Oh deary, deary, dear.

I warn you now, ladies and gents--this is a nerd rant.

So this morning I'm combing through the comments for a game review--the review for Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction--when I come upon a particular comment from one "michaelmcc827", who writes:

"But, by all means, rate the game higher because it makes you feel like a "badass". Just like every other game this gen, just like ACII, just like Modern Warfare 2, go ahead and rate it higher because it makes you feel like you're good at the game, without actually being good at it. Meanwhile, some of us will be getting our gratification from actually accomplishing something."

"Accomplishing something," he typed--without a hint of irony, I'm sure--doing his best to angrily rebuff the reviewer's notion that the previous games in the Splinter Cell series were too difficult/frustrating.

And we wonder why video games have such a social stigma about them--because gamers such as Michael here type things like that.

I frequent various gaming message boards and chats, etc., in my eternal efforts to stave off boredom, and I've encountered similar individuals on a strangely regular basis: gamers who have convinced themselves that their hobby is some noble deed, some powerful achievement that should be recognized by their peers as a display of superior ability and intelligence; people who use the words "tragic" and "sad" when referring to the "state of the industry" and how "dumbed down it is"--

gamers convinced that by sitting on a couch or in a chair (or flailing wildly at the screen with a Wiimote,) and pressing buttons, they've "accomplished something."

Oh, deary, deary, dear--for those gamers, I have some extremely bad news.

What we are doing is a hobby. We do it (or at least, I do it) in order to entertain ourselves during our downtime, the same way people watch television or movies. We relax, controller in hand, and explore virtual worlds, escaping the drab halls of reality for a little while in order to just sit down and play. To that end, it's a wonderful way to have fun--but for pete's sake, don't fool yourselves into thinking this is a productive endeavor. It's not, and never will be (studies concerning hand-eye coordination notwithstanding.) You are playing a game--there's no gold and glory at the end of the day, no mark on your resume, no promotion, no sudden lurches in your burgeoning maturity.

There is, of course (if the game is good) a sense of catharsis and self-satisfaction; this is fine, this is the whole point of completing the game. But to use phrases such as "accomplishing something" (especially in such a way as to act superior to other people because you play video games) or "tragedy" denotes a complete lack of perspective. If you want a tragedy, look at Haiti, look at Darfur. Those are tragedies--and in comparison, the general downturn in gaming difficulty in order to appeal to a wider market most certainly doesn't deserve the word. And as for "accomplishing something"? Gamers of this particular persuasion, looking to "accomplish something" so they can lord it over others--here's the bad news.

Your princess is in another castle.

i wanna fall asleep under a new sky.

You know, I haven't gotten up to a whole lot in the 22 years I've lived.

I haven't traveled much. I've never even been out of the country, and rarely do I venture out of the Charlotte area (occasionally I drift to Denver, NC, because it's the world's largest sensory deprivation tank, but that's another blog post entirely.) I've been to D.C. and Alberquerque, but both of those were trips with the Metrolina Native American Association; otherwise my travels have been relegated to the Southeastern states. My high school years were largely nondescript; while there were predictable teen-love dramatics and the drama class that birthed my obsession with theater, it was, otherwise, a typical high school career. My family life has been hectic, yes, but really, there's nothing there to really examine that hasn't been examined already by some Lifetime movie or another: alcoholism, sickness, mental disorder--twenty years ago this might all have been shocking, but today it's pretty much par for the course.

The problem here concerns my writing. While I'm perfectly satisfied with my body of work thus far, and content to continue exploring the darker side of being human (man, I'm arrogant these days), I haven't experienced very much. People describe things to me and I think to myself, I'd love to try that. I'd love to drive down the highway at 2 in the morning, or be at a bar when it closes, or visit New York and see a Broadway show. I'd love to sit and listen to a guy on the street play guitar for a few bucks.

I mean, as a writer, one of my primary responsibilities is kind of filtering experience through my perspective and handing you the results, right? Sharing stories with you, even if they're fiction, through my point of view and my style--that's what makes my poetry and short stories worth reading, right? My perspective is what makes my writing unique (or it would be, if I wasn't trying so hard to be David Foster Wallace 2, but that's neither here nor there.)

