For part one of this three-part status effect miniseries, head over to this post, Status effects are poisons that turn my silent heart to stone

The nightmare continues. What, you thought that it was over? Unfortunately, this is not the case, as status effects are nearly as numerous as the hitpoints of a high-level Final Fantasy character. I don’t want to talk about all of them, as some of them actually make sense. But where’s the fun in that? It’s not the JRPG way, man!

So, instead, let’s take a look at some of the other bizarre, nonsensical, and pointless status effects from the world of RPGs. Is it going to be a fair and accommodating look at them? No. No it is not.


Curse



Voodoo shit. Execration (not excretion). Hexing (not Hexen). The fine art of cursing is something that we’ve probably all tried at some point. That dick stole my money in the lunchroom, so I’m going to recite a curse that will cause his head to be replaced by his ass while he sleeps. They never work, unfortunately, not even with the use of a voodoo doll or an elaborate ritual site crafted in the luggage closet.

However, the world of Final Fantasy does not play by our rules. In fact, a curse is a very dangerous thing to even the greatest of heroes, as a curse spells certain doom for someone who does not act to nullify this terrible affliction. How so? Well...that’s the tricky part. Sometimes, it kills you after a certain number of turns.

Or it makes you unable to use special attacks.

Or it lowers your stats until it is cured.

Or it just up and fucks your whole party with poison, disease, confuse, and sap.

Seriously, can’t someone standardize this shit? I mean, calling it “curse” is pretty damn vague anyway. How about “Bullshit?” It’s far more representative of the actual spell, especially for the last one.

Honestly, what the fuck kind of shit is poison, disease, confuse, and sap all at the same time? For everyone in the party! It basically means that you’re going to slowly lose health in three different ways, and cast random shit on your fellow party members. Good god.

No matter the particular version of curse, it can die in a fire, which would probably be more effective than trying in vain to get one of your characters to heal it.

Confusion



As long as we’re on the subject of stuff that makes no sense, let’s have a chat about confusion. The basic concept behind a confusion status is that a character’s brain got rewired temporarily, and he’s no longer able to tell who is a friend and who is an enemy. He’ll often respond to this with plenty of sword swipes, fire spells, and sometimes even beat the shit out of himself.

Holy hell, where to begin.

First off, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a JRPG enemy, but let’s have a quick look at this guy:



FUCK. OK, now let’s have a lookie here:



What is enemy? I do not know! How do I tell? Is it the one that I most want to have sex with? Hmm, still can’t decide!

Not stupid enough for you? OK, how about this? When you get confused about something, what’s generally your instinctual response? To attack the thing nearest to you? Or to, I don’t know, maybe take a step back for a second, reevaluate the situation, maybe have a nap? I typically don’t get cast-happy when I’m confused, but maybe that’s just me.

I also don’t start cutting myself with a sword. Is this some sort of psychological doppelganger response here? Oh god, I’m confused! I think that perhaps this enemy has replaced the real me with an evil twin, and to defeat this evil, I must defeat myself! I suppose it isn’t that farfetched considering how often you have to fight an evil shadow version of yourself in JRPGs. But, come on man, in that case you don’t actually have to try to light yourself on fire!

How do you cure confusion? In a way that’s more likely to cause confusion than anything: by smacking the afflicted character in the face.

Here’s what the game assumes:

Party member 1: “Oh no, I’m confused! Better start punching myself in the crotch!”
Party member 2: “I’ll save you!” *smacks party member 1 in the crotch*
Party member 1: “My eyes have been opened! You are a gentleman and a scholar.”

Here’s what the situation would really be like.

Party member 1: “Oh no, I’m confused! Better start punching myself in the crotch!”
Party member 2: “I’ll save you!” *smacks party member 1 in the crotch*
Party member 1: “What have you done to my fucking crotch? You’ll die by my hand, you evil bastard!”

The best part of confusion is that you lose all control of your character, which is awesome when your healer gets confused and you happened to be all about of panacea bottles. It’s even better when your whole party gets confused and you get to watch some ultra-violent version of The Three Stooges play out in front of you. Dammit Curly, stop spamming firega.

Stop



Remember playing “Red Light/Green Light” as a kid? When someone yelled “red light,” you had to freeze in place; if you moved, you were out. You could only move when the leader yelled “green light.”

