#in my defense this definitely had the longest premise | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beanfic · 5 years

Text

Rebound

Pairing: Tyler joseph x reader, Josh dun x reader

Word count: 3099

Warnings: Angst, fluff, heartbreak, language (i think..?) the usuals

Author’s note: This is probably the longest one shot I have ever written, but I hope you enjoy it!!

“We need to talk,” Tyler rubbed his temple as you walked into his basement. His ukulele laid on his couch so you were forced to stand and stare the tired boy. The bags under his eyes were even bigger than the last time you had seen him.

“Ty, bubs, what is wrong?”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Your heart sunk to your stomach and you gnawed on your bottom lip until you tasted blood. “Do what?”

“This,” he spoke between gritted teeth. He pointed to you two and you knew exactly what he was talking about.

“I don’t understand.”

“I have been telling you for the past year that I don’t feel like being in a relationship right now, and all you seem to be doing is pushing it more and more.”

“I thought you loved me, Tyler.” Your vision became clouded with the tears that began to form. The room was spinning, and you wanted to sit down.

“This is why I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep on hurting you like this.”

“You’re not hurting me,” you tried to convince him but he just shook his head.

“Don’t lie to me, Y/N. I know that I’ve made you stay up and cry yourself to sleep. I know that I made you get rid of friendships because of how messed up my brain is.”

“Bubs, your brain is perfectly imperfect and you can’t hate yourself because of that.”

“You’re not listening to me, Y/N.”

“I’m trying too,” you whispered. You could feel a tear slither down your cheek but you didn’t want to wipe it away and make it more obvious how much he was hurting you.

“I’m not happy, and it’s not your fault, it’s my brain's fault,” he explained as he paced around the bottom of his basement. “Life is too short to be unhappy, and it is definitely too short to be making other people unhappy. It’s not fair to you.”

“Only I get to decide what is fair to me and what isn’t, Tyler. You are so much more than your mental health, and you need to realize that.”

“I don’t love you anymore,” he stated. His chocolate eyes burned into yours and you took a step back processing what Tyler had just said.

“This is more than just your mental health isn’t it,” you whimpered.

“The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but I can’t keep on lying to you. You deserve the world and you deserve happiness.”

“You were my happiness, you were my everything.” You didn’t even try to stop the tears, and you watched as they fell down onto your shoes. “My forever promise.”

“Sometimes promises get broken. I need to focus on myself, and my job.”

You wiped your nose and looked up at Tyler. You looked for a hint of regret but his face showed that he meant everything he had said. “Okay.” You started to turn around and walk up to his basement stairs before you felt an arm on your shoulder.

“Maybe we can try again when I figure myself out.”

“Screw off,” you shrugged his hand away and stormed upstairs. You grabbed your car keys and slammed the front door. You didn’t really know where to go because you had moved in with Tyler about eight months ago, but the last thing you wanted was to be on the same premise as him.

Josh.

You pulled out your phone after you got settled into your car, and you dialed Josh’s number. You waited patiently until he finally answered the call.

“Y/N?”

“Hey Josh, could I come over?”

“Uh, sure. What’s going on?”

“I’d rather explain in person.”

“Okay, see you soon.” and the call ended with a click. You took a deep breath and tried to recollect your thoughts before starting to drive to Josh’s house which was only about a twenty-minute drive.

The moment you turned on your car the song Tear in my Heart started to play and you were crying once again. You remembered when Tyler wrote you that song, and you remembered how secretive he was. You also vividly remember the first time he showed you the song. It was on your fifth anniversary of him asking you to be his girlfriend, and he blindfolded you and took you to a small stage in Ohio. When you took off the blindfold you were welcomed with Tyler alone on a stage singing you this song acoustically.

You tried to blink your tears away to make your driving easier, but you couldn’t stop thinking about every good memory you had with Tyler. You remember the whole Europe trip you went on with him for his Blurryface tour, and you remember him kissing you under the tower. You thought about how he promised to love you forever and always, and how he promised to always take care of you, but just like he said, promises get broken.

You arrived at Josh’s house and you could hear the sound of Jim’s barking through his door. Josh already was standing at the entrance before you even had a chance to open your car door. You wiped your tears knowing that it wouldn’t do anything since your face was probably all red and blotchy.

“Y/N, what happened?” Josh asked as he guided you into his living room. You took a seat on his couch and petted Jim as he rested his head on your knee.

“He doesn’t love me anymore,” you whispered. The couch dipped as Josh sat next to you.

“Tyler?”

You nodded and you started to sob loudly, “He told me that he didn’t to be in a relationship anymore because of his mental health and because he didn’t want to hurt me anymore, but then he told me he doesn’t love me anymore.”

“Hey now, it’s going to be okay,” Josh rubbed your back as you tried to regain a rhythm of breathing.

“It might be okay soon, but right now I am not okay.”

“Just talk to me,” Josh whispered.

“I just don’t know what I did wrong. I know that he blames himself but I gave up so much for him so that he could be happy. I gave up friendships, and I gave up my job to go on tour with him. I never made him feel bad about his mental health.”

“You were so good to him and he knows that.”

“I guess I wasn’t good enough,” you whispered softly to yourself. Jim licked your hand and it made you crack the tiniest smile.

“At least Jim is good at making you smile that beautiful smile,” Josh laughed softly. You looked up at him and inspected his eyes. You both just stared into the eyes of each other.

“I should have realized that he didn’t love me anymore when he stopped kissing me good morning and goodnight, and when he would stop writing songs for me.”

“I wish he talked to me about it,” Josh mumbled and you just shrugged.

“The past six years of my life is just gone. I feel so broken, and I feel so empty. He has hurt me before, but nothing as bad as this.”

“You deserve to be happy, Y/N,” Josh said as he brushed a hair out of your face and to behind your ear.

“That’s what he told me too.”

“But I mean it, Y/N. Tyler might be my best friend, but I would never lie to you as he did.”

“He lied to me because he didn’t want to hurt me,” you argued. Josh was talking about the time when you found deleted messages from a girl on Tyler’s phone and he had lied to you about who they were, but it turned out that it was just a friend from high school and he lied because he didn’t want to hurt you.

“He lied and deleted them because he knew it was going to hurt you, and he did it anyway.”

“Have I feel blinded by love this entire relationship?”

“I don’t know, Y/N. You’ve put up with a lot, and maybe you guys aren’t just meant to be together like that.”

“It hurts so bad, Josh. I feel like I will never be good enough for anything. I tried so hard to make him happy.”

“And that was the issue. You were so focused on making him that happy that you were giving up your own happiness. I know it hurts but maybe this is better for both of your guy's mental health,” Josh said. He studied your face, and you kept your eyes down and focused on Jim.

You wanted to be defensive and argue but you knew that Josh was right. “I don’t know what to do now, or where to go. I moved to Ohio like a year ago but that year was spent in Europe. I don’t have family or friends here, and I don’t want to go back home. Not with him there. I don’t want to see him for a long time.”

“I’m not a friend? Hell, I consider you to be one of my best friends, Y/N.”

“You’re also Tyler’s best friend. I can’t just stay here.”

