Exhaustion: A User's Guide

I have been busy lately. Extraordinarily, exhaustingly busy. I work at a magazine two days a week and in retail four days. Retail, as anyone who's worked there or had the slightest bit of empathy for somebody else working there, is exhausting - physically and emotionally demanding, with shifts ranging from 9 to 11 hours at a stretch and unpredictable schedules that make it impossible to form any sort of sleep pattern. On top of working an average of 57 hours a week, I have a brick-wall networking calendar that has me all around New York at all hours, and I recently started taking dance classes.

And I'm going to be honest - I love it. I love being busy, seeing people all the time, having things to do and keeping myself moving.

I love it right up to the exact point when my body sits down and goes "nope, sorry, you're not doing anything else today". At which point I ignore it and keep doing things anyway.

Which...may not be the best plan.

So INSTEAD of slowing down, I've decided to expend more of my dwindling energy to build...let's call it a user's guide. A user's guide to exhaustion.


Here goes.


You may find your thoughts trend inward. You may have find it hard to focus on others. You may think yourself selfish. This is normal.

You may find your mind wandering, only to discover it was thinking of nothing at all. This is also normal.

At the same time, you may want to spend more time with others, but forget to contact them. This is also normal.


You may make mistakes.

You will make mistakes.


You may forget things.

You may forget appointments.

You may forget to go to bed.

You may forget that others care.

You may forget to trust.

You may forget to care.


This is all normal.


Your legs may give out. Maybe at the top of the stairs. Or on the train. This is normal.

Your stomach may ache. Your head may ache. This is normal too.


You will push yourself.

You may wonder if you can get up tomorrow.

You may wonder if you can keep doing this.

You can.

You may wonder how.

Dark Chronicle: Fixing the World

                Games do setting better than any other medium. While novels or films might pay some attention to their setting, a game is its setting, just as a novel is its text. Games communicate everything through their settings, so the setting has to be strong and memorable. Luckily, they’re well up to the task. To take advantage of the medium’s natural strength, many games focus on exploration, which is why Minecraft works. But exploration isn’t the whole story. Most exploration-heavy games like Mass Effect or Legend of Zelda still have a clear goal that gives them a sense of impetus and progression, and marks the boundary between a sandbox and an adventure.

                Adventures are about how the heroes become the people they need to be, and about the consequences should they fail. Not all involve travel, but many do, because travel links the heroes’ development to its impact on the world around them. Travel both causes and represents change: the process through which the heroes become the people they need to be. Video games do this fantastically well, because when players interact with a setting, they empathize with it. When Minas Tirith falls in Return of the King, we mourn the heroes’ loss of their home. When the Citadel falls in Mass Effect 3, it’s the place itself we mourn. We’ve connected with and protected it for three games, and when we can’t save it, we feel responsible. We feel like we’ve failed, and we want to take it back. We want to rebuild it.

                We can talk about how saving the world is important, necessary, but no medium can get us as personally and emotionally involved in saving the world as games. Books and movies make us want to save the people in the world, but only games make us want to save the world itself. They make their world our home, and we don’t want to let it break.

                But what if it’s already broken?

                In Dark Chronicle (also titled Dark Cloud 2), a 2001 action-RPG for PS2, you play as a young man named Max, who builds and fixes machines and carries a mysterious red stone around his neck. Max lives in Palm Brinks, a cozy industrial-age walled town closed off from the outside world. Though its railroad once brought in a booming age of exploration and growth, it’s since been shut down, the town gates sealed. The community is tight-knit and warm, but static: few residents know or care much about the world outside. Assassins soon try to take your stone, and you flee the town through the underground aqueducts.

                You step outside to find a world stripped of civilization. Using the railroad your mentor helped reestablish, you travel farther and soon meet Monica, a girl who carries a blue stone to match your red one. Monica is from the future, and grew up on the losing side of a great war against a figure known as Griffon, who has been wiping out humanity across time. Only Palm Brinks remains in the present. The stones have the power of time travel: Monica’s blue stone allows her to jump a hundred years back in time, while Max’s red one allows him to travel a hundred years forward. By using both in tandem, you can plant the seeds of civilization in your time: small settlements that will come into bloom in hers.