Stop, otherwise known as temporal stasis (I guess), is very similar. Someone yells stop, and you stop. You can’t move, attack, use items, or do anything. You just stand there.

“Oh, you mean like paralysis?” you say. Yes, just like that, except that it doesn’t make any sense! No matter how you understand stop, it’s total bollocks.

Let’s say that it’s just as simple as someone stopping because they’re servile and they were told to, just as in “Red Light/Green Light.” Maybe they just really like that game, and they couldn’t really get over it as a kid. Either way, as their friends die around them, you’d think that they’d say, “Hey, maybe I could recite a healing spell under my breath and still win the game!”

If temporal stasis is more to your liking, you’re going to be disappointed. Temporal stasis means that a person experiences no passage of time, even though the passage of time continues around him. To him, massive amounts of time would pass in an instant. Now, to achieve stasis, the actual space around that person would have to be affected, as would anything that entered that temporal field. So, let’s say a jackass tries to swing a sword at the stopped character. Nope. Impossible, because as soon as that sword enters the temporal stasis field, it would be subject to the same rules as the person in stasis. No movement would be possible, not even that of inertia, so a sword stroke that began outside of the stasis field would still stop instantly.

Also, my scientific logic is as impenetrable as my conception of a stasis field, so step off.

And with that, friends, the prosecution rests. There is nothing left for me to say about status effects, and I hope you’ll agree that we should cast petrify on those little bastards.

But the fun isn’t over yet. This is but part two of three in this series of happy fun. Part three will be a great time, of this I am sure. What could it be, you ask? Well, I’ve talked about all of this existing status effects that I hate…but what about new status effects? A new star is born every day, right? Let’s give birth to some stars, baby.

Gross.

If you’ve played an RPG, be it a JRPG, western RPG, Korean RPG, or ZuluRPG, you’re familiar with the bane of the item-hater’s existence: the status effect. With the power to turn a potential victory into a crushing defeat instantly, they’ve frustrated gamers for years. Why put up with it? What attachment do we have to status effects that developers still feel that it’s a good idea to include such a ridiculous set of rules?

It might be argued that status effects add to the strategy of a game, forcing you to manage not only the dealing and healing of hitpoints, but also the constant threat of being poisoned, silenced, turned to stone, or even turned into a tiny bipedal frog thing. On paper, it might sound great, but the avoidance of status effects so often comes down to that same thing that causes countries to fight wars and families to be torn apart: money. For with enough money, one can keep a constant stock of potions and bracelets devoted to keeping these pesky properties at bay. Then, the battle against status effects becomes more a matter of remembering to visit the shop before embarking on your next adventure than strategically planning out each battle to ensure victory.

Still not convinced that status effects are nothing but a nuisance? Let’s take a quick look at some of the most popular status effects and why they are utterly stupid.

Poison



OK, I’ll start this off with a concession: poison makes a fair bit of sense in some situations. If Edge Maverick, hero and undisputed “best name ever” belt holder, gets bitten by a rattlesnake, that mopey little bitch is going to get poisoned. You probably won’t want to do this, but if you have an antidote bottle in your inventory, you could give it to him and cure his affliction. So far, everything seems to be matching up with the world of the sane.

But, oh no! Skip ahead two seconds, and the rattlesnake has bitten Sarah Palin – uhh, Edge Maverick again, and those green bubbles reappear above his head. Didn’t I just fix this shit? Why do I have to do this like five times in the same damn battle?

Let’s take the case, also from Star Ocean 4, of Bacchus D-79, a cyborg character who also has a tendency to get him dumb ass poisoned despite the fact that he’s covered in more metal than Scandinavia. Oh, you argue, but he was poisoned by that giant green cloud of bile that this little rabbit summoned! Yeah, ‘cause that makes sense.

So, poison, I’m giving you a pass just this once, but not your kin like “on fire,” which acts in the same way in many games as poison. But, what the fuck, didn’t anyone ever teach you “stop, drop and roll?” My five-year-old niece knows that.

Sleep



Ahh, sleep. In the real world, I love sleep. Nothing’s better than birthday-suiting up (save for my socks, of course) and tunneling under the covers. Sleep is truly a joy of this world.

But it is not a joy that extends to the battlefield. No, the notion that someone could fall asleep in the heat of battle…and remain standing…is simply beyond my comprehension. There’s so much wrong with the sleep status effect, but let’s just cover the basics.

