Gamer Street Cred list

 Video games I've played more than just a little bit:

I took students to a special event on campus today and part of it was "mingle while eating" before the event started. Students were asking me what video games I had played in my life and honestly... I started thinking about it and it is a lot, but like... now I need a list. This probably won't be entirely chronological, but I might also hyperfixate and put it in some kind of order. We'll see. I may come back and update this as I play something, or remember something, too. But this is what I can think of right now. It's kind of a lot, and it doesn't count games that are ONLY phone games like those "make a pizza parlor" games.

So I got my first game system when I was about 13 years old in 1983, an Atari 2600. I had the basics: Pong, Space Invaders, Othello, Dig Dug, Pitfall, ET (not a great game.) Joust. Indiana Jones. I know I had others; I had like 50 cartridges at one time. The one I remember playing the most was Pitfall. There was a challenge where if you got a certain score, you could take a photo and send it to some address and get a special patch. I got that score, took the photo, but I never was able to talk my mom into taking me to the post office and getting me a stamp. Sad trombone noises. I played Mario, Donkey Kong. All the big 80s console games. All the "arcade games" too. I was BADASS at Street Fighter. Boys would stand near and watch this young looking skinny ass redheaded girl, mouths wide open, while I beat wave after wave. 

It was some time from the later 80s until I played many games again. My sister & I played the HECK out of the game Willow on my nephew's Nintendo in the early 90s. I also obsessively played a game that was Baby versions of Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck and stuff. I think there are a couple of other odd little games in that time frame too. 

Then I got married, went to college, moved around a bit. I did play a couple of games though. 

• Myst. (Stupid, pointless but intriguing still). 
• DOOM. 
• I totally beat it, and am still traumatized by the giant Hell Spider. It always made me vaguely carsick feeling too. 
• There was this odd game on the basic Windows PC that was a puzzle game, that you were supposed to save a code so you could restart levels. No one but me ever got on my computer, and I was HELLAfar on that game and my nephew restarted it. Silent Internal Screaming.  
• Some kind of Xanth related game-- there was a "the door is ajar" trick that I immediately got because I read all of those books in the 80s. I might look it up later. 
• Oregon Trail. Obviously. 
• Wolfenstein. But not much of it. I didn't like it.
  
• Space Quest 6-- a hilarious game I would totally love to play again. 
  

Then there was the game called "Grad School." Lol. There still are a couple of video games in there though.  

• This history based game where you kind of time traveled, and there was a thing where you solved some sort of Ghengis Khan puzzle. I actually still dream about this game. 
• The Sims. 
• I made Sims out of all my friends and once had a friend who was a baby of other friends get taken away from them cause I didn't know you could move the baby bed. Oopsie. I wrote a conference paper about this. Heh. 
• A Bladerunner game. 
• I'll look up the name and update it, but I also ended up being a replicant because of questionable game choices. Heh.
• American McGee's Alice
  
• History Time Travel game: 
• Some kind of game where one thing you did was inhale a fish scale thingy to breathe underwater. I don't really know what this was called. It might have been the same game as the Ghengis Khan one?
  
• A Wheel of Time game that didn't run correctly on my computer. 
• The Longest Journey
  

Then I had TWINS and finished an actual PHD. So there is a bit of a gaming break.

• SO MUCH FARMVILLE. Lol. Don't judge me. It was a weird time on the internet. 
• Life is Strange (I actually have played all of them, but the first one is hereish.
  
• Devil May Cry (one of the sequels.... I don't actually remember which one. It was fun but I never finished it). 
• The Puss in Boots game. 
• A lot of Just Dance
• A LOT of Skylanders with my kids. 
• (You can see that this is the "teaching my kids to be gamers" phase, right? 
• The Last of Us
• Bioshock
• Plants Vs. Zombies
• Plague Inc
  
• The Stanley Parable
  
• That game with the blobby oil thingy.... I don't remember what it's called. Phone games count, right

THEN I got this teaching job and we moved back to Texas and I was pretty much working ALL THE TIME and I didn't play video games when I was teaching. 

• I did play Skyrim a lot one summer. Turns out I am the Dragonborn. Heee.
  
• and Rock Band. 
• Zelda Breath of the Wild.  I didn't finish it though. I think I got about 3/4 done?
• Overwatch. I never played much of it though. I like being the pink haired Russian chick. TANK life! But I don't really like playing in teams.  
• The Outer Worlds (really enjoyed this!! I'd like more like it). 
• Night of the Rabbit
• More Longest Journey Games. All of them. 
  

Until COVID lockdown. Then we were all BORED and there were Switches. 

• Animal Crossing!! Thank goddess for it!
• Stardew Valley
• More Skyrim. 
• Went back and replayed Last of Us and Last of Us 2.
• Frostpunk. I got pretty far in this but then it just got depressing and I felt cold all the time.  
• There was this other apocalypse game where you built up a city and I kind of liked it but it was a little glitchy and then it got sort of too depressing when animals and stuff started attacking. It just got too grindy. 
• Terraria.
• Portal
  
• No Man's Sky
• Max Payne
  
• Fallout-- the one with Boston in it. I don't remember which one that is.  
• Subnautica
• Little Big Planet
  
• All of the Uncharted games. I started with the one that was sort of a spinoff, with the chick, though, and it was the best one.  
• This creepy game on Playstation where you're a pixelated serial killer and the goal is killing people at a party. I honestly kind of hate it but it's fascinating too. 
• Detroit Become Human (really great game, BTW)
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla (LOVED this. Except for the fishing.)
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey
• Murdered, Soul Suspect
  
• Firewatch
• What Remains of Edith Finch
• Stray (I didn't finish it; got stuck in one spot and rage quit)
• Horizon Forbidden Dawn &  Horizon Forbidden West 
• Control
• All the Just Dance games. 
  
