miseryinwording

[miseryinwording]

the tomorrow past the loop will strangle much more than the mundanity will

[miseryinwording]

I think the 2d painting portion of this paper is overestimating its importance and uniqueness. I used to use Photoshop enough that I was heavily invested in occasionally buying brushes made by people; more specifically, I liked Kyle T. Webster's works. His brushes, even back then, emulated the mediums he was attempting to mimic without the noisy artifacts that came from this paper. Since then, I don't know if the spine and poisson blend method has been used much, but at least today the same brushes, when imported and used with Clip Studio Paint, maintain their texture density and coherency when used on a vector line and transformed. I tested this since I wanted to compare their fish drawing with what I currently have. It's still amazing technology, but I feel this section should not have been emphasized as much as it was. I can see what they meant about the real time feedback, though. The image below was from my testing of brushes I own.

The real depth of this paper comes from how these strokes can be applied on 3d models and maintain their 2d appearance at all angles without harsh deformations. I think the usage of poisson blending to smooth out strokes makes a lot of sense, but the loss of color density in certain places of strokes does make me a bit sad. It's not enough to not make be not like this method, but it's a small detail. This limitation is shown by figures like figure 12 where the rough overall color/value of the stroke is the same but sometimes it'll taper to lighter or darker at the ends.

In terms of time, there isn't much details aside from "it's fast" and I really wish Disney were nice enough to give at least some kind of program for people to use with this. The examples provided are nice, yes, but stretching this to its limits is something that they don't showcase much. How complex can models be? How does it handle the surfaces of lower poly models?

This paper is so interesting, but I'm also conflicted on it.

[miseryinwording]

damn i should go through my free writes and post snippets ueueeuuu

[miseryinwording]

It comes to with no sensation aside from everything. Small fragments of it slough through pieces soft, rigid, moving, stationary, hollow, filled—a thrum, a pulse, eons (what does that mean to it?) apart and writhing through things processing itself. It rests on expanses of jittering particles upon particles orbiting around and weaving through other particles like it can feel other much larger bodies around its thrall. Its pieces fracture between layers of something it can’t name quite yet, but the word green coalesces into its thoughts. It disregards the question of what a word even is as it traces each multitude of itself pass from layer to cell to cell of another shape all made of particles it feels touching itself. Something, a current vessel of itself, opens a piece of itself wide and consumes another vessel. Vessel consumes. Vessel consumed. Millions, billions, trillions—none sound quite right, but they keep filtering into its conscious. It curls into itself but the symphony of itself cycling through so much never quiets. 

Itself… what is itself? Particles made of other particles and containing more particles encapsulate its core but it still feels itself through everything else around its churning body. A body and a body? It throws away the question and drags a sheet of particles up to see. It sees nothing; it sees everything it touches, but it sees nothing directly in front of it. The body projecting does not move in time to anything but a slight pull with its orbitees around something it grasps only at the edges of its reach; the body containing its thoughts twitches as it feebly grasps for control of the particles and pathways directing the mass. Plates of the latter body fracture as it leaks through itself, and it clutches onto the wounds with the body’s elongated collections of interconnected structures. Its thoughts supply the words limbs and joints. It can’t recall where it learned these concepts nor does the question ease the awareness of itself within these things in some of the vessels it's in. It shoves the plates back into place using these strange things only on this body. The other body, the true self, contains bursts and rays. Neither makes sense to it, but they are it. Both bodies are it, and the familiarity of each is equal parts foreign and comforting. 

It filters through the shards of itself and focuses on its rays resting along the bodies of some vessels, and it hears. Particles passing through it synthesize a sound that the fracturing body makes when it makes it expand and contact the chamber it can place its upper limbs on. Other vessels make similar noises with their own chambers, but its awareness of those chambers is only through its shards rather than its direct control. The air, as its thoughts recall, folds into itself as the vessels mold it into unique sounds. Syllables. Words. Breezes. Rustles. It wants to place where these thoughts originate, and it tries and tries and tries and… it finds nothing. Its search makes it lose its grasp on the noises the vessels seem to make, that the particles around them make. It directs its lesser body to grasp at the strange charcoal strands cascading around its vision and, on instinct, tugs. The body hears its own strangled self when it drops the strands. Something pricks at the limb its vision seems attached too, and it makes another breeze noise before pulling again.