For one, battles tend to be pretty noisy. You know, people yelling, reciting spells, dying. This wouldn’t keep them alert? Actually, perhaps that explains the sleepy protagonist trope…they all sleep like comatose babies. Regardless, the idea that someone could fall asleep in the middle of a battle and not wake up instantly is pretty ridiculous. The best part is that some games give you an “alarm clock” item that lets you wake a party member. Yes, because that will be the loudest thing during the battle. Just bang your sword next to his ear!

But what of the waking up process? Games like the Final Fantasy series give you the option of waking up one of your afflicted party members by giving him a stern whack with your weapon. I mean, a full on attack. Really? You can’t hold back for your buddy? Not even a little kick to the shin? A bucket of water to the fact? You have to slice his fucking face off? Well, that’s certainly more effective than Folders in your cup, but oh the missed product placement opportunities!

Silence



Here’s my problem with silence: it begins with the assumption that magic requires speech, which not all games really seem to conform to. Now, for a person to be unable to speak, I imagine that one of three things must happen. Either that person must have such a reduced mental capacity that he loses the ability to speak, his tongue is either removed from his mouth or otherwise seized in some manner, or the lips are temporarily sewn or melded together to completely prevent the escape of sound. All of these are dumb.

On the side of the reduced mental capacity, how do we explain how a person is still able to fight and doesn’t just hang out in the corner watching Monkeybone? The tongue removal thing seems pretty permanent, so I think we have to discredit it since silence is a temporary thing. And the closed mouth? Kind of hard to ingest a potion that way, yes? Unless the use of a Neti Pot is sufficient. Neti Pot = Panacea? This blog just cured cancer…yet still silence plagues us.

Reflect



Yes, there are positive status effects too! Reflect has become a staple in the Final Fantasy world despite the fact that it is shite. Why, you ask, is it thus? Why must I question everything that you love, especially when a spell like reflect actually does make you think more about strategy?

Well, reflect is shite for the simple fact that it is nonsensical. If you’ve ever seen reflect cast, you’ll know that it’s basically this invisible spherical shield that makes you rubber and him glue. Cast, boing, zap.

Where the hell are my physics? I’m pretty sure that if a bigass bolt of lightning strikes from the sky downward on a single point, it’s not magically going to bounce over to the person who cast it, unless it flies back up to Zeus himself, who says “Where the fuck did this come from?” and fortuitously chucks it in what just happens to be the direction of the latest, greatest Pikachu imitator. But that would make for a damn good game.

The best part of reflect is that it makes healing totally useless, even from within the bubble. Tell me how this makes sense: you’re hanging out doing your best Jake Gyllenhaal impression in your reflect bubble when a truck comes out of nowhere and nails you head on. Ouch! You’d better cast heal!

“Hell no,” sez reflect. It’s going to bounce away and heal that truck. “But I’m inside the bubble,” you say. It doesn’t make sense to me either. Where do the forces that create healing power originate from? Why aren’t they inside my bubble! Now you’ve made Jake Gyllenhaal sad. Way to go. You’ll never get to live out that twisted Donnie Darko sex dream now. Not even the bunny will show up.

All right kids, this story is getting kind of long and it’s way past your bedtime, so I think we had better end here for the day and pick up tomorrow night (which has no actual relation to when I’ll write another one of these). But there’s plenty more to learn about these terrible blights upon the world. For now, we’ll just have to cast…STOP.

Heroes and villains have been a staple in gaming since its inception. Of course, this is the same in any storytelling medium, as prototypical stories must contain conflict, and the most direct way to fashion conflict is to introduce a struggle between good and evil and between heroes and villains. It’s universal, and it’s boring.

There’s no hiding the fact that struggles between good and evil have grown tiresome, and the many calls for a renaissance of good and evil in gaming show just how badly many of us want to see stories that discard simple black and white for shades of gray. There have been plenty of efforts to this end, but have any of them truly been successful? We still complain about how poor moral choices have been done in games, as what is meant to be a true moral decision ends up being simply a matter of choosing the good or evil path. It’s not a revolution at all, but simply a new set of curtains covering a stained, broken window.

So, where can good and evil go in games now? Is there a way to truly transform the ways that games treat good and evil? Of course there is, and it’s perhaps not nearly as difficult as a lot of people make it out to be. In fact, there’s a fairly recent game that, for my money, handled the conceptions of good and evil in an impressively original way, and it’s a choice that might surprise you.

