day over. how could any of them have done that to me? all of it, cumulatively, is permanent. i'm ruined. that's white people for you, though! fucking white people.
so i didn't end up buying living the dream, actually!
good thing, too. all the silly soap opera stuff was replaced with a bunch of DIY mad libs mechanics that offer a lot of customization but are completely lacking in context or surprise. it's not a very good game!