Pain, a memory it can’t recall whispers. It tugs again, and the vision of its lesser body speckles with the sensation. The greater body experiences none of this as it churns itself into bursts other senses; countless sets of particles within it collide and rupture into something new, a collective of particles it can feel in multitudes within itself. Each hit, each clash feels like something that should cause this supposed sensation of pain, but the procedure only sparks a heat within its body. It tries to mimic the hit with one of its lesser limbs onto another, and that pain blooms as the body makes another strange noise. Neither body feels the same, but they both are it; the greater body flickers, and the lesser body flexes its digits. It decides, then, that pain is fine. It will be fine. The face of its lesser body fractures without much of that sensation, and it slams the piece back into its place. Pain will not stop it.

[miseryinwording]

An Honest Reflection

Fine.

I confess. I did know Princess Emerald before her disappearance. She took her older sister’s place, you see. Mother took her in exchange despite my hours of advocating against such a choice. Really, it was cruel of her to do so. The Princess, I mean. No sane person could ever stop Mother alone in all her strength and callousness. I told her highness that she should not go into Mother’s arms. She shouldn’t go gentle into her grasp. I told her over and over that it would be equal to ending her life even if it meant her sister was guaranteed to be returned to us all. 

I told her this Kingdom could survive without her interference. I told her this place wouldn’t crumble if she decided to defy the will of Mother. I told her it would be fine for her to hide somewhere in the countryside and live out a life free from the will of higher powers. I told her so, and she didn’t listen. She got it wrapped into her head that she needed to be a martyr for her sister and the kingdom. The Princess was a stubborn person, and she set her sights on tragedy for everyone who cared for her. Cruel I say. Cruel! Cruelty of the highest caliber! Surely there were other options where she’d be safe, even if her sister never emerged. Why couldn’t she have listened to me? Why wouldn’t she? I don’t get it! She had years of joy ahead of her, but she chose Mother’s deal. 

She’s the one who chose to throw away her life, and I couldn’t stop her.

I apologize. I have many pent up feelings about the whole situation. While I can admit that her sister is a great Queen who serves the kingdom selflessly, I can’t stand the sight of her. She looks far too much like her highness. Of course that makes sense. Queen Diamond is her older sister, after all. Blood looks like blood looks like blood looks like blood. What I especially can’t stand is her highness’ face being so immortalized within the public’s eye under the direction of the Queen. The curled hair encased forever in monuments of marble and wood, dotted with beryls far less precious than emeralds but just as striking as her cornflower eyes. The colors are something no real emerald could ever hope to accomplish. They stray far too green; they slot into the other royals eyes but not hers. Her’s with the bright tones contrasted with a lush bluebell. The monument makers knew just as well as I did that flowers suited her far better than gemstones, no matter how holy they are. What I despise is that they never saw her firsthand. They never saw her like I did. No matter how many irises and forget-me-nots they plant, they don’t see which flowers truly suit her.

If I had the final say, monuments to her highness wouldn’t exist. I know that I don’t. Those who know what happened see me as a symbol of blasphemy. What a joke. If I had any say, I would surround those statues in thistles and morning glories. With further say, I’d surround them in groves of yellow rhododendrons and small roses of the same hue. Lay some foxgloves out to attract butterflies too. Dot the arrangement with black dahlias and more roses as ample contrast to the brighter colors. Let there be no mistaking what happened to anyone who has even some knowledge of flowers. I’d make each and every one of them the most beautiful shrine for a betrayal of the millennium.  

I didn’t always hate her highness and her majesty. I served Princess Emerald for years, you know. I got the job as her personal maid and grew ever closer to her. We were friends. We were partners in crime. She looked upon me, someone who was hired to be completely subservient to her, as an equal. What kind of cruel person does that? At least, that’s what I thought for a while. She turned her back on me when she decided to throw away her life. I can’t stand it. Not in the slightest. My other friend was subservient to it too. Under the light of a campfire, after what felt like decades of battle to reach Mother and save her majesty, Emerald’s crown weighed heavily. She kept her gaze on the flickering light that I started by myself for the three of us. Our third companion was my childhood friend, Io. They pulled off their hat that normally hid their eyes from everyone around them to bask in the glow. I did something similar, letting my hair down from its bun after so long sustaining the tight updo. There was no noise in that forest beside the crackling of the wood as it turned to charcoal and ash. We sat in silence for a long time, our bowls left by our side from when we finished our stew hours ago, some stew that I made for all of us. I did so much for the quest, but I had a lingering feeling that something was about to happen. My instincts aren’t the best, but I was right that time.

