Last summer, I worked with a designer and I needed to sew some tiny clothes for what I thought was a stop-motion movie. Imagine my surprise to see Gab playing it! Its very small, but to be connected to someone that I really admire and enjoy just made my day!

Burial culture down in southern Louisiana and especially New Orleans is very interesting. Burial isn't done because it's swampland beneath ocean level and bodies will resurface. Usually people are interred in a mausoleum or tomb in a casket or urn if cremated. After a year and a day enough decomposition has happened that they can put whatever remains of the body in a small pouch that remains in the tomb. Any casket remnants are disposed of and another body can be interred in the same place. Usually a family will own a shared tomb or space can be rented in a church or private mausoleum. Fun Fact! Nicholas Cage has a tomb prepared for him in New Orleans that looks like a pyramid.

The way this game focuses on empathy burnout as a main theme without lecturing and, instead, letting the player, through Hazel, grow in understanding by showing what it looks like is really interesting!

In case anyone was wondering about the fields/old buildings that Goobers didn't read the lore for, Hazel followed Mahalia into the slave quarters of the old sugar plantation (likely owned by the Floods).  Chloe refers to a part that Goobers missed in the area behind the house where she gets her spindles. Local high school students go get drunk in the area behind the slave quarters.

The sugar plantation is the oldest sort, with even Old World sugar plantations in Egypt and the Balearic islands using slave labor. The discovery that the Caribbean islands were perfect for sugar cane pioneered the race-based form of chattel slavery, and some of the worst atrocities of this already hellish system.  Sugar plantations, particularly in the Caribbean, were so brutal that an enslaved person that survived the Middle Passage would only live seven more years upon arriving at the plantation. Malnutrition via the master's refusal to provide food, long hours in the hot humid sun with little water, cuts from the sharp leaves of the cane or the machetes used to harvest it, burns from the great vats processing the cane into sugar and molasses (some people fell in too), little to no medical attention for such wounds or other sickness, sexual abuse, high infant mortality... It really was a hell on earth.

All that is to say, the fact that local high schoolers frequently party there says quite a bit about who is taught what in that town.

I honestly LOVE stylized games. You’re always seeing these triple-A games going with the high quality realism, so it’s nice seeing something different for a change.

FYI: People in New Orleans are buried in small mausoleum-type structures because the city is six feet below sea level. If buried in the ground (without being encased in concrete), coffins would rise up.

And have done so in the past. :)

30:45 The accent that you point out about the firefly and the narrator are Cajun accents! An accent that's mostly in Louisiana and the American South!

At the beginning of the game it says this takes place in Chickasaw County. That’s actually the name of my Native American tribe from that area! We had to relocated to Oklahoma during The Removal but it’s really cool to see it in a game like this!

10:40 Bunny is wearing a snake in the rose bushes jacket, her house has garden wallpaper, and she has an apple tree brooch on. Now I don't know about anyone else, but that's pure devil iconography to me.

As someone with a special needs younger brother, Benjy's story hurt my heart. As much as I get frustrated with him sometimes, as much as it's exhausting, I'd never EVER want him out of my life. I raised this boy and he better send me off thir earth, he has no business leaving before me.

Southerner here--only 16 min in, but to answer 'how does a house float away' they said it was a 'mobile home' or 'trailer'. Idk what they're like in the UK, but here they're capsule homes made in factories and shipped to a site for installation, which is sorta just leveling the floor with bricks or other systems. There's no concrete foundation laid for it to be connected to so sometimes, when a river gets too high, too fast, it'll sweep that big air filled box right down the river. Saw it happen near Nashville back in like, '06 I think on the news, so this isn't just made up for the game. Tornadoes like to fling them around too.
Otherwise, they are pretty nice little homes if you're on a strict budget. My great aunt had one when I was a kid and it was dolled up cute as a button
Edit to add at 28min: lol, I'm actually crocheting during this. Gab's streams are great for crafts

I’m only realizing Bunny lives in a Plantation house. They were placed uphill and had a second level with balconies so the slave managers could keep a better eye on the fields/ plantation.

I love that there so many quilts in the bayou area where your ancestor is leading a family through what could be the underground railroad! While historians havent found enough evidence to say its factually correct, the myth is that different quilting patterns were used as codes to warn of danger or signal safe places or all kinds of other things ❤️

As someone who lives in the south and worked at a place where we sold those blue bottles intended for bottle trees, they were used around cemetaries to trap curious evil spirits and theyd get destoryed by sunlight. At least thats what I was told by people who bought them. Now, most people just put them in their gardens for decoration. They have a really old history, apparently!! :) I got really excited when I saw them in the game!!

Bottle trees can be found all over the south.  Like rhubarb said, haints can't abide by the color blue. This is why you'll see southern homes with porches having their ceilings painted blue.

1:32:57 Those are oversized crawfish mounds. I get them in my backyard after a rain. Crawfish (or mudbugs) come up out of the ground during a heavy rain and swim in the puddles, then they dig holes again that look like the ones in the game (just a lot smaller) and bury themselves back in the mud.

I don't know if it's just nostalgia, but stopmotion animation feels a thousand times more real to me than everything CGI has to offer....maybe it transports some bespoke emotional cues, while CGI just emulates the visual representation.....

Funfact! Hazel's VA usually known for working on Chicago Fire Med PD series - is also an accredited Laboratory Scientist!  We love multifaceted stars

14:10 you 1000% do NOT want to get in flood waters! Full of danger. Sometimes has waste, debris, and not to mention the animals. When we have a hurricane, we tend to find Alligators in so weird places.

My dog's name is Crouton so he was very interested in this video, wondering who was talking to him. 😂