Optional Objectives

has a tumblr but really, you should head over to twitter.com/opobjectives or optionalobjectives.kinja.com if you want to check out our stuff

[optionalobjectives]

Prime Cut

You know what is all kinds of good? Getting out of the city, buying a ranch, rolling around in a new Dodge Ram blasting Blake Shelton’s “God’s Country.” Oh yeah. That’s the kind of thing that just doesn’t feel as good sitting parked in traffic on the way to K street in DC. Some folks in my profession are pissed that they either have to move out to Grand Junction to keep lobbying the BLM or find ways to schedule regular flights and split their time. Or they would, anyway, except they’re doing everything over Zoom these days. Not me. I sold up in Bethesda and plowed some money into a couple thousand acres in Mesa County. My commute is shorter, my sky is bigger, and I can roll all around my new property however I see fit. So I’m not in the center of power anymore. Big deal. The steakhouses in Washington might have more power brokers per square foot, but the beef is better out here.

And it’s not like I had to settle for some falling apart, tin-roofed shack, either. The new place is pretty recent construction - two stories, plenty of square footage, jacuzzi out back. Smoking room with a pool table. Built-in gas grill on the patio. A kitchen sizable enough that I got a personal chef a couple days a week just to make good use of it. A movie theatre where I can run my own damn screenings of the latest Christopher Nolan film or whatever else. It’s a shame Disney pushed back Black Widow, because I’d love to get a hold of a screener and throw a life-sized Scarlett Johansson up on the wall. She’s hot. Not hot enough for me to watch that Jojo Rabbit bullshit, but hot.

Anyway, since nothing new is coming out to watch in my new theatre, I thought I’d take a break from re-watching some of the Duke’s finest and walk my property. Give the Dodge a rest, and take an afternoon on foot.

So I’m hiking around, boots crunching on this sandy gravel, picking my way through some overgrown and dried out grass (which I should probably get a fire crew up here to thin out and burn), and I head up this gully. It looks like a seasonal creek, but there’s nothing running at this point. It’s right at the end of summer, heading into the fall, and it’s plenty dry. I know from the property map that this gully cuts into some foothills, but I want to check out the grade. Really find out what I’m working with in case I get a few head of cattle and one of them heads in this direction. If it’s too steep or too narrow, I might need to fence it off to avoid some trouble further down the line.

Luckily, this thing seems pretty much flat. The hill it cuts into doesn’t have much of a slope, and by the time the vegetation gets too thick the walls are only a little over head high, maybe six and a half, seven feet up. I figure that it’s worth climbing up to get a different perspective on the whole thing and check out the terrain. I grab into the hard clay of the wall, pull on an exposed root, and swing my right arm over the top. It looks like there’s a tree stump or something up there, so I grab a hold of that.

It crumbled in my hand as I grabbed it, which was inconvenient. What was worse was that it was some kind of anthill or termite mound, because as soon as the damn thing crumbled I could feel the bastards inside of it swarm all over my hand. I dropped back into the gully, barely avoiding sliding down on my butt and staying on my feet. My hand was already stinging, burning like hell, swelling up. Needless to say, I made it back out of the gulley in less than half the time it took me to walk up.

It’s about a half mile back to the house and, even with my hand in searing pain, I clear the ground quickly. Claudia should be around today to make dinner, and sure enough, I spot her Durango in the driveway. Bursting in through the door, I yelled, “Claudia! Hey, it’s an emergency!” She came running around the corner, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel and looking concerned, asking “What is it, Mr. Connoly?” I say it’s my hand, it’s been bitten by some local bugs, what kind I don’t know, and can you give me that towel. She walks me over towards the sink instead and gently runs some cool water over it. I can barely feel it, though, because of how badly my hand is burning up. It’s swelled up like I blew into one of the plastic gloves she uses when she’s preparing a spice rub.

I keep it together, but I’m still cursing and swearing, not at Claudia but at this whole stupid situation. She runs over to the freezer, asking over her shoulder, “are you allergic to anything?”