“Why not? You can take my bed, and I can sleep down here on the couch. I care about you too, Y/N. Like I said earlier, you deserve to be happy and I want to help you.”

“Thank you, Josh,” you whispered and you smiled back up at him. You pulled your phone out of your back pocket to check what time it was and your screen saver made your stomach twist. “I need a new screen saver, also how did it get to be midnight already?”

“I’m not sure, and here change the picture to a picture of Jim. He always seems to make you feel better,” Josh said as he pulled out his phone to airdrop you some photos of Jim he had. He sent about six, and they were all very cute and you decided on a picture of Jim wearing a birthday hat in front of a ‘pupcake’.

“I’m so tired,” you yawned and Josh nodded in agreement.

“You should get some sleep. You know where my bedroom is right? You can use one of my t-shirts if you want to sleep in, and I’ll stay down here and watch TV if you need anything.”

“Okay, thank you Josh.” You smiled at him before heading up the stairs and taking a right to his bedroom. It was very modern and there were two different electric drum kits in the corner. There was also a framed picture of you, Tyler and him standing on stage at the very last concert from the Blurry face tour.

You remembered that show vividly. It was a hometown show, and Tyler had brought you up on stage and played Can’t Help Falling In Love. You didn’t want to start crying again so you flipped the picture over.

You weren’t sure exactly which drawer Josh kept his t-shirts in but after looking through four different ones you finally found his stash. You decided on an oversized In-n-Out shirt that ended right before your knees. You stripped down so you were wearing just your underwear and the shirt. It felt like a dress and you giggled to yourself as you stared at yourself in Josh’s mirror.

You braided your hair so it was out of the way, and you washed your face in his bathroom. You were starting to feel better, but you definitely looked like you had been crying all night because your eyes were almost swollen shut and your cheeks were flushed.

You crawled into Josh’s bed which was surprisingly more uncomfortable than you were expecting. With all the money he had, you thought he would spend it on a supportive mattress. You tossed and turned until you finally found a comfortable spot, and you closed your eyes and counted until you drifted to sleep.

“Tyler!” you screamed as you sat up drenched in sweat. You looked around and it took you a couple of minutes to realize where you were. You rubbed your eyes as you tried to get the thought of the night terror you just had out of your brain. You hadn’t had a night terror for about four months now, and you were so used to Tyler holding you close and whispering to you how you were going to be okay but instead you were alone in an unfamiliar dark room and you couldn’t stop shaking.

The clock on the nightstand next to you read 2:34 am and you groaned. You didn’t want to go back to sleep, and you didn’t want to stay awake alone in the room. You decided that you were going to go down and see if Josh was awake because you needed someone to talk to to help ground yourself again.

You walked slowly down the stairs and you saw Josh sitting on his couch watching an episode of the X-Files with Jim laying on his lap. You didn’t want to scare him so you made sure to make your last footstep a little bit harder so he would turn around.

“Y/N, what are you doing awake? Are you okay?” His eyes looked you up and down, and he smiled softly at the t-shirt you were wearing.

“I had a night terror, and I can’t sleep,” you mumbled.

“Oh Y/N, I’m sorry.” Josh paused the TV and stood up. You walked over to him and wrapped your arm around his body. He was warm and smelled like Jim but you didn’t mind.

“I know this sounds so stupid but can you please sleep with me. I won’t be able to sleep if I’m alone.”

“Of course,” Josh whispered. He pulled away from you and placed a strand of hair behind your ear once again. “I like your shirt.”

You blushed, “It was the biggest one I could find.” You followed Josh up to his room and Jim pranced along behind you.

“Jim is going to be upset that you took my place,” Josh teased and you rolled your eyes as you slid under the covers. Josh walked into the bathroom and brushed his teeth.

“Sorry Jim,” you petted the golden retriever head as he whined.

“Uh, Y/N?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want to make this awkward but I can’t sleep in a shirt, so are you comfortable if I sleep in just basketball shorts?”

“Oh, um, yeah it’s fine.” Your heart started to race and you didn’t really know why. You turned over and faced the wall as you could feel Josh slide into the bed next to you. You tried to control your breathing and count again so you could fall asleep but the memories of the night terror kept on flashing in your head.

“Are you okay?” Josh asked. He must have heard your breathing get heavier.

“I can’t stop seeing the night terror,” you whispered. You felt an arm wrap around your waist and soon you felt Josh’s bare chest against your back.

“Is this okay?” he asked and you nodded. His arm was creating a sense of security and almost instantly oxytocin began to run through your veins making you calm down. You reached down and intertwined your hand with Josh’s and he held it tight.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

“Of course.” Josh’s breath was hot on your neck as he held you tight. You missed being held like this because it must have been months since the last time you fell asleep next to Tyler. He was always up late writing music, and he slept far away from you. The more you thought about it, the more you realized how much you and Tyler had grown apart the past year.

You eventually got uncomfortable from being stuck in the same position and you released Josh’s hand and flipped over so that you were facing him. His eyes opened and stared into yours and you couldn’t help but smile.

“Hi,” you whispered.

“Hi,” he whispered back. You both layed their, gazing at each other for what seemed like the longest time before you broke eye contact and looked down at Josh’s lips. He must have noticed because his head inched a little bit closer towards yours.

“Can I?” you asked softly and he nodded before he touched his lips to yours. It was a soft kiss, but you didn’t want to pull away.

“Y/N, we shouldn’t” Josh whispered as he pulled away. You bit your lip and looked down.

“Why?”

“Tyler is my best friend, and you’re my best friend, and we just shouldn’t.”

“Then why does it feel so right?” you asked. You looked back up at Josh who was already looking down at you. “You said I deserve to be happy, and what if you make me happy?”

“You make me happy too, Y/N but it’s too soon.”

“Tyler doesn’t love me anymore, and I don’t want to love him anymore either. Please just kiss me,” you stated leaning in and planting another kiss on his lips. This time you wrapped your arms around Josh’s neck and his hands danced around your back.

“This does feel so right,” Josh spoke as he took a breath. His lips came planting down back down on yours as he pulled you up onto his lap. You moved your kisses from his lips towards his neck and Josh moaned. You pushed your hips into him and you could feel him become excited.

“Josh,” you murmured as you could feel his hands make their way under the t-shirt you were wearing. “Stop.”

“What’s wrong?” Josh removed his hands from your shirt and you sat back down next to him.

“Can we just kiss? Like, take it slow?” You were glad it was dark in the room because you could feel your cheeks were hot with embarrassment.

“Of course, Y/N. I want you to be happy, and feel safe,” he planted a soft kiss on your forehead and you sighed. You hadn’t felt this safe in a long time, and you felt so comfortable and happy being wrapped up in Josh’s arms.

“We should sleep,” you whispered. Josh nodded and you both laid back under the covers and Josh’s arms were around you once again.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Josh purred into the back of your hair and the last thing you remember is falling asleep smiling.

66 notes · View notes

asterinjapan · 5 years

Text

City in style

Good evening from - well, slightly out of Imabari I guess, since my train just pulled up from there. I'm currently on the train back to Okayama, but since it's a long ride, I'm typing my report on the way. Battery of my phone is at 40% and it’s a fast train, so this will be tricky, haha.