Eme kept her eyes down as she finally let a heavy whisper fall from her mouth, “Maybe I should just turn myself in.”

I felt smoke on my tongue at such a suggestion and my head snapped up to look at her. I didn’t say anything in hopes that she would continue, but still I was the only one looking up. 

“I mean… how long have we been on the road? Everyone wants my sis back. And, like, how many times have they just ignored me and gone on and on about her? They hate me so much.” She pulled her legs closer to her chest as Io exchanged a glance with me. I knew it was finally time for me to speak.

“How many times do I have to tell you? This place can go on without you—”

“So you agree; they don’t want me.”

“No no!” I jumped back in to defend her from herself, “I mean without you as a ruler. There are earls and lords or whatever. The court’s functioned without a queen for years now.”

She shrunk down further before I could continue. How I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and keep her there forever. I just wanted to murmur that she was far more than a title, but I couldn’t. I needed to nip this in the bud. No matter what, I couldn’t let Eme give herself up.

“Eme please. I want you here, not with Mother. There’s got to be another solution than handing yourself over. Weren’t you the one who always talked a big game of diplomacy?”

She glanced over at Io, her gaze purple in the light of the fire. Eme took a deep sigh with a quivering lip, “Giving up is diplomacy. It’s simple. It solves the main issues. It makes the most people happy. D-don’t I have a duty to do that?”

“No! You are you. Stop it. There is another solution! There has to be, ok?” I spat out while looking back at our third companion, “Come on. You can’t seriously think that’s a good idea?”

They looked back into the fire as the cackling wisps danced in the conversation’s standstill. Eme and I refused to take our eyes off of them, so we watched as they furled and unfurled their palms over and over again. Each second made my hands clench tighter while they contemplated. Surely they’d be correct. Surely Io’d know how stupid Eme’s idea was. I wouldn’t stand for it if they agreed with her. I couldn’t. She was precious to me, holier than any stone we were named after. Exalted and stunning and something that needed to stay in this realm. She needed to stay away from anything that could permanently take her light. There was no way I could stand it if she disappeared.

Io then spoke.

“We should do it.”

How dare they. How dare she?! How dare they both turn and accept that foolish idea as the only way to deal with this!

Now the details of what I did immediately after should not be too relevant. I needed to stop them both, you see. I wouldn’t stand such a betrayal. I had to stop them! Don’t you get it? Emerald was ready to throw herself into the arms of a cruel goddess and the person who I thought was my best friend agreed with her decision. Both of them deserve to be punished for such a stupid idea. I’m right, you see! I’ll have you know that nothing could stop me from fighting Io if I ever have the displeasure of seeing them again. The kingdom may have a Queen, but it didn’t need that! I told her this place would move on without one! But stupid, stupid Emerald couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. She just couldn’t let her sister stay dead to the world. This place already planted lilies for her.

We could have gone on with our lives; we could have become anything besides what we already were. Instead, she threw the chance away. She threw the chance to be normal away! Io threw the chance to be reasonable away! I can’t stand them both. Io’s good as dead when I see them again. They’ll choke on some yew or burn to a crisp since I’ll have a say. And my betrayer? 

Eme may not be dead—she won’t be for a while—but she’s dead to me.

[miseryinwording]

He digs graves, and I watch. At least he’s no longer accidentally pushing me into them.

[miseryinwording]

It Skulks Along

Capturing the fleeting emotion of an extended dream—endless paths as the world sits between time and outside of reality—remains a task few pieces of media handle with grace. While some tread the path of subconscious through multitudes of colors and elusive imagery, others paint a concrete narrative with only a slight haze in a desperate attempt to invoke that fleeting sensation. Out of all creations, the Hazy Lane found at a sparse train station in Level 5’s Yo-Kai Watch 3 delineates this distinct dissociation with the wisps of a nightmare.

The series it originates from didn’t gain as large of a following in the United States as it did in Japan, leading to localizations either taking a few years to complete or never being planned in the first place. In particular, this game was the last in the franchise that received an English localization, but it stands out for its vast amount of content compared to both its predecessors and successors. 

Like the two games before it, the player can take the train to various stations in the countryside. One station lets them off at a small rice paddy field, and a warning sign stands in front of a strange path. Ignoring this warning brings the player to Hazy Lane, an isolated departure from static reality with one goal: reach the end.

