"We spent the whole day shopping, but all she got was a picture."
Connection
Show me the peach sunshine rays at sunrise and the marmalade sunset skies.
Show me the velvet flower petals dressed in dew beside fern and moss.
Show me the trees clawing their way toward radiance and their multicolored leaves blanketing the earth.
Show me the whiskers and wet snout of the animal companion on your daily walks.
Show me the endless streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans you visit to escape the summer's sweltering heat.
Show me the double rainbow you found after a torrential spring shower and the crystalline snowflakes caught on your cotton scarf.
Show me the landmarks I've never seen and the history I've never read when you go adventuring. Teach me the little known facts. Expand my vocabulary of concepts.
Show me the cover of the book you last shed tears over. Show me so I can learn the lessons you did within its pages.
Show me the playlist you pull up in the car and the station you turn to when you can no longer abide the ear-splitting silence. Let me hear the notes of the melody attached to your most precious memory.
Show me the yellowed recipe card handwritten by your great-grandmother so I too can prepare your favorite meal. Teach me the house rules of the games you grew up playing.
Show me the collection of teacups and seashells and pins and coins from foreign nations.
Show me the fingerprint-laced mug of clay and the canvas filled with your uneven brushstrokes.
Show me the table you sanded down and varnished, the dress you sewed with curtain fabric, and the miniature model you glued together and painted.
Show me the steaming loaf of bread fresh from the oven and the crooked wooden spoon carved with your blade.
Show me, not because they are perfect, but because you are the one who made them.
Show me the bright smiles and squinting, starry eyes when you gather with long lost friends and beloved family members.
Show me the laughing faces from your last celebration forever frozen on film.
Show me your milestones, anniversaries, and days of remembrance.
Show me your greatest accomplishment.
Show me your deepest loss.
Show me all the ways we are different.
Show me all the ways we are alike.
Show me there is a light in the abyss of darkness.
Show me we can choose joy and peace over bitterness and war.
Show me we can choose compassion and kindness over cruelty and hatred.
Show me we can choose goodness, faithfulness, self-control, and gentleness in a universe screeching division, deception, degradation, and destruction.
Show me your faith and why you believe it.
Show me what brings you hope.
Show me love.
(Alt title: the only reason I still use social media)
Video games! I enjoy video games. They are what I do in my free time. At the end of the day, after work and chores are done, with the little energy I have before bed, I reach for a console controller.
If it's been a particularly rough or draining day, I pull up a single-player game. If I'm feeling social, I'll jump into a multi-player game and see who else is online. I have several different consoles and I play several different games. It's a form of entertainment.
What amazes me is the impact these games can have. A story in a book can get turned into a video game. A movie can get turned into a video game. A number of board games are also video games. A game can get turned into a movie or tv series or a book (you go, Scott Cawthon). I especially enjoy the subculture of musicians who make video game-based music. Not just the background scores (which are amazing and beautiful), but lyrical pieces that can apply even outside of their intended video game context.
Most games are driven by stories, though they don't have to be. A game can start out as one little character trying to find a dungeon in the middle of the woods with relatively no story at all. And several iterations of the game later, you have a world of interesting characters, epic villains, and cutscenes where the game is heavily story driven. A game's story can be all of: "please protect our village from giant monsters and use their parts to make better weapons so you can fight even bigger monsters." Sometimes the game is about how long you can survive in a specific setting or overcome an incredibly difficult challenge. But these games all started out as an idea someone took the time to develop and share with the world.
Communities are built around those ideas and stories. Friendships are made through those connections. We're in a weird period of time where the majority of people my age grew up playing at least one video game or are familiar with them in concept, even if they never play them.
If I say, "War never changes," a large group of people know that's the opening line from Fallout.
If I say, "Hey, you're finally awake," those are the opening lines in Skyrim.
"Eyes up, Guardian," - Destiny
"Hey, listen!" - Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
"You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" - Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
"Our princess is in another castle" - Mario
"The cake is a lie" - Portal
"Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer" - Darkest Dungeon
"Flawless victory" - Mortal Kombat
"So, you want to hear a story, eh?" - Borderlands
"A wild (insert name here) appears!" - Pokemon (all of them)
"Stay a while and listen" - Diablo
"Lettuce away" - Fire Emblem: Three Houses
(Okay, that one was more of a meme, but moving on...)
There are many different types of games: scary games, puzzle games, farming games, real life simulators (farming, hunting, fishing, flying, truck driving, powerwashing, etc.), platform games, role playing games, strategy games, survival games, sports games, dungeon crawler games, the list goes on and on and on. In this day and age with digital downloads, if you aren't enjoying a game, you can easily switch to a different one without ever leaving the house. *salute to Gamestops and secondhand game shops everywhere*
I played Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Spyro, Megaman, Lego Island, and Crash Banicoot games with my siblings. I played Half-Life, Doom, Heart of Darkness, Tomb Raider, King's Quest, Command and Conquer, and Castlevania with my father. My husband and I played through all of the Halo games while we dated. We've played tons of video games together since then. I've played plenty of games on my own too. I've played single-player, couch co-op, multi-player, and massive multi-player online games. I've played Fire Emblem, Hollow Knight, Runescape, Luigi's Mansion, Guildwars 2, Portal, Lords of the Fallen, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and almost every Lego game out there.
Platformers and creative games are typically my jam, but I also enjoy first person shooters, puzzles, and action adventure games. Btw, if you enjoy platformers, go play Ori and the Blind Forest (and its sequel, Will of the Wisps). They are excellent. I go back and play through both games every few years just to relive the story. Makes me cry every time.
Surprisingly, I didn't love and play Destiny for the looter-shooter aspect. My husband handed me the controller in the middle of a Player vs Player match with his friends and said, "Keep me alive." (I hid under a rock and died instantly when I was found). The mic was hot, but I didn't dare breathe a word, worried about what his friends would say when they found out their friend got swapped out with a girl. After that encounter, I played Destiny specifically so I could get gud and be useful the next time something like that happened.
His friends turned out to be super chill and welcoming, by the way. When I got my own console, they welcomed me into their fireteam, taught me how to play the game, helped me level up, helped complete exotic quests, and we went on to beat several raids together. It was awesome! Much love to my fireteam, you all are forever immortalized as side characters in Fire Sword Chronicles.
We picked up a few more MVPs when we moved on to Call of Duty. I wouldn't have had those experiences and those memories if I didn't learn to play the game.
I don't always have the resources to play the games I want to (time, money, platform, energy). In such cases, I watch someone else play through it. It's like watching a movie or a sport being played out. It allows me to experience the game when I don’t have the ability to play it myself. Sometimes, groups of people streaming gameplay will collaborate for charity events. Viewers watching gamers will donate toward worthy causes. What a time to be alive!
It's not always fun and games. Sometimes your favorite game will get an update that changes a mechanic, making the game lose the thing that made it fun. Sometimes the developer will adopt money grabbing practices that capitalize on the fear of missing out to increase their sales. Sometimes the community will turn sour and super toxic or gatekeep new players. Sometimes a streamer or speed runner you were watching turns out to be a terrible person. Maybe the organization you supported changed their vision or got themselves into hot water and drama that you no longer want to be part of. *cough* NaNoWriMo *cough* Sometimes you need to delete favorite games to make room for new ones. Humans still fail. Disappointments still happen. It's okay to let go, change course, and move on to something else. Something better.
This was supposed to be a less serious post so let's get back to the lighthearted stuff. I'm all about music. Here are some of those gaming songs I was talking about. Enjoy!
"How are you holding up? Because I'm a potato." - Portal 2