Hint: It’s a JRPG. Really!




While dozens of games lately have attempted to put the weight of good and evil into the hands of the player, Tales of Vesperia tells a linear story, and one that, when taken on the surface level, doesn’t do a whole lot differently. The basics of the story involve an evil force that’s threatening to destroy the world, and a villain who hopes to dominate the planet and will do whatever it takes to achieve this goal. What’s impressive, though, is how various characters who seem so unambiguously good surprise you. So let’s take a look at some of those characters who truly seem to distance themselves from what we normally consider heroes and villains. You don’t need to have played the game to read this post, but if you want to avoid spoilers, you might consider putting this aside for now.

Yuri

Yuri is the main character in Tales of Vesperia, and being the main character, is tasked with saving the world. Sounds like a job for a hero, right? In some ways, this holds true for much of the game. Yuri is the type of character who simply acts to do whatever he thinks is right, and most of the time, the character will agree with him. He sets out to recover a stolen item that controls water in his city, and thus his journey begins.

Then, all of a sudden, on a dark city street, Yuri encounters a minor villain in the game, Ragou: one whom you haven’t had to fight at all, as he’s not the fighting type, really. Sure, it’s clear that he’s not your friend, but in the realm of villains, he’s no Sephiroth.

So, on this cold, dark street, what does Yuri do? He assassinates the unarmed Ragou and tosses his body into a river. Hard. Core. The best part? He hardly struggles with the decision.



Later in the game, yet another villain meets the same fate. Cumore is a bit more of a bastard, basically taking an entire town over and using its citizens as slaves. One night, Yuri sneaks into Cumore’s room, wakes him up, chases him out to the desert, and backs him up against a pit of quicksand until he falls in. Then Yuri just watches as Cumore is buried alive by the sand. Hard. Core.

After this scene, we get to see a bit more about Yuri’s justification for his actions, which essentially comes to down to fact that he had no faith in the ability of the justice system, so he went off and exacted his own brand of punishment. His husband (not really), the ideal knight Flynn, gives him a healthy chiding for his actions, but Yuri doesn’t waver from his opinion that the only way to truly stop evil is to stamp it out completely.

The great thing about the game, and where it allows Yuri to succeed as a character, is that it, as a game, never seems to take a stance on the issue. I feel like so many other games fail in moral ambiguity because they write one good choice and one bad choice, and expect us to be the ambiguous ones through the choices that we make. It is not up to us, as players, to create moral ambiguity in your games. It is up to you, writers and developers.

Estelle



Annoying princess character with a sheltered upbringing? Yep. Healer character? Yep. Crappy voice acting? Yep. Wish she was dead after about thirty minutes? One thousand times yep.

Yet as the healer character, Estelle is later given one of the more interesting roles in the game. See, she’s the only character in the game who is able to naturally heal characters not only in battle, but any wounded NPC that the party might come across. Because of this, she’s celebrated throughout the game by nearly everyone you meet.

That is until some flying bird thing calls her an insipid poison, which doesn’t really make any sense, but let’s focus on the poison part for now. Indeed, later in the game, you do find out that she is literally a poison. Her healing ability uses “aer” (stupid term for a familiar thing? Check!), which the world requires in a certain balance. If this balance is interrupted, oops, the world is broken.

So, you come to find out that every time Estelle has used her healing ability, she has killed the world a little bit. That’s heavy.

In all honesty, though, it’s a fantastic way to put a spin on something that we so often see as a universal good. While, in their struggle to defeat the villain of the game, they unquestionably require Estelle’s healing, they also have to come to grips with the fact that it’s destroying the planet. Keep using it and the planet turns into a giant unhappy face. Stop using it and your friends probably fail in their journey and die. It’s a tough choice, and those are the sort of choices in games that make us truly forget about the lines between good and evil and think only of what’s necessary.

So, what can other games learn from this? There’s nothing, nothing in this world or any other world that we should ever treat as universally good or universally evil. The real world does not work that way, so why should a game world? Stop thinking in terms of good and evil and simply think in terms of characters: what does one character want, and what is he or she willing to do to get it? It is this consideration that makes for realistic morality, and, properly executed, will give us far more rewarding games than the cut-and-dry morality of many of this generation’s attempts.

Welcome, friends, welcome. Step into my world.