On and on I walked as the sky melted into constellation painted twilight and bled back to a mistified dawn. Scarecrows pierced the soil at the edges even as gravity dragged others into the sky; with two pokes, I sent a begging man to his starry grave in the cosmos, leaving behind a ghastly bird of death. Aching animals crowed out, asking if caged subservience is happiness. As sunflowers usurped the fields of rice, lone phone booths rang out tales of tormented cats and festivals I can’t remember even though I participated. The world smeared as more faces, masked and not, passed by to give tours ending in disaster, stuttered of something closing in, trapped in the cycle of the infinite lane that expanded or shrunk with each decision.

I’d seen It in the distance, past the windows opening in the sky, watching me follow the linear path towards a peculiar girl in blue’s abode. Each day I wandered along the lane far enough to reach her, she mentioned It and gestured through her dainty window facing her creation. It skulked behind with Its everlasting gaze, billowing in tandem with blades of grass. I’d trek forward, and…

Freeze!

The blustering music ceases with the rhythmic footsteps as I stilled. It approached, out of sight, inching closer to the back of my head, waiting for the right moment. It wouldn’t reach out, nor did It sever the ligaments clean from my muscles with teeth that should not exist.

All that remained…? The lane that cleaved the horizon in two.

The girl in blue stared at me from behind her signature crocodile tears.

“So? Are you prepared to turn around?”

[miseryinwording]

this blog was a mistake. however its kinda nice to post things. ill just stare in fear at numbers while doing nothing about it

[miseryinwording]

One Bite to Fill

How far are you willing to go to satiate your hunger? Plenty of stories dangle this question in front of their audience to varying degrees of success since everyone experience hunger to some degree during their life. We saw through meats, rip apart flora, and boil grains all to serve that purpose of fulfillment. Descriptions of hunger can only bring someone so far, so interactive mediums such as video games can provide a unique way to toy with questions and the thought of hunger. Watching someone cook, after all, is outside while mimicking the action within a game feels closer to the thought process required for the original action. Games, in all forms, are designed to evoke emotions; some focus on fun, others on despair, and some on fear. Hunger, as a theme, pairs well with horror media due to the sinking feeling that comes from a lack of food, so games can capitalize on these themes in many different ways depending on how they want to direct or influence the player. Horror games that utilize hunger as both a mechanic and a core piece of the story amplify anxiety, desperation, and contemplation using ludonarrative synthesis.

Ludology and Narratology

Ever since the study of games, ludology, expanded to include the birth of video games, debates around how ludology and narratology could or could not coexist permeated discussions. Those focusing on ludology often treated the two fields as separate, but some would contend that they are similar; narratologists, on the other hand, view the stories of games as worthy of study just like movies and novels. As an active participant, the player breathes unique interactions between viewer and the creative work not often seen within other mediums, though the presence of interactive versions of those mediums begs the question of how much intractability separates a story from a game. Some ludologists make the argument that ludology and narratology cannot coexist and that games cannot have narratives, however the clear presence of unique storytelling within swaths of games refutes that notion. There are plenty of games which exist as a mechanical medium for broader narratives just as there are games which are designed most of all for the player to interact with its mechanics. Neither can be discredited as the story told by the mechanics of a game and the more commonly understood narrative weave themselves together.

One of the best ways to showcase the difference in ludology and narratology is through the concept of ludonarrative dissonance: when the mechanics of a game tell a different story from its stated narrative. Within Pokémon Sun and Moon, both games introduce the player to the mechanic of capturing pokémon using poké balls under the assumption that they might be a new player. Like all previous games, there are different forms of poké balls which are more or less effective depending on factors such as location, type, time of day, etc; Pokémon are more likely to be caught when their health is lower and when they have a status effect, and there is one poké ball which guarantees capture. While the mechanics of the game emphasize weakening the opposing pokémon to capture it, the games treat the main antagonist, a women obsessed with preserving the beauty of pokémon through both conservation and cryogenic means, as not a reflection of the mechanics but instead someone who treats pokémon the wrong while friendship is the correct way. The mechanics of Pokémon capture strain against that intended theme of friendship triumphing. The mechanics provide one sense while the narrative offers another. In contrast, ludonarrative synthesis is where the opposite occurs; the mechanics and narrative work in tandem throughout the game.

