Month: May 2018

What You Like

Chris Leave a comment

I want to like the things you like.

When I see the glow in your eyes
And the way you get so excited
I want to burn with the same passion.

I want to feel the blazing light
That shines from your face
Whenever I let you run away with the conversation.

So I try to like the things you like
And warm myself in your glow.

The magic you see in children’s books
Reopens my eyes to the way
The world looked when I was small.

The walk was an easy one to make
But not one I’d thought to start
Until you bridged the gap between
The books I love and the worlds I left behind.

The unattended care of movement
Made in sync with loud music
As you cluster with your friends,
Never seeing beyond the circle
Of smiling eyes and laughing lips
Which only care that you are there.

It was never something I cared for
But I find myself there with you,
Forgetting my elbows, for once,
And the rest of the world, too.

Pastimes set aside as I try to stay
On top of chasing all my dreams
Are things you like just as well
But which were wasting my time
Until I could do them with you.

Any chance to spend some time
On any activity with you
Seems like a dream I can chase
A bit more literally than the others.

Things about myself that I can never see
No matter how long I look in the mirror
And the way my words come out,
Often halting and slower than I can bear,
Without ever doing justice to how I feel,
Earn that special smile you show me
When you want me to know you like me.

I was never something I cared for,
At least not in terms of “like” and “dislike”,
But I find myself wanting to start
Because you like me and I want to like what you do.

Video Games in the Workplace

Chris Leave a comment

Because I work at a super cool place, one of my team’s side projects was to design and build an arcade cabinet shaped like one of the products my company is famous for. Once it was ready, we started using it to work out some of the kinks in the system we had set up to act as the software for our cabinet. It was a desktop computer and a large TV, so it was nothing complicated, but the version of windows was leftover from a computer two company operating system upgrades ago and the computer itself was something basically built out of salvaged parts the company was throwing away. Needless to say, it did not work very well. We had it mostly working for a while, aside from an occasional crash, but someone tried to fix that and it wound up getting bricked.

For a short period of time, though, the entire team competed at Galaga. Mortal Kombat was popular, but almost everyone played Galaga at some point or another. Or at least we tried to get everyone to play it. Whether or not they actually did it has yet to be determined because, after a few weeks, a couple of front-runners emerged.

Galaga isn’t a terribly complicated game. The levels always happen the same way, the mechanics work the same from game to game, and it is possible to win by simply memorizing the game’s patterns. If you know where everything is going to be and how long it will take your bullets to get there, you can easily get your score super high. If you know the trick to get two ships and are confident in your ability to kill everything before it can kill you, it gets even easier to get up there. Unfortunately, new levels kind of kill your ability to remember your way into victory, so your high score tends to increase slowly unless you’ve got amazing instincts. Sure, all the levels are different, but the patterns are similar enough that you shouldn’t be caught entirely unaware.

Myself and two coworkers competed for the top spots. One, Competitive, of them took it very seriously, and the other, Infrequent, only occasionally played. Competitive liked to get me to take turns with him, since our scores were close and we’d trade top spot every week. Infrequent would have been the clear leader if he’d played consistently since he almost doubled our scores the first time he played and then set the leaderboard solidly in the six-digit range. It took me a week to figure out how to get my score that high, but I eventually got there. A week later, Competitive did as well. Infrequent stopped playing at that point, so it was mostly just me and Competitive taking turns.

I have nothing against a healthy rivalry, but it was getting frustrating. Competitive wanted to play every day and he’d just walk up behind me, grab me by the shoulders, and say “How about some Galaga?” or brag about the fact that he held the high score. It got to the point where I didn’t even want to play anymore, despite the game’s comforting repetition and engaging simplicity. Galaga is a lot of fun and I can see why people loved arcade games, now more than ever, but it wasn’t worth the amount of disruption Competitive brought to my daily life, especially when he started wanting to play twice a day.

The entire dynamic felt weird to me. Both Infrequent and Competitive had played Galaga when it first came out. Competitive seemed to just enjoy having someone to play against while Infrequent seemed like he was disappointed in his stellar performance. The first time I played it was in a combo arcade at a pizza place, while my family waited for a seat. I was six or seven, I think. The next time I played it was at work last year. I pick up games quickly, especially ones that rely on repetitive mechanics, and I’m stubborn enough to put in the time it takes to get decent at something. If I’d kept at it, I’m certain I’d have gotten quite good at it.

These days, no one plays. The computer that once held the games was bricked and now the arcade cabinet sits cold and empty. Competitive stays in his office and I need no longer worried about being accosted by a man looking to feed his competitive spirit. I kind of miss it, though. The game wasn’t amazing and the controls kind of sucked, but it was simple, it was fun, and it was a puzzle just waiting for me to figure it out. I hope we get the cabinet fixed again soon. I’d like to get my high scores back.