“No, not insects or anything that I’ve ever found out about. I get poison ivy, I guess, goddammit, nothing, uh, hey, thanks.” Claudia interrupts me interrupting myself, handing me a baggie full of ice cubes, wrapped in a kitchen towel. “So, Fred, listen,” she says, “That looks pretty serious, and I know you’re new to the area, but you have to know there are some venomous things out there. We should get you to urgent care or a hospital right away.”

“Yeah, fuck, I know.”

“Good.” She’s steering me away from the sink by my shoulders now, as I hold the cloth-wrapped ice-cubes. “Let’s get you into my truck. You shouldn’t drive with that hand or the amount of pain you’re in.”

“Yeah, okay, fine. Where’s shit,” I wince with pain, “where’s the closest one?” Claudia opens the door to her truck and helps me climb into it. “It’s probably the Redlands one. C’mon, let’s get going. It’ll definitely be faster to get you there one way, instead of waiting for an ambulance to come out here and drive you back to a hospital.”

We get going, Claudia tearing ass down the road. I tell her not to worry about any kind of speeding ticket or anything - I’ll pay any ticket or court cost at this point, and you could say I know a few good lawyers. I try and keep it quiet, and Claudia doesn’t talk much in the 15 minutes there except to continually check in on the condition of my hand. It’s holding pretty steady, with my fingers inflamed to something like twice their usual girth. Extraordinarily painful. I can’t move any of my joints much, everything is so swollen, so I’m just holding it, resting it on top of the wrapped ice. Sonuvabitch it burns!

Claudia screeches to a halt in the mostly-empty parking lot and helps me out of the car. We’re already making a scene, me cussing up a storm, Claudia practically carrying me over her shoulders. I’m blinking back tears as we move through the automatic doors and into the lobby. They take me in back quickly, seeing as I might be poisoned. Claudia says she’ll wait for me in the lobby. The nurse practitioner on duty, named James something-or-other, checks my heart rate, blood pressure, all that. It doesn’t seem like a snakebite or any of the more venomous spiders, at least. He says they’ll need to run more tests, but since he doesn’t see a stinger or anything to remove that the swelling will probably go down. He prescribes some prednisone, wraps my hand, and advises me to contact my PCP. I’m supposed to return if symptoms get worse or if any new ones appear.

My hand feels a little less like I’m sticking it into an open flame, at least, and is mostly hot and numb. I’m not feeling much when I touch anything with it, although I can feel the cold of the ice cubes. They charge my insurance a ton for a few more fancy ice packs, and I head back into the lobby to sign paperwork. Or attempt to sign it, anyway, since I can’t really write anything. I ask if they have some digital way of signing things, or if they can send it to my secretary, and then I remember to call my secretary and cancel appointments for a few days.

Claudia drives me back home and makes me some kind of soup in a hurry. Then she finishes the salmon she had in progress even though it goes straight into the fridge. It’s for tomorrow, she tells me. After I hear her close the door on her way out, and hear her truck’s tires slowly crunch the gravel at the end of the paved driveway, I drift off watching some tennis replay on ESPN.

When I wake up, the stream has ended and my TV is sitting dimly on some menu screen with a bunch of recommended “30 for 30” documentaries. Something smells incredible, and my stomach rumbles. It’s hard to describe. A meaty, seared smell, like finished pit barbecue. Or the first sizzle of a steak hitting a searing hot pan, salt and fat and high heat. God, it’s irresistible. I lurch off the couch, and head into the darkened kitchen. It smells like Claudia came back - maybe she started some ribs in a slow cooker or something, just to make sure that I had food prepared for the next day or two. The clock reads that it’s about 2:30 in the morning, so that seems unlikely, and everything is off. I’m checking the inside of the oven, putting my good hand over the stove to sense if there’s some residual heat, looking inside the refrigerator, but there’s nothing new, just the platter of salmon.

I switch the lights on. That’s when I notice that the bandages on my hand are soaked. They feel looser, too, but they’re a concerning light pink, mixed with some yellow. It’s like blood and pus saturated the wrap all of the way through. There’s no way it’s good to keep that kind of thing on.

It doesn’t seem right to unwrap that in the kitchen, so I head into the bathroom. The delicious aroma comes with me, without fading at all as I traverse the house to the downstairs master bath. I find the end of the wrap and start to peel it off, and I catch a big waft of something amazing. Just fresh cooked meat. I speed up, which has the effect of squeezing juice out of the bandage and into the sink. It’s mixed with bits of skin, which swirl down the drain. I get the whole thing off in a flash.

