My favorite game of all time is in the process of being remade. I still have mixed feelings about any changes whatsoever to this game, but that is because the original is perfect to me. From an objective perspective, the changes are probably beneficial to the story.
When we were a kid, we watched a Nova three-part series on quantum physics. We didn’t take any classes after highschool, but physics was and is our favorite branch of science. We used to know the (very basic) formulas by heart, because they just Made Sense, but we have unfortunately forgotten, and any reading that we do in the present is limited by the need to eliminate equations. We’ve always meant to go back and re-learn things so that we can advance our reading. But we’ve “always meant” to do a lot of things. Write novels. Compose music. Code video games. Learn to cook French pastries. Learn too many languages to be able to pick. Overthrow all the groups of people making cp videos and stealing kids’ art and minds and enter a new society where we respect nature, cultures, and children.
So yeah, big ambitions + overthinking + alters + short lifespan = fuck, what am I doing with my life? Thank god we’re in therapy.
Anyway.
As I was saying.
We watched this Nova series on quantum physics as a kid. And a lot of the concepts that we were introduced to then were represented – at least to our interpretation – in the Myst games and book trilogy. Especially Riven. And especially The Book of Atrus.
I do not know how many times we have re-read that book, but we will keep on re-reading it until the day that we die.
It became a staple of innerworld symbolism. I don’t want to go into too many details as to why. We are trying to be safer in regards to what we share about our own system. Especially since we do have ambitions to create things, and I don’t want to deal with the weirdness of people thinking that they know who you are and what you mean when they don’t. Especially since art, once released, belongs to the reader/viewer rather than the creator. I don’t want to divert the meaning of my own words from something that might be useful to somebody.
That might be too paranoid/future focused. But I’d rather be too careful than otherwise.
But yeah, It’s interesting to me how strong my feelings are about a remake of Riven. Cyan is creating the remake. They’re in charge of revamping their own freaking game. So it’s interesting to me that I feel this sense of unease. I can play the original whenever I want. I have a hard copy, even.
Do I dislike change to this severe of a degree?
I guess…with how strong the ties are that Riven holds to our innerworld symbolism, it feels like somebody is poking at my safe space. They aren’t. But I think it’s good for us to acknowledge this feeling. Understanding the sources of your own emotions is the best way to control how you express them, imo.
And this brings me to another interesting thought. Because with all the dreams that our system has had that take place within our consistent, innerworld map, we know that we use Myst to keep a lot of our abuser introjects from fronting. (Again: not comfortable explaining how this works, but it’s complicated and multi-layered enough that I feel safe sharing this much.)
I have several thoughts about this.
Firstly, with how complex and puzzle-based that part of innerworld is, we are constantly dedicating a large portion of our mind towards keeping persecutors out of front. This is probably at least part of the reason why we have lost so much of our ability to live in the moment and are having so much trouble resurrecting it.
Secondly, the longer we keep this up, the more our persecutors are going to hate us and feel like their voices do not matter.
Thirdly. we are not in an abusive situation anymore. Keeping certain persecutors out of front mattered while living in that situation. But at this stage in our life it is unhealthy.
I know exactly which alter is in charge of maintaining this gate. Though “gate” feels like an understatement for how complicated and huge this thing is.
So I guess I’d better go talk to this person and see if they are willing to start a conversation with the alter that, to them, represents everything that they hate within this world.
Thank god for therapy.