                Just because you’ve left Palm Brinks doesn’t mean you’re gone for good. The city is home. It’s a foundation to build on and a cushion to fall on. It supports you when you need to rise, and it’s there to catch you when you collapse. Palm Brinks is that world’s heart, and the love that went into building it oozes from every cobblestone and storefront. No area exemplifies that like the once-bustling train station. With the railroad line shut down, no trains go in and out, no passengers line up, and no clerks sell tickets. Still, the city maintains it like the day it was built. It’s gorgeous and baroque and empty: a place of motion, held in place, filled with potential that could break free with the spark of an engine. Like the world, it’s dormant, not dead. That the developers put so much effort into one area makes Palm Brinks a place that we, the players, care about. It’s not just somewhere we have to go back to; it’s a place we want to go back to, a place we want to protect. It’s not just Max’s home. It’s ours.

                Having a home means you’re not afraid to fall, because there are people who will catch you. The people there give you a place to come back to, and in return, you give them a place to go. Your task is to rebuild civilization, and you can’t have civilization without people – but the only people left are in Palm Brinks! They’re kind people, good people, but they’re complacent, and before they’ll venture out with you, you need to understand them and help them with their problems. You show each of them you care, and they learn to care as well, not just about the people around them, but the world as a whole. You’re the one that builds the settlements, but they live in them and bring them to life. Your adventure becomes everyone’s adventure, and once you’ve helped them become the people they need to be – helped them care, fixed them – they fix the world themselves.

                The people in your settlements aren’t the only ones making things better. There’s a beautifully cyclical nature to the way you rebuild the world. Once you’ve built your friends new homes, you travel to the future to find that over a hundred years, what you’ve built has blossomed under their care. Their descendants in turn give you tools and knowledge that you can carry back to the present and use to help the settlers. Ancestors nourish descendants and descendants nourish ancestors, building between them a world far better than the one that was lost.

You don’t just rebuild the world; you don’t just rebuild the world. You unite two groups of people, creating each other across a hundred years of history, to bring the world through its darkest hours shining brighter than it ever had before. To fix the world, you fix the people in it. You teach them to care, but before that, the game makes you care in a way no other medium could. It shows you a broken place, a beautiful place, a place full of loss but brimming with potential, a place you fall in love with, a place you can make better. And like the train, all it needs from you is a spark to come alive. All it needs for you to do is interact.

And you do. The rest follows.

Fine

This is a little mini-story - well, a scene really - that I wrote during a 30 minute sit-down event with some other writers. Here's the prompt:

1)      Set it in summertime.

2)      Start with a lie.

3)      Include the phrase “Everything’s been different since…”

4)      End with a truth.


            “I’m fine.”

            Anna doesn’t respond. The broken air conditioner buzzes in the background. It’s even louder than the cicadas outside, and just as good at keeping the room cool.

            Jen wipes the sweat from her forehead. “I’m fine.”

           “You’re sitting in the worst café in Dallas, drinking at noon-“

            Jen’s eyes flick to her wineglass – almost empty – then to the waiter – busy.

            “-you just lost your job-“

            “Hey,” Jen interrupts, “that’s not-”

            “-and you’re with me.” Her words hang in the air like a car falling off a cliff. Outside, a particularly daring cicada raises its voice over the drone of the AC unit.

            Jen licks her lips, pondering. “Okay yeah, it seems bad, but when you think about it-”

            “You’re still with me.”

            Anna’s seen corpses give stares less dead than Jen’s.

            “And…” Anna speaks slowly, gauging Jen’s reaction. “I seem to remember you had some. Uh…words. About what you’d do, if you ever saw me again.”

            Jen grips her wineglass, and tiny ripples dance across the surface of the cheap white inside. “Anna…” The word sounds like broken glass between her teeth.

