MayVaneDay Studios (Gopher Edition)

early on a thundery Friday morning

published: 8-3-2018

I woke up at three in the morning after a nightmare where I was someone’s patron-saint, guarding them from the dog my grandma’s neighbor has even though their backyard consisted of a giant maze of fenced-in partitions. Almost like a petting zoo. And there were kids running about all through the maze, dodging the dog, and then somehow I ended up doing sick tricks on a motorcycle on a track that looked like it was straight out of Video Game Maker Tycoon while explaining to someone over the phone why so many unwashed men flock to Melee like it were the last boat leaving the Titanic.

On the waking side of the world, I have no goddamn idea why I was even thinking about Melee in the first place, considering that I only played it a grand total of once and I always get roped into playing Subspace on Brawl with my brothers because they’re scared of playing any Smash game where I’m not on their side.

I didn’t get to see the sun rise this morning, but I got to see the sun cast its golden tones over the house of one of our neighbors and then promptly disappear when a tiny thunderstorm rolled in.I got to hear the birds chirping outside and see a spider crawl across the outside side of my bedroom window.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Some of it in a panic-fueled rage after having a mental breakdown thanks to my parents incessantly hounding me about college financial aid. Some of it right before I go to bed, making me pick up my phone after I already said good night to my internet friends and jot down a few notes before my eyes threaten to burn to a crisp. Some of it in the car, blaring music through my headphones so I don’t have to hear my brothers screaming about the latest copy-pasted Teen Titans Go episode.

I have autism. Did you know that? It affects almost every part of my day-to-day existence, even if I’m good at masking as neurotypical for short periods of time or like to delude myself that it doesn’t affect me. For example, there are some textures that I cannot stand, like scrambled eggs or whipped yogurt. I can choke them down so I don’t hurt the cook’s feelings, but then I want to puke after. And I don’t like shirts with words or pictures on the front, although I don’t know if that’s genuinely because of autism or because anything more than solid colors leads to people knowing what I like and then being able to use that knowledge to embarrass me. I can “social” enough to order my own food at a restaurant or email a teacher about a problem I have, but afterwards I feel like I want to nap for a hundred years in a big dark cave. Repetitive sounds drive me up-the-wall insane.

And I have special interests, apparently. Things that I’m inexplicably drawn to like a moth to a flame, even though the only moths I’ve ever seen not on the internet were outside or curled up and dead underneath a table at my grandma’s house when I drummed a TV remote beside it to scare it too much. They’re not addictions, because, while looking at pictures of our dear Poot or Lonk gives me a flutter in my heart, there are times when I need to momentarily forget that video games exist and do adulting. And I can with litle trouble.

When did we decide that being passionate about something was childish? When did we decide that adulthood was to be drab and boring and slave away at a job to accumulate mere wealth and then roll over and die?

I’m not an immature little kid. I’m still me, vehemently so, an individual who works best when allowed to be an individual- but, I’ll admit, setting yourself against the world all the time is so damn tiring. Not every waking moment can be devoted to improving oneself, and I’m ashamed that I even have to say that. People aren’t self-sustaining- people aren’t vacuums. We need to get inspiration from somewhere, from art, no matter what form that art takes- books, music, games.

Part of what lead to my mental crash of early summer this year was the chan mentality of, if something is mainstream, it is trash regardless of its quality. If something couldn’t contribute to a superiority complex over the “normie” masses, then it wasn’t “good enough”. Places like /r/StopGaming are wrong, to an extent: yes, it’s bad to spend seven hours a day playing WoW or DoTA, farming for worthless virtual monies. But there’s nothing wrong with, say, occasionally playing Smash with my friends and family or maybe sinking an hour into a strategy game by myself when I can’t get up the spoons to write. It’s not the medium that matters, it’s the message, it’s what you get out of something that you enjoy. There are lots of things I can study in a game that aren’t just “durr how do I play this game”. There’s the visuals- character design, and the art style used, and all the little intricacies of the game’s map. There’s the audibles- one of the things that gets me through a long day is just sitting down in a quiet place with my headphones and a long playlist. And studying the voice acting in games that have it helps me to recognize other people’s emotions when I encounter them in real life. And there’s lore, which studying can help me recognize common tropes and why people like them and improve my own writing.

Yes, I could do some of these with a book. And I still love to read. But sometimes I just don’t have the mental spoons to quiet my brain enough to read.

But I digress.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been trying something of an experiment with myself. Maybe, if I stop treating everything my brain wanders back to when I’m idle as an “addiction”, maybe my mental health will improve. Maybe my writing block will finally end. Maybe I’ll stop being so much of an insufferable misanthrope.

And guess what?

Big fuckin’ whoop, I was right!

Wow! For the first time in a long time, I don’t see a depression meme and instantly relate! What a foreign sensation, loving and accepting oneself and reaping the benefits is!

I’m nine chapters into the sequel to The Duality of Mankind. I’m still putting the finishing touches on the first book, and then I’ll release it for peer review. Maybe tomorrow? The next day? Sometime real soon, because it’s coming out August 15, exactly two years to the date The Samhain Files came out and I celebrated my first book by going on a walk to a park and catching some Pokemon.

I’m still here! And I’ll always be here!