It's been a bit since I looked at this blog, but I wanted to go over some of the things I've done this year. As I write this, I have a list of things that I want to talk about: my reading goal for 2022, progress on my games backlog, my game development ideas.
Thinking over these things, I wonder; are these really the things I want to remember this year for? By deciding to write about these things, I'm implicitly organizing my life around them, using them as my measurement of progress. At the very least, I'm thinking about them, and in doing so, dismissing the other things that happened as less relevant. In light of that, perhaps I'll try and look at all the other things that happened this year.
The year started, more or less, with a holiday in Cowes, Phillip Island. As is sometimes the way of these things, I mostly want to stay inside, while my family wants to go out and do things every day, usually swimming at the beach. Hazel, turning three around the beginning of January, was so much more grown-up than on the last holiday. I remember our 2021 holiday fondly, in part because I was able to entertain Hazel so effortlessly. She wanted to do the same things over and over again: walk up and down the stairs, throw things down the stairs and watch them tumble, "Tom sit here", etc. It was delightful to show her the simple things we take for granted and see the fun and excitement of those things reflected in her reaction.
Another thing that was perhaps so special about the holiday in 2021 was that it coincided with an awakening of my own. I'd watched the Pixar movie "Soul", which was honestly life changing. It showed me how to appreciate the beauty that constantly surrounds me, and it felt like waking up from a 22-year-long stupor. It felt like I'd spent my whole life walking around looking at my feet, and I'd suddenly learned how to look up. In this way, I felt like I was having the same kind of experience that she was; the sudden and uplifting ability to comprehend the world around you and how it works.This year was different. I didn't feel able to make fun for her as much. The games she wants to play are more complex than the year previous, and still so much simpler than anything an adult would be entertained by. Perhaps she's in a gap, one where I'm not sure what to do with her. Luckily, she's pretty good at entertaining herself nowadays.
Zeke was not quite ready to talk yet, but was doing plenty of walking and running. I'm sad to realize I can't remember much of him from the holiday, except for one instance of playing a game with him, and when I tried to escape to my room for some reason (probably to read or watch netflix), he started calling my name to get me back. A little later in the year, I would become firmly established as his favourite, but I'll get to that.
Eden was of an age to do nothing but lie around, drink milk, and cry. Luckily, she did very little of the latter. She spent a lot of time in her bouncer, and she would smile at anyone who made funny noises at her. Not a lot has changed, now she just smiles at you while she toddles around.
I did a fair bit of reading while we were there. I was reading "Mother of Learning" for most of January and a bit of February. It's a really good "Groundhog Day" style story set in a D&D inspired world. The genre has been described as "Progression Fantasy" which I think captures what's so compelling about it: seeing the main character progressing and becoming an incredibly powerful magician. I've seen some people criticize it for being pure power fantasy, but I don't really see that as an issue. It's really a lot of fun, and I recommend it to anyone who is at least as nerdy as me and is willing to read a book that doesn't really have any literary pretensions.
The first book I finished this year was Howl's moving castle. I'd watched the movie in 2021 with Beck and Daniel, and I thought the film was so beautiful that I had to know what it had been adapted from. I bought the trilogy of books on my kindle the very same night (or perhaps it was shortly afterwards, but that doesn't sound as good). There's something so thrilling and terrifying about the unresolved symbolism in the film: what is the meaning of Howl's transformation into a bird? Why does Sophie gradually grow younger when she gets closer to Howl? Why does the main theme make me feel so sad? I actually found the movie a bit upsetting; it was so moving and yet I couldn't grasp the source of its beauty, which stands in contrast to my own philosophy of storytelling. The half-baked thought that enters my mind when I contemplate these things is this: Am I fundamentally wrong about how stories should be told? Have I misunderstood the foundational purpose of storytelling?
If I stop and take the time to really pin down these thoughts and inspect the ideas founding them, I realize that they depend on a belief that there is one correct purpose of storytelling and many wrong ways, and that a story can only be considered great if it matches up to that one correct standard.