            Okay, yeah. Time to stop on that particular thread. No need to make her mad. Unlike the Jen of years before, the Jen of today probably wouldn’t do anything…but Anna saw no sense in chancing it. Perhaps a safer path was in order. “You wanna…talk about it?”

            “No.”

            “But you’re gonna.”

            “…I am, dammit. See, it’s shit like this that got you booted back in Houston.”

            Anna shrugs. “I wanted out. I got out.”

            The sound Jen makes sits about halfway between a sigh and a growl. “Yeah.” She tosses back the rest of her wine, raises the glass at the waiter. “Lucky fucker.”

            Anna flashes her a grin. “And now that we’re both out, we’ll ride across the desert like Bonnie and…uh…”

            “Louise?”

            Anna’s face hits her palm. “That…didn’t go where I wanted it to.”

            “Never does,” Jen says, but she’s smiling now. She lifts her wineglass. It’s still empty. She shakes her head. “It’s just, everything’s been different since Pedro left.”

            “Pedro left?”

            Jen nods.

            “So, Frankie…”

            “So,” Jen nods. “Frankie.”

            “Shit.”

            “Shit,” Jen agrees.

            The waiter ambles up, wordlessly fills Jen’s glass.

            “You’l be okay?” says Anna.

            Jen picks up her glass. She considers it, makes as if to toss it all back in a single gulp. Then she stops, sets it down. “I’m fine.”

Reviewing the Reviews: Woman in Gold

This weekend a friend and I went to see Woman in Gold. It was a rare pleasure. The story of Holocaust survivor Maria Altmann's struggle to reclaim a stolen portrait of her aunt from the Austrian government, it's tense and fiery, with a lot of heart and a genuine understanding of the family and cultural connections that were at stake during the Holocaust. Reviewers have dismissed it as melodramatic, hamfisted, lacking nuance, and so on. And they're right. It's not subtle! But much like Pacific Rim, the lack of subtlety isn't a bug, it's a feature. Woman in Gold is a tale about avenging a martyred culture, and that kernel of smoldering fury that lies at its heart has no room for subtlety. Woman in Gold is not melodramatic. It's concise.

Woman in Gold deals with cultural trauma with a level of empathy, insight, and clarity I've never seen before in a film. Though it's nominally about art restitution, the soul of it lies in its exploration of how something like the Holocaust, and the subsequent shattering of European Jewish cultural identity, can ripple forward in time and impact those born far later. I'm in particular a huge fan of the film's very conscious decision to evoke that trauma in form of the PURE ANCESTRAL WRATH which permeates every element of the film's construction, and makes the story a very personal one for every Jew who sees it.

It's also one of the rare movies about Jews that's actually about Jews. See, Jews are accustomed to seeing pretty much every movie that OUGHT to be about us - say, anything concerning the Holocaust - focusing instead on some Gentile standing tall with a shield and a cross. (I'm looking at you, Schindler's List.) The fact that a movie which is supposed to be about us for once actually is makes me really happy. (Though the decision to cast the stellar-but-still-very-Gentile Helen Mirren and Tatiana Maslany as very Jewish characters in a very Jewish film is...perplexing, and the decision to cast the mediocre-and-also-very-Gentile Ryan Reynolds is...dubious at best.)

I understand that giving the audience a Gentile they can identify with is an effort to broaden the appeal, but I'm unimpressed, to say the least. By viewing a Jewish story through a Christian lens, that kind of film loses out on any chance it had to inspire genuine understanding of and empathy for its Jews. Wisely, Woman in Gold chooses to focus on perspective and choices of actual Jews, forcing the audience into our shoes for a moment.

Of course, not a single review I read actually cared that Woman in Gold was about Jews. Most of them didn't even seem to notice.

Of the six or so reviews I read, EVERY SINGLE ONE very neatly sidesteps or sidelines the fact that this film is specifically about Jews and Jewish heritage. (The LA Times review doesn't even mention that Altmann is Jewish.)  Many bemoan the film's treatment of the obstructive Austrian government, much as reviewers bemoaned Selma's treatment of Lyndon Johnson. Their complaints, while arguably accurate from a historical standpoint, ignore the unique perspectives from which these films were written.

