#oneaday Day 748: Life Story

Do you think your own life story would make for an interesting read? Playing Katawa Shoujo rather extensively today has made me give some consideration to the thought, since that game, despite its distinctive — perhaps even unique — premise (“This is a game about disabled girls”) is in fact simply about human relationships and real life struggles. There’s no “epicness” whatsoever; the world doesn’t come to an end; there’s no “save the princess” (except metaphorically speaking in a few instances) — it’s just about normal people (albeit normal people with disabilities) living their lives.

When I think back on my own life, there are certainly plenty of interesting stories there for the telling, and given that we human beings are creatures of habit, often doomed to make the same mistakes over and over, it’s fairly unlikely that there’s nobody out there who could relate to some of them.

This makes the concept of autobiographies an interesting one. The shelves in ailing book retailers such as Smith’s and Waterstone’s are crammed with celebrity “autobiographies” (and I use the term loosely, since a large proportion of them are ghost-written), all called things like My Story, My Struggle or My Tits. (I made the last one up, but it’s arguably what anything written by Katie Price should be called, given the thing that most people seem to know her for.)

The thing is, though, I almost feel like I’d rather read the autobiography of someone who hasn’t led a remarkable life. Someone who hasn’t shot to stardom, done something remarkable with their life. It works for fictional narratives, as anyone who has read Generation X by Douglas Coupland will attest — a narrative in which nothing happens (relatively speaking) means that you can focus more on the people and their reactions to everyday, relatable situations and then, crucially, compare your own experiences and prejudices to the same situations. This is something that you simply can’t do with most celebrity works — they live in such a different world to the rest of us, almost like caricatures or fictional characters.

The “fiction” part of celebrities is arguably at least partly true. Their public perception is something which is carefully managed and controlled by their publicists. The truth behind their lives is often a lot more mundane, but by extension, more relatable. The trouble is, the only time we ever see that mundane everyday life is through the snooping lens of a paparazzi, or in some cringeworthy ITV documentary showing Peter Andre having a wank or something. The very nature of their celebrity makes them feel different, makes observing them doing “natural” things feel like an alien thing to do. Celebrity Big Brother proves this particularly aptly by being actually rather boring. In this case, it’s because they’re in an artificial situation where they’re forced to be mundane, and this, once again, is merely a fictional representation of a real life.

Normal (i.e. non-celebrity) people, though, the non-player characters of society? Those are the ones I’d be interested in reading about. Whether it’s the story of how they got into a fight with their supposed best friend at school over what one of them assumed was light-hearted teasing and the other one took to heart, or the tale of how they met their partner. Truth and real life is sometimes far stranger than fiction, and it’s worth remembering that sometimes.

I’m not sure what my point is, to be honest. I don’t think I’m planning on writing an autobiography (though certain fragments of this blog stray into that territory sometimes, admittedly) but I feel like doing so in one form or another might be an interesting experience. Perhaps writing fictionalised stories based on real-life experiences? It’s something I’ve toyed with the idea of before, but have always shied away from for fear of people connecting the dots too much and making judgements about things I’ve been through.

That said, despite my shyness in a lot of social situations, I’m generally pretty up-front with talking about past struggles if given the opportunity to do so, so perhaps it might not be such a terrible idea to do, after all. The truest, most resonant creative works come from the creator tapping into their own personal well of past experiences and pain.

Anyone reading this tapped into the contents of their own soul and memory and come up with something great?

#oneaday Day 723: The Escapist

Escapism is cool, and an important and valid method of keeping yourself sane.

There are, of course, many means of escapism, and different ones are more or less effective for different people.

There’s the escapism of a child giving life to the inanimate lumps of plastic they own. Without a child, they’re just potential, models, things to be looked at, without life. Add a child (or, more specifically, someone still in possession of their childish imagination) and something magical happens — those objects come alive, engaging in battles to save the galaxy; heroic adventures; or even just a normal day in a normal street.

Then there’s the escapism of a good book. Good readers also have one of the most important qualities of a good creative writer: that active imagination again. But it’s partly also down to the writer to create a convincing world, compelling characters and a reason for the reader to commit part of their life to staring at tiny print on paper, e-ink or an LCD display. You know a writer’s done their job properly if you can hear the characters’ voices, see the places they’re in, picture the things they’re doing. And as a reader, your interpretation and mental imagery might not be the same as the writer (or indeed the person who designed the book’s cover) — but that doesn’t make it any less valid.

There’s the escapism of interactive entertainment. Instead of passively observing an unfolding story, you become a part of it. It doesn’t have to be an explicit narrative as such — a long game of Civilization tells a story just as much as a chapter of Heavy Rain. The meaning the player chooses to assign to the experience is what makes interactive entertainment special.

There’s the escapism of film. Increasingly designed as memorable spectacles these days, a good movie plunges its audience into darkness before casting them into a whole new world. It could be a world of giant robots; of CIA agents; of lads on a pulling holiday. For those couple of hours, though, the outside world ceases to matter.

There’s the escapism of a good TV show. When you find a show that resonates with you, you want to stick with those characters, to find out what makes them tick, what they want, what they find challenging. You cheer for their successes, feel bad when they encounter adversity. And given the amount of time you spend with the cast of a TV show over an average run of a moderately successful show these days, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the cast might feel like “friends” by the time you’re through.

And there’s the escapism of music. Music is a powerful imaginative stimulus, but again it means different things to different people. For one person it might stir up dormant memories. For another it might encourage them to close their eyes and picture themselves in a whole new situation. For yet another it might have an emotional impact that reflects the things that are weighing on their mind at that moment in time. And for others still it might inspire them to push forward, to do their best, to power on through and do that extra set at the gym, or put in that extra bit of effort at homework.

