Written Validation

Cody didn't speak much anymore, he didn't know how to. At least not to James. Not in a way that was constructive, or that would help him with whatever internal thing he was wrestling. He sat at his computer closing down his internet pages, and opened up a blank note document.

    Tentatively, with James watching over his shoulder, he began to type. 'I can't do this anymore,' he tapped out gently, 'I can't keep making these for you.'

    James ran his fingers through his dark hair, and as Cody turned to look at him he saw something he'd never seen before. Confusion. "I only want to help you, Cody. I don't understand why you won't let me help," James said, reading over the text again. He leaned forward and squinted, as if getting closer to the screen would help him understand; it didn't.

    Cody faced forward again, typing another message, 'struggling to come up with new ideas isn't making me depressed. Low points are just a part of the process.'

    "But you've completely hidden yourself away from everybody, it's... it's like you're a recluse or something.” James shook his head in defiance. Why was Cody being like this? So... so stubborn? Why was he refusing help?

    Cody offered his friend a hard stare accompanied by a frustrated, barely audible sigh. 'When you're around me, I feel physically ill,' he typed, his pace faster now, 'you've so infected my personal space that maybe I did start planting solutions in my work somewhere. Just to make you happy.'

    James’ eyebrows furrowed while his gaze skimmed over the text. He was hurting Cody. Slowly the mist lifted and he understood. "I'm the reason, aren't I? The reason all your inspiration is gone... I poisoned it for you."

    Cody’s silence lingered.

    "I forced you to write things I could try to find meaning in... try to make sense of, try to... use to figure you out," he explained, resting his elbows just above his knees. His stare hit the hot pink carpet Cody had been so adamant on choosing when they'd moved in. He rested his palms over his eyes, "I felt okay as long as I had your work to see myself in. I wanted to know you through the things you wrote, but..." he paused, eyeing Cody through his fingers, "because your work is dark and incomplete, I assumed you were too. I thought you were lonely... desperate for help. The whole time it was me. Searching for... something."

    'My work doesn’t need a solution,' Cody typed, 'why can't you just let it be what it is?'

    James looked completely lost. Everything in his being was telling him that Cody was wrong. Writing should be complete, a piece should have an ending, and it should be good enough to reap external validation. But why?

    “When I showed people your work, they acted like I was the important one, for somehow discovering your talent..." James pursed his lips, chewing on loose skin, "they were interested in what I had to say." If James knew that his life depended on finding something to be driven by other than external validation... what would that even be?

    “Nobody has ever praised anything I've made... I actually cannot conceive of what that would be like," James mused.

    Cody didn't know what he was supposed to do or say, but watching the life slowly drain from his friend's face pained him.
    Without hesitating, he turned to his keyboard again, 'you're not my problem to solve.'

Signed,

Elijah.

Meta Sentience.

27/11/17

Philosophies of Jim

  Madness is so often mistaken for philosophy, so my question to you is; how often do you think philosophy is mistaken for madness? How many times do you think somebody said something comparable to, 'yo, um, guys? I think the earth might be round??' and drew the same reaction? Probably not many, right? Why listen to some crazy old man who supposedly knows nothing outside of himself?

  I don't know. Jim Carrey's been on the brain lately and people seem to think he's going a bit doolally. I believe he's a lot more down to earth than people care to understand. He's unhappy, and has been for a long time due to the amount of time he himself has been stuck as Jim Carrey: Funny-man extraordinaire. He made a promise to himself that he would make ten million before he turned thirty, and he did that. Unfortunately, only now does he realise that wealth doesn't make a sad man happy.

  It breaks my heart to see a man I have so much respect for, an individual who has single-handedly molded my sense of humour into what it is today, in such a discontented and dilapidated state. I would give anything to have a one on one conversation with Jim over Jim Carrey any day of the week. How often do you think people asked for that?

  If there's one thing I can take from Jim, one thing I can shamelessly live by, it's that life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you. You can fail at what you don't want, so you may as well take a chance doing what you love.

  Have a great weekend, everybody.

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
24/11/2017

I'm fine.

  'How are you?'

  I don't know, I wish I had more that I could give. I wish the things I said were leading and that they meant something, that somehow a purpose would poke it's head through the void and make my life meaningful.

  I wish I was brave enough to face my creativity head on, alone, and that I could simply be content with whatever the outcome.

  I wish that my hobbies still gave me the warm, fuzzy feeling they used to before everything turned into craving approval.

  I wish I wasn't so desperate for what I create to be loved and adored, much like myself.