From the perspective of an oppressed minority, someone who understands your plight, who has the power to help you, but refuses to do so is a villain. Full stop. They may not be the worst you have to face, they may even be redeemable, but in the moment their utter apathy to your existence is horrific. As a uniquely black film, Selma therefore portrays Lyndon Johnson, who had the power to protect blacks with the stroke of a pen but chose to drag his heels, negatively. Woman in Gold portrays the Austrian government, which could have easily returned the plundered art pieces to their rightful owners but chose to hold on to them for its own benefit, in a similar light.

The worst reviews come from the most venerable publications. The New York Times, Telegraph, and Variety each pretend Woman in Gold is really about the concept of art ownership - the question of whether art can or should be a possession, the extent to which it should be democratized, and so on. It's an important topic, and would be a good critique to bring up if this were literally any other movie about art. In the case of Woman in Gold, however, shifting the discussion to the airy topic of art theory ignores the very pressing fact that A GENOCIDE HAPPENED, and the overriding demand for justice outweighs any theoretical, academic concerns about who owns art.

The damage of that singular attempt to plunder, enslave, and ultimately annihilate an entire people ripples forward through history in the form of a cultural scar that manifests as alienation, isolation, and a host of other insidious problems invisible to those who don't live with them. The enormity of the crime is such that it can NEVER be repaid. You can't give us back our grandparents and great-grandparents, our heritage, our homes, our ability to live our lives without the lurking suspicion that some day, for no particular reason, Gentiles might collectively decide it's a good time to murder us all.

You can never pay it back. But you can at LEAST admit what you did. You can at LEAST give us back the things you stole.

These critics' attempts to divert the discussion are painfully ironic, considering that Woman in Gold depicts the Austrian government of using the exact same tactics to ignore, belittle, and delay. Particularly striking was a moment early in the movie, when a minor Austrian functionary meets Maria to say - (pardon the paraphrasing, I'm working from memory) -  "Not everything is about the Holocaust. Why don't you people ever quit?"

But that's a code, and it's a simple one. It means, "Your existence is inconvenient to me. Can you please stop?"

And when a film critic tries to turn a conversation about the Holocaust into one about art theory, all I can hear is that. Just below the surface.


(By the way, I'm planning to start writing more reviews of reviews! If you liked this piece, and there's a review of a book/movie/show you want me to talk about...just comment right below!)

Jupiter Ascending gets smart about fairytales

You might have heard a lot of noise about this movie Jupiter Ascending. You might have heard it's awful, it's poorly written, it's very very pretty, it's awful (but in the fun way). There's a common strain here. Because this movie is openly glittery, absurd, fantastic, and ridiculous, because it embraces its tropes and archetypes so wholeheartedly, nobody seems to take it very seriously.

So let's try taking it seriously.

I mean what the heck, right?

A few critics have called Jupiter Ascending a fairytale, a Cinderella in space. They're half right - it's a fairytale, but it's not Cinderella. Well, not entirely. It's also Tam Lin.

For people who didn't grow up around a bunch of Celtic folklore nerds like I did, Tam Lin is the classic tale of a lord's daughter who wanders into the Forbidden Wood (because seriously has anyone ever done literally anything other than wander into that place?) There she meets hunky knight Tam Lin, sleeps with him, goes home, finds out she's pregnant, goes back, finds out he lives there because he was enthralled by fairies an unspecified number of years ago, and finds out ADDITIONALLY that the fairy queen plans to kill him in about a month. One month later she steps out to meet him and proceeds to save his life by yanking him off a horse and wrestling him to the ground as he transforms into all manner of wriggling wildlife. She then hauls off  takes home her young shirtless nubile prize noble knight and marries him. The end!

Make no mistake - Jupiter Ascending is a fairytale. Even though they're technically human the Abrasax are fairies, and even though he's a shirtless doggie on SPACE ROLLER SKATES Caine is Tam Lin. That's important, because in fairytales - the old fairytales - fairies are monsters in their just as vicious and vampires and werewolves. And the Wachowskis understand them better than almost any creator I've seen barring Terry Pratchett (may he rest in peace).