The reason I'm so far out is that today, I went to visit Matsuyama! I had to cancel that side trip last year due to flooding, so this time, I reserved a seat on my first full day in Okayama to make sure the trip was on this time. I was really excited for it! Matsuyama is the largest city on the island Shikoku, and is directly connected by train with Okayama if you're okay with sitting in a train for almost 3 hours. It's a limited express, which means miles of leg space and seat reservations, so yeah, I was okay with that, haha.

Spoiler: I had such a good day that I caught the last direct train back to Okayama, oops. To be fair, that one leaves at like 6:30 pm, but still. Follow me below for today's report!

I had a seat reserved in the 8:30 train, which would bring me to Matsuyama at a little past 11. It's an hourly train and it's still the holidays, haha, so I refused any train earlier than that. My train is called the shiokaze, which has no specific characters that determine the meaning, so I suspect it's the first translation I can think of: salty wind. Which would make sense, as this train rides almost entirely next to the Seto Inland sea, so lots of salty air. The train took me over the Seto Ohashi, the world's longest two-tiered bridge system, and continued along the coast, allowing me to see quite a bit of Shikoku, as Matsuyama is at the other end of the island. It's so close to the water that I'm surprised they managed to get the train up and running again in a matter of weeks last year. The view is lovely, though, and I found myself wondering if that Dutch tv show Rail Away has featured this line before.

I dozed off a bit, nibbled on a delicious rice cake I'd bought yesterday and safely arrived in Matsuyama. I checked out the tourism office, which was pretty small, and decided I could do this with my own notes instead of a big guide book I'd only partially use. I did some quick math and learnt that a tram pass wouldn't pay off, so I just went to the tram stop and hopped on the first one that would stop at Okaido. Which doesn't sound very interesting until you learn that's the stop closest to Matsuyama castle, haha. You didn't think I'd go this far out if the city didn't have at least one castle, did you? (I'm kidding. OR AM I.)

Anyway, the castle is on a hilltop, but they've been so kind to install a rope way and a chair lift. You could pick either, so I was gonna go with the rope way because it was pretty windy, but then I decided, no! I shall overcome my fears! And so I got on the chair lift, haha, which at least didn't require a wait. And it's not like they catapult you up to the top, the pace is much like an escalator, so that was actually pretty nice even with my fear of heights!

I still had to walk for a bit to find the main tower, but the sun was breaking through the clouds as I did so, making for lovely views over the city and the Inland Sea as I got there. This castle is one of the 12 which survived the end of the feudal era intact, although it is the most recent one. It was originally constructed in the 1600s, but it burnt down due to lightning and was only reconstructed in the 1820s, mere decades before the end of the Edo period and with it, the feudal time. The castle went from 5 to 3 stories high, although it remains an impressive sight, and was actually rebuilt in a time when its primary function as a defensive fortress was no longer needed, as the Edo period was a time of relative peace with no wars to fight on Japanese soil.

The castle grounds are big, and the main tower covers a lot of area to explore. And they'd put in an effort! Some other original castles only have the bare bones inside with the occasional information plaque, but this one had a proper museum, with a ton of information in multiple languages and even some interactive bits, like feeling how heavy a samurai sword is or trying on armour. Though I must say the stairs were a bit tricky as they tend to be in original constructions. I've definitely seen worse (looking at you, Matsumoto) but it was still a bit steep and narrow. By no means as accessible as Shuri, but to be fair, this wasn't a castle for living, but for defense. It sure had a ton of gates for that purpose!

I had a great time exploring, and by the time I left the premises, I realised it was already 2 pm, oops. No wonder my stomach was rumbling! I uh, had pasta for lunch (with avocado and shrimp! And a salad! Healthy!), because I needed something quickly, and then made my way back to the tram. Next stop: Dogo Onsen!

Yeah, okay, I wasn't planning on going into the bathhouse, but I had some other sights here too and the building looks lovely, so might as well check it out. The station itself is really nice too, and across the street is the Botchan Karakuri clock. The clock is named after the novel by Natsume Soseki, one of the most famous Japanese writers of modern times, and every hour, figurines from that novel come out to chime in the new hour. I was here too early for that, so I walked through the nearby shopping street to find the Dogo Onsen main building, the Honkan. It was constructed in the 1890s and is such a refined bathhouse that it also welcomes the imperial family as guests. The building is said to have served as an inspiration for the giant bathhouse in the animated film Spirited Away. I've seen other claims which dispute it, but regardless, the sheer size and style are certainly reminiscent of that movie. The building is undergoing renovations, but the front is still visible whilst the back is covered with a lovely Phoenix by legendary animator Osamu Tezuka, so it's still an amazing sight.

Back through the shopping street (also housing a Ghibli store - the animation studio behind spirited away, that must have been on purpose), I caught the clock chiming 3 PM. I recorded it on my camera, but I hadn’t accounted for it actually spouting extra levels on top, so there’s some random zooming going on in that video, haha. Still though, this was a nice sight to behold, I’m glad I waited here for a bit to catch it.

Next, I made my way to my next destination: Isaniwa shrine. There's a huge and steep staircase in front of it, but it was surprisingly light to climb, and oh, so worth it! This must be one of the most photogenic shrines I've ever seen. The vermilion stood out splendidly against the blue skies, and I took a good while wandering around here.

I then took a slight detour through Dogo park. You see, Matsuyama used to house another castle: Yuzuki castle. The park was built on this site and not much of the castle is still around, but it's a nice walk and has a great viewpoint hill from which you have an unhindered panorama view of the city. Also, I could wave at Matsuyama castle from here, haha.

My final stop was Ishiteji temple, which was also the sight furthest removed from tram stops. This was an - interesting temple to say the least, haha. It's the most famous one in Matsuyama and part of the 88 temples in the Shikoku pilgrimage. The complex is big with a nice pagoda and an eclectic mix of statues. It also houses a cave that apparently branches out in two directions, I'm learning now. Dang it, missed the inner temple, but that cave was pitch dark for the most part and had stairs, so you know what? I'm proud I braved it once and didn't break my neck, I'm not going in another time, haha. I didn’t see anyone around who could have helped me had I tripped, so I was a bit scared to be honest. I’ve had this ‘trip in the pitch dark’ event before in Kyoto, but there, it was flat ground and plenty touristic. Here, before I entered the area, they had put up a box asking to pay 100 yen (or 200 yen in English, a very interesting translation, hm). I paid, but like... there was no-one to check? This so would not work back in Europe, dang.

Anyway! With the temple behind me (quite calm for the most famous one), I made my way back to the tram stop at Dogo Onsen. I just missed my transfer at Matsuyama station, so I booked a seat on the next shiokaze, also the last one for today, oops, and killed time with buying dinner and some stationary at daiso, where everything is 100 yen plus taxes, haha.

And now I'm still in the train, on the way to Marugame, the last station on Shikoku. Typing on a moving express train is pretty challenging, so I'll clean up this entry in the hotel and then share the photos of today too.

