Of Carrots and Worms
This one is about letting yourself win.
This is queued to send at the start of February so obligatory note that I'll be participating once more in Storytelling Collective's Flash Fiction February and that I do share the work I do on Patreon and Comradery before gathering my faves into a collection. Some previous flash from this challenge are shared on my blog.
At the end of November I started playing Fallout: New Vegas again. It had been six years since I'd played it through last--which means I've never played the game in California. The enticement of playing was a carrot I dangled in front of myself for years. Oh finish this novel draft, then you can play. Actually do this other thing now, and you can play. No, you need to [finish/achieve/be better at THIS thing] first.
Partly this was fine, because I know myself and I know my history with focusing too much on something and how certain things can overstimulate the brain worms in a way that makes working on daily life difficult. And it's not like I didn't play games or find distractions, I did one and 2/3 playthroughs of Outer Worlds (a same-vibes game also from Obsidian), I read a lot, sometimes too much. I wasn't depriving myself cruelly, but I was denying myself for more and more complex reasons.
And you need to understand, between one playthrough and the next, FNV was regularly on my mind. I started writing a Twine game about it, when I studied game writing it was with the lens of "why does this game work so well." When we began going to the California Botanic Garden not only was I like "oh, plants that are in this video game" but I was thinking about how the path design at the Calbg is like a master class in wayfinding and in creating a sense of endless paths and choices within a confined space and plan. I was getting closer and closer to finally deciding the Thing That Would Be Enough for me to "earn" a fresh playthrough.
November went to shit. Like, the back half of the year things had been degrading in ways that are nobody but family's business, but November is when they peaked. But we got through it! And there, at the end of November, I realised actually I could do something without earning it--and as it was I think I've done enough in 2023 (even before November) to justify playing a video game to my brain worms. So I fired up Fallout: New Vegas for the third time.
I jokingly posted on Tumblr 1, "Maybe this playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas will fix me."
[Image description: Screencap of a tumblr post that reads "Maybe this playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas will fix me." The tags read: fallout:nv, it's been six years according to timehop, i kept using it as a carrot to finish things but guess what I think I've earned it, godamn cinderella-ing myself with New Vegas, anyway this play through will be my first Benny play through, meche chatters. End ID]
A month later, I realised it might be. I use a pomodoro timer and made a setting for video games--45 minutes/10 minute/45 minutes/25 minutes--that creates a hour and a half of play with stretch/bathroom break in the middle and a longer break during which I can do a small household task. A lot of quests are about 45 minutes per section, or less, so it feels like I'm getting a chunk of story in and I don't feel cheated. Before I can set down and play I need to get something, anything done on one of my little lists. This is less a bribe and more so I don't feel tasks hanging over my while I play. And somehow, all those things together have put me here with 100+ hours of game and endless small tasks done around the house. I've even got larger tasks done, because if you continually pick at something it will get done eventually.
But as much as giving me a strange sort of structure, maybe more than, I'm doing something I enjoy that keeps my brain cooking along various creative paths. It's nice to do nice things, turns out. It's nice for you all over. It feels sort of adjacent to "use the good vanilla", or wearing the nice clothes you like because you like them rather than saving them for special occasions that never come.
Anyway, I'm back in the Mojave and playing a fave type of build--a simple soul with a lot of luck and charisma who is good at fixing things.
from Flickr,
[Image description: Picture taken of a monitor showing the SPECIAL character points builder from Fallout: New Vegas. The point distribution is: 4 Strength, 8 Perception, 6 Endurance, 7 Charisma, 3 Intelligence, 4 Agility, 8 Luck. End ID]
Going below 4 INT in FNV changes your dialogue options, it is not always apparent but it pops up in the most delightful places. I have something I said to a friend once in my commonplace book and I think of it often: "sometimes you need to take the L and open up a new dialogue tree." My one takeaway from Philosophy 101 over 20 years ago was that being like "I dunno," is an answer that can unlock some cool doors if you're willing to risk it. I think Plato... maybe? So I dunno why playing this game is working but it is. I've got some theories but who cares, what a ride.
I've read a couple of things lately that feel like cousins to the way FNV can play out. I mean a protagonist who is sort of thrown into a path they're locked on--whether because they're looking back or because the path has literally got them on rails--and they were both a delight. Fast reads, fun characters, wild worlds.
The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente - There are two distinct parts to this book (it's worth reading the author's note at the end about why each was written) and I really enjoy the change in the narrator's voice between the young her and the older her. There's something about it that isn't pessimistic so much as straightforward. An active choice of optimism despite it all.
The Hike, by Drew Magary - I stg I added this to my holds because it was recommended in a newsletter I follow but damned if I can find it. Imagine a super average white guy of middle age who loves his wife and probably doesn't read much, thrown into a Kelly Link story. There is also a crab.
Have some photos from winter in southern California.
[Image description: An overexposed photograph taken from ground level of the edge of a sidewalk, a baby palm growing in the crack of the curb blurry in the foreground. Across the street, in the background, is a pale peach house with pink trim glowing cold winter light, a large palm tree in the yard and more tall grass-type plants around it. In the far background is a glimpse of a green and blue mountain faded by haze under a very light blue sky. End ID]
[Image description: A photograph of a chaparral plantscape, scrubby bushes in the foreground, with two yucca spikes sticking up, their broccoli floret-like tops green. Behind them are a row of blue fan palms, their blue-green contrasting with the yellower-green of the plants and cactus around them. In the far background is a low ridge of haze-obscured mountain under a soft blue sky scattered with smeared clouds. End ID]
[Image description: A photograph of crooked Joshua trees, with layered spiky trunks and bundles of spike leaves at the ends. They're in silhouette against a hazy grey sky where the sun shines white through, it's circle wrapped by the twisting trunks. End ID]
Finishing off with some links from various places recently in my mind:
- A game on Itch.io about types of narrative choices in game design, "an interactive taxonomy of narrative choices, and a primer to how providing the player with choices can take many forms." (free to play): Types of Narrative Choices by Clara Fernández-Vara
- An article with lots of pictures about interior designer Hazel Dell Brown. I love how fun her designs are and also I will look at rooms with glass brick walls and bright and cheerful lino all day: Hazel Dell Brown of Armstrong Flooring — the most influential residential interior designer of the 20th Century (that you probably never heard of)
- A short story on The Dark about being seen and the horror of it, but make it gentle: Velvet Man by Leone Ross
[1] Which is where you will find me most often, nowadays.