So I've decided that it's about time I start checking out more of the world around me than just Charlotte, North Carolina. I love this town, and most of the time, this town loves me back--I've been more successful in getting roles and work here than I ever thought I'd be (yes, even a tiny role like Dap in Camelot. You leave my low standards out of this.) But my writing is beginning to stagnate. I catch myself writing phrases over and over again. I find myself coming up with similar ideas for stories and poems. I could honestly clear 10 or 12 pieces out of my gallery at deviantArt and none would be the wiser; while I keep them there for posterity's sake (posterity, oh man, I'm getting ahead of myself) they're extremely similar in both scope and execution. Because I haven't had much in the way of new experiences, I keep filtering the same ones over and over. Even considering my favorite subject matter--see my blog post "On Writing"--this is detrimental.

I guess what I'm saying is that I want to experience more of the world around me so I can write about it more effectively. I'm going to make it a point to meet new people (starting with where I work), go to new places (college, for one; new places in the woods behind my house, for another) and do new things (one of these days I'm going to go to Jackalope Jack's and just hang out 'til the bar's closed. Just to see what it's like.) I need less third-person and more first person narration so I can tell a better story, write a better poem, and improve my ability to entertain and engage you as a reader.

Starting...now, I hope.

Hi, how are you? My name's Chez...

So, uh, you wanna come over and play some video games?

So, I've decided I'm a masochist.

I recently purchased a game called Demon's Souls, for the Playstation 3. This particular title was touted to me by some friends of mine who claimed it was the most engaging video game experience they'd had in years--that the game, despite its simple, bleak aesthetic would end up consuming hours of my life.

Always one to enjoy getting lost somewhere, I relented and picked the game up.

There was an ad for a game called Daikatana years ago, infamous because it declared that "John Romero [the creator of the game] is going to make you his bitch." I've decided that this ad was prophetic, aside from being for the wrong game and by the wrong guy.

Demon's Souls will make you its bitch.

The game's structure goes something like this: you travel to the cursed kingdom of Boletaria, and a tutorial level. Fighting your way through a beautifully-designed, ruined palace using whatever weapons you chose to start with (your character is customizable), you probably won't have much trouble at first. Some typical zombie soldiers, a few madmen--nothing even the most casual gamer would find particularly difficult. Even the Blue-Eyed Knight--a large chap in black armor, with glowing blue eyes and some rather nasty sword attacks--posed a challenge, but nothing insurmountable.

Then comes the Vanguard, a towering, beastly fellow with a massive axe. You know he's dangerous because a boss' health meter stretches across the bottom of the screen. You lunge in to attack, figuring maybe you can just use your shield to block any incoming attacks.

And then his axe crashes into you, because this is your first time playing the game and you have absolutely no clue that you should probably be dodging instead of guarding, and you die.

That's right, the tutorial level ends with you dying.

Your suddenly-liberated soul flees to the Nexus, trapped there by the influence of the Old One, a sleeping god beneath Boletaria. You're greeted by a young woman with strange coverings over her eyes who informs you that you're not going anywhere until the Old One's put back to sleep; moreover, because of the deep fog surrounding Boletaria, you can't leave the Nexus except by way of certain "archstones" that serve as teleports to various areas within the kingdom.

So now you have your set up--go to each world, kill each major archdemon, and put a rousing god back to sleep.

It's around this point that you realize the game is out to get you, rather than you get it.

Your first level is an assault on another, altogether-more-ruined castle. Hoofing it up the stairs, you fight off more zombie soldiers, more madmen, and you reach a section of the battlements where you have a Blue-Eyed Knight to your left, and a Red-Eyed Knight to your right. The game gives no indication that the Red-Eyed Knight is any more dangerous than the Blue, save for that he carries a spear. This is not the case: the Red Eyed Knight will kill you in one hit, and if you engage him at this stage of the game, he will get that one hit. This Red-Eyed Knight, in fact, isn't supposed to be taken down until a later stage in the game, fairly close to the end.

The game does not tell you this.