As some of you swell forum-dwellers might already know, I recently moved into a new apartment, where I make my bed below what can only be described as either an elephant or a human who someone mutated and developed elephant legs. Blehman and I suggested that perhaps someone was constantly hopping in some perpetual twisted sack race. But the jackasses above me are not the topic of this, the topic is my new apartment and the setup therein. I’ve wanted to do a setup post for a while, and now is the time. So, here it is. Come see how I play. Come see how I live. Come marvel at my inability to take a straight photograph. One leg must be longer than the other.

Part 1: The Living Room

It’s what you all came to see, right? This is where the gaming magic happens. So let’s jump right into it, yes? Let’s start off with the TV area.



BRIGHT FLASH. Yeah, there’s that. But otherwise, you can check out the 42’’ Vizio and the happy speaker mounting fun. I actually managed to hang that center channel fairly straight and sort of centered. Kind of proud of that. Also, Police Constable Nicolas Angel makes another appearance—you may remember him from one of the other blogs I’ve done. And then there are, of course, the consoles, but I’m getting to that.



Holy consoles. Poor Wii and PS3 got cut off a little bit there, but you get the idea. Also, good god, look at that wire mess. That’s terrible.

Anyway, what we’ve got here is the Xbox 360, the Dreamcast, the PS2 (which isn’t even hooked up, actually), the Genesis, the SNES, and the Wii on the bottom, then my Onkyo receiver and the PS3 up top. Yep, that’s a lot of consoles in one place, and I managed to situate everything to where I’m not covering any vents. Hooray for airflow. I also have a PSP floating around somewhere, but I didn’t take a picture of it. You can imagine it in your mind. Floating. Around.

Oh, yeah, I has games too!



Yeah, not sure how well you can see everything here, but, basically, I have a lot of shit that I never really watch or listen to. Most of it is pretty boring. I don’t really buy movies anymore, and I only occasionally pick up a physical CD, which is good, because this thing is totally full. And if you can spot a DVD that you want, let me know. Maybe we can trade something in the TRADING FORUM.

Anyway, let’s take a closer look at the games.



So, yeah, there are the 360 games and some random PC games that I found while I was packing up the old apartment. Hooray for having some crappy games! At least I have plenty of good ones as well.



I swear that there’s some sort of organization going on here, but it’s just too brilliant for you to comprehend. That bottom shelf makes sense, at least. Got my pathetic PS3 collection paired up with my less-pathetic PSP collection. Top shelf is where I keep the overflow of PC jewel cases and my Gamecube/Wii collection, which is also pretty pathetic. It actually got a lot more pathetic now that I traded Twilight Princess away. Yikes. I play videogames, I swear.



Look, old stuff! Man, my PS2 collection was so much more badass back in the day before my brother started stealing and selling a bunch of my games. But, anyway, there it is. I also keep retro games in there, but you can’t actually see any of them because I’m a terrible photographer, but they’re not particularly exciting, to be honest. And, yeah, I have music too.



Oh look, I have a bunch of books too! A lot of them are rubbish!



I don’t really know why I thought you’d want to see my Rock Band instruments, but I took the picture, so I’m going to use it, dammit.



Ahh, the real star of the show. If you follow me on Twitter, which you should be doing, then you may have already been introduced to Rowdy, also known as Sparky. He’s an obvious Scrubs reference. He’s also way more awesome than the Scrubs version of Rowdy. Come on, dude is wearing a crazy face mask with 3D goggles. How hardcore is that?

Yes, Rowdy likes to party, and he also likes gaming swag quite a bit. He’s got a nice Fatal Fury hat going on, a KOF sticker, and, of course, a pirate flag. Because he’s hardcore.



The hardcoreness continues! Yeah, dude is smoking a pipe under his mask. That’s healthy. But that’s just how he parties. He’s got a fantastic Cursed Mountain lanyard going on there too. And the coolest part might be that T necklace. Anyone remember the band Tantric? A buddy of mine did their merch, and he sent me that prototype necklace. There are only like 3 of them in the world. Anyway, he’s also wearing a bowtie, but you sadly can’t see it in the photo.



Raiho keeps watch over my kitchen.



So, this is a little shelving thing off of my living room where I keep random crap. On the left, you’ll see Sir Marks-A-Lot, who is the craziest highlighter the world has ever known. Though his highlighting power may have died, his body lives on. I also have two empty halves of coconut. I’ll give you one guess as to what I do with those. Then there’s the Chinese beckoning cat and the swagbasket. Oh, and the empty Devil Summoner 2 box.