But stories are not just things that people have made up. The concept of a story is something that people have made up. Stories, like most other concepts, are tools. They are created in order to serve a purpose. Howl's Moving Castle (the film) is excellent for the purpose of filling me with an ethereal sense of mixed dread and beauty, but not great as an anti-war metaphor.
And importantly, if I want to tell a story, I get to choose what purpose it serves. Because it's all made up anyway, right? This is a slightly scary realization, but one I've been coming to peace with this year. As Solomon said, "Everything is Vanity!" I don't actually believe the broadest interpretation of this adage. I've been gradually delineating the things that are made up, and the things that are "ground truth" so to speak. Most things in our society (government, TV shows, road rules, contracts) are made up, which sounds obvious, but it's easy to act like these are atomic (read "indivisible") units of meaning.
And the reason we think like that is plain to see, if you only observe a one-year-old child learning to speak. "Tom", and "Mum" and "Harry" and "dog" and "car" are all equally atomic units of meaning to a child, even though the first and third are proper nouns, the first three denote specific things in the world, while the latter two denote classes of things, and "Harry" denotes a particular instance of a dog.
It shouldn't be surprising, then, that when we learn words like "Government" and "Police" before we are even able to understand the dynamics of interpersonal interaction in a small group of people that we continue into adulthood believing that the Government decides what people are allowed to do, and we don't even realize how remarkable it is that we almost instinctively believe that if someone does something wrong, then The Police will come and stop them and The Law will determine punitive action.
In summary, Howl's Moving Castle is a good movie. The book was also good, but didn't really move me in the same way.
The next book I read was The Little Prince. I won't summarize the story for you, but suffice to say, it probably would have hit me harder if I'd read it early 2021. It has a little bit of that feeling of "unresolved symbolism" that I mentioned above, but not in a way that upset me at all. It did make me think about some friends who told me about the book. People who had "tamed" me. And I missed them. A lot. One of them I managed to catch up with this month, but I'll get to that. The other is in a different world, and I still miss her, sometimes. (In case it's unclear, I'm not saying she's dead or anything)
The other thing I did on the holiday was watch "Archive 81" on Netflix. I really liked the premise, presentation, and the start of the show. It ended up going in a little bit of a demonic direction that I didn't appreciate, and I guess I didn't like how the backstory ended up panning out, but it had enough great moments that I was pretty happy with the show overall. Shame it's not likely to get a sequel, what with Netflix cutting shows like an axe murderer. It can go in my pile of Netflix shows which were undeservedly discontinued, along with "Great Pretender". It's a very short pile. A pile of two shows.
I didn't realise this at the time, but it's no wonder I had the idea to make "haunted cartridges" and other physical/tactile game experiences around this time. An instance of this idea was to produce an NES cartridge that you could play, but at some point in the game, it would imply that you need to open the cartridge and do something in order to progress. When you actually opened the cartridge, you would find that it's filled up with some kind of fleshy organism with tendrils going everywhere (probably made from molded silicone or something). In order to get on with the game, you would need to perform "surgery" on the creature and rearrange some kind of plugs inside it or something. Perhaps that idea is a little too gross, but it does capture the essence of the sort of experience I want to create; something that kicks players out of the rut of modern gaming and gets them to interact with the game in different and interesting ways.
I can't really think of anything else to say about the holiday, so I think it's time to move on. I managed to make it through the rest of the uni break without getting a job, which was probably not ideal.
A good memory I have from the early part of the year was Heidi's 25th birthday. It was at her new share house over in some far-flung corner of metropolitan Melbourne. I can remember a few good conversations I had there.
It's striking me now that I'm scared of forgetting those conversations. I want to preserve them all here, even though that would take way too long, and would not be interesting to read at all (not that anyone will read this). But the conversations were meaningful to me. One of them was one of the first really good discussions I'd had with Calum. I told him about my idea for a game where you ride bikes around, and after showing him some photos I'd taken while riding around my area, he just got it. It was really nice to just click with someone talking about gamedev. He and I are currently discussing plans to do a game jam together some time in the next couple of months.