Further compounding this entire mess is the fact that if you die, the game gets harder. That's right, the game punishes you for not adhering to its strict, absolutely terrified mindset--when you die in Body Form, you lose half of your maximum health and remain in Soul Form until you kill a boss or use a certain item. Furthermore, dying robs you of your Souls--the game's currency for everything, from building stats to buying healing items to repairing and upgrading your equipment. In an almost uncharacteristic concession, you get one chance to recover any lost souls by touching a glowing bloodstain left where you last died. You die before that--well, it's all over but the crying, man.

That's not to say that Demon's Souls makes no effort at all to assist you. The online mode is pretty revolutionary--other players can leave you messages on the ground, indicating any traps or ambushes that may lie in wait ahead. If you're in Soul Form, people can summon you to their game as a phantom in order to help them through the levels--and if you help them complete one, you get your body back. You can also invade other players' worlds and make their day worse, if you want. It's co-op without strictly being co-op, and the game is more fun for it.

I guess the weirdest thing about the game is that, true to my friends' word, I've been sucked in. The hopelessly bleak, dark fantasy aesthetic reminds me a lot of Sabriel by Garth Nix, one of my favorite novels. The combat is a breathless, intense affair even when battling some of the most basic enemies; you're constantly on your toes, gauging risk vs. reward, moving and slashing more cautiously than you would in, say, Zelda. Even at its most frustrating, Demon's Souls dares you onward towards higher accomplishments, accompanied by the consequent risk. You want to see just how awful and difficult the game can get. It turns you into a masochist, suffering through countless sudden deaths and apparently impossible bosses just to get to the next section and do it again.

And you will, let's not lie.

If you played this game, you'd be a masochist too.

On writing (alternate: that poor dead horse)

I love to write--as is evidenced by my adorable optimism that anyone's going to read this blog.

More specifically, I love to write because I love to explore.

A lot of my work centers on darker themes--murder, rage, insanity--and as a result I'm often instructed to "write something happy for once, Chez!" But that's the thing: plenty of writers have gone forging through that particular section of the human psyche, where everything turns out alright and nobody gets hurt. There's a lot to like about that line of thinking, too--it's comforting to think that, despite all the rainy days and cancer patients, there's still something in the world that works, right?

But then we have the other side of the mind, metaphorically speaking. People, despite their best instinctive efforts to the contrary, occasionally have thoughts of a rather more crimson nature. In rare, tragic cases, they sometimes act on these impulses, despite years of social conditioning not to kill or hurt people. Whether it's because of rage, or insanity, or something else altogether above my meager comprehension, these people break themselves almost completely down and kill another human being.

Given that I could never do it, this sort of thing astounds me, intrigues me in the same way a coroner might approach a massive car wreck: certainly the subject is horrid, but it's curious how people managed it.

Of course, right up there with murder on my favorite list of subjects is insanity, and not just the go-nuts-with-a-kitchen-knife-and-make-the-wallpaper-red type, either. There's a million kinds of crazy--dementia, schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, foile a deux, so on--and while a lot of writers make these characters the bad guys, the antagonists and the murderers, I've always thought they made for more interesting narrators, or protagonists. Fight Club, A Clockwork Orange, A Beautiful Mind--all of these movies explore the idea of sociopathic or insane individuals through the individuals themselves, instead of the more clinical study from a third person perspective, and they're more engaging as a result.

Insanity, as a character trait, forces me to look at the world from a different place entirely separate from normal mental vistas--I'm driven to create entirely new systems of logic for my characters (some of which make too much sense, which frightens me) in pursuit of making the psychosis complete and believeable. We don't often get to see this section of the mind in action--a lot of writers shoot more for relatability and realism, and there's nothing wrong with that. These writers will likely be more successful than yours truly--but success has never been the intent with me. It's always been about shining some light on things we don't often talk about, partly out of interest, and partly just because, well, we don't talk about them.

I suppose you could say I'm less interested in beating the dead horse, and more interested in finding out who murdered the poor bastard.

First post!

So, I've finally started a proper blog, instead of Facebook notes or a deviantart.com journal. This is the first post.

For those of you who may have stumbled upon this blog from somewhere else, a mini-biography:

My name is Chesley Allen Oxendine, and I'm 21 years old. I like to fashion myself as a writer, theater geek, and gamer, so that's likely what this blog's going to be about, alongside whatever else inspires me to actually post in it.

That's all for now. I'll probably get started on this thing well and truly tomorrow.