So, enough with the living room. Let’s move into my room.

Part 2: The Bedroom



This is my desk area, computer, and whatnot. Incredibly exciting. I think Krow is trying to talk to me down there in the right hand corner. Sorry buddy! Anyway, another room, another crazy wire mess. My chair is crazy comfortable, though.



Thus begins the onslaught of instruments. This here is my electronic drum kit, which is about all I can manage in an apartment, but based on the jackass above me, I’m starting to think that an acoustic drum kit wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Alas.



Real instruments! We’ll see more of the guitars in a second, but you can check out that piano that I suck at playing. It’s really quite a nice 88-key electronic piano, weighted keys and all. I really need to learn how to play it. Now that I actually have room to set it up, perhaps I will! Also, wastebasket.



Ahh, instruments that I actually do know how to play. Left is a Martin electric/acoustic, middle is some shitty bass by, like, Rogue or something. Whatever, it’s a bass. Next is a PRS Custom 24 in whale blue. Ooh baby.

And that’s it! You don’t really need to see my kitchen, do you? It has a sink in it, I’ll tell you that much. Also, my bathroom has a toilet. The toilet is made of porcelain. If any of this sounds totally novel to you, maybe I’ll do a setup post: places where I eat and poop edition.

Otherwise, thanks for taking this journey with me. Please don’t rob me. Instead, hit up the trading forums so I can continue to make my collection as awesome as I want it to be. It’s kind of lacking right now, isn’t it?

This is based somewhat on the album Mercy Falls by Seventh Wonder

His birth was so many years ago that few among us remember it. It was one of little fanfare; many others were born around the same time and often received more attention than our little child. Still, we loved him from the moment he was born.

We named him John Randall Puglisi-Gore, my husband, surprisingly, being the one to push for a hyphenated last name. He liked the initials it created, he would later tell me. JRPG. They flowed, almost as if they meant something. I never admitted it to my husband, but I liked them too.

John grew up fast and was very popular with his elementary school friends. Groups formed on the playground, and while John was in one of the smaller, less-popular groups, those closest to him loved him. They all wanted to be like him, dressing like him, acting like him, and even refusing to speak, just as he did.

Throughout the years, John went through many changes, and like any parent, we loved some of them and resisted others. Perhaps we were too hard on him at times, but after all that has happened, it’s easy to blame myself. Still, his friends, his teachers, and everyone around him often criticized him—his intellectual development wasn’t fast enough, he wasn’t trying to grow up like his peers. I’m sure this took a toll on him emotionally and, in some ways, perhaps even physically.

None of that matters now as I sit beside John’s hospital bed, staring at his comatose body and facing the very real consequences of the decision that I’m about to make. A son should never die before his mother. A mother should never have to kill her son.




Throughout John’s life, he struggled with people’s expectations of him. He first impressed teachers with his dragon warrior drawings, which teachers found to be the first thing to really define John’s intellectual style. A year later, he became prone to fanaticizing, which many praised him for and others suggested wasn’t a constructive use of time, as he did this over and over again despite always saying that "This one will be the last." But it can’t be argued that his early fantasies weren’t creative, giving his school teachers a glimpse into an imagination that they had never experienced before. They also made him more popular with the other kids outside of his small group of friends.

Pretty soon, however, John’s health started to fail. It was extremely slow at first, and no one knew what was wrong. But certain things became apparent to everyone around him. He was no longer creative, many of his teachers argued. Something was fundamentally wrong with his mind.

We noticed other changes too, or, rather, the lack of changes. So much about his appearance and personality wasn’t developing. Those same things that were considered sacred parts of who he was were now his greatest weaknesses.

His creative mind slowed. He drew the same pictures over and over again with only minor changes, keeping so many fundamental flaws in place while his peers overcame them with grace. He created fantasies using the same basic story, character types, and mechanics. He had finally begun to speak, but his speech was poorly delivered and not well-constructed. His speech either made no sense or was horribly difficult to listen to. He lost many friends this way, and even we, his parents, began to chide him for these things. Perhaps we were too hard on him, or perhaps we weren’t hard enough. Regardless, we didn’t know what to do, and we didn’t see any improvement.