And it scares me that this memory might be lost. Why don't the memories I've already lost scare me? Should they? It feels like death. Like a little piece of me dies when I lose that memory.
Rationally, I know it shouldn't. I should be happy that something joyful happened to me, and be happy that I can live to experience more joyful things. It would be nice to believe that one could be happy without any long-term memory. Just going about living in a good way being sufficient. I'm not sure I believe this; it scares me. Perhaps I should get down to business and write that story about card-playing immortals that I've been talking about for ages. It tells the story of some immortal people who gradually forget all of their memories, and yet some element of their personalities remains with them throughout billions of years, and they are able to find the same happinesses and sorrows throughout time.
The conversation I wanted to bring up in particular was about the book I was reading. Someone was trying to guess what the book was about based on the title, "Mother of Learning". Soon, a couple more pitched in, with their own guesses. I can remember one person was particularly insistent on guessing that the story had something to do with a sheep. Was it Josh Griffin? I can't remember. Eventually, I gave them the clue that the title came from an old latin phrase which translated to "Repetition is the Mother of Learning". Later on in the evening, after everyone else had been given the answer, Daniel Grimes gave it a go, with the clue. He immediately guessed the Groundhog Day setting, and guessed it involved a magician trying to end the time loop. It was pretty funny.
It was a beautiful night. Heidi had set up chairs and couches out in the backyard, and we could just sit there and look up at the stars.
I think this ends the part of the year that I look back on fondly. Soon after I was back at university, and barely a couple of weeks in, I had a mental episode. It's hard to explain, but it ends up being a string of panic attacks, generalized anxiety, and debilitating depression. I was barely able to do anything but sit and stare at the wall for a day or two. I wasn't able to go to uni for a week and a half. This one was triggered by me realizing how the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics works, and realizing that it is, indeed, the most elegant solution to the measurement problem. I've since come to decide that I don't actually believe it (for largely metaphysical reasons, if you're curious), but that period of time when I thought it was true was some of the worst I've ever experienced. It was what really kicked off the chain reaction of me questioning whether anything has meaning. As above, I did eventually conclude that there are meaningful things in life: life itself, love, and many other things that I won't or can't express.
I do still wonder though; What should I do with my life? Most of the things that exist in society, professions and the like, are made up. One poetic way I put this question was "Is there anything that I can do which is worthy of the gift of life?" What's worth doing? The answer "Soul" would give is that the best thing to do with your life is live it, which is true, but actually doesn't help me with planning things out. These thoughts make the idea of being a vagrant preacher appealing. Just being in a position where you can let life happen to you, and doing what you can to help the people you find around you.
I'll probably add an interstice talking about books here, just to break up the heavy stuff a little.
The next book I read was Stephen King's "The Gunslinger", first book in the Dark Tower series. There wasn't really much substance to it; it honestly felt like a long prologue, which, I suppose, it was. That being said, I could see and liked the direction it was headed. I'm not sure if I'll go back and read the rest of the series, although that could be my fatalistic of inadequate reading speed complex speaking.
Next was "A Wizard of Earthsea". It was cool, I guess. I don't think I really have anything to say about it, which is, by some standards, the worst thing a book can do. I'm interested enough that I might try the rest of the series.
I quite enjoyed Diana Wynne Jones' "Castle in the Air", sequel to "Howl's Moving Castle". It was a bit silly and rather fun. I'm sure there's something to be said about its cliched depiction of middle eastern culture, but I don't know what exactly should be said and I don't care enough to figure out what it is.
The next book was Jim Butcher's "Storm Front", the first book in "The Dresden Files". It was quite good, and I find my tolerance for low fantasy growing as I experience more of it. When I was a teenager, I thought that the tendency authors had to set all of their stories in our world was arbitrary and boring. Nowadays, I would only say that the tendency authors have to set their stories in naturalistic real-world settings is arbitrary and boring. If that's not character growth, then I don't know what is.
