Cellar Door

Before I begin there is one thing you have to know. The Longest Journey is the greatest video game ever. Now, I know what you’re thinking – taste is subjective; there is no definitive best or worst when it comes to art and media. Well, you’re wrong. I’m sorry. Don’t worry though, these things happen.

The Longest Journey was very influential for me. As with most things people idealize, I discovered it when I was young. I was only 12 when I first played The Longest Journey all the way back in 2000. Originally, the game wasn’t even mine. It was actually a Christmas gift for my brother, who decided shortly afterwards that it wasn’t his style. My mother would have flipped out if she had realized I was playing an M-rated game (for nudity and profanity, in case you’re wondering), which only made me more eager to try it out.

Immediately I was drawn in. I had never played a game that was so dedicated to its story. It was a story. It spanned two worlds and had a protagonist that felt real in a way most games still struggle to achieve. I cheated the first time I got stuck – in fact, I printed out an entire walkthrough so I could consult it without having to stop and look online (which was a lot more cumbersome back in 2000, you whippersnappers). For once I didn’t care about the normal objectives like completing puzzles, all I wanted was to watch the story unfold. I finished the story and then started it all over again. I’ve played through the entire game at least 20 times over the years.

The second game, Dreamfall, was released in 2006. That game can be summed up with the phrase ‘loose ends’. The kind of loose ends that leave you wondering if certain characters are alive or not. At the time they said their were plans to release “Dreamfall Chapters,” a series of episodes that would complete the story.

It was postponed. Put on indefinite delay. Is it still considered vaporware if they never began working on it?

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Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the first RPG I ever attempted to play. I say attempt because I never finished the game – in fact, I never got very far into the game at all.

I’ve been playing video games for as long as I can remember, but I really sucked at them until I was a teenager. It seems that most gamers have memories of fighting hard to complete titles when they were a kid. The only game I remember finishing as a kid was Super Mario Bros. on the Super Nintendo. Even then, my older brother probably completed several of those levels for me, even though I don’t really remember now. I just wasn’t good enough to finish them when I was little. I didn’t have the dexterity to finish something straight-forward like a racing game, and I wasn’t patient enough to play through anything long or complex.

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I was a pretentious teenager.  Objectively, I’m not that far removed from my teenage years, but it all feels like a lifetime ago.  Maybe every decade is like that, maybe once I reach 30 I’ll look back at my 20’s and think I was acting like an idiot.  

However, the pretension of my teenage years is undeniable. I never thought I was perfect, or that I knew absolutely everything, but I did think I had better taste than my peers. So when everyone else was busy reading Harry Potter I was forcing my way through the “classics.” Sometimes the language was too much for me, like with Paradise Lost and The Odyssey. If you’re wondering what kind of idiot teenager thinks she can get through Paradise Lost on her own, Congratulations! You have now found her. There are scholars who have dedicated their whole careers to studying John Milton’s epic and I thought I’d breeze through it in a week.

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Today I found a link to this interesting site that analyzes inputted text and compares it to famous authors. On a whim I decided to enter an old blog post (“Science-Fiction, Fantasy, and Some Thoughts on Classification”) and see what I got. Lo and behold, Kurt Vonnegut came up on the answer page. Vonnegut is my favorite author, so I feel extremely flattered, but also a little concerned. How much of my writing is influenced by the authors I admire? I would like to believe I have a unique style, that over the years I have found a voice that fits me. I don’t want to mime anyone, even someone whose writing has always amazed me. On the other hand, I realize it’s impossible to escape the influence of other writers. No one’s writing exists in a vacuum; we are all influenced by what has come before. If I switched styles to escape Vonnegut’s influence I would only end up sounding exactly like someone else. I’ll keep writing as it comes naturally to me, because there’s no other writer I’d rather (subconsciously) imitate than Vonnegut

So I spent the past several days making an elaborate spreadsheet of my “To Be Read” List, and classifying each book by genre. This endeavor has only reinforced my long-held belief that authors are very tricky people.  

Classifying literature is difficult.  A book is a multi-faceted creation, and most have elements of multiple genres. Sometimes the dominant genre is clear – if it involves hunting down a killer it’s a mystery - but usually it’s not. A book taking place in the future might not necessarily be science-fiction. If it’s the far-flung future (as in, 50+ years) then it’s almost always sci-fi - but if it’s the immediate future (anywhere from 1-10 years) its classification becomes murky. Many books that take place in the immediate future are actually about the present. They’re about the ramifications of modern society; our world with one key difference, or one aspect taken to a more extreme degree. In cases like that, I’d argue the book is still considered Contemporary fiction. Contemporary is a monster of its own though, and I’m not ready to tackle that one.

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