At the core, every monster we imagine up represents something dark in ourselves. Vampires represent repressed desire. Werewolves represent repressed fury. And fairies...fairies represent privilege.

As beings of privilege, fairies are Better Than You, and they'll do anything to convince you of that - trick and tempt you, bedazzle and beguile you - because if they can convince that your place is at their heel, they've won. You're theirs.

But here's the secret. Fairies can't create. They can't build, they can't craft, they can't cook or weave or write. All they can do is consume, so they build a world of glamour to convince others to feed their hunger. That glamour is a lie of course, but it's a lie strong enough to build empires on.

Privilege is the fairies' power, but it's also their weakness, because they're bound to follow its rules. They have to behave gracefully and glamorously, or they lose their grace and their glamour. And once you can see beyond all that glitz and glamour and power...they're really not that impressive. You don't have to serve them anymore.

You're free.

Let's take a look at that word. Glamour. It's no coincidence that we use it, a word once used for the magic of lies, to describe the rich and powerful in our own society. Much as the fairies shape beauty and lies, our elites use their power and their privilege to shape the definition of beauty to their own ends. We see them in magazines and advertisements in all their glory, and we want to be like that - and we can. For just a small monetary fee right now, and a larger fee over time in the form our diminishing self-worth.

It's a glamour more real than any fairy could cast.

But it's still just a lie.

Mass Effect 3: How It Ended, and How I Wasn't Angry

So if you know me in anything more than passing, you're probably familiar with my astounding lack of knowledge of most things pop-culture related. See, I grew up in absence of TV, and almost all of my media exposure was in the form of books and video games. 

I AM getting better at it, though! This partly involves working at a media and culture magazine, and partly involves furiously catching up on Things I Need To See. Mostly shows. Occasionally movies. And on very, very rare occasions, games. 

Specifically, certain very high profile games which I somehow missed.

Anyway, last weekend I went up to Boston to visit some friends who happen to possess a certain game system I lack, with a certain game I've been dying to finish for a year and a half. And as luck would have it, a certain winter storm trapped me there with little to do but finish that game.

So I'm happy to announce that in my latest round of Catching Up On Media Several Years Too Late For Anyone To Care...I finally finished Mass Effect 3.

(I know I often discuss at length the Nature and Meaning of whatever bit of media I'm analyzing, but I'm going to assume you know how Mass Effect 3 ends. I knew how it ended before I even started the first game. If it's not a spoiler to mention that Snape kills Trinity with Rosebud, this isn't a spoiler either. My point is, if you somehow avoided the colossal storm of angry nerds yelling after the game's release, and you don't want spoilers, now is your last chance to stop reading.)

(Okay, I can see you didn't. Good!)

Even after dying six or seven times in the grueling penultimate battle - even after dying several more times against the final (very weak) enemy because I had played as a Vanguard and this fight me to actually aim at something - I finished Mass Effect 3.

It was a wonderful and immensely experience, and...

(I'm now stuffing my ears with wax in preparation for the inevitable tide of Nerd Rage.)

(Speaking of Nerd Rage, I'm going to be consistently referring to Shepard as female. If that bothers you, you should probably do some serious thinking about your personal opinions on women and why you hold them.)

...I'm not counting the ending out when I say I iked it.

I can understand the problems that a lot of people had with the ending. It was imperfect. But I don’t think its flaws were nearly as serious as the bulk of the audience seems to think. All in all I’m about…80% satisfied with it.

But because the bulk of the audience seems to have developed an cultish dedication to shitting on the ending, I feel like I have to answer that.

So. Let’s talk about the 20% I didn't like.

There were two major I could see with the ending. First was the change in tone between the intense, emotional, and philosophical clash between Shepard, Anderson, and the Illusive Man and the almost serene atmosphere of the scene following it. As I saw it, this reflected nothing so much as Shepard's utter exhaustion. She's not just tired, she's so tired she can't even feel it.