I stare at my hand. Who wouldn’t? It’s gone down in size, but it’s raw as hell. And completely pockmarked up and down with tiny holes. No maggots, no worms, no sign of anything except that it looks like dozens of small openings all up and down, front and pack, each dripping with fluid.

The sight should turn my stomach, but instead it rumbles. I’m famished, ravenous. I can’t tell you how good this smells. It’s more than a smell, it’s a goddamn aroma.

I lick my hand. At first I hesitate, like I’m about to touch my tongue to a dish that just came out of the oven. I chuckle a little bit, imagining a waiter saying, “careful sir, don’t touch the plate, it’s hot.” What the hell am I doing.

What the hell am I doing.

It tastes good. It’s like the seared edge of a filet, perfectly seasoned. Maybe some brown butter, maybe some truffle. Rich. Dry aged. Tender.

I pull back, staring at my hand, waiting for something to fly or crawl out of it. But nothing happens. It’s just me, the aroma, and the aftertaste.

Have you heard about how much closer a shave you can get with a straight razor? I switched a few years ago and I’ve never looked better and never looked back. It’s such a clean feeling, sharpening the blade and then running it gently, and at just the right angle, across your face and neck.

There’s my razor, right there on the counter. I grip it lightly in my left hand, not my usual grip, but I can make this work. And I’ll tell you, I’ve never managed such thin slices before.

[clickbliss]

Treachery in Beatdown City swings wild, but with direction

By: Don (@opobjectives)

Treachery in Beatdown City

Developer: Nuchallenger

Publisher: Nuchallenger

PC, Switch

After the opening cutscenes of Treachery in Beatdown City finish rolling, Lisa Santiago beats the shit out of a racist. The racist in question rudely complains about the state of the bathrooms at her home boxing gym and demands that she clean them. It should be noted that Santiago is not an employee of the gym. She’s just there to blow off some steam after hearing that third-term President Blake Orama has been kidnapped.

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[optionalobjectives]

Under the Bright Lights

Because a capital management company is closing TAY, I’m moving my blog posts from there to here. Not that tumblr is a particularly trustworthy company, but hey. At least they’ll be available here.

Starting about a year and a half ago, my friend John and I made a series of recordings. John would come to my apartment in Koreatown, Los Angeles with a large plastic tub full of audio recording equipment– microphones, a Zoom multitrack recorder, wind screens, miniature tripods. We had a shared google doc with topics and ideas that we could work out in advance, mostly while he was at his office job. The idea was to start a podcast. Well, kind of. The idea was to talk about games and make recordings, and then see about a podcast.

Part one went well. Any next parts are just next parts, for now phantasmagorical. But, as I’m the kind of idiot that can’t enjoy something without analyzing it, I continue to play games with analysis in mind. I’m not a game designer, but I am a sociologist. And so while I play I look for cultural significance and narratives in game design and my experience of play.

I play a lot of games. I can’t tell yet if I play more or less now that I’m finished writing a doctoral dissertation, but I think that I’ve been enjoying games more lately. Writing might be the same, but I haven’t been doing much for myself.

There’s good work going on in video game criticism, design, and scholarship these days. I’d like to contribute to it, although I don’t plan on making particularly serious contributions. A lot of what John and I recorded was bullshit, two white guys talking about videogames at a kitchen table. We talked about reskinning a game according to an album (I suggested Deus Ex: Mankind Divided reskinned for David Bowie’s Low); about how much we enjoyed The Witness even though Jonathan Blow has awful opinions; about the sound design for the DLC for The Evil Within. We talked about some retro games, riffing on the terror of Kirby’s Adventure and the animal to human to animal transformations of Ninja Spirit (the Turbografix game). And mostly we digressed and chatted and occasionally hit on a good idea for two or three minutes.

I like the idea of placing some words, video, images, or stream somewhere. This seems as likely a spot as any, together with the associated accounts on twitter and twitch. So next time, instead of putting up a set of tweets about the thrilling and manipulative simplicity of Excitebike, Out Run, and Hang-On, I’ll put something a little more considered up here. I’d also like to invite some friends from near and far to have some conversations with me about what they’ve played and what they’re playing, and those conversations can find a home here, too.