The Man in the Golden Hat

Chris Leave a comment

While my favorite Terry Pratchett stories are those following the Night Watch and Sir Samuel Vimes in particular (because of the themes they explore and the cast of characters in each of them), my favorite Pratchett character is Moist Von Lipwig. This unfortunately named man is introduced in his first story, Going Postal, as he sits on death row. The narrator reveals that he was a swindler and crook who defrauded banks, cheated people, and convinced himself that he wasn’t doing anything wrong because everyone chose to be swindled (for common street swindles like the shell game) or because they tried to cheat him (by buying a ring supposedly worth a lot of money for a tiny amount and then selling it to a jeweler only to find out it wasn’t even worth what they paid for it).

Eventually, of course, he was caught and sentenced to die for all of the money he stole and hid. Of course, nothing is that simple in Ankh-Morpork, the city most of Pratchett’s stories revolve around. Lord Vetenari, the current tyrant, decides to spare Moist on the condition that he take a job as the postmaster of the city’s failing post office. As is his modus operandi, Lord Vetenari leaves out just enough information to make Moist Von Lipwig’s life interesting.

Moist wisely takes the job and the arc of each of his three books is set. Vetenari gives him a difficult, nigh-impossible task and he rises to the task, not only figuring out how to restore public faith in his assigned institution, but often taking care of several other problems for Vetenari. The plot of Going Postal isn’t just about restoring the postal service, but about fighting against the corruption plaguing the rapid-communication towers. These semaphore towers were bought out by a group of greedy men who wanted to milk them for all the money they’re worth, regardless of what it costs in people and reputation to do so.

Moist, of course, rises to the occasion, taking on the administrative challenge of the post office and the inter-personal challenge of facing down the head of the company that owns the semaphore towers. He puts his silver-tongue to good use, selling the entire city on the idea of a functioning post office and his new invention, stamps. The people of Ankh-Morpork are easily entertained, as Pratchett likes to point out, and Moist is a master showman. He gets a golden suit (with matching hat) in order to stand out, he constantly makes bigger and bigger claims, and he constantly steps up every challenge he’s given. When he manages to somehow squeak through as a result of sheer luck or some audacious plan, the people reward him with their belief in the dreams he weaves.

That is why he is my favorite. He talks big and never feels more alive than when he is taking some insane risk. He wants to be challenged and to risk everything on the power of his tongue and the ideas he can sell people. He talks his way out of almost every corner he’s in and then somehow manages to deliver on everything he promised. He feels like a fraud and knows that he’s selling an impossible dream to people all too willing to believe him because he makes them want his dream. All while wearing a flashy golden suit.

In his subsequent books, Making Money and Raising Steam, he finds himself in a few more tight corners and needs to put in a bit more effort to get himself out, but he always manages it somehow. Despite the fact that he was a con artist for most of his life, he has become one of the most beloved people in all of Ankh-Morpork. He gets his kicks taking insane risks for the good of the public and constantly helps pull society forward by, as he likes to say, “selling them the sizzle” because a sausage always smells better than it tastes.

He’s one of the few heroes in Discworld whose power lies in his words. Some of Pratchett’s protagonists have magic. Some have luck. Some have a keen detective instinct or impeachable ethics. Some are strong. But only two rule through the power of their words and only Moist Von Lipwig has more than one book. William De Worde, the editor and first reporter for the Ankh-Morpork Times, does similar things in a different way, but his power lies more in his access to printing things in a paper than the words themselves, so I prefer Moist Von Lipwig.

I don’t really identify with him or anything like that, I just like the idea of a hero who abhors violence and wins using the strength of his words. The ability to spin a tale so well that you can talk yourself into or out of anything is a power I’d love to have. More than any other power, honestly.

Coldheart and Iron: Part 16

Chris Leave a comment

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

I woke up in a dark room. I had a few confused moments of wondering who had let the lamps burn out before the throbbing of my head started up. As the steady beat of pain pounded against my temple, everything came back. I fought down a surge of panic and settled for quickly standing up. In my haste, I didn’t realize that my hands were still tied behind my back so I pitched forward onto my face.

I lay there for a few minutes, doing my best to let my pain fade a bit while I ignored the bubbling sound my nose made. I didn’t think it was broken, but the sharp pain of landing on it had cleared my head. After the pain of my nose and head faded enough to ignore, I took stock of my surroundings. The room was completely dark, but not entirely soundproof. Every so often, I could hear the shuffle of feet passing by two of the walls. The fact that I could hear it and the rough, cool feeling of stone against my knees told me they’d taken my watch and my insulated gear.

