“I've always felt, since I was small... That I was different from the others. Special, in some way.”
Before cigarettes and alcohol, cars and girls, work and bills, marriage and mortgages; betwixt red maple and palm; back when Grandma Susu woke me every morning with a tall glass of chocolate milk; when I still kinda believed that toys came to life when people left the house; back in that prepubescent fog wherein I still enjoyed Blue’s Clues but had developed just enough self-awareness to be embarrassed about it; when music skipped and movies barfed tape; back when Miles, my best friend, lived right by the fishing pond on the border of my backyard; when trampolines were gravity wells around which all children orbited; back when we thought time could be stopped and things would never change; when I could pick up Between the Lions and Dragon Tales on PBS if I moved the antenna just right; back when the internet was confined to large gray cubes and was mainly used for printing out cheat codes; when clouds only existed in the sky and Final Fantasy VII, not everyone’s pocket; back when Game Boys and asthma inhalers were the only devices kids had; when I would leave the house with nothing but my wits because phones were still tethered to walls with curly cords; back when true freedom was just beyond the picket fences, in the overgrown alleys between houses of red brick and cheap vinyl siding; when we all knew the neighborhood cats by name; back when politics were boring and there was just so much else to talk about; when neighborhoods felt like they were owned by people instead of banks and politicians; back when parents kept their doors unlocked and kids swept through like little tornadoes; when we would spend afternoons ringing doorbells and running away; back when I would fall asleep on the floor enveloped in the soft glow of video game cathode; when sleepovers were the best thing in the whole entire world; back when Miles lent me his friend Lauren’s Game Boy Camera, which I traded for store credit to buy the game with the cool spiky-haired blonde guy on the cover.
“Ha, ha, ha... my sadness? What do I have to be sad about? I am the chosen one.”
It was around this time that I heard some sort of commotion coming from outside the office. Matt’s dad, a goblin of a man, who must have come home early, was shouting at his son. My stomach dropped and I was suddenly aware of the blood inside me, burning, for I was obviously trespassing in Matt’s dad’s office, having been told several times by both Matt and his dad never to go into the office—or the house without the parents present, for that matter. My face was all flushed red, full of hell and hemoglobin, which I tried to gulp down. I had only a few more questions to go, so in one smooth motion, I twirled and rolled the chair to the office door, locked the deadbolt, then twirled and rolled once more back to the computer, where I took the mouse in hand like there was no tomorrow and started just clicking away as fast as I could, answering the remainder of the “Which Final Fantasy VII Character Are You?!?!” quiz questions as if I had cast Haste on myself and then jumped into the body of Sephiroth, like it was no longer me answering the questions but Sephiroth himself, in the flesh, clicking mighty fast clicks.
“They say that the golden age is gone, never to return. But I believe that we can somehow bring it back. I must believe... if I am to carry on.”
—Narrator, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
Between the verdant hills of Arcadia and the rainbow falls of Shella, the cleansing fires of Kilanda and the wheat fields of Fum, the tranquil streams of Tipa and the crystal blues of the Jegon, even between the burning sands of the Sahara and the majestic geysers of Yellowstone, there creeps a sick miasma, snuffing out the golden glow, slowly killing us all.
You can try to fight it, hold your heart high like a crystal chalice filled with myrrh, try to banish the miasma with memories of the golden age—but your chalice is running dry and the memories are fading fast and you’re all alone because everyone around you has already dropped dead and you’re starving for myrrh and the miasma is closing in faster than ever before.
How long do you think you can survive by yourself, lost in this monstrous fog?
Eventually, you’re going to need someone on your side, because you can’t banish the miasma alone.
So pack up your caravan and dust off that old magic racket, because we’re heading to the unnamed fantasy world of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles to collect some myrrh, banish the miasma, and maybe—just maybe—bring back the golden age.
“And he has, that is exactly what he has done, whatever he wanted. As if attempting to reach the end of his desires, to find out what is there at the end. Discovering instead with horror that his desires even when instantly and gorgeously gratified only make him increasingly unhappy and insane.”
—Intermezzo, Sally Rooney, 2024, p. 411.
