Category — Uncategorized

Thank you to everyone who weighed in with stories or sympathy about losing my Saturday morning routine.  It felt really weird to wake up yesterday and… not play.

But that’s okay because I am replacing the game with a bunch of games.  Instead of putting all of my eggs in a one-game basket, I’m spreading out my gaming energy in a few different places while I drink my coffee.

First and foremost, I’m playing Loot and Legends.  I love Loot and Legends.  I am particularly attached to my wizard, Bathilda.  Sometimes the kids watch me play, and the ChickieNob will shriek, “protect Bathilda!” when her hit points drop.

In the same vein, when Land Fit for Heroes launches in a few days, I’m checking out that gamebook because it has a multi-player mode.  I don’t totally get how multiple people will share a game, but I’m all for finding out.

Next, I am working my way through the IF Comp games.  I plan to vote this year, so I want to play as many games as possible before the November 15th deadline.  I’m also playing Scroll Thief.  I have a huge backlog of interactive fiction to get through.

I am playing the Sherlock game (though I wish I could reset it because I botched the first round), Solitaire, and all of the old Activision and Atari games in the app.

So I have stuff to play.  It’s different, but it’s good.

What games are you playing these days, online or off?

Side note: tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get writing!

UPDATE AT BOTTOM!

I have a song that is driving me crazy.  So far my Facebook feed is stumped.  I am going to give you about a dozen clues, and you are going to help me figure this out.

I heard it on a top 40 station, though it probably wasn’t a top 40 song.  Meaning, I’ve been perusing hit song lists, and nothing feels familiar.  But I get the feeling the song is from this summer, or maybe last spring.

It is a female artist.  She sort of has a scratchy voice.  It sounds like she is singing the song lying down; like she doesn’t have enough energy to sit up.

It is a veeeeeery slow song.  What kicked it off tonight was hearing the song “Say Something” and at first I thought it was MY song, but then a man started singing.  My singer sounds like Alessia Cara crossed with Ellie Goulding singing with complete ennui.  Sort of like a Lana Del Rey.  Sort of… dirge-y.  Or a Florence and the Machine.  Or even an Adele.  Except probably none of those people because I’ve been clicking on their songs all night and haven’t found it.

I can only remember one line from it, and I’m not even remembering it correctly, except that I know it has something where the person is saying “the first” and then rephrases “the second” (or the third…).  Sort of like a vocal strikethrough.  So she’s singing about how she doesn’t get something right the first time, the second or the third time…

Help?

Update:

THE SONG HAS BEEN FOUND!  This is it: Love is Real Try Again by Miranda Dodson.  Christina found it, and she is my favourite favourite favourite person in the world because I had just about given up.  And it has the line I remember: “Why can’t I get it right on the first second time or the third wasted life.”  I can’t even explain the relief I am feeling right now.  Off to buy the song.

Oh my G-d, and it’s about infertility and pregnancy loss.  Yes?  Or am I reading too much into the lyrics?

National Stop Bullying Day is held on the second Wednesday of October, but it kinda sorta could use an awareness day every month.  Every week?  Um… a daily reminder?

A few weeks ago, I read Jon Ronson’s new book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed*, and I’ve been digesting it ever since.  Every time I see a person being skewered on social media, I think about how they would have been a chapter in his book if this moment had occurred earlier.

Isn’t that terrible?

There was a wonderful quote in the book that summed up social media.  For me, it occurred on page 88 out of 336 (because I was reading the e-book):

I once asked a car-crash victim what it had felt like to be in a smashup.  She said her eeriest memory was how one second the car was her friend, working for her … and then a blink of an eye later it had become a jagged weapon of torture — like she was inside an iron maiden.  Her friend had become her worst enemy.

Has social media, which has been a very good friend of mine for many years, become my worst enemy?  No, not quite.  It’s still a community-building space, for me.  But I have a lot of fears about social media, most of them contained in truly scary ideas like Peeple.  And the fact that the people who made Peeple didn’t think there was anything wrong with it as they made it.

Where am I going with all of this?  I have no clue.  Only that sometimes social media feels like an out-of-control train, and I have to hop off it and roll through the grass and observe it from afar until I sense that it is slowing down and I can hop on again.

*A side note: I loved this book.  I devoured it in two or three sittings.  I couldn’t take it in fast enough.  But I often feel that way about Ronson’s books.

Every Saturday morning, I wake up before everyone else and play video games.  It’s my hour or two of “me” time.

I always start out with the same game, a group game that I’ve been playing for years with the same women.  I don’t know these women in the face-to-face world, and I only know them by their avatars, not their full names.  But we’ve been playing this game together for years and usually casually chat during tasks.

They’re like bulletin board friends.

On Saturday morning, I sat down with my coffee and opened the game.  I was greeted by a single message.  I had been kicked out of the group.

I stared at it for the longest time.  You can’t play the game without a group.

I didn’t really feel like playing any video games after that.  I ended up cleaning instead because it was something within my control.  I scrubbed down surfaces and washed sheets and vacuumed the floor.  I sat by myself and cried for a bit because it felt like middle school.  I had no clue what I had done wrong; all I knew was that, without warning, I was no longer welcome at the lunch table.

I applied to join my old group, mostly because I wanted an explanation.  And… everyone acted excited that I was back, but they admitted that it hadn’t been an accident.  They dropped me because they didn’t think I pulled my weight with the group tasks.  No hard feelings, right, Mel, we just really want to win.

But there are hard feelings.  I have hard feelings right now; messy, conflicted, really hurt feelings, especially since I know it’s only a game.  You can get upset about the loss of a real friendship, right?  You can’t really get upset about a game.

This is what I know.  I can focus on single player games; I tend to enjoy them more anyway.  I may have dedicated years to playing with these women, but they don’t even really know me, so how could it be personal?  Plus, they’re right, I’m not going to pull my weight.  They play daily, I play once a week.  They’ve always told me this wasn’t a problem, but clearly it is.  This game will cease to be fun if I try to keep their pace.

And yet, I think they forget that there is a very real person on the other end of that avatar.  It’s something I think we see forgotten daily online — from Twitter to the comment box — that there are very real people on the other side of these social media accounts and blogs. They didn’t think about how I was going to wake up on a Saturday morning and see that the people I’ve been playing with for years dumped me without an explanation.

They put playing the game before the humans playing the game.

Maybe they should.  After all, it’s a game, and the point of the game is to win.  If they don’t think I’m doing enough to help them win, I probably shouldn’t play with them.  And we clearly have different feelings about winning; I enjoy being part of a long-standing group, even if we never win.  And they would rather have a group that wins than the community that comes with the group.  Everyone is allowed to approach games differently.

The game is no longer fun; no longer something I look forward to playing.  My stomach knots as I look at the icon, wondering if I’ll open the game again and see that I’ve been dropped a second time.

It’s okay.  It’s just a game.  If I’m not enjoying myself, I should drop it.

It’s just that I used to like it very very much.

*******

After I wrote this post, I logged into the game and said goodbye to everyone.  My finger hovered over the delete button for a moment.  And then I took a deep breath, confirmed my choice, and closed the game.

I don’t have regrets, but I don’t feel good about saying goodbye to that game; those players.

I went to a Harry Potter festival.  In the rain.

We didn’t play Quidditch this time, and we didn’t dress up.  But I did get a little golden snitch…

…That hides a timely, little secret.

How much fun is that?

I feel like the Pied Piper as kids follow me around, begging to click the clasp.  Nothing is more mesmerizing than a golden snitch swinging from someone’s neck.

Love.

Side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMondays.  Get writing.