Now off to decide on what to do tomorrow, hmmm... anyway, I'm really glad I got to go to Matsuyama, the long train ride is definitely worth it. Also, I’m making some good progress on my list of castles, haha.

Good night for now, see you tomorrow!

#report #report: japan 2019 #japan 2019 #places: matsuyama

2 notes · View notes

pixelrender · 5 years

Text

My 5 genres of video games

I used to spend my time on a variety of games from AAA open world titles to small flash tower defense games. I’m still quite fond of many of these games and Kingdom Rush in particular has a special place in my heart as the smoothest tower defense game I’ve ever played. I got obsessed over niche genres from time to time too. I had a short period, in which I read many articles on hg101. Naturally, I got super interested in shmups back then. I still like to play a simple free shmup from time to time, but I avoid more difficult entries these days and I can’t call myself a hardcore fan of the genre.

For the longest time I was big on RPGs and Boiware in particular. I loved Dragon Age and I still plan getting my hands on Inquisition one day. I need to replay Mass Effect 2 and finally finish the trilogy. Baldur’s Gate is still on my shortlist of games to finish and Jade Empire is one of my favourite underrated games to recommend. There were other RPGs than those from Bioware too. Gothic 3 probably qualifies for the game I spent most time with as completing it took me half a year. I still like low fiction of Gothic series and admire compact worlds of the first two games and Risen. Oblivion is my favourite roaming game. The best part about it was bumping into a small settlement in the middle of nature and just be there. The last not least I should mention RPG Maker. I developed few small games in it and I still sometimes work on three more. 2 of them are actual RPGs. I played and enjoyed many RM games, some of them epic fantasies. So, why is this genre only a honorable mention? I don’t find myself as attracted to it and its power fantasies as I used to. I don’t have time for sprawling epic and there are certain strategy games fulfilling my lust for medieval and characters better. The two basic premises of RPGs aren’t as interesting for me as they used to be. I don’t really care about hero’s journey narrative and I’m little bored with basic mechanics. For example leveling up can be such a chore.

Now my choices are way narrower than they used to be. I still play other games and especially hobbyist and micro RPGs, which might enter my top 5 one day. These are the five genres I purposely follow, build up libraries or knowledge of their game design and talk about on Discord the most.

1. Non-linear platformers

I enjoy myself a good metroidvania. There’s only one thing, which makes a foggy, rainy better. It’s not alcohol. Also, I used term non-linear platformers on purpose. I enjoy sideview platforming and not every metroidvania’s that. There are many different movements and some of them are less fun and there are 3d games, which use Metroid inspired progression. Also, I haven’t played a single Metroid or Castlevania proper. I don’t have any excuse for the travesty. Ok, not being a console guy might give you an explanation of my situation. And with so many likes and clones on steam, I have enough to eat through without touching emulators.

I enjoy the genre’s level design in particular. I think that adding multiple layers and making souls inspired timing based combat or adding too many rpg elements rarely helps. Movement’s still the core. Upgrades/progression is at its best, when focused on obtaining new ways of movement and not stronger weapons. Clever boss fights are always important, but I prefer them to be a puzzle rather than an endurance competition. I have a huge, almost endless list of metroidvanias to play and to base my own one on.

2. Walking simulators

Sometimes I just need to turn off. Games in general are a good resting activity, walking sims and ambient games take it little further. And I usually feel enriched by playing them. I don’t feel like an overgrown child. Walking around studying original aesthetic of their creators. It’s a dialogue, in which I confront and reflect their approach to architecture and aesthetics They are definitely better enjoyed on a big screen with proper audio and smooth performance. They’re quite power hungry as even low poly ones are usually 3d. That’s a problem with my current hardware and software. In general I enjoy low poly and minimalist walking sims the most. They tend to focus more on composition.

Almost walking sims present you with a sense of wonder. You explore unknown and often massive lands. They should let you find your own way, but some of there are more focused and lead. Even if the land’s strange, it’s for the better when it rings a sense of familiar. Going cheap surreal isn’t the way. Landscapes in walking sims can be way weirder than Dali, but they should have their own nature. Walking sims are usually very slow. There’s no activity besides walking, maybe you can pick up an item. Sometimes, you follow a story. It’s hard to define a hard border, where walking sims end and other genres start. Gone Home is about something completely else than pure walking sims, but I still enjoy it for its pacing and ambiance. That brings it very close. Curtain certainly isn’t a walking sim, but the way you move around the apartment and then walk through a corridor to bend time is very much close to timeless scenes of walking sims.

3. Art games - game art

This is a difficult category to define. Art games are usually aiming for more than entertainment. They’re deeper with references to other media or filled with social critique. Having fun sometimes feels bad in them. Game art is even more difficult to define. To put it simply, it’s usually a piece of art using games as its medium. It can have a form of an interactive executable or weird modification of an existing game but the artistic concept is more important than it being a working game. In terms of mechanics, this is a diverse group and vague one, when it comes to game design. Here I can learn from areas more relevant in the real world. They often take on philosophy, ethics, politics, aesthetics and other fields I’m interested in more than in violence and loot.

Some game are clear art games. An easy example is Kentucky Route Zero, which despite it’s artsy nature is clearly defined by its mechanics and sense of progress. The other example from my favourite games would be Little Party. This one’s lighter on mechanics, but it tells a very subtle and civil story and it uses art and creativity more than being a product of it. Proteus would be my personal borderline example. The game’s about complementing and its island are small art pieces. This is actually very close to an ambient video installation and could be considered game art.

4. Turn based strategy games

Games my brain enjoys the most. I get satisfaction from solving. Solving concrete situations of strategy games is closer to me than abstract puzzles and logic games in general. Into the Breach is close to the latter in terms of mechanics but I love it, because it’s not cold, it makes me feel and every time I fail and an enemy hits one of the cities, I stop breathing for a moment. It makes me feel heroic to put one of my mechs in front of houses and almost sacrifice its pilot to save those lives.

There’s a huge influence of Heroes of Might and Magic. That game has many flaws, but its pace is perfect. Battles are usually either swift of epic. Heroes were my first love and I still fondly return to them from time to time. They’re not as challenging or complex as most tactics/strategy games, but they’re perfect rewarding fun. I only left them as my default turn based strategy to branch out. Series like Civilization and Warlock are building more consistent worlds. Especially in Civ its super fast turns and ties to the real world’s history make it a captivating game, in which you need to strategize on several fronts at once. Tactics are the second path I currently follow. There are closer to RPGs, but for reason your characters becoming stronger makes more sense here. It’s often because you can lose them and losing a level 10 character hurts more. I enjoy the small scale of tactics games too. The smaller the better. Again it’s a game design challenge of going further without sacrificing complexity.

5. Grand strategy games

I wonder how longer this one sticks. I love engrossing myself in Paradox games, losing track of real for weeks and becoming weirdo obsessed with my own history of the world. But it’s weird and disconnecting and you can’t talk about it with your friends, because explaining it is impossible. You can share some stories with fellow grand strategy players, but it’s not difficult to realize the weird nerdness of the company.