  I wish my definition of success didn't depend on how many people like what I produce.

  I wish happiness was easier to achieve.

  I wish I was enough.

  I'm fine.

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
21/11/2017

Slip 'N' Slide

  Since I was very little, my dad has taken me to our local ice rink almost every single weekend. Ice skating has been our hobby for as long as I can remember, meaning I have a lot of hours on that rink. Being on the ice is freeing... that is until something goes very wrong. My long streak of no injuries had lasted for a solid two or three years until my dad jinxed me. I'm convinced. It was either him or my witch friend putting a curse on me...

  'I've never even seen you fall,' he said during a skate session last week. The following Saturday I had a nice five or ten minutes of skating before my streak was shattered. Somehow a guy managed to trip me and the next thing I'm on the ground looking up at six people who've just seen me slide a good ten metres. I don't specifically remember the falling, just the whole landing on my back with brute force and smacking my head against the ice. That I remember vividly.

I had a rest and finished out the session at a calmer pace than I would usually, but the pain didn't really set in until later. My abdomen started to feel like I'd done two weeks worth of working out in a single day, and lifting my head from a laid down position was excruciating so I'm just assuming I strained my neck. Today is the seventh day of recovery and I'm still in pain, but it'd minimal at this point.

  I didn't go to the hospital or even get checked by a health professional because I'm way too stubborn and I hate that kind of thing, but if you hurt yourself in a similar way then please go get yourself checked. Better to be safe than sorry. All I did was make sure I didn't sleep until I was sure I didn't have a concussion - but even then it's really impossible for me to properly know. Be safe, be sensible.

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
16/11/2017

A Clown Among People

Drawing the menthol smoke into his cold lungs, Oliver allowed it to sit as usual, to fester inside him before exhaling slowly into the blistering night air. The smoke arrogantly wafted into the faces of happy couples as he passed, as if it were obeying the spiteful will of it's conduit, drawing snarls and knitted brows from the victims. The Clown sniggered, but there was no real humour behind it. Every fibre of his being wanted an excuse to ruin somebody's night. He was feeling shitty, so everybody else around him deserved to feel shitty too. It took a powerful force within him to resist the urge to shove an ice cream into a kid's face, or to kick somebody into the sloppy mud.
    Thailand wasn't the place he wanted to be at this time of year. The locals were nice enough, meaning of course their pleasant attitude was unbearable and... hospitable. He'd missed Hallowe'en with Niall, he was missing Bonfire Night, and he would most likely miss Christmas, too. He hated all three, but that simply wasn't the point. There was a constant nagging in his head offering the insight that maybe his father had sent him away on work purposely.
    If he were honest, he wouldn't usually give two fucks if he slept through occasions like those. But seeing Niall's face light up during the holidays was about the only blessing he had, and that had been taken from him. The younger male understood his boyfriend's malicious, hateful nature, and somehow was able to soften him. Perhaps that was the real reason Oliver was angry; he was missing the chance to have life breathed into him. To have a smile on his face caused by somebody that he could make happy.
    He placed the cigarette between his lips for the last time, then dropped it onto the pavement without attempting to douse the stub. Fireworks reflected in the pupils of people he passed, but his own were lined and cold. Lifeless and unforgiving.
    The buzz from his phone pulled him out of the thoughtful smokey haze. Taking it from his jacket pocket, he pressed Niall's text icon. 'Get some sleep tonight. I know what you're like when you're tired and grumpy. x'
    His nostrils flared as he scoffed. 'Telling an insomniac to sleep is like telling a man with a broken leg to get up and walk it off.' he tapped out in response.
    Not ten seconds later came Niall's cheeky reply, 'how about telling a grumpy bastard to lighten up? Is that a better comparison? x'
    Oliver's lips curled at that. 'Go to sleep, I'll call you in the morning.'
    'I love you. x'
    'Good, someone has to. I love you, too. x'
    
Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
14/11/2017

The Beginner's Guide: A Subjective Idea

  There are few things that I can say I'm genuinely in love with, and it's taken me over two years to really think about and find the right words I want to say about this, but here I go. I hope this lives up to what I hope and expect from myself.

  The Beginner's Guide, (TBG), was released onto the Steam store on October 1st of 2015 without much explanation. The only details anybody really knew for a fact was that it was created by Davey Wreden under the studio name Everything Unlimited Ltd. The indie game is Wreden's follow up to his heavily praised piece The Stanley Parable, (TSP) - And by 'heavily praised', I'm saying Wreden went from an unknown game designer to basically what I can only describe as the Messiah of game-based storytelling overnight.