Henceforth, this paper will separate usage of the theme into three categories: narrative, mechanical (ludic), and ludonarrative synthesis. The first category refers to the more traditional narrative of the work, the second is the mechanical implementation of the idea, and the third is when the first two categories are in alignment.

Narrative Usage

Six, the small girl with a lovely yellow raincoat who is the protagonist in Little Nightmares, hunches over as her stomach hisses and gurgles, desperate for anything to ease the starvation she’s faced. You’ve dealt with this before; all she needs is something to eat. You just finished weaving her through a crowd of ravenous guests in the restaurant on the massive ship as they reached and crawled towards her in their fervor to get a single taste of the new meat in front of them. You compel her to the right of the screen through a few rooms until you stumble upon a wider area with a friendlier creature— a nome holding a sausage out towards Six—in the center. The nomes have not betrayed you before, unlike the first trap you encountered with fresh meat as the bait, so you push her closer to the beckoning arms. The music swells, and a heartbeat thrums with each step forward. Take the sausage, you think, but Six launches herself at the nome and tears into the living creature with just as much drive as the guests had when pursuing… you? Her? The line blurs; why hadn’t she taken that offering?

You’ve done this before. You’ve died again and again as The Narrator tells you to kill The Princess or face the end of the world during Slay the Princess. First, you went in without the pristine blade and watched her tear apart her arm with her teeth to get out of the chain around her wrist. She clearly was an animal at heart, so you tried to kill her; she won that fight, but the world started again with The Narrator none the wiser. Within the cabin again, her form became inhuman, and she stalked the undergrowth for a taste of your entire flesh. Each moment you dodged, her beastly mouth reached closer to her goal, but she failed in the last moment. Your organs paint the ground as she stares. You died again, and you return to the path in the woods. The Den, the titlecard proclaims. You and the voices of your previous lives return, once more, to what no longer can be called a cabin, and you head into what can only be vaguely described as a basement. No words echo up the passage unlike the previous times; she tries, once more, to eat and eat and eat and eat as you crash your pristine blade against her jaws and rip into her flesh with as much desire as she does into yours. You’ll fulfill the inexplicable hunger tying you and the Princess together.

The lack of hunger based mechanics—the ability to choose throughout the story for Slay the Princess and the transition to interactive cutscene for Little Nightmares—behind these instances of hunger opens the door for contemplation about both the world and what hunger means to the characters experiencing it. Players, as they participate in the fictive work, often place themselves into the role of who they control, and they thus reflect on their interactions with the game world using that lens. With Little Nightmares, the player feels dread as to what will happen as they direct Six towards the friendly nome with the sausage, and the ensuing guilt makes them wonder why the character of Six, not themselves, chose to do that. Similarly, the player can be brought into a fervor of clawing and biting and attempts to eat each other within The Den route, but the player is left wondering what caused the Princess to change so drastically into what she is rather than the morality of their actions. This reflects canonical fiction as opposed to self-involving interactive fiction as described in Video Games as Self-Involving Interactive Fictions, as the player slips away from the “degree of first-person discourse that is found in talk about our interactions with them” (Robson and Meskin 167). The Princess cannot make the player understand her hunger more so than the feasting guests of the world Six inhabits; they reflect on the player controlled characters instead, allowing for more thought about how the theme functions within the game’s world even without player input.

Mechanical Usage

Here you are, a person in a strange area; the autumnal breeze and palette of the world highlights the strange brush around the rose covered portal you stumbled through. All you have is the title of the game as a guide: Don’t Starve. You wander and wander, scaring a few birds who, thankfully, drop some seeds for you, and the daylight begins to slip away while you gather some random sticks, rocks, and grass fibers. As the dusk turns to night, all visibility is cut off, and your little puppet—your avatar within this world—honks out a small note about it being far too dark. Something unseen strikes, and you quickly fall. That’s ok! You can try again in a new world. You scare more birds, pick up seeds and flowers, and check what things you can make in your menu this time. Dusk, once more, turns towards nightfall, and you hold out a torch to keep dark away from you. As you wait, you munch on some of the seeds right as the little stomach icon ticks a bit down; can’t let that hunger get too low. You’ll find some other ways to get food, you’re sure. The darkness is more pressing.

