I’ve started and stopped a lot of different Substack newsletters over the past month about a variety of topics that I figured were low-stakes but perhaps welcome given the rapidly boiling pot of shit that is America in spring of 2022.
But then, my fiancé’s PS4 ruined my week. Don’t scroll away just yet—let me explain.
I finished grading for both of my adjunct gigs a couple of weeks ago. Over the past few years I’ve developed a tradition: the week after I finish a semester, I play an immersive video game of some kind that I’m excited about. I’m a binge-r when it comes to content—I’ll demolish a TV series in an afternoon, a book series in a week, etc. So I let myself be a couch slug with a controller in my hand and let myself fall into an entirely different world where no one is emailing me, I don’t have to post grades, and I am responsible for nothing but my lil avatar’s life, however that manifests on screen. To give you a sense of what sorts of games I’ve savored post-semester in the past, think Stardew Valley, The Sims 4, Wytchwood, etc (all of which I highly recommend).
It’s delightful and has become something I look forward to. I select a game and will sometimes wait months to start it so that it feels like a real treat. This time, I held off playing a game I’d started once in the past but never had the chance to sink my teeth into: Disco Elysium.
If you’re wondering how this is related to America being a shitshow, I promise it’ll all make sense in a sec. Stay with me.
Disco Elysium is an RPG where you play an alcoholic detective who wakes up in a hostel room massively hungover with no memory of who he is, where he is, or what he’s supposed to be doing. He has to rely upon the many voices within his brain that make up his persona to help him solve a grizzly murder. Some are obvious trains of thought, like “Perception” or “Empathy” or “Hand-Eye Coordination”, but others are more ephemeral like the “Inland Empire,” which the game defines as “the unfiltered wellspring of imagination, emotion, and foreboding. It enables you to grope your way through invisible dimensions of reality, gaining insight into that which sight can't see.” In other words: the protagonist’s anxiety has a whole lot of say in how you play the game.
The game is, at its core, a murder-mystery, but it’s also much more than that. There’s subplots involving a union struggle, police brutality, addiction, colonialism, racism, Marxist ideology vs late-stage capitalism, cursed bookstores, a church that might one day be a nightclub, the pursuit of cryptozoology, and honestly that’s barely scratching the surface.
The world is visually rendered with gorgeously painted portraits and landscapes. It is bleak comedy and philosophical discourse but most importantly, it is delightfully written. And I’m telling you this to make it abundantly clear that I was AMPED to dive in without real-life distractions and responsibilities pulling me away.
I played for days and days. Sure, I took breaks to read a book outside, or work out, or cook dinner, or, unfortunately, check the news, which felt like gazing into an apocalyptic nightmare.
But when it got to be too much, I could turn back to Disco Elysium. Sure we may lose the right to abortions, but I’m finally making progress unlocking parts of the map. Yes, what happened in Uvalde is an absolute tragedy that never should have happened, but I’m so close to upping my Visual Calculus score. Oh, the Uvalde cops absolutely botched rescuing children within that classroom? Surely I’ve figured out how to unlock that secret passage that’s been so intensely difficult to open. It’s not like the content of this particular video game is all glitter rainbows and chihuahua puppies, but it is a very different world from my own, one I can engage in in any way I choose.
And here is where the tragedy occurs: out of nowhere, my fiancé Ben’s 10-year-old PS4 crashed. I didn’t just lose some data—days upon days worth of data evaporated into what the game would call “primordial blackness.” All of my hard work, and most importantly distraction, was now gone.
I was in despair. While Ben tried in vain to recover the data, I felt intensely angry. Not at Ben, but this ancient (by game console standards) box of hardware. How could you do this to me?? Do you know how much I cared about this game?? I tried to telepathically communicate to an inanimate object (which, if you play the game, is certainly something the protagonist would try to do).
I tried to watch some Disco Elysium walkthroughs on YouTube, but the experience was nowhere near the same. I wasn’t getting to interact with the game narrative in the same way and watching someone else make the choices I’d relished felt like watching the Instagram story where you realize all your friends are hanging out without you. I felt left out and isolated and so, so mad.
Because now, I was checking Twitter more than I had been. I was reading more detail about Uvalde, and Buffalo, and Roe v Wade, and making it illegal for a child to be near a drag queen (don’t even get me started on this one).
I was reading the news more, which for several happy days I’d been able to tune out. I was mired in the same anxiety that I’d been trying to escape, but now it was heightened. I was stuck within my own Inland Empire, which I’d been trying to escape via the Inland Empire of a fictional man in a fictional world.
To go back to the beginning for just a moment: I’ve started and stopped a lot of so many newsletters for this Substack because the deluge of bad news—high-stakes, deeply personal bad news—felt like far too much to convey in an email.
Distracting myself with a video game was a band-aid, of course, but losing my distraction during this particular time felt like a betrayal. Because if I couldn’t play, I had more brain space to consider the real questions I’d been avoiding: What will I do if a shooter enters my classroom one day? What will happen to me, as a nonfiction writer, if I can be taken to court for merely alluding to abuse? How can I have a child in a country that doesn’t give a shit about them after the moment they are born?
This newsletter entry is not meant to inspire pity. It’s a sob story of the highest degree, the most privileged shit ever (and to put a primordial bow on it: Ben’s getting a PS5 any day now). Cue the world’s tiniest violin.
Not immersing myself in the news is a privilege, not a right, and losing data is nothing compared to losing essential rights, losing your life, or losing your child in the most horrific way possible on a national stage.
But I suppose the reason I’m actually cuing this newsletter up to send to you all is to say that: if you’re finding yourself profoundly emotionally invested in some distraction—hopefully one that’s harmless and low-stakes, like a video game—I’m right here with you.
We’ve all been holding so much anxiety and uncertainty and real-life horror for so long, it seems obvious that the distractions we afford ourselves would become even more dear. All of our Inland Empires have, frankly, been on overdrive for far too long, and this shitstorm doesn’t show signs of stopping.
Until the PS5 arrives, I’m checking the news in healthy doses. I’m baking strawberry rhubarb crumble. I’m working on strengthening my core muscles. I’m taking my dog on longer walks without my phone.
It isn’t much, and it certainly isn’t a satisfying answer, but it’s what I’ve got and it makes the terrifying potential future of this planet just a little easier to live with. Plus it makes the many anxious voices that live within me—my Inland Empire, so to speak—just a smidge quieter. For now, at least.
Thank you. I needed your words, and I think I need to get a PS5 and this game, too.