His health further deteriorated after he was diagnosed with a condition known as Stagnancy, which affects the mind and the body alike. It was a devastating diagnosis – one that often leads to death within a few short years. He kept many of his creations to himself, not allowing his peers to see them. You could see in his eyes that he was suffering, knowing that he was afflicted by Stagnancy but feeling powerless against it.

Still, the poor boy tried. He tried to become more active in classes rather than simply waiting his turn. Some loved him for this, suggesting that he had finally found a way to reignite his creativity. Others suggested that this new personality trait simply wasn’t who John was. His mind became even more conflicted, and his struggles with Stagnancy only increased. I’ll never forget the day that he asked me, “Do people even want me to beat this disease?” I had no answer.

As more and more time went by, John’s body began to develop alongside his peers, but inside, he experienced only minor improvements. Many of his greatest developments were rejected by his peers, perhaps because they were too weird, or too characteristically “John.” So many of his friends had given up on John and begun to hang out with Wes, a new kid from out of town. Soon, his Stagnancy became so overwhelming that it put him in a coma. Doctors suggested that he might not ever leave that hospital bed again.



It is beside that bed that I have sat so many nights, waiting beside John with the radio on for some signs that he’s still in there. I imagine some nights that he’s fighting a battle with his own body and mind, simply hoping for another chance to show the world what he can do. I would love to afford him that chance, truly I would. He deserves that, at the very least. He always had so much promise.

But so much time has passed, and we’ve seen no change. Has even John given up hope of coming back to life? Has he suffered the ultimate defeat in the face of his torpor?

With the inability to speak for himself, the decision rests upon my shoulders. And I’m tired. We’ve been through countless treatments, hundreds of sleepless nights, and unrealized hopes. Though it may sound insensitive, I simply don’t know how much more I can take. The stresses of a comatose son are nearly more than I can bear.

No…they are more than I can bear. I look at myself in the mirror of the dimly lit hospital room, hearing only the slow, methodical beeping of John’s life support. I think about the hours that I’ve wasted on John. I think it and immediately shudder…how can I have such a thought about someone who I love so much? Am I truly ready to give up?

Before I realize what I’m doing, I have called John’s doctor into the room and uttered two simple words: “do it.” After all this time, he knows exactly what I mean. I reposition the chair in the corner, preferring not to see his face while it happens. I don’t think I could handle that.

So I simply wait for the sound of the machines to cease, and I begin to whisper my thoughts to him, not knowing why. “It’s the only solution. Your body won’t heal. Your mind won’t recover. What else can I do? What else is there?” I say them for myself, I decide.

I close my eyes, knowing that I’ve simply given up. Was this a fight that could have been won? I don’t know.

The sound of the machines cease. The doctor says something to me, but I don’t listen. He leaves the room and shuts the door, and I realize that I’m alone.



The sounds of the radio penetrate my trapped consciousness, and I, as always, am somehow aware of my mother’s presence beside me. Today, something feels different, but I can’t put my finger on it. My struggle somehow seems more hopeless.

For years I’ve fought in this shell of a body to be what the world wanted me to be, and more often than not, I have failed. Stagnancy was something that I was not prepared to overcome, and when I was initially diagnosed, I was taken by surprise and I simply couldn’t fight it. It took me over. I was fighting a battle that I was losing before it began.

Still, I know that I only need time. Just a little more time.

Nothing is sacred. I can change.

I am so ready to live. I want to come alive again. For the first time in my life, I realize what I have to do. I know there’s no one medicine that can cure me of my Stagnancy, but I’m ready to fight. I’m ready to live.

I hear the familiar sound of my doctor enter the room. I want to scream out to him, to beg him to give me the time that I need. I want to call out to my mother, and to everyone who has ever believed in me, and ask for just one more chance.

My mother and the doctor are discussing something, but the radio drowns out their voices. My life support machine beeps in time to the music…how curious.

I feel my mother move away from me. The doctor is close. The radio grows quieter…no, it’s the beeping. It has slowed. It has stopped.

Just a little more time, I say again to myself. I’m so ready to live.

Then, the sound from the radio stops.

I started playing videogames at a very young age – a time when gaming was largely viewed as a hobby for children. This was the prevalent belief in my household as well. As my brother moved on to more adult pursuits like cheva, I decided to take a different path: I’d just stick to the games that I grew up on. Sure, I played 8 or so years on a football team and had plenty of other hobbies, but as they came and went, playing videogames was pretty much the one constant. Despite the waxing and waning of my free time and the amount of games that I played, this hobby never disappeared.