At this point I hit a dry spell of reading for a bit, but managed to pick it back up with Brandon Sanderson's "Skyward Flight" novellas and "Cytonic". Nothing really needs to be said here, I just enjoy everything Sanderson writes. I can see the flaws in the writing and I know why some people don't enjoy the books, but I don't really care. I just love the worlds he makes and the way he puts the story together. I could keep reading his books for the rest of my life (although he's bound to die halfway through some series, and we'll all be left hanging).
"Artemis" by Andy Weir was as almost as excellent as I've come to expect from Andy Weir. I'm not quite sure why it wasn't as good as The Martian and Project Hail Mary. Perhaps it was about the cast of characters, who were a little one-note. Maybe that's why he returned to the bottle format for PHM.
Fun fact: Andy Weir has written a number of pieces of fan fiction, including one for Ready Player One which has since been declared canon by Ernest Cline, and was referenced in Ready Player Two.
The next book I tried to read is what really killed my reading streak. "The Magicians", by Lev Grossman. It was just so miserable. It doesn't even feel like the fantasy setting matters to the story he's trying to tell. It's really about the disenchantment that you experience as you enter adulthood. In a sense, some of the themes of the story match up pretty well with the ideas I was brooding on this year, but the book really tries to plumb the depths of depravity that this mindset can lead to. I tried really hard to push through it, but I eventually decided I couldn't bring myself to finish it. A really dreadful book, in my opinion. George R R Martin said "The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea." Perhaps it's telling that I don't like whiskey, although while I know people like whiskey, it's hard for me to say what anyone would enjoy about this book.
Stepping backwards a bit, in July, I jumped on a plane to Adelaide to stay with my sister and her family. In the lead-up to them moving over, I had, for some reason, become Zeke's favourite uncle. This was only compounded by my trip to Adelaide. Ostensibly, the reason we went over was so Sam could buy his new car (a Hilux Surf), but I was just happy to have my siblings together again. Playing with Zeke almost constantly was really tiring, but it's hard not to be pretty chuffed when a one-year-old starts calling your name whenever you leave the room.
There was a moment, just a few minutes, on the last day Sam and Jord were there (they drove back to Melbourne, while I flew), where James (my brother-in-law) was off in another room with Zeke, and it was Just me, Sam, Jord, and Belle sitting at the table together. Jord told a joke, and we all laughed, and it felt just like when we were growing up. I suddenly felt a little sad, because I realised that we might never have a time like this again; just the four of us, enjoying knowing each other and being known by each other. We were all grown up now, heading different directions in life. I'm crying now as I type this. I know we're never going to stop being in each other's lives, but I'm going to miss that closeness. Belle, Jord, Sam; I love you guys so much.
The thing that finally gave me the time to finish it was house sitting for an aunt. I was on my own for whole days at a time, so I would spend my evenings playing Zelda and watching Yugioh (which I was surprised to find is a better anime than Pokémon). Next, I turned my attention to Metroid, and managed to beat that in a couple of days, although it should be noted that I was playing the "Metroid + Saving" patch created by Snarfblam, which, perhaps most importantly, includes a map, so my experience of the game was probably a lot less frustrating than most people. I definitely recommend anyone interested in exploration-based games plays it, but if you want the comforting amenities most modern games afford, I would suggest you play it in the form of Metroid Planets, an excellent fan creation. I started Metroid 2, but didn't have time to finish it until after my exams were complete. I think Metroid 2 is very playable by modern standards, but is almost completely lacking in the open exploration and sense of lost-ness that the first Metroid thrives on (although some would argue that these are the major pitfalls of the first game). AM2R is to Metroid 2 as Metroid: Zero Mission is to Metroid 2. It's an absolutely incredible fan creation, and it's hard to believe that fans created a game of such high quality without any prospect of financial recompense. Nintendo C&D'ed it, which is kind of like a really sucky "Nintendo Seal of Quality". Like, Nintendo clearly thought the game was of high enough quality to pose a threat to the sales of their upcoming Metroid: Samus Returns, so them hand-picking that game to take down really is an assurance of quality.
