My prompt for Blaugust was a doozy. A real noggin' buster. Thaaaaaanks, Bel. What is your greatest fear, and how does it impact the type of content you create or consume?
See? Intense, right?
Now, diving into it, I should start out by saying that I am a fairly frightened person. You might not be able to tell that about me from the way I present myself online, but I have a lot of anxiety and depression issues, and uncertainty and insecurity really tear me up. In pretty much any context.
So thinking about how this affects my video game playing actually took a minute (or more). But I think I've come to a pretty decent answer.
My Greatest Fear
Not to get too heavy (he says before he gets too heavy), but my greatest fear is dying alone and unloved. Really. If you want to know what gives me nightmares and creeps its existential tendrils into my brainyparts in the middle of the night, it's that.
Maybe it's the other way around, too. I fear being unloved and dying alone.
You may be wondering how that affects the content I consume and the games that I play, but after thinking about it for a while, I realized that it influences it a great deal.
Giving in to Fear?
I like to play games that make me happy. Or feel some connection with other people. I don't tend to play games that are overly violent or focus solely on violence — like many horror games or first-person shooters. I have no desire to snipe and hide and blast and kill and see entrails everywhere all the time.
There are exceptions, obviously. Like, I am really looking forward to playing Resident Evil VII during October of this year for #HorroGameOct and the community game-along. But in general, I don't actually play games that make me face my own mortality in such direct ways.
Heck, I played Valorant for a while when it was new and ended up bouncing off because it was too much like a normal FPS with head-shots and such, when I prefer the softer version of a team shooter like Overwatch.
I also tend to play games with other people. MMOs were my drug of choice since 1998, and it's mainly because of the connections I made there. I raided and I made friends. I had that social interaction that kept me going, even when I hated the gear grind.
I was an admin on Stratics forums, I run our Geek to Geek Discord community, and I spend an inordinate amount of time on Twitter. And my number one thing is that I am making friends when I do it. I don't consume content in a void or vacuum. For me, content consumption is almost always a lead-in to sharing that with someone else.
Even with the Geek to Geek Podcast, when Void and I first started it, our primary goal was to bring together a community who could share stuff we love with each other. Blaugust itself even made me interested because of the community nature.
Dragon Quest FM and my place in the DQ fandom is largely because of how welcoming those folks are. I make a lot of my choices on content creation and consumption based on the kinds of people who take part in that area.
Because my greatest fear is dying alone and unloved, I have a habit of playing games and creating/consuming content in such a way that I actively work against that fear. I make things to bring people together and present a happy, fun, friendly face to the world so that I don't (or at least don't intentionally) run people off.
It's not a false thing, either. Because that's my fear, because it's so deep-seated in who I am and the way I look at the world, it is a persona based on the truth.
Online Beej, Gaming Beej, Creator Beej…all of these are as close to the quote-unquote real me as possible. Because when your greatest fear is something so internalized and abstract, it just kind of sits there subconsciously and makes you seek out ways to deal with it.
For me, it's making friends and playing games with others and making content that brings people together. So, I mean, if I end up dying alone and unloved…you can't say I didn't try.
:laughing_emoji: :staring_wide_eyed_emoji: :grimacing_emoji: :laughing_emoji:
And yes, I wrote all of that out by hand. Because it felt funnier that way.
Next time, on Blaugust…
The wonderful MagiWasTaken (or as some know him, Dan) is hosting the prompt next time. So y'all should absolutely head over to Indiecator and check it out to see what kind of amazing stuff is put out to continue Blaugust.
And because I have special inside information (read: Bel shared a spreadsheet with me), the prompt at Indiecator is especially fun and interesting. So what are you waiting for, you monsters? Go!
That said, back to the point of this whole thing…what is your biggest fear? How does it affect the content you create or consume? Head to the comments to talk!