So, what’s so good about them? They simulate politics on a world-wide level with an amount of realism, which just feels right. You can change history, but only within borders set up by Paradox. For example you can conquer France as an Aztec, but it stays France. Shapes are the same, systems too. This shade of reality makes fiction in Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria and other games much more easy to engage with. That’s also why I find Stellaris boring. Leaving reality, there’s nothing to compare your fiction with. It renders my choices irrelevant and different developments have same impact on me. Multiplayer probably changes this.

Civilization is far less complex than grand strategy games. It’s simple and easy to explain and to change. Yet it keeps certain connection to the real world and it has great modding scene. There isn’t an infinite number of expansions for it, which would make it bloated with features. And one run lasts a lot less. Civ isn’t a simulation, it’s still a very long puzzle. One day, I will only stick with one of the two. Now It looks better for Sid Mayer than Paradox.

Pictures are from following games: Caged Bird Dont Fly Caught in a Wire Sing Like a Good Canary Come When Called, Gunmetal Arcadia, Mura Toka (1 and 2), Morphblade, Victoria 2

#feature #genres

0 notes

topsolarpanels · 7 years

Text

Is it too late to save the world? Jonathan Franzen on one year of Trump’s America

As the ice shelves crumble and the Twitter president threatens to pull out of the Paris accord, Franzen reflects on the role of the writer in times of crisis

If an essay is something essayed – something hazarded , not definitive , not authoritative; something ventured on the basis of the author’s personal experience and subjectivity- we might seem to be living in an essayistic golden age. Which party you went to on Friday night, how you were treated by a flight attendant, what your take on the political outrage of the day is: the presumption of social media is that even the tiniest subjective micronarrative is worthy not only of private notation, as in a diary, but of sharing with other people. The US president now operates on this presumption. Traditionally hard news reporting, in places like the New York Times, has softened up to allow the I , with its voice and opinions and impressions, to take the front-page spotlight, and book reviewers feel less and less constrained to discuss books with any kind of objectivity. It didn’t use to matter if Raskolnikov and Lily Bart were likable, but the question of “likability,” with its implicit privileging of the reviewer’s personal impressions, is now a key element of critical decision. Literary fiction itself is appearing more and more like essay.

Some of the most influential fictions of recent years, by Rachel Cusk and Karl Ove Knausgaard, take the method of self-conscious first-person witnes to a new level. Their most extreme admirers will tell you that imagination and invention are outmoded contrivances; that to occupy the subjectivity of a character unlike the author is an act of appropriation, even colonialism; that the only authentic and politically defensible mode of narrative is autobiography.

Meanwhile the personal essay itself- the formal apparatus of honest self-examination and sustained engagement with notions, as developed by Montaigne and advanced by Emerson and Woolf and Baldwin- is in eclipse. Most large-circulation American magazines have all but ceased to publish pure essays. The kind persists mainly in smaller publications that collectively have fewer readers than Margaret Atwood has Twitter adherents. Should we be mourning the essay’s extinction? Or should we be celebrating its conquest of the larger culture?

A personal and subjective micronarrative: the few lessons I’ve learned about writing essays all came from my editor at the New Yorker, Henry Finder. I first went to Henry, in 1994, as a would-be journalist in pressing need of money. Largely through dumb luck, I made a publishable article about the US Postal Service, and then, through native incompetence, I wrote an unpublishable piece about the Sierra Club. This was the point at which Henry suggested that I might have some aptitude as an essayist. I heard him to be saying,” since you’re obviously a crap journalist”, and denied that I had any such aptitude. I’d been raised with a midwestern horror of yakking too much about myself, and I had an additional racism, derived from certain wrongheaded notions about novel-writing, against the stating of things that could more rewardingly be depicted . But I still needed money, so I maintain calling Henry for book-review assignments. On one of our calls, he asked me if I had any interest in the tobacco industry- the subject of a major new history by Richard Kluger. I rapidly said:” Cigarettes are the last thing in the world I want to think about .” To this, Henry even more quickly replied: “ Therefore you must be talking about them .”

This was my first lesson from Henry, and it remains the most important one. After smoking throughout my 20 s, I’d succeeded in ceasing for two years in my early 30 s. But when I was assigned the post-office piece, and became terrified of picking up the phone and introducing myself as a New Yorker journalist, I’d taken up the habit again. In the years since then, I’d managed to think of myself as a nonsmoker, or at the least as a person so securely resolved to quit again that I might as well already have been a nonsmoker, even as I continued to smoking. My state of mind was just a quantum wave function in which I could be totally a smoker but also totally not a smoker, so long as I never took measure of myself. And it was instantly clear to me that writing about cigarettes would force me to take my measure. “Thats what” essays do.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at his election night rally in New York in November 2016. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/ Reuters

There was also the problem of my mother, whose parent had died of lung cancer, and who was militantly anti-tobacco. I’d concealed my habit from her for more than 15 years. One reason I needed to preserve my indeterminacy as a smoker/ nonsmoker was that I didn’t enjoy lying to her. As soon as I could succeed in discontinuing again, permanently, the wave function would collapse and I would be, one hundred per cent, the nonsmoker I’d always represented myself to be- but only if I didn’t first come out, in publish, as a smoker.

Henry had been a twentysomething wunderkind when Tina Brown hired him at the New Yorker. He had a distinctive tight-chested manner of speaking, a kind of hyper-articulate mumble, like prose acutely well edited but scarcely legible. I was awed by his intelligence and his erudition and had promptly come to live in dread of disillusioning him. Henry’s passionate emphasis in “ Therefore you must write about them”- he was the only speaker I knew who could get away with the stressed initial “ Therefore ” and the imperative “must”- allowed me to hope that I’d registered in his consciousness in some small way.

And so I went to work on the essay, every day combusting half a dozen low-tar cigarettes in front of a box fan in my living-room window, and handed in the only thing I ever wrote for Henry that didn’t need his editing. I don’t remember how my mother get her hands on the essay or how she conveyed to me her deep sense of betrayal, whether by letter or in telephone calls, but I do remember that she then didn’t communicate with me for six weeks- by a wide margin, the longest she ever ran silent on me. It was precisely as I’d dreaded. But when she got over it and began sending me letters again, I felt insured by her, insured for what I was, in a manner that is I’d never felt before. It wasn’t just that my “real” self had been concealed from her; it was as if there hadn’t really been a self to see.

Kierkegaard, in Either/ Or , builds fun of the” busy human” for whom busyness is a style of avoiding an honest self-reckoning. You might wake up in the night and realise that you’re lonely in your matrimony, or that you need to think about what your level of consumption is doing to the planet, but the next day you have a million little things to do, and the day after that you have another million things. As long as there’s no end of little things, you never have to stop and confront the bigger questions. Writing or reading an essay isn’t the only style to stop and ask yourself who you really are and what your life might mean, but it is one good way. And if you consider how laughably unbusy Kierkegaard’s Copenhagen was, compared with our own age, those subjective tweets and hasty blog posts don’t seem so essayistic. They seem more like a means of avoiding what a real essay might force on us. We spend our days reading, on screens, stuff we’d never bother reading in a printed book, and bitch about how busy we are.

