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Why Romance Writers Shouldn’t Be Gamers

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As you may or may not know, in addition to writing, I enjoy playing video games.

We played World of Warcraft back when it was vanilla. I remember when Burning Crusades was released…yeah, I just aged myself. We decided online games were not for us. We explored other games, and fell in love with many fan favorites: Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed etc.

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Not even going to confess how many hours we spent on this game.

My disappointment that many of these games abandoned decent writing in a desperate attempt to create a MMO (looking at you Mass Effect) aside, you will note that many of these are open worlds. Giant sandboxes to play in with little or no plot. Why? Because as Assassin’s Creed taught me when they killed the main protagonist (Desmond Miles, not Ezio or the various other past lives you jump into), the concept of story is not something most gaming companies do well.

So give me Fallout where I roam the wastes to find my father and basically get to explore, find cool stuff, and the like. Which, incidentally, is another game where their story-telling was SO bad they had to patch the ending. The game is so old I won’t consider this a spoiler, but literally most of your companions could complete the ending quest of walking into the radioactive room without being harmed (robots) or actually being healed (super mutant – which yes, I was such a goody-two-shoes I had one as my companion), but nope, you had to do it and die…for reasons… Yeah, they had to patch that. Not even their core gamer population was swallowing that.

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And you know I have every one of these.

 

Fallout is not kid friendly. Especially not the way we play with the one shot, one kill mentality. Yes, we like to play snipers in our house. As we play through Skyrim and find ourselves already able to sneak without penalty in our full daedric armor before ever find the Nightingale quest line…

But we have not yet figured out a way to turn off the graphic violence of a head shot in these games, and the heads on pikes in Fallout are not for children. So kids has meant we turned to many old favorites that are family friendly, like the Legend of Zelda and Mario Kart.

As part of this, we bought Super Smash Brothers mostly to get a chance to play the characters from a whole slew of different games.

Because my daughter desperately wanted to play Zelda.

Sad that Zelda was not even a favorite in the game…But there was this whole slew of characters I had never seen before that intrigued me. So, I started checking into their games, figuring they would be more games I could share with my kids as they were all Nintendo…

 

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Fire Emblem Fates

Ummm, yeah. I got sucked into the Fire Emblem series in 2019 through Super Smash Brothers as so many got sucked into it over two decades ago when Smash Brother came out on the Nintendo 64. The only reason Nintendo even brought Fire Emblem to the US was how many people wanted it after playing Smash Brothers back then.

Fire Emblem. A strategy game, with crazy characters that I build relationships with so I can marry them off then recruit their kids to my team?!? This exists? And no one told me?

I discovered my ultimate gamer catnip.

CatNip

Or so I thought.

Then I learned the hard way. The Fire Emblem series doesn’t believe in happily ever after.

 

Serial Micro Fiction: News

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Claudia paced as she thought through her prayer and found her brother alone in the great hall with an untouched glass of wine beside him.

“What’s wrong?”

He shook his head.

“Tell me.” Claudia crouched beside him. While he was almost ten summers her senior, she had been his confidant and voice of reason since Anton’s death.

“King Garon wants war.”

Serial Micro Fiction: The Prayer

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There were no spells in any of Claudia’s books large enough, powerful enough, to destroy all of Ilyious.

No matter how much she studied, how much she was willing to give up, there was no way to end the wars once and for all.

But she would not give up.

She closed her eyes and prayed to the Moon Dragon.

Serial Micro Fiction: Done

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Claudia watched her mother all but beg for her father’s attention and was disgusted with both of them.

Her mother would never be the Duke of Whitecliff’s first wife.

She should stop trying.

Claudia stared down at the mage tome in front of her. She would never let herself be anyone’s second choice.

Besides, she had a war to end.

Family: Parenting Is Hard. Especially for an Introvert

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Not that I thought parenting was going to be easy, but it is so much harder than I thought it was going to be.

I love my kids. I love snuggling with them, hearing about their days, and seeing them grow as people. They are amazing.

But I honestly think parenting is even harder if you are an introvert.

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I understand why 1950s moms drank.

I’ve learned to tolerate the hour a day it takes to pick them up from school.

I still dislike sitting through dance class week after week, but I manage, mostly because I plan ahead with books and snacks for the child stuck sitting with me.

Then there is all the other things you have to remember to do, like buying new fall jackets after they lost theirs at the zoo. Or, just in general, noticing their pants are getting too short or they need new socks and underwear. There’s the yearly purchase of winter gear etc.

These are all things I can handle. I may not be good at them, but I an handle them.

Then there are other things that you feel obligated to do because kids should experience them even if you would really rather not. Really, really rather not.

Like the children’s museum.

Or a water park.

Or state fair.

I hate crowds. Hate them.

Too many people. Too much noise. Too many distractions.

I feel overloaded.

Add to that trying to keep track of two children in the middle of all of that, one who wants to go, go, go, and the other who wants to walk slowly and observe everything and you have an introvert’s nightmare.

This was brought home to me when I made the mistake of going to the state fair with my husband and kids.

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And your sanity.

Before children, we never went to the state fair. It was of no interest to us. Then some friends invited us to go with and bring the girls. My husband took them, and I stayed home. My allergies thanked me, and he and the kids had a great time, and I got some quiet alone time. Win-win.

Then this year there was a spate of shootings right before they went to the fair.

Fueled by fear, I begged my husband not to take the kids. The last place I wanted them to be was another large public venue.

He said he wouldn’t live life in fear, he’d promised the kids the fair, and they were going with our friends.

I am not entirely certain why I chose to go other than fear. Fear that I wouldn’t be there to protect my little ones if the unthinkable happened. Not that I could do much other than throw myself over top of them, but it still seemed like a smart idea in our quiet home that morning.

It wasn’t a good idea.

The fair is everything I hate.

Hot. Crowded. Overstimulated and Bored.

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Me and both my children.

Is that possible to be overstimulated and bored at the same time?

I wouldn’t have thought so, but it is. I felt assaulted by smells from food vendors, noise from the crowds and bands, and the visual panoply of booths, rides, and people. Add to that the heat, the low grade fear from the evening news, and the very real need to keep a close eye on two energetic kids.

But none of this entertained me.

I couldn’t enjoy my time with our friends as I was too stressed. Sitting and waiting for my kids to get off of rides was not exactly exciting. And the heat made eating less desirable. Even when I was hungry, nothing tasted all that good because of the assault of smells from everything else.

Still, I tried my best to give my kids a great time. This was made all the more difficult by not knowing what to expect, so being unprepared for it.

My husband is great at going with the flow of things, and I figured he had everything all set for the big day.

Love him dearly, but no.

I will stick to what I am better at.

Next year, when/if he takes the kids, I will stay home. I will make sure he has enough cash, sunscreen, and water bottles packed in a backpack. I will make sure he has tickets and ride bracelets. I will make sure they have a spectacular time.

While I enjoy the quiet.

I accept I am an introvert. This means there are some thing I won;t be able to give my kids other parents can. I also think this means we are not doing Disney.