[optionalobjectives]

Cluster

And now, in a bout of seasonal celebration, a very special scary story from Optional Objectives.

Cluster

Opening up my calendar, I could see that the next session was going to be a snooze. An intake for family counseling. Two parents, one kid. Marital strife, behavioral problems. A mom and dad looking for phrases like “dysfunction” and “attention deficit” and most of all “medication.”

If that makes me sound burnt out or uncaring, fine. Let’s see you handle social services for more than a month. For more than a decade. Let’s see you get scolded as a hypocrite for needing a cigarette a few times a day while you ask about other people’s bad habits. Or vomited on by nervous children whose real issue is having asshole parents. Or getting vomited on by anxious parents with asshole children. I’m here to help, and everyone needs to vent, including me. At least I had a minute to look at my phone, vape in my office (with a fan and an open window, I’m not inconsiderate), and lean back before the next family in crisis walked through my door.

The Brandts. Matthew, Kate, and Nic. I greeted them, passed out some forms, asked if Nic needed help filling his out. The kid was 12, but I don’t want to presume too much about literacy or anything like that. Without raising his head, Nic mumbled, “It’s fine,” and started filling in bubbles and writing short answers. All of them were sitting as far apart as possible. Me, on a chair in front of my desk, Matthew on the side of the couch closest to the door, Kate leaning on the opposite armrest of the couch, and Nic in a chair closer to me. I could see him marking down a string of “not at all likely” bubbles next to listed symptoms and behaviors. No smoking. No vaping. No drinking. Not sexually active. No problems. Fuck off. He had wisps of sandy blond hair sticking out from under a Chicago Blackhawks hat that was pulled comically low over his face.

I leaned over, and Nic rapidly recoiled, saying, “Hey, I’m still filling this out.” His eyes admonished mine, surrounded by a face exploding with acne. Poor kid. Then, to his Mom, “Did you smell that when we walked in? And who opens their window when it’s cold and raining?”

“Nic, honey, it’s okay.” Then, turning to me with some apprehension, “Doctor Nakrani, these forms are confidential, right? Who has access to these forms?”

She had a pale, freckled face, large, mousey brown eyes, and a forehead crinkling with worry.

“That’s right,” I replied, “They’re subject to the confidentiality of this office. Myself, our records division, and the other clinicians are the only ones with access, unless there’s a very serious legal intervention. It’s not doctor, by the way, and just Greg is fine.”

Matthew leaned forward, with his gut pressing up against an old but very comfortable looking flannel shirt. “Okay, fine, Greg. So listen.” He held my eyes with his, two slate gray orbs with a yellowed tinge. “I know this is just a public assistance kind of thing, and that Nic’s school counselor recommended that we come in, but still, I think we’re open to it. Right?” He looked over at Kate, who nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Just, you know, we’re not all about that touchy-feely stuff.”

“Yeah,” piped in Nic, “no touching.”

“Okay,” I replied, “well, this is more of a talk therapy kind of thing, so it’s not like there’s going to be trust falls or an obstacle course or anything like that.” I smiled, but nobody mirrored the sentiment. “Heh, alright. Well, let me just take those forms and we’ll put them on file.” Nic handed his over, while Matthew leaned over to take Kate’s, brushing her hand. Then he bent far forward to hand them to me. Did I say his eyes were slate gray? No, he had the watery brown ones. I looked up, and it was Kate with the slate grey ones. And they were more bloodshot than yellowed. This crowd was really into some uncomfortable eye contact, except, of course, Nic.

“You’re not even going to look at them?” Nic snapped. “Mom, he’s just going to stick them in some folder. It’s not like the questions were important, anyway.” Matthew kept leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, sighing. “Nicky, that stuff is important, maybe Greg is going to look at it along with what we talk about and help us with some things.”

“Whatever.” Nic slouched further in his chair, legs straight in front of him.

“That’s right, Matthew. I use these forms when I write up notes about sessions to see if there are things that we can figure out together. So,” I stood up, stepped over to my desk, and lifted my laptop, bringing it back to my seat with me. “So, I see that you’ve had trouble at school, Nic.”