My feet were free, so I rolled onto my back, tucked my legs to my chest, and slipped my hands around to my front. The zipties had been replaced by nylon rope, but it was tied too tight for me to shift my hands at all, so it was still awkward to push myself to my feet. I cautiously stood all the way up and, after encountering no ceiling, I lifted my hands above my head. I couldn’t reach whatever ceiling there was, even standing on my toes, so I shifted my attention to the walls. Careful shuffling footsteps brought me to the wall. I put my hands on the wall and used my feet to measure my room.

I was in a rather large room, some twenty by thirty feet, but there didn’t seem to be anything else in here with me. At least nothing against the walls. As I made my way back to the corner, I stopped every few steps to listen for the shuffling sounds from earlier. Once I’d located them, I stood in the corner and listened to them walk around me. After a few hundred heartbeats, I sat down. There was no way out. I couldn’t see any glimmers of light and I hadn’t felt any seems in the wall as I went, so I was either in a pit or they’d somehow managed to conceal the door from me.

“Hello?” my voice croaked into the empty room, but nothing happened. No one answered and the steps outside didn’t change.

Just as I was settling down to try to sleep off the throbbing pain that covered my head, I heard a few rapid, light steps beside the wall. A moment later, part of the wall near me silently swung open. I was behind the door, so I was saved the worst of it, but I still couldn’t see anything for a few seconds. Just as my eyes started to adjust, the door started to close.

“Hey!” I started coughing as my voice caught. I needed a drink badly, but my attempt had attracted the attention of whoever had opened the door. A tall figure stepped into the room, pulled out a battery lantern, turned it on, and shut the door. I blinked in the harsh fluorescent light, trying to see who it was.

“Here.” I recognized Camille’s voice as the figure held out a water bottle. I took it gratefully, but couldn’t get it open with my hands tied like they were. Camille twisted the cap off, and I downed the water quickly.

“You’re the best.” I dropped the flimsy plastic bottle and leaned back. “Anything you can do about these?” I held up my hands.

“Sure.” Camille reached into her pocket and pulled out a switchblade. “I’m surprised you weren’t able to conceal anything when they stripped you. This is the shoddiest operation I’ve ever seen.” Camille popped the blade out and started cutting through the nylon strands, careful not to hurt my hands. “They didn’t even strip us naked. Half the bandits seemed like they were afraid to touch a woman, so I was able to hide all of my knives easily.”

“Excuse me for my failures.” I watched as Camille slipped the knife between my wrists and cut the last strands without so much as marking me. “I fell unconscious before we were unloaded and I just woke up about half an hour ago.”

“Shit, Marshal, you’re going soft.” She smiled as she pulled me to my feet. “And that mouth on you! No wonder they punched you in the head.”

I shot her a smile that became a grimace when it cause a flare of pain. “Tell me they didn’t ruin my good looks, at least.”

Camille made a show of looking me over in the lantern light before shaking her head. “Nope. Can’t ruin what you didn’t have.” She winked and resisted the urge to smile again.

“Anyway, Mar. You’ve been out for about six hours, then, since that’s how long we’ve been here.” She held up a hand. “I can answer any questions you’ve got, but not right now. Trevor will be here in a couple of minutes and he’s our ticket out of here.”

“Trevor?” I stood to the side as Camille switched places with me.

“Yeah. He’s the leader of the little squad the bandits made from the laborers, so he’s got a few keys, including the one to this room. I heard he was planning to stop by after dinner, so I stole a key and made my way over here as fast as I could.” Camille grabbed a few of the longer strands of nylon and started arranging them on my newly freed wrists.

“Then I’m going to pretend I’m still tied up so he can come inside to beat on me, at which point you’ll jump him and take his keys?”

“More or less.”

“Neat.”

Camille rolled her eyes and picked up the lantern. “Just do what I tell you and we’ll all get out of here alive.”

“Always.” I took a deep breath and went back to my spot on the floor. The entire room was just as empty as I thought and the only signs of the door was that it was a slightly different color. There was no handle, no visible hinges, not even the tiniest gap. Whoever had made the door had been a master. After another moment’s thought, I turned to Camille. “There’s no way to open this door from the inside.”

“Yeah. All the cells or storage rooms are like that.” Camille hunkered down and switched off the lamp.

“What do we do if he doesn’t show up?”

“Wait for someone else to. I should have a few hours before they notice I’m missing.”

I was silent for a few moments, listening for the sounds of people walking around the room. “Thanks, Camille.”

“You’re welcome, Mar.”

I closed my eyes, trying to focus on listening. I lost track of my heartbeats, but eventually a louder set of footsteps appeared and stopped near where the door should be. A moment later, the door opened and I was almost blinded through my eyelids. I opened my eyes the tiniest amount, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on.