So when I got to high school and the opinion of gaming among many had changed, its status as a child’s hobby began to disappear in a variety of places. In my household, however, this didn’t seem to be the case. Instead, as my mother continued to support my hobby monetarily, she’d begin to comment on my purchases and seemingly censure gaming at the same time. Many times, she’d see a cartoony cover art and ask why I wanted that game since it looked like it was for kids.

Early on, I tried to explain to her that, no, these games weren’t necessarily meant for kids. Videogames, as an industry and an art form, had evolved. A cartoony look was not a way to pander to children, but an artistic choice that defined a game’s style.

But no amount of defense on my part could break my mom’s armor of gaming misunderstanding. In a way, it’s reasonable, as it’s the same disconnect that media outlets who cry out against Mass Effect suffer. If you don’t actually play the games, you’ll have a very hard time understanding what they’re trying to accomplish with any given characteristic, whether it’s an art style, a sex scene, or a smiling anthropomorphic cactus. If you have no desire to understand them, how can someone expect you to sympathize with a gamer’s opinions? Now, at nearly 25, nothing has changed.

That is until one day recently when I believe my mother’s barrier of understanding may finally have been broken. It was the day that she first navigated to Destructoid.



All adult gamers look like that guy, right?

Like a typical mother, mine has always been very interested in reading anything that I write, even if its subject matter is of no interest to her whatsoever. But when I started writing posts on Destructoid, I didn’t bother telling my mom. Out of all of the music stuff I had written in the past, essays about Gravity’s Rainbow and the creepy Shirley Temple references, and unfinished fantasy books that I never should have started in the first place, I figured long, sometimes foul-mouthed posts would be of very, very little interest to her.

Still, writing “The people who have the power to change the world” made me constantly think back to Flower and what I felt was a second layer of that game that I didn’t discuss in the post: the game’s power to change a person’s perception of gaming. I’m actually hoping to do an experiment on this someday—but more on that when it happens.

Anyway, I went ahead and used this as an excuse to bring up my Destructoid writing to my mom. I think I had mentioned the site to her before in passing, and perhaps had even mentioned some writing, but hadn’t really told her what it was about. But one day, I just brought it up, if only to see the reaction.

In my interpretation, this reaction was one of excitement over my writing and utter indifference toward the subject matter, which is pretty much what I expected. Still, I told her how to find that post above and dropped it, thinking that the chances that this conversation would be continued in the future were pretty low.

I was wrong.


There’s no reason to use this picture again other than the fact that it’s very pretty.

This weekend, out of nowhere, my mom brought the post up as she was preparing to help me move. Of course, she said that she read it and enjoyed it, which another mother would do. But to my surprise, she then dropped my post entirely and instead wanted to know about Destructoid.

See, she was surprised by something: she couldn’t believe the level of discussion that took place in the comments. As she put it, she was staggered by both the level of intelligence in the comments and the supportiveness of the people leaving them. It was clear that she was expecting a response to the post akin to YouTube comments, which is probably just about the only exposure she has had to the fine art of internet commenting. I can’t blame her for that.

What it did do was give me the chance to get on my Dtoid soapbox and give a long dithyramb on the merits of the community here, explaining everything from community blogs to PAX, and at the same time working in little hints about just how much there was to say about this hobby that we all share.

And she listened. By damn, she listened.


There’s no reason to use this picture. At all. But dawwww.

At the end of it all, she was truly interested in Destructoid as a community, understanding what it is that draws us to this place and why we just can’t seem to force it out of our minds. I think she understood why I would buy a green shirt with a robot face on it. I think she understood why I would spend large chunks of time playing and writing about videogames.

But perhaps most spectacular of all, I think, at long last, she might understand or at least accept gaming on the whole. While I don’t expect that she still knows what it is about these games that we find compelling and worth writing about, she knows that it isn’t just me out there enjoying a child’s hobby when I should have left it behind years ago. She knows that you’re out there too, and you’re not children, and you’re not stupid.

So, to you, Destructoid readers and writers, thank you for accomplishing in one fell swoop what I could not achieve in nearly 25 years. While I don’t think you’ll ever see my ma’s name gracing an intro post in the forums, just her simple understanding of my beloved hobby is more than enough for me.