“Yeah. Other kids won’t stay away from me.”

“Do you want them to stay away from you?”

“Obviously.”

“What’s that about?”

“Nothing.”

I arched an eyebrow at the adults on the couch. Kate shrugged, “oh, you know, middle school is just hard.”

“It’s not hard, Mom, it’s stupid. Everyone there is stupid and they don’t know how to just leave someone alone, even when you ask.”

“Nic, you can still talk to your friends,” Matthew said. “You’ve been going to that school for years.”

“Yeah, and nobody listens to me! They all think it’s like it was last year, but it’s not.”

“What isn’t like last year?” I asked.

Nic looked up, red in the face. He waved his hand in a broad circle around it. “THIS. God.”

I looked calmly at him. It was bad, sure, but not the worst that I’d seen. A visit or two to a dermatologist and he’d probably be fine. Maybe the medication wasn’t going to be adderall, after all. Maybe all the kid needed was some aquaphor. To Nic, I said, “Alright. I’m sure you’ve already heard about how these kinds of things happen, but they don’t have to be forever.”

“What do you know about it?” Nic slouched back down, sliding further in his chair. “Just some idiot normie.”

“Nicky! Come on,” Matthew interjected, “we said we were going to give this a chance, right?”

Kate leaned over and put her hand on Matthew’s shoulder, sweeping her straight brown hair over her shoulder. “That’s right, we’re together in this.” I looked over at Nic, who didn’t respond, and then back at Kate. Wait, now she had something more like a copper brown perm. And Matthew had long, straight, copper brown hair instead of close, dark curls. I paused. A little too long, apparently.

“So... do we just wait now, Greg? Hello?” Matthew raised his eyes, which were somewhere around light brown and bloodshot. Kate’s were matching. I realized I was staring, and kept staring. Greg’s belly receded, his flannel getting baggier, and Kate’s blouse started too look a little tight. What the hell?

“Uh, excuse me, I just, um. Can you give me and Nic a moment to talk, just to feel things out?”

“Oh!” Kate replied, sitting up. “Oh, of course. That makes sense, he might be too embarrassed about the whole puberty thing with his parents.” Nic shot a glare in her direction. “We’ll just sit in the hall for a minute?”

“Yeah, sure. There’s, uh, coffee or water or tea out there if you ask Jenna at reception. I’ll just...” I rubbed my eyes. Kate’s hair was back to blond, and Matthew had the dark, short ringlets he had walked in with.

“Oh, sure, alright Greg, just let us know when we should come back in.”

“Yeah, it should just be a couple minutes. Thanks,” I said, holding a thin smile. Had I switched in a weird cartridge? But I hadn’t switched anything, I was still vaping sweet melon. Nicotine. Maybe I should just cancel the session and plead illness for the rest of the day.

The door clicked shut quietly.

“See? It’s like that,” Nic said, from under his hat.

“What, your parents?”

“Yeah. They touch each other and, like, become the same person. That’s what it’s like for them.”

“Excuse me?”

“I saw you staring. They act like it’s no big deal, like they don’t even notice.”

I leaned back in my chair, “I mean, having two parents who are in agreement isn’t exactly the worst thing...”

“NO. You know what you saw. Their hair. Their bodies. It’s gross.”

“Uh, Nic, um.” I paused. On the one hand, I was distressed by the whole hallucinatory moment. On the other, it was worse that this kid seemed to be saying it was no hallucination. Should I stick with a standard, “Oh well, adults can get pretty close,” line, and keep ignoring the whole thing? Or do I go with the kid?

“Okay Nic. That was a little weird.”

He perked up, arresting his slide onto the floor. “What was weird?”

“Your, uh, your parents. Did their, uh,” I lowered my voice, “did their hair change color for a second there?”

“Not just that! Didn’t you see the whole thing? It’s nasty!”

“Uh, well, I wouldn’t say ‘nasty’...”

Nic snorted. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

“... but yeah,” I concluded, “that was weird.”

“Yeah, and now the same thing is happening to me!”

I blinked. “With your parents? Does that happen if they touch you?”

“Ugh, no! With everyone!”