“Hello, Captain Marshall.” Trevor’s voice made it all too easier to see the sneer on his face. “I guess we get to have our time together today, after all.”

I blinked a bit, trying to pretend I couldn’t see. “Fuck off, asshole.” I took a look out the door and saw two more laborers standing just outside, watching Trevor as he stood a few feet away from me. I glanced over at Camille and cleared my throat twice before turning my attention back to Trevor. “I’m not into guys so either beat me up or leave me alone. Whatever you do, just cut it out with this obnoxious flirting.”

When Trevor growled and stepped forward, Camille silently rose to her feet and pointed from me to Trevor. “I got it.” Camille nodded. “You’re intimidating. Just do whatever you came here to do and get out. I’ve got better things to do that talk to you.”

“Like think about your girlfriend?” I stopped shuffling around and looked him in the eye. He smiled like he’d just won the lottery. “Don’t you worry about her, Captain Shithead. I’ll make sure she sees what horrible shape you’re in after I’m-”

I leapt to my feet from my position on the floor, closed the gap with Trevor, and punched him in the stomach with everything I had. As he doubled over and I grabbed the back of his head to bash his face into my knee, I saw Camille slip around the door. I heard a satisfying krack as I broke his nose and he fell bonelessly to the floor. Trevor groaned and squirmed, trying to clutch his face without actually touching it. I watched him for a moment before kicking him in the nuts for good measure.

By the time I turned my attention back to Camille and the two laborers outside, Camille was already wiping her knives on their jackets. “Grab that one.” She pointed to the one a couple of steps outside the door and then hauled the other dead laborer inside. I leaned out the door and admired the concrete structure around us for a moment before grabbing the other laborer and dragging him inside. Thankfully, neither had bled much, so the floor were still mostly clean. I grabbed the shirt off my laborer and wiped up the floor as best as I could, and then ducked back inside the room.

“Now what?” I dumped my dead laborer next to the other one.

“I take his keys, stab him in the kidney, and we leave.” I watched as Camille did just that and then grabbed the lantern from where she left it. Trevor twitched a little bit, but he’d stopped by the time Camille closed the door behind us. I absently touched my nose, checking to see if it was broken, as I followed Camille down the hallway.

Camille was in her element. She moved almost silently and took out four bandits as we walked down the hallways, killing them so quickly they didn’t have time to do more than register our presence before they died. I did my best to keep up with her between scuffles and stayed out of her way during them. My head was still pounding and I thought longingly about ibuprofen. There had been some in the medical supplies we’d recovered before the blizzard settled in, but Camille and I had higher priorities.

I followed her back to where her cell had been located, and she started going from door to door, checking for more Wayfinders. All of the rooms right around hers were empty, but one at the end of the hall contained Lucas. The bruise on his face had grown darker, but he seemed in better shape than I was. His zip-ties had been replaced with a set of loose manacles on his wrists and ankles. Enough to discourage him from attempting an escape, but not so much that it would restrict him from working.

He grinned up at us as Camille tested keys on his manacles. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Except you, Marsh. From the sight of you, it looks like you’ve got sore eyes.” He chuckled as Camille found the right key and yanked him to his feet.

I rolled my eyes at Lucas as he started rubbing his wrists. “You’re one to talk. Your face is worse than anything I’ve gotten today, and you’re stuck with it constantly.” I smirked, careful not to move the side of my face that was still throbbing. I glanced around Lucas’ cell while Camille loosely wrapped the manacles around her left arm. It was a small room, about ten feet long and six feet wide with a small pallet that Lucas had been sitting on, a bucket, and a couple rings bolted to the concrete walls.

“How’d you get out, Camille?” Lucas stretched and started cracking his knuckles. “I didn’t manage to conceal anything on me and the bastards didn’t come close enough for me to take them out.”

“I stole my guard’s keys while he was busy watching me strip to be searched.” Camille shrugged. “I just wrapped the keys and my knives in my shirt, stood around in my underwear for a couple of minutes, and got dressed again. Like I told Mar, these young guys seem pretty timid when it comes to anything but pointing guns at people.”

“At least we have that going for us.” I shook my head slowly. “We need to cover more ground. Can we afford to split up?”

“Negative, Captain.” Lucas shook his head. “They have us spread out. We’re going to need to check every door and, if we start killing people now, we’re going to get found out before we’re ready. Better to stick together, hide, and find everyone first.”

I sighed and Camille chuckled. “It’s a bit too late for that, Lukey-boy.” Camille poked Lucas in the ribs and cracked her knuckles. “So far I’ve killed seven people today and four of them are just sitting in hallways.”

“Alright. Speed and murder it is.” Lucas held out a hand. “Give me half the keys and I’ll go check the eastern wing. You guys can handle the western one.”

