Midwest Setting
 

I was just wondering how familiar non-Usonian (I didn't say Americans, are you happy Ginny? :p) types are with the setting of Puzzle Agent? For example, how many of you have seen the Coen brothers films? What do you think of when you hear the term "Midwest"? Do you think of a place in the States? Do you know where the Midwest is? I'm just curious to hear a "foreign" take on the setting, and the images it conjures up.

I am from the upper west side of Wisconsin... short drive from Minnesota where the game takes place... I think I will be pretty familiar with the setting.... I know you didn't ask me.. but I answered anyhow.

Thanks for the interest!

Midwest no idea. But basically, it's like those standart settings of North American fiction for me. I think I may watched some of the same setting, or something awfully similar, before, especially because we watch a ton of your fiction here (Most of the movies in theaters are North American in fact!).

I know very little about USA political geography, I know San Francisco is facing the Pacific, Chile has the same hour as New York and Texas has a funny shape (AND a very similar flag compared to the Chilean Flag) but, sadly, appart of New York, any other City in USA is in USA (No specific state or place in the Map) so I can't really tell which state or place is the setting. In fact, I think is in the North of USA because I know the Northest the place is there, the colder will be, but nothing else.

But that's me. Probably a Mexican or a Canadian will be a bit more familiar than me.

Right now, I'm just thinking it's probably similar to the Prairies.
I guess before going to Canada, I would have just thought it was similar to "Province", which is the name us snobby Parisians have for every part of France that isn't Paris or its suburbs :p

You can read up on it if you are interested..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...USA_MN.svg.png

Irishmile, I'm thinking it might be a good idea for you to stick around just to so we have an expert on hand.

Okay, so ... no clue about Minnesota. Actually very few US shows are really set in the Midwest, only one that I could think of is Smallville and that's actually filmed in Vancouver which is next to nothing like Kansas. Minnesota isn't so much like the prairies as it's a cross between Ontario and Alberta. It has more snow than Alberta and hotter summers, but the northern half of Minnesota is also farther north than Toronto. It's in the "heartland" of America, traditionally farming communities with a recent history of dwindling populations as younger people move out seeking work in the more populous states.

Whether it needs to be mid-west specifically I don't know.

Scoggins seems to have more of the same vibe I get from Fargo, Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure etc, even though Peaks was Washington state and NE is Alaska; Imposing forests, harsh weather, small tight knit communities, quirky characters possibly hiding dark secrets and something ominous lurking under the surface.

I think the game setting translates perfectly well outside the USA.

More than six months of snow while still having hotter summers? You've got to be kidding me, I'm never going there.

When I think of Midwest settings, I think of Steven King novels. Sure, it's probably wrong, but well.. As a foreigner it's the first thing that springs in my mind. The second thing is Mike Nelson, but I'm probably the only MST3K fan in Eastern Europe. That's all I can think of the Midwest, but who can blame me... It's full of emo vampires, slasher killers, zombie outbreaks, and... umm... corn?

When they say nothing ever happens in the Midwest I can vouch for that. It's the most boring place on the earth. The Coen Brothers glamourize. Actually, what Coen Brothers movie is set in the Midwest? No Country For Old Men was it wasn't it?

It snows here from at least October-November and doesn't stop until March-April, and it frequently can get into 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, although 90-100 is far more common for summer months.

So yeah, it's not so fun.

(90°F is 32°C and 100°F is 37°C)
My first year in Alberta, it started snowing in September, and when I left in the last days of May there was still snow everywhere.
At least while it's snowy it's not that hot? Although the shift can be brutal, so it being super hot doesn't mean that there isn't still snow everywhere that hasn't melted yet.
Why did people ever settle in places like that? It's insane.

Incidentally, the hottest weather I experienced was in 2003 in Paris, when it reached up to 40°C and was over 35°C most of the summer. It wasn't that bad though, for some reason. Alberta is much less hot and yet much worse, I think it's because it's so dry. And there is much less shade since it's so empty, you're pretty much always in the sun.

I'd be interested in knowing what region is called "Midwest" exactly, could someone put up a map? Because Minnesota looks more East than West to me.

Dry heat is nothing, we have wet heat. Wet heat just makes you feel disgustingly gross. We have a huge amount of humidity at all times, and I can definitely tell you that dry heat is far more bearable than wet.

Also: I have no clue why it is called the Midwest, but it is.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...idwest.svg.png

I should also point out that I live near the lower left hand side of Wisconsin, and the weather is likely much snowier further north.

There's "Fargo" and "A Serious Man" which were set in, well, Fargo, North Dakota and a Minneapolis suburb, respectively. And Stephen King is from New England, which is like the Midwest, I guess, only it has access to the ocean. So ... lobsters and crab rather than trout. And the emo vampires are in Washington state which is also on the ocean, only the Pacific which is on the other side of the country.

This wiki article should give a pretty good idea of where the Midwest is.

I think it's pretty amorphous. Given the way U.S. history unfolded, the Mississippi River, rather than some arbitrary halfway point, is often regarded as the dividing line between east and west in the U.S. So geographically, the half (or so) of the west that is closest to the Mississippi is the Midwest, in contrast to the far west. Of course, the source of the Mississippi is in Minnesota, so that's not a definitive answer. Culturally or socioeconomically, the term Midwest can refer to that part of the U.S. that is grain-farming-intensive, an area that mostly coincides with the geographical explanation.

Oh, and just to obfuscate things even more, the term Midwest can itself be refined further, as in "Upper Midwest", which tends to refer to Minnesota and/or the Dakotas, etc. :)

The game's setting is a pretty generic wintery small town, so I don't think it really matters if you know about midwest or not. I've known where midwest roughly is for a long time, but I didn't know it extends that far up to the east. I always thought it as west from the great lakes.

I have no trouble relating to the setting, either since I come from a Nordic country. :)

Well, when I was in Guadeloupe, it was very much wet heat, and I liked it better. You need to sweat less and to drink less, and sure you're all sticky but that's always the case when it's hot, difference is here it comes from the outside instead of the inside.
I thinks with fans and stuff I'll take dry heat, but as it is I'll take wet heat. If I'm making sense.
I usually wear wet clothes in summer. Like, I wash them but don't dry them, put them on and leave. That cools me down a little bit. For the first few minutes haha.

The more humid it is, the hotter it feels at similar temperatures. You're the first person I know that prefers wet heat over dry.

You aren't required to sweat any less, the problem is that sweating doesn't work as well as in dry heat so the body can't cool down that easily.

When there's low humidity, I can barely even tell that it's hot. When there is high humidity (which there almost always is in the summer here), I can barely even move without sweating profusely, and I just generally don't feel like doing anything but dying of exhaustion.

Maybe I've never experienced real wet heat then. I know I dislike the Prairies' dry heat, I drink a minimum of two gallons of water a day just to get by, and that doesn't even include other drinks (typically tea).
It's a pain.

I liked Paris. Rarely went down to freezing temperature in Winter, rarely was incredibly hot in summer and always had shade everywhere, as well as places to cool down, be it by entering a store or a bar or a pool.
Oh, and you don't need to carry a sweater with you in summer in case you need to enter a mall. Seriously, in North America (where I've been in North America, I should say), I keep a sweater with me because the malls are kept so cold that I get sick otherwise.

If the winter is too cold for humans and the summer is too hot, and they both last a while, is there any time at all to visit?