Nic leaned over, and, holding my gaze, whipped out a hand and grabbed my wrist. It felt like my arm was falling asleep, pinpricks and fuzz. Staring at Nic’s hand, grasping tightly, I could see hairs sprout on his knuckles. Looking at mine, they had suddenly become sandy blond. His messy sprouts of hair were increasingly salt-and-pepper, gray and black.

I shouted, “What the hell?!” and fell backwards out of my chair. Nic kept an iron grip on my wrist, screeching, “This is what it’s like! People just won’t listen to me!” My face itched. Nic’s was sprouting a beard. Mine felt dry, greasy, and suddenly hot in patches. Nic was more mature by the second, pimples clearing and being covered over by graying curls.

I grabbed his hand, prying at his fingers. Less immediately shocked, I remembered he was just a twelve year-old, and a skinny one, too. But I was also getting skinnier, and Nic was filling out his baggy, rumpled hoodie and jeans. “Fuck you, old bitch!” Voice cracking up and then down into my tenor. He was grasping at my hands as I tried to pry him loose, now on top of me, wrestling me, equaling my strength but with a better position and shock on his side.

My office slammed open, with Matthew and Kate spilling into the room. “Nic! Let Dr. Nakrani go this instant!” Kate shouted, to little effect. I could feel his/my hands on my throat. My/Nic’s face leering down at me, a 12 year-old skull with 43 years worth of crow’s feet and tobacco-yellowed teeth. He kept pressing on my throat with both hands, and Matthew and Kate ran over and pulled him by the shoulders. “Nic! Let. Him. Go!”

Everything was blending together in my blurred vision. My skin was roiling, tremors shooting through my body as my bones stretched and muscles fluctuated. I felt Nic’s hands, more hands, my hands, their hands, our hands grasping my neck, grasping one another. All at once three pairs let go, Matthew and Kate falling backwards, finally pulling Nic away with them. I gasped, my vision slowly widening from a pinprick, exposing the amalgamation of the three of them, bodies becoming more distinct from my own, if not each other.

“Nic, what did you do? What did you do?” Matthew hollered, in a pitch far higher than his previous baritone. Kate was also yelling in an identical pitch, panicking. She swiped the folder from my desk, she and Matthew mostly distinguishable only by their clothes. As a cluster they bundled Nic out of my office, barreling through the waiting area and out into the rainy Chicago evening. I braced myself on my chair, gasping, burning, feeling my beard thicken and watching my waistline return.

That was a year ago. Today, I was shaving my beard down. It’s time to change up my look, maybe work with just a mustache. But under the hair on my cheeks, I noticed something new. A pink acne scar, badly healed.

[clickbliss]

How to watch and how to organize a Puyo Puyo Champions Tournament at AnimEVO

Image: A screenshot of Shirobrawl and S2′s match in the top 8 of the 2019 AnimEVO Puyo Puyo Champions Tournament

By Don (@opobjectives)

EVO 2019 was held a few weekends ago in Las Vegas, with thousands of people competing in a range of competitive games. While the spotlight was on fighting games with larger communities and budgets, a variety of side tournaments were held at the same time under the AnimEVO 2019 umbrella. Side tournaments are a hallmark of the fighting game community, often relying on self-organization and focusing on games produced by Japanese game studios. Rather than being broadcast on one of EVO’s main streams, or on one with a game publisher’s imprint, they rely on their communities for broadcast, commentary, and organization. All of that is why the tournament that I wanted to tune into the most was the self-organized, six hour, double-elimination event for Puyo Puyo Champions.

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[clickbliss]

Getting Drunk and Hustled at Darts in Yakuza

by Don (@opobjectives)

The Yakuza games are well known for being part neighborhood simulator, part highly dramatic hypermasculine gangster fantasy. On occasion, that mix includes an oddly thorough representation of meeting strangers, playing darts, and getting drunk. 

Just about every entry in the series offers a few bars with dart boards, with bar staff offering a small variety of minigames like 501, Cricket, or Count-Up. If you play a few rounds, then side characters start to crawl out of the woodwork to offer some competition. That’s par for the course across the series. 

Only in Yakuza 0, however, does that competition lowball their skills, liquor up protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, and hustle millions of yen out of him.

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