“Just how big is this place?” I looked from Lucas to Camille. “Did someone give you guys a map? How do you know it so well?”

“Millie struck gold during processing. She asked to see plans for the base, to offer some advice on fortifying it.” Lucas wrapped the keys Camille gave him in the blanket from his pallet and tucked them into his pants. “As a result, we’re going to have to face some meaty checkpoints, but we all got a good look at the blueprints of what this place is supposed to be. It’ll put some of our fortified depots to shame if there’s enough of them alive to finish it when we’re done here. See you guys at the main entrance in thirty.”

Lucas started down the hallway, soundlessly making his way down the hallway. I watched him go for a moment before turning my attention back to Camille who was trying to get the manacles to sit comfortably on her arm. “Did you happen to know where they stuck our things?” She shook her head. “How about where to get some guns?”

Finally satisfied, she started down the hallway after Lucas. “Come on, Mar. Who do you take me for? Of course I know where the guns are!”

Tabletop Highlight: To Run or To Play, And Why

Chris Leave a comment

I love both playing tabletop RPGs and running them. When I run, I get to tell a story in a different format, hand-in-hand with a group of people who are just as excited about the story as I am. When I play, I get to participate in a story with a bunch of other people who care about what we’re doing and escape from my life for a while. Running a good game leaves me with a feeling of satisfaction and calm exhaustion that make me want to rest up so I can prepare to do it again the following week.  Playing a good game is exhilarating, whether I succeed or fail, because I got to do things I normally wouldn’t and think about things in new ways until I eventually return to myself, ready to coast through the rest of the day on the relaxed feeling I get from not being me for a while.

When you run a game, there are a million little things you’re doing to make it work out. Keeping track of the larger plot arcs as time passes, maintaining a world for the players, playing the part of any number of NPCs the players encounter, designing challenges for your players so they don’t get complacent or bored, telling a story so everyone can participate, and so much more. For every hour of game I run, I do a minimum of one and a half that many hours. Generally, it winds up somewhere in the two-to-four range. For instance, this week’s sessions was mostly travel, a chance to resupply, and a couple random encounters that wound up giving me an idea for an interrupt to the main goal the players are pursuing that also lets me bring in the requirements for a player’s prestige class. In order to get all that ready, I spent all of Sunday afternoon preparing a single item of legacy, adjusting the encounters to fit a party with tons of martial damage but almost no magical support, and digitizing some notes for the players to reference about their character. Throw in the time over the week leading up to that when I fleshed out the interrupt quest(s) and a couple of hours Friday night writing out my notes so I could see how they fit into the campaign plan. All of that adds up to about ten hours of work for four hours of play.

However, I now feel an immense sense of satisfaction that the players are moving along on their quest, that they feel like I’ve reminded them of the dangers of complacency and that they know there’s not just a goal, but actually feel tension because outside forces are quite capably working against them. It felt good to see my plans play out as I intended, to see my player get excited when I let him know we’d be able to get his prestige class stuff worked in soon, and how they all had to play their characters out in a situation that challenged their characters’ normal modes of addressing problems. I wanted to shake them out of their grooves without shaking up the story and I managed to pull it off, so now I’m excited to see what happens as a result of this.

As a player, I can ignore everything but the needs of the body as I place myself in the situation of my character. All of my knowledge except what my character knows and what might be applicable to the situation fades away. Sometimes the buzzing of my phone or my inability to remember the exact terms of an ability require me to break my focus, but those are quickly set aside so I can return to the game. Decisions are make, abilities are used, skill checks are made, and the story unfolds as I walk through halls and dungeons that exist in the murky, semi-transparent realm of my imagination. As a story-teller myself, my mind fills in all the little details as my character moves through their environment and I do my best to play by the rules of the game without breaking the illusory world I’ve created in my head.

Some GMs are better than others at letting this play out and some characters are better for it than others. If my character’s focus is on their own well-being, it is easy. If I need to focus on other characters because I need to protect them, it is more difficult. I don’t like filling in the gaps on other people’s characters and few people describe their character in great enough detail to create an image. A bunch of the people who don’t describe their will, instead, wind up drawing them, and that is better in some respects, but so solid an image can make it stand out from the murkier world I’m creating. Any character who takes the fore or who moves on their own is my preference. Sometimes, though, a character is so different it is hard to really get into their mind, so all of my effort gets focused on playing them correctly (or what I think of as correctly) that I don’t get quite as invested into the game as I would like.