As of writing this, I have been married for nearly seven years, and within that time, I have thought about sleeping with an unquantifiable number of people who are not my spouse: men, women, non-binary, otherkin—whatever. I am not picky. Pretty much anyone I see that I find even remotely attractive, I end up thinking: “What do they look like without clothes on? How do they kiss, I wonder? Are they wearing a wedding band? Would they be receptive if I made an advance? Do they have a boyfriend? Would they prefer top or bottom? Do they have a girlfriend? Have they ever thought about having sex with me? Are they thinking about having sex with me right now?” and so on.
Just a heads up that, while typing this email, I was (am) listening to the track titled “Elwynn Forest (Ambient)” from the official World of Warcraft Soundtrack—which was ripped by some person named “Homer” (per the attached metadata)—which I had illegally pirated some time ago (along with nearly a terabyte of other video game music, all of which I had listened to while playing the actual games in question at some point in my life [meaning I did not just download this stuff to have it for no reason—each soundtrack holds some sort of special meaning for me]), all of which I have had stored on my second hard drive for many revolutions (the drive is named “X-Drive,” and yes, this predates Elon’s co-opting of the letter X, which is also a good reminder that I need to get a new drive for storage sometime soon). And I was (am) listening to this track on repeat, of course. And if for whatever reason you don’t believe me, and you think I’m just trying to be cute or clever or funny or whatever, I have attached a screenshot of my desktop with both X-Drive and the Rhythmbox media player pictured as proof of these claims (see attachment titled “proof.png”).
(context: this is an email response to a reader who provided feedback on my scathing critique of social media found in the first issue of Mognet; essentially, this is a follow-up clarifying some of the WHY of why I left social media.)
Hello Reader,
I really appreciate you reaching out. It kinda made my morning when I read your email. I didn’t know I had this type of influence on people—or even one person, for that matter. I was especially surprised that it was you who reached out, as I was under the impression that, for some reason, you didn’t like me or something, but that was probably just my mind playing tricks, as it often does.
When I first saw your email—(of which I'm usually notified through my phone, but for some reason, it [your email] did not push a mobile notification, so I only found your email once I manually checked Protonmail on my PC using Firefox on a whim [which, oddly enough, was three minutes after you had sent the email itself])—titled “Morrowind, Social Media, and Long-form Writing,” I honestly expected a long critique and/or attack on my work; something like “you misunderstood the plot of the game,” or “you overuse semicolons,” or “you can't just put hyphens between random words for emphasis like that; compound nouns/adjectives don't work that way—it's confusing,” or “you could have cleaned up this and this and that, and it would have been much more concise,” etc., etc. (These fears likely stemming from some deep-rooted insecurity about my own ability as a writer.) So, as you can now imagine, when I read your email and found it to be quite pleasant, it coaxed a genuine smile out of this pale, blue-light-stained face, especially considering that no one has ever emailed me directly about my writing before. And for that, I thank you.
When I was a real young kid, I watched my neighbor shoot my cat with a rifle; I watched her eyes go dark and felt the warmth of her blood on my hands. On that day, I looked deep into the eyes of death—the hard-coded reality of it all—and it pained me terribly. Now, I only look when I really really have to, and even then, I shield my eyes, peering through the thin gaps of my figurative fingers, playing peek-a-boo with the quote-unquote real world.
The thesis of this essay is that everyone does this—not just me, but you, too. And you’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
This one is for Corbel and all the other cats out there who just want to explore the world unfettered by the fear of death.
“Yesterday's faded. Nothing can change it. Life's what you make it”
I was 15 years old when I first heard The Colour of Spring. I even remember where I was and what I was doing the very moment the first track—“Happiness Is Easy”—started playing after I inserted the CD into the disc drive (remember those?) of my Dell something-or-other with one of those fat, black-chassis monitors displaying some sort of low-resolution Final Fantasy wallpaper, no doubt. The year was 2006, and I was at my mom’s house playing Okami for the PlayStation 2, which had been released that same year. Weird association, I know, especially considering the album’s 1986 release date, as you were probably expecting something more along the lines of “I had just finished watching ABC’s afternoon Benson-MacGyver block before I slipped the cassette purchased direct from the local Sam Goody into my stereo system’s tape player.”
