Sqrlmog Thinks About Family
Jun. 16th, 2019 06:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlSome late night/early morning thoughts on family and gaming. Depressive-sounding, to a degree, but really I'm okay. Skip if dwelling on death or familial seperation overly concerns you.
I don't particularly get on well with my family, but there's one thing I can never deny: My family have always been gamers. Even the extended family.
My uncle Marvin, for example. He was perpetually drunk and even when he wasn't he had this weirdly filthy laugh and rolled-out way of speaking that made you aware that this man spent most of his life with a beer bottle in his hand. He loved gambling, he loved Mad-Libs (one of my prize possessions as a young innocent creature was a book of Mad-Libs he'd filled in with absolutely obscene responses, teaching me many new words without context) and he eventually loved video games a bit too. He'd sit and play anybody's Nintendo for hours, probably until long after they stopped being polite and started actively pushing for him to please leave the house now.
He eventually died of liver failure.
There were my cousins, Randy and John. They lived with us for a while and they got real addicted to my copy of Rad Racer. Passing the controller back and forth between attempts, they'd play the game with a focus I could never quite match on any car game until Outrun 2. They'd make custom mix tapes, with precisely timed-out song lengths. If you hit level 4 BEFORE Aerosmith kicks in, you're good. But if you're not at stage 6 and you hear the Whitesnake, you're fucked. Reset. They went to prison eventually. I know John was in juvie beforehand. Randy I was never sure about. Heavy smokers.
My father introduced me to video games at a young age of course. He was fine most of his life, but took up drinking more and more the closer I got to college. I don't know if he kept it up after we had a huge fight and I walked out to go be gay somewhere else, he probably wasn't drinking when he died of cancer. But him and my uncle John (A different John) would often sit up all night trying to finish Prince of Persia. Uncle John was the first person I ever knew who actually finished a video game, he worked out the puzzles and rescued the princess in that game. This was before he got super-drunk and lodged a pickup truck in the top boughs of a tree one night.
Even my mother (heavy smoker) got hooked on Bejeweled and playing Cribbage online on some kind of ladder site. She tried to claim she didn't play games once and the list of "but" and "well," eventually wound through half the Popcap and Big Fish catalog.
So I kinda feel like the World Health Organization might have a point, classifying excessive gaming as an addictive problem. I don't drink or smoke, but I absolutely play video games sixteen hours a day and have no other life skills.
For various reasons, I'm probably the last of my family line. The transness, the asexuality, and the primarily-attracted-romantically-to-guys pretty well cements that. Sometimes I feel like the cul-de-sac at the end of a long road full of mistakes.
None of my family tree died UNHAPPY, though. In pain, yes, but... they all seemed satisfied with their lives, their families, the way things were going. Maybe by numbing down the world, maybe by fighting against it... Y'know, maybe that's the best one can hope for?
Ah well. Just what I've been thinking about. Terribly morbid, though, isn't it? I wish I had a solid conclusion to brighten the atmosphere.
Maybe I should play more Rad Racer. I always liked that game.
I don't particularly get on well with my family, but there's one thing I can never deny: My family have always been gamers. Even the extended family.
My uncle Marvin, for example. He was perpetually drunk and even when he wasn't he had this weirdly filthy laugh and rolled-out way of speaking that made you aware that this man spent most of his life with a beer bottle in his hand. He loved gambling, he loved Mad-Libs (one of my prize possessions as a young innocent creature was a book of Mad-Libs he'd filled in with absolutely obscene responses, teaching me many new words without context) and he eventually loved video games a bit too. He'd sit and play anybody's Nintendo for hours, probably until long after they stopped being polite and started actively pushing for him to please leave the house now.
He eventually died of liver failure.
There were my cousins, Randy and John. They lived with us for a while and they got real addicted to my copy of Rad Racer. Passing the controller back and forth between attempts, they'd play the game with a focus I could never quite match on any car game until Outrun 2. They'd make custom mix tapes, with precisely timed-out song lengths. If you hit level 4 BEFORE Aerosmith kicks in, you're good. But if you're not at stage 6 and you hear the Whitesnake, you're fucked. Reset. They went to prison eventually. I know John was in juvie beforehand. Randy I was never sure about. Heavy smokers.
My father introduced me to video games at a young age of course. He was fine most of his life, but took up drinking more and more the closer I got to college. I don't know if he kept it up after we had a huge fight and I walked out to go be gay somewhere else, he probably wasn't drinking when he died of cancer. But him and my uncle John (A different John) would often sit up all night trying to finish Prince of Persia. Uncle John was the first person I ever knew who actually finished a video game, he worked out the puzzles and rescued the princess in that game. This was before he got super-drunk and lodged a pickup truck in the top boughs of a tree one night.
Even my mother (heavy smoker) got hooked on Bejeweled and playing Cribbage online on some kind of ladder site. She tried to claim she didn't play games once and the list of "but" and "well," eventually wound through half the Popcap and Big Fish catalog.
So I kinda feel like the World Health Organization might have a point, classifying excessive gaming as an addictive problem. I don't drink or smoke, but I absolutely play video games sixteen hours a day and have no other life skills.
For various reasons, I'm probably the last of my family line. The transness, the asexuality, and the primarily-attracted-romantically-to-guys pretty well cements that. Sometimes I feel like the cul-de-sac at the end of a long road full of mistakes.
None of my family tree died UNHAPPY, though. In pain, yes, but... they all seemed satisfied with their lives, their families, the way things were going. Maybe by numbing down the world, maybe by fighting against it... Y'know, maybe that's the best one can hope for?
Ah well. Just what I've been thinking about. Terribly morbid, though, isn't it? I wish I had a solid conclusion to brighten the atmosphere.
Maybe I should play more Rad Racer. I always liked that game.