I quit cigarettes for the second time in 1997. And then, in 2002, for the final time. And then, in 2003, for the last and final day- unless you count the smokeless nicotine that’s coursing through my bloodstream as I write this. Attempting to write an honest essay doesn’t alter the multiplicity of my egoes; I’m still simultaneously a reptile-brained addict, a worrier about my health, an eternal adolescent, a self-medicating depressive. What changes, if I take the time to stop and measure, is that my multi-selved identity acquires substance .

One of the mysteries of literature is that personal substance, as perceived by both the writer and the reader, is situated outside the body of either of them, on some kind of page. How can I feel realer to myself in a thing I’m writing than I do inside my body? How can I feel closer to another person when I’m reading her terms than I do when I’m sitting next to her? The answer, in part, is that both writing and reading demand full attentiveness. But it surely also has to do with the kind of ordering that is possible merely on the page.

Former FBI director James Comey testifying before the US Senate select committee on intelligence in October. Photograph: Saul Loeb/ AFP/ Getty Images

Here I might mention two other lessons I learned from Henry Finder. One was Every essay, even a think piece, tells a story . The other was There are two ways to organise material:” Like goes with like” and “This followed that.” These precepts may seem self-evident, but any grader of high-school or college essays can tell you that they aren’t. To me it was especially not evident that a believe piece should follow the rules of drama. And yet: doesn’t a good debate begin by positing some difficult problem? And doesn’t it then propose an escape from the problem through some bold proposition, and put in obstacles in the form of objections and counterarguments, and finally, through a series of reversals, take us to an unforeseen but fulfilling conclusion?

If you accept Henry’s premise that a successful prose piece consists of material arranged in the form of a story, and if you share my own conviction that our identities consist of the narratives we tell about ourselves, it stimulates sense that we should get a strong make of personal substance from the labour of writing and the pleasure of reading. When I’m alone in the woods or having dinner with a friend, I’m overwhelmed by the quantity of random sensory data coming at me. The act of writing subtracts almost everything, leaving merely the alphabet and punctuation marks, and progresses toward non-randomness. Sometimes, in ordering the elements of a familiar tale, you discover that it doesn’t mean what you thought it did. Sometimes, especially with an debate (” This follows from that “), a completely new narrative is called for. The discipline of fashioning a compelling tale can crystallise thoughts and feelings you merely dimly knew you had in you.

If you’re looking at a mass of material that doesn’t seem to give itself to storytelling, Henry would say your merely other option is to sort it into categories, grouping similar components together: Like goes with like . This is, at a minimum, a tidy route to write. But patterns also have a way of turning into stories. To make sense of Donald Trump’s victory in an election he was widely expected to lose, it’s tempting to construct a this-followed-that narrative: Hillary Clinton was careless with her emails, the Justice department chose not to prosecute her, then Anthony Weiner’s emails came to light, then James Comey reported to Congress that Clinton might still be in difficulty, and then Trump won the election. But it may actually be more fruitful to group like with like: Trump’s victory was like the Brexit vote and like the resurgent anti-immigrant patriotism in Europe. Clinton’s imperiously sloppy handled in her emails was like her poorly messaged campaign and like her decision not to campaign harder in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

I was in Ghana on election day, birdwatching with my brother and two friends. James Comey’s report to Congress had unsettled the campaign before I left for Africa, but Nate Silver‘s authoritative polling website, Fivethirtyeight, was still giving Trump only a 30% opportunity of winning. Having cast an early vote for Clinton, I’d arrived in Accra feeling only moderately anxious about the election and congratulating myself on my decision to spend the final week of the campaign not checking Fivethirtyeight 10 times a day.

I was indulging a different sort of compulsion in Ghana. To my shame, I am what people in the world of birding call a lister. It’s not that I don’t love birds for their own sake. I run birding to experience their beauty and diversity, understand better their behaviour and the ecosystems they belong to, and take long, attentive walkings in new places. But I also maintain way too many listings. I count not only the bird species I’ve seen worldwide but the ones I’ve seen in every country and every US state I’ve birded in, also at various smaller sites, including my back yard, and in every calendar year since 2003. I can rationalise my compulsive counting as an extra little game I play within the context of my passion. But I truly am compulsive. This builds me morally inferior to birders who bird exclusively for the joy of it.

It happened that by going to Ghana I’d dedicated myself a chance to break my previous year-list record of 1,286 species. I was already over 800 for 2016, and I knew, from my online research, that trips similar to ours had produced virtually 500 species, merely a handful of which are also common in America. If I could see 460 unique year species in Africa, and then utilize my seven-hour layover in London to pick up 20 easy European birds at a park near Heathrow, 2016 would be my best year ever.

Hillary Clinton …’ Careless with her emails .’ Photograph: Jewel Samad/ AFP/ Getty Images

We were assuring great stuff in Ghana, spectacular turacos and bee-eaters found only in west Africa. But the country’s few remaining woodlands are under intense hunting and logging pressure, and our walkings in them were more sweltering than productive. By the evening of election day, we’d already missed our only shot at several of my target species. Very early the next morning, when polls were still open on the west coast of the States, I turned on my phone for the pleasure of confirming that Clinton was winning the election. What I found instead were stricken texts from my friends in California, with pictures of them staring at a TV and seeming morose, my girlfriend curled up on a sofa in a fetal posture. The Times headline of the moment was ” Trump Takes North Carolina, Building Momentum; Clinton’s Path to Victory Narrow .”

There was nothing to be done but go birding. On a road in the Nsuta forest, dodging timber trucks whose momentum I associated with Trump’s, and yet clinging to the idea that Clinton still had a track to victory, I insured Black Dwarf Hornbills, an African Cuckoo-Hawk and a Melancholy Woodpecker. It was a sweaty but satisfactory morning that objective, when we re-emerged into network coverage, with the news that the” short-fingered vulgarian”( Spy magazine’s memorable epithet) was my country’s new president. This was the moment when I insured what my mind had been doing with Nate Silver’s figure of 30% for Trump’s odds. Somehow I’d taken the figure to mean that the world might be, worst case, 30% shittier after election day.

What the number actually represented, of course, was a 30% chance of the world’s being 100% shittier.

As we travelled up into drier, emptier northern Ghana, we intersected with some birds I’d long dreamed of watch: Egyptian Plovers, Carmine Bee-eaters and a male Standard-winged Nightjar, whose outrageous wing streamers devoted it the appear of a nighthawk being closely pursued by two bats. But we were falling ever further behind the year-bird pace I needed to maintain. It occurred to me, belatedly, that the trip lists I’d seen online had included species that were only hear , not ensure, while I needed to see a bird to count it. Those lists had raised my hopes the way Nate Silver had. Now every target species I missed increased the pressure to find all of the remaining targets, even the wildly unlikely ones, if I wanted to break my record. It was only a stupid year listing, ultimately meaningless even to me, but I was haunted by the headline from the morning after election day. Instead of 275 electoral elections, I needed 460 species, and my route to victory was becoming very narrow. Finally, four days before the end of the trip, in the spillway of a dam near the Burkina Faso border, where I’d hoped to get half a dozen new grassland birds and see zero, I had to accept the reality of loss. I was abruptly aware that I should have been at home, trying to console my girlfriend about the election, exerting the one benefit of being a depressive pessimist, which is the propensity to chuckle in dark times.