All this isn’t even getting into what it means to be a creator as opposed to a consumer of all the above media, either.

The fact is, the world can be, at times, a bit of a sucky place. Having something comforting to escape into, whatever form that escapism might take, is important. No-one likes to feel trapped, so even if it’s only for a short while, escape into something awesome and return to the real world refreshed, invigorated and ready to tackle any challenges it might want to throw at you.

And if you don’t have anything like that? Then you need to have more fun.

#oneaday Day 693: Endings

I finished L.A. Noire tonight. MILD SPOILER: It’s somewhat bittersweet. I liked it, because it was entirely in keeping with the genre in question.

Endings are a tricky business, though, whatever medium you’re working in. The temptation to have a happy ending where everything resolves itself nicely is always strong, because everyone likes things to be “resolved” and for characters they’ve spent a hefty amount of time with to have some degree of “closure”. Leaving things hanging either leaves an author open to accusations of planning a sequel, or leaving the audience unsatisfied.

I wrestled with this particular conundrum throughout the course of the month-long piece of fiction I wrote over the course of November. In fact, for the final post, I rewrote the ending several times. I eventually plumped for a “happy” ending because I felt it was in keeping with the personal journey my protagonist had been on — to smack him down after everything he’d been through would be a bit harsh.

Well, yes, it would — but equally, a harsh ending isn’t necessarily a bad one. In fact, a bittersweet ending where not everyone leaves feeling satisfied can actually be very effective and memorable. I’m not going to spoil L.A. Noire‘s ending here in case there are people reading who haven’t played it yet, but instead I’m going to talk about the first game I remember to have a strikingly “bad” ending — and I’m not talking “bad” in the sense of “poor”.

Rare’s Conker’s Bad Fur Day was a peculiar game. Starting out as one of the cutesy platformers that typified a lot of the N64’s catalogue, it eventually morphed into something completely unexpected: a “mature” title. Now, by maintaining the game’s original cartoony visuals, there was an element of immaturity about it, too, particularly when combined with the not-very-well bleeped out swearing, the grotesquely excessive violence and the crude situations (a bee cheating on his wife by humping a large-breasted sunflower (off-screen, but very audible) being a particularly memorable example). But there was an undercurrent of maturity about the whole thing, too — the game treated the player as an adult who enjoyed puerile humour but was capable of understanding pathos and an impressively wide range of references to movies and popular culture.

Most notably, though, it had a brilliant ending that not only spoofed Alien fantastically, it also managed to provide a genuine “What the fu–” moment in a game that prided itself on its ridiculousness throughout. By providing a sobering, heartbreaking ending after the hours of cartoonish insanity which had preceded it, the game was giving the player a very marked wake-up call. It was marking the end of your time in this brightly coloured world filled with chocolate, poo monsters and cogs which told you to fuck off. It was time to wise up and start being a grown-up again. It also mirrored Conker’s own journey throughout the course of the game — the basic premise of his whole adventure was him attempting to get home and recover from the mother of all hangovers. The most sobering experience he could have was the loss of the one he loved.

This isn’t to say that good endings aren’t satisfying — who doesn’t like to see the Death Star blowing up? But a well-made “bad” ending can be just as — if not more so — effective at tugging at the heartstrings and provoking an emotional response. To date, my favourite game endings include the aforementioned Conker along with Silent Hill 2, surely one of the most depressing interactive experiences you could ever sit through — but all the better for it. Heavy Rain, for all its plot holes and flaws, also had a great “bad” ending. Several, in fact.

So what makes an effective ending? For me, it’s a sense of “closure”, that this is most definitely and unequivocally “the end” — whether that’s because everyone is dead, because the planet is saved or simply because our lead characters are closing one chapter in their lives and starting a new one. Get me invested in your characters and I’ll care what happens to them — so make sure whatever shenanigans they’re involved in reaches some sort of satisfying conclusion — even if you’re planning a sequel.

#oneaday Day 595: Life Expectancy

I forgot to blog about a book I read while I was away in Germany, and that is Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz, recommended to me by one Jeff “Feenwager” Parsons. Such was the impact that said book clearly had on our Jeff, if you happen to have him on your Xbox Live friends list and then start reading this book, you’ll likely have the same reaction as I did.

But anyway. Enough about Jeff and his Gamertag — what about the book?

It was a great read. It helped a great deal that the book was narrated by a likeable character who was honest about when narrating things which took place at different times didn’t quite make sense — how could he possibly remember what was happening when he was born, for example? In fact, the whole cast of the book was made up of strong characters, from our protagonists to some of the more minor people who had a role to play in the story.

The structure was interesting, too — for those unfamiliar with the novel, it’s centred around one Jimmy Tock, who entered the world just as his grandfather departed it. Said grandfather came out with a series of chilling predictions on his deathbed, which Jimmy’s life then begins to revolve around. We join the tale after four out of the “five terrible days” have already taken place, so there’s some tension as Jimmy narrates the events, but we at least know that he’s going to be all right — until we reach the last one, that is.

Jimmy, it has to be said, is a bit of a joker and there are at least two occasions in the novel where he outright lies to the reader only to come back with the literary equivalent of “lol jk” at the start of the next chapter. Unreliable narrators are one thing, but having a narrator who outright lies to you is a new one on me. It elevated the prose somewhat above the usual fare you get with first-person narration — it was more like someone actually talking to you. Pretty cool.

I enjoyed the novel a great deal, in other words — and I’m consciously trying not to give away any spoilers here. It was a thrill ride that kept me interested from start to finish. I’d never read anything by Koontz before, but my good experience with this piece is enough to make me interested to try some of his other stuff.

As always, if anyone has any recommendations along those lines, do feel free to let me know.