There’s this great early 00s aesthetic of like, fuck it we’re in the future let’s have our UIs seem really alien and futuristic, but also it’s the early 00s and our computers couldn’t actually handle anything that looked really alien and futuristic. Like it was prepackaged retrofuturism
i know exactly the kind of aesthetic you mean but i cannot think of any examples off the top of my head
A lot of the Windows Media Player things were this I feel
i wonder if magnus ever lies awake at night, thinking there must be something wrong with him because he can’t remember small things that should be important
he knows his parents and he knows great sideburns run in the family (or he thinks they do? the evidence is in his name and face, so he has to be right). but he doesn’t remember where his parents even live. he’s their only child and he can’t even get an address in his head, can’t even send a letter.
you know what, maybe he tried to send a letter once, when he was drunk. he scribbled a messy letter that made sense at the time, but was nonsense later. the mailman knew him (because everyone knew him in Raven’s Roost) so he got the letter back with an added note that “sorry mag, we can’t read the address.” and the address isn’t quite illegible, because the letters are all there on the paper. but when anyone, even magnus himself, looks at it, they can’t string the letters together. and magnus kept that letter in his nightstand and kept trying to understand it through the headaches every day (because something important is written there, he’s sure) until his house burns down with his village and he loses grasp on the thought of it entirely.