• Potioncraft Alchemist Simulator
  
• Elder Scrolls Online LOT of time on this game. Sigh. I hear the platform has mostly died. Sad trombone again.  

VR Games

• Beat Saber 
• Supernatural
• Work Simulator
  
• This Space Pirate Game
• Maestro (like it, but they need more songs)
• Some other dance game
• Tennisy game. Bleh
• I don't really like many of the VR games yet

I have to not really play games during the school year because I get too hyperfixated and forget to actually do my job. And also, it hurts my carpal tunnel. Cause-- see long list of video games above. LOL. 

Romeo + Juliet: Tybalt, Prince of Cats

TYBALT: What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word,
As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee... Romeo and Juliet Act 1 Scene 1. 

My students are watching the 1996 version of Romeo & Juliet in classes this week. I've loved this for a long, long time, but this week, something in that long term hate between Montague and Capulet has made some sense to me in a way that hasn't entirely resonated before. Like-- why does the red team fight the blue team and why do they hold onto that hate for so long that people don't even remember why they were mad in the first place? I've always thought John Leguizamo's performance in this movie was great, and I still do, but I've also always been more drawn to Mercutio, later. Cause I always considered myself a more unaligned, neutral party. Chaotic agent, maybe. And who wouldn't love this beauty?

 

But lately, I kind of understand Tybalt more. Mercutio is just-- messing with everybody. Tybalt has real reasons for things, reasons that make sense to him.

It's really hard to let go of that anger from things that you have no control over. Part of my lecture notes are about the Renaissance Great Chain of Being, about the way people couldn't figure out how to get out of their positions on that chain, in fact, couldn't even imagine it was possible. Until-- everything changed. Apocalyptic change, like the Black Plague, and the Reformation, and the Printing Press, and a Queen of England where there had always been Kings, and a fleet of Military might sunk because of a freak storm (and a little weird luck and unusual fighting style). 

Is it really all that different in the world today? We might not have the great chain of being, but we have these-- hierarchies. And rules. And ways things are supposed to work. Or at least we did. n

A lot of people who aren't in the US right now are saying "Why aren't you doing something about it?" Heck, even in this country, people are saying "why isn't the Democratic party doing something" or "Why isn't Kamala doing something" (like what would she do?) or "where is our HERO?" I think we've watched too many Superhero movies and expect Ironman to come bashing in and changing everything. But even in the moment, where there are obvious supervillains, (and I will argue that we are in an obvious supervillain phase) there are a lot of moments in the drama where regular folks, middle of the chain of being folks, who get smashed around, their cars tossed by the Hulk, their apartments destroyed, or whatever. Half the population snapped away. Sure, they come back in the sequel. But they don't ever really talk about that time period (five years) where that half of the people were gone. It's sort of handwaved in the sequels-- the people snapped away just come back in the middle of the next big battle, no time having passed, but the people left behind experienced all that time. The probably learned to not like the other side of the argument much. It would be hard to just get over it. 

What happens when, years and years later, you grew up with all that Capulets did this, Montagues did that?  I hate peace, hell, all Montagues, and thee. 

We're gonna need to work on that. After we get out of this five year snap, cause the alternative is not good at all, and not a place I want us to stay. I just realllllllllllly hope it doesn't actually take five years. Or lose us 50% of the living population.

Poetry & stuff

When I teach literature, it usually makes me need to write my own. I'm not even trying to claim that I can write even close to any of the poets or writers that I teach. Literally never. 

But still, it makes me feel like putting metaphors & similes & allusions down in my own little obsession filled ways. 

I'm supposed to be exercising, and grading student work, but I was logging into Microsoft Cloud and found a poem I had started I don't even know how long ago and was like OOOOO this is good and then I finished it and added more stuff allusion wise to it and I submitted it for potential publication somewhere. Which is both exciting and nausea causing and I'll totally forget all about it and maybe something will come from it eventually. We'll see. We'll see. Wish me luck. It's about a Greek figure that I've always been fascinated by and my kid is lucky she wasn't named after. (I mean. I did name her after a Greek goddess. Just not this Greek figure.) 

So now I'm gonna go exercise in a virtual reality landscape and grade some poetry mini zines (some of which are TOTALLY AWESOME btw). And then the week ahead includes MUCH SHAKESPEARE SO WOW SUCH JULIETROMEOMURDERMETAPHORTROPES. Many Baz Luhrmans. 

And yet, I'm also constantly on edge and terrified of my government. So there's that, too. Dear rest of the world: some of us didn't choose this, and we're just as outraged and ashamed and enraged. And a little afraid to say it out loud but it's not like they wouldn't have me with a big old "on that list anyway" so there's that. Anywaysssss.... Y'all know Gil Scott Heron said the reason the Revolution Would Not Be Televised was cause it had to come inside your own head, it was a "click moment" when you understand that the fight isn't about what's on TV? But yeah. These days, I think they'd probably try really hard to not put it on TV.