After exams, I almost immediately beat Metroid 2, and got started on The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past". I can tell that it really sets the direction for the rest of the series, which I actually find a little disappointing. It's hard for me to really explicate why without going really deep on what I loved about the original game, which is what the video essay was for. Perhaps I'll reformat what I have of the script into a series of blog posts. All that said, I did enjoy ALttP, and with maybe two exceptions, I think it's very approachable and a great place to enter the series for a modern gamer.
Since then, I've played through "Yoku's Island Express", "Kirby's Dream Land", and "Ori and the Blind Forest". Yoku is a delightful little metroidvania/pinball game. I was concerned that I would find the game a bit of a slog, but it was very well paced, and I easily got through it pretty much in one go. Kirby's dream land is a very short, very easy, and very polished platformer. I managed to finish the game while my parents were out on a walk. The thing that's impressive about it, and probably the reason the game is so well remembered is just how adorable everything is, and how much love has been put into every detail of the game. Finally, Ori. I don't know if there has ever been another game of such cinematic excellence. It's like playing a Pixar movie. The chase sequence at the end of the game is so tense and exciting, and really rivals the best chase sequences in cinema (with the caveat that it might not be as exciting to watch as it is to play). The gameplay leaves something to be desired. I think it feels more like a Zelda-inspired platformer than a metroidvania, what with the very Zelda-esque dungeons.
For the first time in a while, I feel like I'm making a little progress on my gaming backlog, but I get the feeling that I'll never actually finish all the games I want to play. I should allow myself to be okay with that, but I really do worry. When I wanted to play Ocarina of Time, I decided to play all of the Zelda games leading up to it, because I felt like I needed to do things in "the right order". I own Final Fantasy 7 on the Nintendo Switch, but I feel like I'm not allowed to play it until I've played Final Fantasy 1-6 through. And then when I decided to play FF1, I started to worry about having an authentic experience of it, and so I decided I had to play the original version on NES. But then I worried that it might be one of those games with a terrible english translation, so I decided to play one of the fan retranslations. You can probably see where this is going. I have a broader problem than just a big backlog. I have some kind of compulsive need to play through every part of it, and ensure I get and "authentic" experience. This is one of those "made-up" things that I could do to deconstruct. Why do I have this desire to play through my backlog? If I find an underlying and more reasonable impetus, then the next question would be "Is there a better way to sate this impetus?"
Anyway, here is my backloggd account, and here is a spreadsheet I made with hour counts from howlongtobeat. It paints a pretty dismal picture of how long it would take to play these games through. Included in the spreadsheet is a shortlist of games I might try to play over the course of the next year.
Time for a final hard hitter. I have a friend from high school who, around 2019, withdrew from our high school friend group. I don't know all the reasons why, but I know it was following some hard experiences she went through. Over the next couple of years, I sent her messages on her birthday, but really didn't put enough effort into reaching out to her. After a couple of years of this, I decided enough was enough, and we needed to organise a catch-up.
The day of the catch-up was shortly after the worst of the flooding we had in our area, some time in early November. I know because I rode my bike to Eltham, and on my way there, almost every footbridge was destroyed, and I had to find detours. I arrived at the meeting spot, a cafe on Main Rd. We hugged, sat down, and had a few moments of awkward silence. I worried for a moment that this was what had happened to our friendship. We'd left it stagnating for too long, and now it had turned into an "old friendship". As it turned out, that wasn't the case. When we realised neither of us were hungry, we made our way outside for a stroll in Alistair Knox Park, and found a spot to sit. And we just talked. About friends, about her partner, about video games, and plenty of other things. At some point, she directed discussion to serious things. I think she felt the need to explain, in some capacity, her absence. I still don't know all the details, but I got the impression that one of the big things was this: She wasn't a Christian anymore, and the prospect of existing within our group of friends was (rightly or wrongly) very stressful for her (e.g. she didn't want to be "that friend" who everyone else was trying to convert back). I don't remember saying anything in response about this, but I hope she felt reassured and welcomed by whatever I did. I'm not really hurt by this; she had to work through some things and needed some time to do it. I just wish she didn't feel she needed to leave altogether. Later, she said that she honestly thought that everyone would be better off without her. This was the thing that really hurt me. I know for certain that I'm not better off without her. She's such a wonderful person, and she's really important to me. I wish I had been able to tell her that. Instead, I tried to speak, and all that came out was a series of pathetic squeaks and tears. We hugged for a minute, and the words of Christ ran through my mind: "this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." I'd found her. I'm happy she's back in my life. I hope she stays in it for a long time.