That  worked because the Crucible was always going to be a moment of transcendence, and to accept that sort of moment, to really understand it, we have to be at our lowest. To accept the miracle, we have to first accept that the situation is beyond our control. Mass Effect 3 is about bringing the entire galaxy to this point. That's what the Crucible is. It's a shot in the dark, a prayer, because nothing else will work - and at the end, Shepard accepts it. She can rest.

But it is a change in tone, and it's a sudden one. Jarring, even. And for some people, that can break immersion.

The other problem was that the writers didn't seem to put much thought put into what Synthesis would actually mean.

I don't have any problem with the fact that Synthesis existed. The Crucible was this Big Thing We Don’t Know What It Does, which would naturally to several options, any of which would be drastic, even transcendent moments that altered the very nature of this universe

Destroy was always going to be on the table, because that was Shepard's original goal. Control was going to be an option too, because that was the Illusive Man's goal. But both are awful! The writers did well to recognize that. Destroy doesn’t fix anything in the grand scheme - it takes care of the Reapers in the short term, but does nothing to stop them from coming back. It's not a step forward; it's a step back. A Shepard who chooses Destroy is the one who looks over the precipice, sees the new world that could be, and backs away. It's passive, and it's cowardly.

Control is worse because, to quote the main villain of Fullmetal Alchemist, the whole point of it is to CAST GOD DOWN FROM THE HEAVENS AND BECOME A PERFECT BEING. It's the height of arrogance. There is a reason Control is the Illusive Man's goal, and it's the same reason he's a villain. Sure, you can say it’s better because Shepard is better, but that’s EXACTLY THE SAME ARGUMENT THE ILLUSIVE MAN MAKES. That he deserves to rule the universe  because he's BETTER than other people. Which should be a pretty big damn hint that it's wrong.

(And the less we say about Refusal, the better.)

No, the correct answer always had to be something truly transcendent. An active choice, a choice to move the world forward, but without arrogance. Synthesis was clearly supposed to be that option. It needed to be there.

But…I don’t think the writers really fully thought through what it actually entailed? Or if they did, they didn’t work hard enough to make those thought processes clear to us - basically, they got lazy.

Yes, there needed to be a moment of transcendent, universal change. But why did that moment of transcendent change SPECIFICALLY have to be the union of synthetics and organics? I’m sure there are arguments, good ones - but I’d like to see them within the actual game. And I'd ideally like to see them made by someone who ISN’T A REAPER.

I's okay though. It's okay.

I’m like 80% satisfied.

Writing is hard

God damn but it is hard.

The thing I've come to understand about my brain is that while it loves writing, it doesn't actually like it. At all. For me, writing is grinding, painful, hard, hard work, and my lazy brain will take literally any excuse to avoid doing it. 

A lot of those excuses are pretty good! I'm a busy person. I work 5-6 days a week at two jobs, have all sorts of chores to handle, as well as this burning and inconvenient need for a social life. There's a certain amount of give and take, but they're all important, and I can't just ignore them.

Sometimes, it's not quite like that. Sometimes, when I actual I sit down at a blank page, blink, shrug, and go "nah". Actually if my brain had its way that's how it would be all the time. In order to actually get to putting down words I more or less have to put my own brain in a headlock and wrestle it into a very talkative submission. Occasionally it drops into hyperfocus mode and I blaze through page after page, but more often it never stops being a struggle. It will take any opportunity to get distracted, think about something else, even just check out for awhile.

When I look at a blank page I see a trackless wasteland, obscured in fog. It's terrifying. I can look a certain distance ahead, but if I plan too much I end up being wrong and having to revise, and if I don't plan enough I look at that big white page and mumble "perhaps tomorrow".

But that's the thing about creation. It doesn't get done tomorrow; it gets done today. Tomorrow is this nebulous ideal time to write when the light is perfect and you're energetic and awake and the stars have all aligned in the house of Saturn or something. Tomorrow is a hypothetical. When the next day becomes today, you'll still be planning to write tomorrow, and then the day after that, and the day after that.

Don't do that.

Write today.