Personally, I’d prefer to have both playing and running happen in the same week so I can get both the escape and the satisfaction, but I only have one group I play in with any regularity, and that game is a bit harder to get invested in for a few reasons that mostly revolve around totally valid stylistic choices by the DM and the fact that I don’t know any of the other players or the DM very well. I know one of them a bit better, and she’s the person who invited me, but everyone else is still basically a stranger. Running happens most weeks, but not every week because of the time and energy commitment involved. If I’m feeling worn out because of work or my mental health, I’m not really in a place where I can run a game and I’ve learned better than to try anyway.

In an ideal world, I’d have one night of fully-immersed play and one night of extremely satisfying running. In this world, I can generally manage one night of play and one or two nights of running, so that’s still pretty great, if more exhausting that I anticipated before agreeing to everything. Still, the benefits are worth the costs.

Sunday Afternoon Musing

Chris 1 Comment

Sorry for the break in schedule, but today you get a musing post because I forgot that I hadn’t written a flash fiction piece for today and I’m way too tired to do more than chronicle my thoughts on something.

I spent the weekend traveling around Wisconsin, attending senior art shows and a wedding. The art shows were super fun and the wedding was absolutely wonderful, but I’ve kind of hit the point where I’m both exhausted and wired. Laying on my bed for the next sixteen hours sounds amazing, but so does going for a hike since the weather is beautiful. I want to pretty much punch anyone I run into if they want me to talk to them, but I also want to not be alone since I haven’t been meaningfully alone since Friday morning (both events were for friends of my girlfriend, so the trip was more fun that it would have been if I’d been doing it alone). The wonderful contradictions of being an introvert who doesn’t really like being alone.

I enjoy driving places. The feeling of being in motion, that horizon as it rolls past, seeing new places… All things I love. Most of my trips, though, have been done alone. Driving to my grandparents’ cottage, visiting friends in other cities, going to conventions, almost all of them have been solo trips. It was nice to have someone along for the ride this time, to talk to and just keep me company. I’m not a huge conversationalist all of the time, which I’m sure can be frustrating to my girlfriend at times, but I like having the option. Plus, it’s just comforting to have someone in the car with me.

I don’t really know why I had such a good time, beyond getting to spend time with my girlfriend and her wonderful friends. I’d expect myself to enjoy that stuff, but to be one hundred percent ready to slap someone by the end of a full weekend like this. I like social engagement with my peers, just in smaller doses than a full evening of people following by a wedding the next day. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to wake up this morning and actually be looking forward to getting breakfast with everyone. It was a delicious breakfast and I was sad to be leaving everyone, though I was totally ready to just be home.

Which I am now. Home. And exhausted. Sorry if this rambling post didn’t make too much sense, but I’ve gotta write every day and sometimes that means writing rambly blog posts so you can keep up your daily blog posts and not tax your already exhausted mind to the point of getting frustrated or upset.

Now I’m going to go tax my already exhausted mind to the point of frustration by trying to successfully fight enemies with the annoying sword system from Skyward Sword until I decide I’m better off quietly reading a book. Have a great day!

Saturday Morning Musing

Chris Leave a comment

There’s a part of me, deep down inside me, that worries I’ll eventually run out of words. Not in a “be unable to write or talk because I can no longer use words” sort of way, because even I do not have enough senseless anxiety to worry about that. This part of me is specifically afraid of running out of Things to Say. It worries that I’ll eventually say everything I have to say of any consequence and I’ll no longer be able to convince myself that I should be writing.

I don’t remember who it was, which irks me greatly, but I saw someone on Twitter post that to be a writer, you need a bit of an overly large ego. The whole idea of being a writer is predicated on believing that you have something to say that people want to hear. You can’t really write a story or a newspaper column or even a tweet without believe that what you are writing is something that someone wants to read. Sure, a lot of tweets are pretty dang meaningless and don’t have much thought put into them, but there’s also a lot of rather casual arrogance out there about writing.

Just like when you talk to a friend, writing a message includes the implicit belief that they care about what you have to say. Tweeting includes believing that the people who follow you care about what you have to say and that random strangers could potentially care about it. Writing a blog says that I think you, whoever you are, care about what I have to say. Writing a book says that I think a bunch of strangers will care about my thoughts or stories. No matter what I do, I have to believe that what I have to say is something that someone wants to hear.

I know it might just be a result of my OCD and the particular ways my brain words, but that thought feels like a vortex it’d be really easy to get stuck in. I struggle regularly with the belief that I don’t have anything worth saying. I don’t really posses an ego large enough to simply brush past that doubt, so I often wind up trying–and failing–to justifying writing something. And it isn’t just blog posts. It is everything from text messages to Facebook or Twitter replies. I can’t tell you the number of messages/comments/replies that I’ve typed up and then deleted instead of sending. For today alone, my best guess would be at least two dozen.