  I would call TBG an experience, to say the least. The game supposedly combats struggles that Wreden faced during the release of TSP; so much attention drawn to one person in such a short period of time, a spotlight that he found almost impossible to escape because finally he was given exactly what he'd been craving. To be adored and idolised, to be questioned and studied in such a way that he could offer his thoughts on everything he'd always wanted to talk about.

  By writing this article and by bringing attention to this game once again, I am desecrating the very message TBG is trying to send. But as somebody who has spent what ought to be described as an unhealthy amount of time thinking about this game, I'm willing to take that step. Besides, I'm almost certain there's still a small part of Wreden that revels in being examined.

  The game for me centres on two ideas:

• Creating and sharing in hopes of reaping some form of external validation to feed the desperate need to be liked and appreciated. And encompassed within that, being content with the belief that what you have created is good and worth the effort it took to make it, regardless of who sees it and what they ultimately think.
• The Artist is Absent.

  As a writer and somebody that used to make games in college, the connection I feel with TBG is fierce. I am in a constant looping struggle of desperately needing to create something for myself, to give me purpose, and then ultimately sharing it with the world. It's like keeping a secret. Don't tell anyone and the secret is safe. It should be as simple as that. But the desire to keep my own secrets is constantly battling the overwhelming, insatiable appetite that can only be satisfied with praise and approval. It's like a cyclic nagging in my head telling me to send what I produce into the world in hopes that other people will like it too, because if they don't then I've wasted my time and I need to be better. This frame of mind is exhausting, and it's dangerous. It is because of this that I related so intensely with the theme of the game.

  The Artist is Absent, (TAIA), is a concept that I have been continuously enamoured and humoured by throughout my writing career, and I noticed specific parts of it interwoven into the game's story. It's hard to talk about relatively to TBG because by saying, 'TBG is about the absence of an artist,' I am then contributing to the concept itself. I am making that assumption because it has never been clarified by Wreden himself. Making the assumption that you understand what the artist meant to do without actually knowing it concretely is TAIA. Imagine; you've been making all sorts of assumptions and telling everybody you could find exactly what a certain thing meant, and then suddenly you're confronted directly by the creator who then tells you flat out that you're either wrong, or there simply is no meaning. That is the absence of an artist.

  The fact that I am telling you all this, the fact that I researched this game enough to somewhat understand the point, (I think... at least I hope), is me taking part in TAIA, which I hate. If you ever studied literature in English class, you might recognise what I'm talking about. 'Yes, the curtains were blue, but what does that mean? Could the author be attempting to cleverly reference an underlying melancholia through the colour of the curtains? Maybe the blue represents an oncoming state of calm that the reader is yet to realise!' Or maybe the curtains were just fucking blue. There is no way to know the meaning behind someone's work unless an artist tells us outright, so why are we so obsessed with plastering an interpretation on something as if it were fact?

  This then cleverly loops back to my previous point. Praise. The excessive need to feel positively validated by some external source because we're so desperate to be told that we're good, that we're right and that what we come up with is brilliant. I've done my best to really avoid the plot because if there's anything you take from this post, it's that I want you to go play the game yourself, or watch a playthrough of it and make up your own mind. The ironic part is that it's impossible not to speculate on the real meaning, which is exactly what the game is telling us not to do. The sheer enigmatic nature of The Beginner's Guide can only be likened to the cat that wants you to pet it and then scratches you two minutes later for doing so, but... it was worth petting that cat, right?

  I'm going to include a couple links here at the bottom for people interested in digging deeper. Until then, see you guys next week.

Davey Wreden: Playing Stories - Aalto University Games Now! (Lecture)

The Artist is Absent: Davey Wreden and The Beginner's Guide

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
10/11/2017

Turn Back

Turn back, turn back from this cave,
You said let me prove that I'm brave, let me keep going,
But the cave goes for miles... and miles, and miles,
And you're so tired.

Click the link, press play now and click the blue words to proceed.

Turn Back

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
07/11/2017

Entry 2

I knew mum's birthday would be a complete and utter fucking disaster. It always is because there's no way of avoiding her sister. We could move to Yemen and that hag would find us. I wouldn't give a shit about her snide attitude if she just left Ronnie out of it, but she always finds an excuse to bring him up so she can rip him apart. I know she does it to get at us, including me, and I wouldn't mind so much but dad's face... it kills me. I just want to see him smile when somebody mentions R, like he used to.

- Adrian