How had the short-fingered vulgarian arrived at the White House? When Hillary Clinton started speaking in public again, she gave credence to a like-goes-with-like account of her character by advancing a this-followed-that narrative. Never mind that she’d mishandled her emails and uttered the phrase ” basket of deplorables “. Never intellect that voters might have had legitimate grievances with the liberal elite she represented; might have failed to appreciate the rationality of free trade, open perimeters, and mill automation when the overall gains in global wealth came at middle-class expenditure; might have resented the federal imposition of liberal urban values on conservative rural communities. According to Clinton, her loss was the flaw of James Comey- maybe also of the Russians.

Admittedly, I had my own neat narrative account. When I came home from Africa to Santa Cruz, my progressive friends were still struggling to understand how Trump could have won. I remembered a public event I’d once done with the optimistic social-media specialist Clay Shirky, who’d recounted to the audience how “shocked” professional New York eatery critics had been when Zagat, a crowd-sourced reviewing service, had named Union Square Cafe the best eatery in township. Shirky’s point was that professional critics aren’t as smart as they think they are; that, in fact, in the age of Big Data, critics are no longer even necessary. At the event, dismissing the fact that Union Square Cafe was my favourite New York restaurant( the crowd was right !), I’d sourly wondered if Shirky believed that critics were also stupid to consider Alice Munro a better writer than James Patterson. But now Trump’s victory, too, had vindicated Shirky’s mockery of pundits. Social media had allowed Trump to bypass the critical establishment, and just enough members of the crowd, in key swaying states, had find his low comedy and his incendiary speech “better” than Clinton’s nuanced arguments and her mastery of policy. This follows from that : without Twitter and Facebook , no Trump.

After the election, Mark Zuckerberg did briefly appears to take responsibility, kind of, for having made the platform of selection for fake news about Clinton, and to suggest that Facebook could become more active in filtering the news.( Good luck with that .) Twitter, for its part, kept its head down. As Trump’s tweeting continued unabated, what could Twitter possibly say? That it was constructing the world a better place?

Mark Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook could become more active in filtering the news. Photo: Steven Senne/ AP

In December, my favourite Santa Cruz radio station, KPIG, began operating a fake ad offering counselling services to addicts of Trump-hating tweets and Facebook posts. The following month, a week before Trump’s inauguration, the PEN American Center organised events around the country to reject the assault on free speech that it claimed Trump represented. Although his administration’s travelling regulations did afterwards make it harder for novelists from Muslim countries to have their voices heard in the United States, the one bad thing that could not be said of Trump, in January, was that he had in any way curtailed free speech. His lying, bullying tweets were free speech on steroids. PEN itself, only a few years earlier, had given a free-speech awarding to Twitter, for its self-publicised role in the Arab spring. The actual outcome of the Arab springtime had been a retrenchment of autocracy, and Twitter had since uncovered itself, in Trump’s hands, to be a platform made to order for autocracy, but the ironies didn’t end there. During the same week in January, progressive American bookstores and authors proposed a boycott of Simon& Schuster for the crime of intending to publish one book by the dismal right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. The angriest of the bookstores talked of refusing to stock all titles from S& S, including, presumably, the books of Andrew Solomon, the president of PEN. The talk didn’t aim until S& S voided its contract with Yiannopoulos.

Trump and his alt-right supporters take pleasure in pushing the buttons of the politically correct, but it merely works because the buttons are there to be pushed- students and activists claiming the human rights of not hear things that upset them, and to shout down notions that offend them. Intolerance particularly flourishes online, where measured speech is punished by not getting clicked on, invisible Facebook and Google algorithms steer you towards content you agree with, and nonconforming voices remain silent for fear of being flamed or trolled or unfriended. The outcome is a silo in which, whatever side you’re on, you feel absolutely right to detest what you detest. And here is another way in which the essay distinguished from superficially similar kinds of subjective speech. The essay’s roots are in literature, and literature at its best- the work of Alice Munro, for example- invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might dislike you.

Three years ago, I was in a state of fury about climate change. The Republican party was continuing to lie about the absence of a scientific consensus on climate- Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection had gone so far as to forbid its employees to write the words “climate change”, after Florida’s governor, a Republican, insisted that it wasn’t a” true fact”- but I wasn’t much less angry at the left. I’d read a new volume by Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything , in which she assured the reader that, although” period is tight”, we still have 10 years to radically remake the world economy and prevent global temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Klein wasn’t the only leftist saying we still had 10 years. In fact, environmental activists had been saying the exact same thing in 2005.

They’d also been saying it in 1995: We still have 10 years . By 2015, though, it ought to have been clear that humanity is incapable in every way- politically, psychologically, ethically, economically- of reducing carbon emissions quickly enough to change everything. Even the European union, which had taken the early lead on climate, and was fond of lecturing other regions on their irresponsibility, needed only a recession in 2009 to change its focus to economic growth. Barring a worldwide insurrection against free-market capitalism in the next 10 years- the scenario that Klein contended could still save us- the most likely rise in temperature this century is on the order of six degrees. We’ll be lucky to avoid a two-degree risebefore the year 2030.

In a polity ever more starkly divided, the truth about global warming was even less convenient to the left than to the right. The right’s denials were odious lies, but at least they were consistent with a certain cold-eyed political realism. The left, having excoriated the right for its intellectual deceit and turned climate denialism into a political rallying cry, was now in an impossible posture. It had to keep insisting on the truth of climate science while persisting in the fiction that collective world action could stave off the worst of it: that universal acceptance of the facts, which really might have changed everything in 1995, could still change everything. Otherwise, what change did it build if the Republicans quibbled with the social sciences?

Because my sympathies were with the left- reducing carbon emissions is vastly better than doing nothing; every half-degree helps- I also held it to a higher criterion. Denying the dark reality, pretending that the Paris accord could forestall misfortune, was understandable as a tactic to hold people motivated to reduce emissions; to keep hope alive. As a strategy, though, it did more damage than good. It conceded the ethical high ground, insulted the intelligence of unpersuaded voters (” Truly? We still have 10 years ?”), and foreclosed frankfurter discussion of how the global community should prepare for drastic changes, and how nations like Bangladesh should be compensated for what nations like the United States have done to them.

Dishonesty also skewed priorities. In the past 20 years, the environmental movement had become captive to a single issue. Partly out of genuine alarm, partly also because foregrounding human problems was politically less risky- less elitist- than talking about nature, the big environmental NGOs had all invested their political capital in fighting climate change, a problem with a human face. The NGO that especially enraged me, as a bird lover, was the National Audubon Society, once an uncompromising defender of birds , now a lethargic organization with a very large PR department. In September 2014, with much fanfare, that PR department had announced to the world that climate change was the number-one menace to the birds of Northern america. The proclamation was both narrowly dishonest, because its wording didn’t square with the conclusions of Audubon’s own scientists, and broadly dishonest, because not one single bird demise could be directly attributed to human carbon emissions. In 2014, the most serious threat to American birds was habitat loss, followed by outdoor cats, collisions with buildings, and pesticides. By invoking the buzzword of climate change, Audubon got a lot of attention in the liberal media; another point had been scored against the science-denying right. But it was not at all clear how this helped birds. The only practical effect of Audubon’s announcement, it seemed to me, was to discourage people from addressing the real threats to birds in the present.