Some people say that anyone can be a writer and that is definitely true. What people often fail to take into account is that, like any other trade or art, it takes a lot of work to actually be decent at it. People go whole careers without ever being good at it and even fewer ever wind up being considered great. Writing gets treated as an after thought in a lot of work places and by a lot of people, but our increasingly electronic world depends more and more on writing. Thanks to the internet, the main way we interact with people is through writing. Video chat may entirely replace text-based communication on the internet eventually, but I think it’ll be a while before then since video still uses a lot of cellular data and that can still be very expensive for a lot of people (myself included).

Yet here I am, struggling to keep up with my daily blog posts because I feel like I don’t have anything worth saying. I find myself circling back to previously picked-apart topics and thinking I don’t have anything worth adding. I can’t find any thought or idea worth writing a poem about. I can’t think of any story worth telling here. That nothing I have to say is worth posting about.

It took me a while to realize that in order to consider whether or not something is worth saying, I actually need to have something to say. There’s little reason to shout down something as worthless if there’s nothing actually there and one thing I know for a fact about myself is that I’m not going to shut myself down over nothing. There’s always something at the core, even if I can’t seem to find it. Every thought spiral, every depressive episode, every single needling anxiety. There’s always something there, beneath the emotional/mental turmoil.

While it felt like a huge epiphany at the time, I’ve got to say that it really hasn’t changed much. I still wonder if everything is worth posting or writing or even considering long enough to see if I have enough there to write about. Hell, I wrote most of this out and then nearly trashed it since I don’t have much of a conclusion or anything thought-provoking to say. Mostly, I just wanted to say this so maybe someone else thinking the same thing would know they’re not the only one wondering if their words are worth it.

I’m pretty sure they are. Probably. You never know until you try?

Keeping Up

Chris Leave a comment

I live in a hole that fills with water
And all I have are my two cupped hands.
I can keep up if I constantly bail,
But a single falter is all it takes
To watch the waters slowly start to rise.
I have no time left for thoughts of escape.
I’m not even sure that I would want to.

Return to Celeste Mountain

Chris Leave a comment

One of my go-to unwinding games has been Celeste. I really enjoyed playing through it the first time and, while I can’t recapture the catharsis I felt as I watched Madeline work through her problems for the first time, I still spend some time reflecting on how they still apply to my life as I try to get the additional collectibles or set a personal speed record for a level. That’s why I always start from the beginning of the level and, unless I’m doing a speed run, explore the entirety of each level, including talking to everyone again.

This game has plenty of collectibles and even additional levels if you get certain collectibles. These tapes are called B-sides, and you can find one hidden in every level you play through. The rooms they’re in are usually hidden in some way, requiring you to make a split-second decision to alter your course, thoroughly explore all your options, or to notice that a wall isn’t really a wall but a hidden entrance. Each room has a puzzle involving timing your jumps from one set of blocks to another as they switch which set can be interacted with. They’re not terribly challenging once you figure out your path, but they’re not easy, either. That being said, I found it a lot easier to find the B-sides on almost every level than some of the other collectibles.

The hardest things for me to find where the Crystal Hearts. There’s one hidden in every level, though the ones in the B-sides aren’t really hidden so much as the goal of the level, and I found maybe two of them during my first play-through. When I went back and spent more time meticulously combing through the levels, I found three more. I’ve still got two more to find on the traditional levels and then a bunch of B-sides to complete. The Crystal Hearts are used to unlock the last level of the game, The Core, and I only just got enough of the hearts to start exploring The Core, so I’m looking forward to dedicating the time to getting through that level. I’ve already spent half an hour exploring it and finding almost nothing. I got through the first puzzling bit, but it feels like I haven’t gotten that far yet.

The last collectibles are the Strawberries scattered through all but one of the main levels. Like all of these collectibles, they have almost no impact on the main game since only the Crystal Hearts actually unlock anything, but they give you a reason to start exploring and a reason to keep exploring even after you’ve cleared the level. They’re often quick to get and encourage you to do more than just get through the level. Usually, you can find the Strawberries in hard-to-reach, out-of-the-way places that require you to change how you’re getting through the screen in order to collect them. Unlock the Crystal Hearts and B-sides that just require contact to collect, the trick to the Strawberries is that you have to stand on solid ground after collecting them in order for them to stay collected. If you die before then but after getting the Strawberry, it just pops back to its original place.

Thankfully, you don’t actually need to complete the level again in order to accumulate the collectibles you’ve gathered while re-doing a level. If you want to leave after getting that last Strawberry instead of making your way through the entire level, you still get the Strawberry (and your additional deaths), added to your record for that level. While the death total is interesting to see and compare to other parts of the climb, deaths are definitely not something you want to collect. I haven’t found any kind of negative impact resulting from having a bunch of deaths recorded and I’ve reached four figures in the deaths department, so I expect that I’d have encountered it by now if it existed.