While I was house sitting, I finally managed to rekindle the enjoyment of reading that Lev Grossman so thoroughly extinguished with a book called "Rivers of London", by Ben Aaronovitch. It's actually rather a lot like the Dresden Files, except thoroughly British. The low-fantasy world didn't really catch my imagination, but the voice of the main character was excellent. Its depiction of London and British culture was captivating, though I suppose I can't speak for its accuracy.
The most recent book I finished was "Empty World" by John Christopher, who also wrote the Tripods trilogy. It was a pretty miserable tale about a boy who is one of the only survivors of a horrific pandemic that sweeps across the world. I actually enjoyed it, not for any of the characters or the plot that makes murphy's law look optimistic, but for the Wyndhamesque presentation of events and exploration of the consequences of said events. While I don't know how his contemporaries responded to his works, I hope John Christopher wasn't too bothered by the fact that his books' best qualities are all stated in comparison to John Wyndham.
Currently I'm reading "The Lost Metal" by Brandon Sanderson. I've been waiting for this book for many years, so I'm very happy it's here.
At the beginning of the year, I set myself a reading goal of 24 books. If you've been keeping count, I've read 14 so far (assuming you count the skyward flight novellas separately. Throw me a bone here!). I'm not going to hit my reading goal, but I'll probably finish another 2-3, so I'm pretty happy with that result. If I keep up this rate of reading and don't buy any more books, then I'd finish my reading backlog within 5 years or so, which is actually very reasonable. That being said, I'm accumulating books at a much higher rate than I'm reading them, and it's hard to think of a reason that will slow down any time soon. I expect that the pool of books that I would like to read is far too big for me to exhaust; I'll have to be a bit pickier.
The last thing that I'd like to cover of this year is creative projects. Pretty much as always, I had a number of interesting ideas, but haven't done much towards actualising any of them. This used to bother me a lot, but it doesn't bother me as much anymore. I used to think as though my purpose was to be a creative being that made brilliant works of art that would be universally recognised as masterpieces. Nowadays, I'm much more at peace with the fact that creating things is an activity I do because I enjoy it, and it doesn't really matter if I have something marketable at the end of the day. Often, thinking and talking about making things is more fun than actually making them. That being said, it would be super duper cool if I could share some of these ideas with people, and actually have something tangible to show for all my hours of dreaming. Towards that end, I've asked for a Gameboy cart flasher for Christmas, and I'm hoping to use it to make some cool physical Gameboy games. If I do end up doing that, I'll post about them on here.
I had two ideas brewing in my head this year. One is about a world that is set entirely underwater, where people find refuge in settlements formed around creatures called airshells, which have a sort of reverse gravitational field and maintain a bubble of air around themselves. It's one of the first times I've had an idea that gradually developed from a rough thought I wasn't all that excited about to one that I think is excellent, and could make a great setting for a story. Normally my ideas start from one image which is really captivating, and immediately implies all the things that arise out of it. This idea took hard work to polish it and extrapolate from it, and I'm very proud of it.
The other idea was to create a hack of a Pokémon game that was haunted, and to flash the game to a cart and donate copies to some op shops. The eventual goal would be to turn it into an ARG of sorts.
If you've read this, even a small part of it, thanks. It's a ridiculous, self-indulgent wall of text, but it's filled with some of the most meaningful experiences I've had this year, so I hope you'll find some meaning in them too.
Oh, and if you are reading this... How in the world did you find it? I doubt there's anywhere on the web that links to it. Please comment and let me know.