The majority of hunger mechanics within games are meters that deplete over time just as how all living beings require food with the same passage; these do not necessarily invoke horror or terror and instead spur the player on to discover and search around the world. All horror media draws on these concepts, but the definitions from Dawn Stobbart within her book Videogames and Horror: From Amnesia to Zombies, Run! best describes these concepts for this purpose:

…terror [is] the internal, psychological, feeling that there is something to fear around the next corner, in the darkness, or behind the closed door. Horror, by contrast, is the realization of that fear: seeing the monster emerge from the gloom as it chases you or finding that the vague shape in the darkness is a corpse… (Stobbart 3)

A mechanic on its own is able to invoke these emotions, but hunger mechanics—some as simple as a meter while others change gameplay depending on how low the player’s hunger value is—rarely have the terror behind them that help settle in any horror for the player. As vessels which invite exploration like the mechanic for Don’t Starve does, they provide a pathway for the player to meekly wander out of the territory they’ve decided to be safe, thus inviting them to fear what might be around the corner even in a game which is often considered not that scary of a horror game. It is a useful tool for developers and can force players into habits which invite uncertainty and madness, but these mechanics on their own do not provide much contemplation or reflection. They are the vessel that forces the player to continue searching rather than a vice which makes the player wonder about what is around them on a level deeper than questioning what is edible.

Ludonarrative Synthesis

Yesterday, you went to bed with the realization of a plague settling over the town with a bit of hunger pooling in your stomach. The local shopkeepers seemed well enough stocked with eggs and other things to eat, and thus you wake. As you step outside, the yawning form of Pathologic’s polyhedron greets you; there are many things to do, as a letter says you need to provide proof of the encroaching plague before the powers of the town can do anything to protect the citizens. You reach towards the shop. You freeze. Nothing is affordable anymore, not nuts, lemons, nor even a delicious egg. The shopkeep tells you about how people have been stockpiling after a rumor about a plague. But that’s fine! You just need proof, and maybe you could help some citizens along the way; you are a doctor after all. A new letter in your inbox outlines a plan to make a safe-house; the sender, Lara, offers up money for you to buy food for the shelter, and you do so. It would be rude to deny the request of someone so noble. With the food, you reach the house; it’s already infected. All she gives you for your assistance, after taking the food you bought for her, is some nuts. However will you protect yourself from the looming hunger now?

You’ve been traversing the dungeons of Fear & Hunger for a while now with a small party of ragtag travelers in tow: a thief named Cahara, a strange mage named Enki, and a girl without a name. It’s been ages since you’ve found any food, and everyone's hunger has been increasing to the point where your party is weaker than they should be. Rotten meat, as you’ve unfortunately tried before, poisons and infects you with parasites. You know this is just poor luck, but you need food to ease the unnatural passage of hunger caused by the dungeons or else you and your party will die. You look through your inventory, desperate to find anything useful, and stop upon finding the bonesaw. Each limb is useful to all of you, but in this dire time, it might be your only salvation. With harrowed breath, you select it, and you’re given the option to ask one of your party members to let you saw off an arm or leg. It’s too horrible to pick someone, so you randomly select one, then ask to cut their arm off. Much to your horror and delight, it’s edible. You take a bite, and your stomach sinks; your hunger fills more than you’ve even seen it fill so far in your quest. Is this the only real option within these dungeons?

The two games above are both known for their brutal mechanics and themes, but the use of hunger is a throughline to emphasize and bolster all other emotions; desperation claws at the player while they consider what they can even do to offset the ever creeping hunger yawning at their character and any others who may be under their care. The intensive mechanical pressures along with the constant outside mentions of hunger lead the player to a mindset that attempts to mimic the terror of starvation, a feature common within famines and a perfect place for horror to thrive. Historical accounts of famines, widely contested as they may sometimes be, often invoke cannibalism for a few potential reasons, but the most prevalent reason here is the attempt to sell the desperation found within that time period. The perpetrators of such cannibalism were faced with much more harrowing and pressing versions of the pressures players are forced to handle; the hunger claws up their stomach, and there is nothing left but the living for them to use. Through plenty of historical instances of severe famine, the scholar Cormac Ó Gráda notes that most accounts “…suggest that ‘normal’ people could be reduced to cannibalism in extreme situations…” (Ó Gráda 19). Horror games, when using hunger as an ever present theme and mechanic, try to set the player into a similar mindset within the world of the game as the perpetrators from famines. Without the narrative, the player needs to only consider the search for food, and without mechanics, the player is an outsider to the hunger, but together they can bring the player to partake in actions they wouldn’t otherwise consider.