I really enjoy replaying the levels. Sure, I’m only racing against my own timer at this point, but the game is really easy to pick up and put down as my time allows. The whole system is super portable and easy to use for short periods of time, but most of the games I have do not work that well in short periods. If I’m playing for only five minutes, I’ve only just finished loading into my Breath of the Wild file. Or I’ve gotten to the first checkpoint on one of the later levels in Celeste. I really can’t emphasize how great the portability of the Switch is and it feels like Celeste was specifically made for the accessibility and ease of use this platform provides. I can save and resume even in the middle of levels without needing to worry about getting sent back to the nearest checkpoint.

A month and a half after I first finished the game, I’ve gotta recommend it again. The levels are fun, there’s so many reasons to keep playing after you’ve beaten the game, the themes are mature, and the plot actually has something difficult to say. If you read, play or watch nothing else I’ve reviewed, you need to play this.

Ready Player One: The Book

Chris Leave a comment

After writing the review for last week, I sat down and powered through the rest of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. I liked it a bit more than the movie in some aspects and a bit less in others. The plots are essentially the same: the game world’s creator passed away and left his vast fortune to whoever completed his puzzle first. There are a series of challenges and puzzles, each set awarding a key and then a gate, at the end of which is the prize: Halliday’s Easter Egg (in this case, an easter egg is something hidden by the developer of a game, usually as a way of leaving their mark on the game they created). The exact challenges are all different, though some are more similar than others, but the basic ideas of the competition are the same.

Overall, I probably liked the movie more, but I think that is a result of the different reference period. In the movie, the cultural references have been expanded to include more modern references in addition to the 80s references. While the movie was super fun to watch because I could look for things I knew, the book felt like it was touting the superiority of 80s culture and implying that there hasn’t really been anything worthwhile since. It wasn’t a huge deal because either I knew enough to understand the references or they were explained well enough by the narrator, but it felt a lot like I was talking to someone who is so convinced that they are correct in their opinions that they refuse to even listen to what you’re saying.

Despite this feeling, I actually liked the characters from the book more. They felt a lot more human and behaved a lot more like every gamer I’ve ever met. They get things wrong, they make mistakes, they’re all hyper-paranoid, success-obsessed dorks who are so focused on their current goal that pretty much everything else fades from view. The protagonist abandons his friend and, to a lesser degree, his quest for the prize, in order to spend time with his romantic interested. As soon as he’s back on the quest, after being rejected by his romantic interest, everything else fades away as he tries to make progress on the next puzzle between him and the next key. At the same time, some of their interactions felt a little off as well.  The eventual relationship between the protagonist and his romantic interest feels even weirder than it did in the movie, when she suddenly just gives the lead to him as soon as they meet. The relationships between the other characters who aren’t potentially romantic partners feels a lot more natural, so the contrast makes the fledgling romance stand out even more. There’s also a deus ex machina moment from Ogden Morrow, where he just shows up and fixes something.

That part was probably the most frustrating part of the novel that they thankfully changed for the movie. The protagonist comes up with this ridiculously complicated plan that relies on getting extremely lucky and not only does everything work out as he hoped it would, it all turns out even better than that. Everything just falls into place for him at the end. As soon as crunch time starts, gone is the fallible human character who made mistakes. He gets replaced by a god who is nervous about whether or not his plan will succeed, but who ultimately manages to pull it all off without any major stumbles, thanks to several other lucky occurrences from the past. There was no tension at the end of the book because it was so obvious he would succeed, and not just because I saw the movie. Plans that shouldn’t have worked, work. No one recognizes him or sees through a rather desperate plan. He manages to just have everything he needs to make it work, because he’s a little magpie who collects shiny things that just so happen to always be exactly what he needed later on.

 

That frustration aside, I think I appreciated the way they overcame the antagonist in the novel a bit more in the movie. It made for a much less tense and showy moment, but I like the critique a little better. The movie says it is easy to hide in a faceless crowd if you are faceless as well, but the book says that relying too much on technology to work for you without having a proper understanding of it allows other people to use it against you.

They also changed some of the points that the game world’s creator makes at the end, but I feel like the movie’s point made a bit better than the books. Even though I enjoyed the book, I felt like it was trying to say a few important things about the world but sort of stopped a few steps short of actually saying them because it just assumes you’ll understand. If you enjoy video games and want a cool book about a virtual reality world that doesn’t wind up asking questions about what is real and does the “real” world matter if we live our lives in the virtual one, you’ll enjoy this book. If you dislike pandering or feeling like someone is saying that nothing cool or worthy was created since the 80s, then you probably won’t like this book.