Games

I grew up a gamer in a family that had other gamers, so my case was always going to be terminal. When I was in college my uncle bought a share in a gaming store so he could syphon off Warhammer 40k models he wanted to complete his own army of classic 'blueberry' space marines. When he would babysit me or I would hang out with my cousin as children we would have anime cell outlines from his dot matrix printer for coloring. Since my cousin was also the closest thing I had to a sister it was a natural transition from playing pretend to playing table top role-playing games (TTRPGs) and then to live action role-playing (LARPs). We even had a boardgame called Dungeon! that was an inspiration for the development of Dungeons & Dragons that I would play with my parents the way most families play Monopoly.

In grade school I was fortunate enough to meet one of my oldest friends. We didn't hit it off at first, but in 2nd grade we got assigned to be walking partners and quickly discovered that we were the only weirdos who wanted to walk with either one of us. We happily spent our walks talking about ghosts and goblins and werewolves, totally giving our classmates the heebie-jeebies. In 4th grade she got me started playing D&D and the rest is history.

I'm not as into video games as I am into irl RPGs, but I've definitly fallen in love with a few that I regularly cycle through: Sims 3, Valheim, Slime Rancher 2, Potion Crafter, Honey I Joined A Cult, and Palia. Though with that last one I am waiting for better coop options. When those are better my partner and roomie are down to jump back on and play together. I also play Project Zomboid but only as the base bitch. Zombies are fucking terrifying even in pixelated pixels on a screen. Also once in that game I got scratched on a bush and bled to death going through the menus to put a bandaid on while my partner stood there helplessly watching in game and trying desprately to talk me through the bandaid process irl. And people say Valheim is brutal. I mean, ok, yes it is also pretty brutal.