Shared Presence

Video games, especially those in the horror genre, provide a uniquely terrifying experience that cannot easily compare to other mediums such as film or writing; as Adam Daniel describes it in Affective Intensities and Evolving Horror Forms, “Gone is the frustration of watching protagonists make the wrong decision… Now it is you who will be forced to make the decision to traipse down into the murky basement.” (Daniel 157) This places them into the perfect place to truly make the person playing the game feel in ways more personal and intense than those other mediums allow depending on how the intended themes are implemented. A purely mechanical implementation of hunger is merely a pressure that keeps the player moving while a purely narrative implementation makes the player question what is happening in the world around them. Through ludonarrative synthesis, they heighten anxiety and force players into a more direct mindset which fuels the horror of the experience. It makes them ask themselves how far are they willing to go to stave off hunger, and why does the world do this to them? These experiences can assist the player in finding some answers.

After all, how far are you willing to go to satiate your hunger?

Pokémon Sun. Gamefreak / Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company, 2016. Nintendo 3DS game.

Pokémon Moon. Gamefreak / Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company, 2016. Nintendo 3DS game.

Slay the Princess - The Pristine Cut. Black Tabby Games / Black Tabby Games, and Serenity Forge, 2023. Microsoft Windows game.

Little Nightmares. Tarsier Studios / BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment, 2017. Microsoft Windows game.

Robson, Jon, and Meskin, Aaron. “Video Games as Self-Involving Interactive Fictions.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 74, no. 2, 2016, pp. 165–77. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44510494. Accessed 20 Oct. 2024.

Don’t Starve Together. Klei Entertainment, 2016. Microsoft Windows game.

Stobbart, Dawn. “Introduction: A Light in the Darkness – Videogames and Horror.” Videogames and Horror: From Amnesia to Zombies, Run!, DGO-Digital original, 1, University of Wales Press, 2019, pp. 1–22. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.14491610.6. Accessed 18 Oct. 2024.

Pathologic Classic HD. Ice-Pick Lodge and General Arcade / Good Shepherd Entertainment, 2015. Microsoft Windows game.

Fear & Hunger. Miro Haverinen / Happy Paintings, 2018. Microsoft Windows game.

Ó Gráda, Cormac. “Eating People Is Wrong: FAMINE’S DARKEST SECRET?” Eating People Is Wrong, and Other Essays on Famine, Its Past, and Its Future, Princeton University Press, 2015, pp. 11–37. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv7h0ssr.4. Accessed 24 Oct. 2024.Daniel, Adam. “The Embodied Player of Horror Video Games.” Affective Intensities and Evolving Horror Forms, Edinburgh University Press, 2020, pp. 157–70. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvxcrx98.13. Accessed 20 Oct. 2024.

[miseryinwording]

Eyestrain

Instead of faded shadows that comply with the palette of an entire piece throwing together two colours so bright so burning so clashing is something I do advise

Trust your local artist intensity always comes at a cost be it saturation or brilliance or maybe from heavy sections of shade or when ignoring colour through twisted silhouettes and ever contorting shapes Tandem neons serve to bring artistic pain

[miseryinwording]

autopsy report as a metaphor for unwillingness to be vulnerable until one is gone

[miseryinwording]

moonstruck.

with the light of the moon shining on me i can’t help but consider what could be

if i were to grasp your hands as my own lifeline, would you even let me do so?

how forward it is of me to dream in misted tints of purple: in lavender

but i don’t know you as much as i’d like and i doubt you know a thing about me

despite that i continue with my dreams even with the ones involuntary lucidity has never been my strength

isn’t it a shame? i’m far too scared of you to ever make any moves that could even mimic pursuit of any sort

i still desire not you but your friendship but my head had to turn it all around and make a mess of that whole damn concept

your voice is harmonious which makes sense in the grand scheme of things since you strive for eminence and intentional discord

so your voice stands bright against that storming music against the jazz and pop and the classical solos which highlight your range

i can’t help but despise you in the same breath since you have been running rings around my head and i need it to stop before

i do something strange as an anxious mess

[miseryinwording]

tldr my stupid friends said i should post my weirdo old yearning poem i made so ig here ill post small writing snippets of mine

#misery in wording for ig completish writing #misery in prompting for ideas that havent fully formed #misery in asking for asks but i dont expect any #misery in talking for pure yap