Snow Geese in New Mexico, USA. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/ Alamy/ Alamy

I was so angry that I decided that I’d better write an essay. I began with a jeremiad against the National Audubon Society, widened it into a scornful denunciation of the environmental movement generally, and then started waking up in the night in a panic of repentance and doubt. For the writer, an essay is a mirror, and I didn’t like what I was find in this one. Why was I excoriating fellow liberals when the denialists were so much worse? The prospect of climate change was every bit as sickening to me as to the groups I was attacking. With every additional degree of global warming, further hundreds of millions of people around the world would suffer. Wasn’t it worth an all-out effort to achieve a reduction of even half of one degree? Wasn’t it obscene to be talking about birds when children in Bangladesh were threatened? Yes, the premise of my essay was that we have an ethical responsibility to other species as well as to our own. But what if that premise was false? And, even if it was true, did I genuinely care personally about biodiversity? Or was I just a privileged white guy who liked to go birding? And not even a purehearted birder- a lister!

After three nights of doubting my character and motives, I called Henry Finder and told him I couldn’t write the piece. I’d done plenty of ranting about climate to my friends and to likeminded conservationists, but it was like a lot of the ranting that happens online, where you’re protected by the impromptu nature of the writing and by the known friendliness of your audience. Trying to write a finished thing, an essay, had made me aware of the sloppiness of my reasoning. It had also enormously increased health risks of shame, because the writing wasn’t casual, and because it was going out to an audience of probably hostile strangers. Following Henry’s admonition (“ Therefore “), I’d come to think of the essayist as a firefighter, whose undertaking, while everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them. But I had a lot more to fear now than my mother’s disapproval.

My essay might have stayed abandoned if I hadn’t already clicked a button on Audubon’s website, confirming that, yes, I wanted to join it in fighting climate change. I’d only done this to gather rhetorical ammunition to use against Audubon, but a spate of direct-mail solicitations had followed from that click. I got at least eight of them in six weeks, all of them asking me to give money, along with a similar deluge in my email inbox. A few days after speaking to Henry, I opened one of the emails and discovered myself looking at a picture of myself – fortunately a flattering image, taken in 2010 for Vogue magazine, which had dressed me up better than I garment myself and posed me in a field with my binoculars, like a birder. The headline of the email was something like” Join Author Jonathan Franzen in Supporting Audubon “. It was true that, a few years earlier, in an interview with Audubon magazine, I’d politely praised the organisation, or at least its publication. But no one had asked for my permission to use my name and image for solicitation. I wasn’t sure the email was even legal.

A more benign impetus to return to the essay received from Henry. As far as I know, Henry couldn’t care less about birds, but he seemed to see something in my argument that our preoccupation with future catastrophes discourages us from tackling solvable environmental problems in the here and now. In an email to me, he gently suggested that I lose the tone of prophetic disdain.” This piece will be more persuasive ,” he wrote in another,” if, ironically, it’s more ambivalent, less polemical. You’re not whaling on folks who want us to pay attention to climate change and emission reductions. But you’re attentive to the costs. To what the discourse pushes to the margins .” Email by email, revise by revision, Henry nudged me toward framing the essay not as a denunciation but as a question: how do we find meaning in our actions when the world seems to be coming to an end? Much of the final draft was allocated to a pair of well-conceived regional preservation projects, in Peru and Costa Rica, where the world really is being made a better place , not just for wild plants and wild animals but for the Peruvians and Costa Ricans who live there. Run on these projects is personally meaningful, and the benefits are immediate and tangible.

In writing about the two projects, I hoped that one or two of the big charitable foundations, the ones expending tens of millions of dollars on biodiesel development or on gale farms in Eritrea, might read the piece and consider investing in work that produces tangible results. What I get instead was a missile attack from the liberal silo. I’m not on social media, but my friends reported that I was being called all sorts of names, including “birdbrain” and” climate-change denier “. Tweet-sized snippets of my essay, retweeted out of context, induced it sound as if I’d proposed that we abandon the effort to reduce carbon emissions, which was the position of the Republican party, which, by the polarising logic of online discourse, attained me a climate-change denier. In fact, I’m such a climate-science accepter that I don’t even bother having hope for the ice caps. All I’d denied was that a right-minded international elite, meeting in nice hotels around the world, could stop them from melting. This was my crime against orthodoxy. Climate now has such a lock on the liberal imagination that any attempt to change the conversation- even trying to change it to the epic extinction event that human beings are already generating without the help of climate change- amounts to an offence against religion.

I did have pity for the climate-change professionals who denounced the essay. They’d been working for decades to create the alarm in America, and they ultimately had President Obama on board with them; they had the Paris accord. It was an inopportune time to point out that drastic global warming is already a done deal, and that it seems unlikely that humanity is going to leave any carbon in the ground, given that, even now , not one country in the world has pledged to do it.

In 2015, President obama described the Paris accord as the best chance to save the planet. Photo: Pool/ Getty Images

I also understood the ferocity of the alternative-energy industry, which is a business like any other. If you allow that renewable energy projects are only a moderating tactic, unable to reverse the damage that past carbon emissions will continue to do for centuries, it opens the door to other questions about the business. Like, did we really need quite so many windmills? Did they have to be placed in ecologically sensitive regions? And the solar farms in the Mojave desert- wouldn’t it induce more sense to covering the city of Los Angeles with solar panels and spare the open space? Weren’t we sort of destroying the natural environment in order to save it? I believe it was an industry blogger who called me a birdbrain.

As for Audubon, the fundraising email should have warned me about the character of its management. But I was still surprised by its reply to the essay, which was to attack, ad hominem, the person whose name and image it had blithely appropriated two months earlier. My essay had, yes, devoted Audubon some tough love. I wanted it to cut out the nonsense, stop talking about 50 years from now, and be more aggressive in defending the birds that both it and I love.

But apparently all Audubon could see was a threat to its membership numbers and its fundraising endeavors, and so it had to disprove me as a person. I’m told the president of Audubon fired off four different salvos at me personally. This is what presidents do now.

And it worked. Without even reading those salvos- simply from knowing that other people were reading them- I felt ashamed. I felt the style I’d felt in eighth grade, shunned by the crowd and called names that shouldn’t have hurt but did. I wished I’d listened to my anxieties in the night and maintained my opinions to myself. In a country of some anguish, I called up Henry and dumped all my dishonor and regret on him. He replied, in his barely legible route, that the online reaction was merely weather.” With public opinion ,” he said,” there’s weather, and then there’s climate. You’re trying to change the climate, and that takes time .”

It didn’t matter if I believed this or not. It was enough to feel that one person, Henry, didn’t detest me. I consoled myself with the thought that, although climate is too vast and chaotic for any individual to alter it, the individual can s