sobota, 9 lipca 2016

On grief and love



As I’m sitting on the bedroom floor, looking at my deceased aunt’s books, pictures and papers, i can’t shake the feeling that I shouldn’t be here. This is not my room and it shouldn’t be mine, but it is. These are now my books, my pieces of furniture and my plants that are just here as my aunt has left them.
This all seems too surreal to be the truth but unfortunately it is. 

I’m not feeling devastated even though it’s been weeks since the news of my aunt’s death. I feel hollow, like a cardboard cut-out of a person and not a real human being. The paper is soggy, the cut-out is less than perfect, but here I am, sitting on a bedroom floor deciding what should stay and what should go. 
Reality is brutal: I can’t keep everything. If it’s going to be my room I need to change it. Some books may stay, but most of the ones that are here - dictionaries older than me, with glued covers and yellow pages - need to go. I divide papers into two piles, „useful” and „useless”. The second pile is much larger than the first and I need more than two plastic bags to put all the scraps in. I put „useful” papers in a large paper container for my mother to look through later.

I can’t think about my aunt, who left this world way too early, who should have had more time, whose life shouldn’t end like this. I can’t think about her partially because I’m afraid I’ll end up a sobbing mess of a person and I just can’t afford that, not today. I also can’t think about her for a much more selfish reason: I can’t think about this situation and I don’t want to think about this situation. It’s too painful, too heart wrenching, it hits too close to almost all of my fears. Like somebody put all the things that I never thought I was scared of in a box and left for me to open, like a Pandora’s box. 

Grieving, as I was told, is a process that takes time and steps, but who the hell thinks about those when a tragedy hits your family like a ton of bricks, taking all your breath away and earth under your feet with a one, long sweep? You don’t care about guidelines, you’re barely sane and at most of the time exhausted and tired and you want to be left the hell alone. 
No, I don’t want to talk to you on Facebook about some trivial stuff, let me curl under a blanket and let me sleep for as long as it’s possible. 

However, there are things that need to be taken care of. Documents to be filled, signatures to be given and other people to be consoled. The real world hits hard and it hits right where it hurts the most. The death of a loved one cannot be forgotten even for a moment.

Grieving, as it turns out, is not a one person problem to be solved over a big glass of wine. It’s a process that takes time, so much time that in some cases it may never end. It also takes more than one person, sometimes a whole family and most often a whole family including friends and coworkers. 
Never in my life have I’ve been more thankful for friends. And not even my friends. The love that my family was showered with was unexpected and won’t be forgotten. 

It might sound cliché, but love your friends. Make new friends. Renew contacts with people who might have forgotten you, but who you loved and treasured but lost sight of. You never know what might happen in the next hour or a week. 

I believe that the love and good deeds you give come back to you in one way or another. 

So go and do good. 

wtorek, 5 kwietnia 2016

Reincarnation

Reincarnation
(a short story by Marta Tlałka)

If I was my mother and knew what I know now, I would take the sharpest knife in the kitchen and slit my daughter’s throat before she even took her first step.

I wouldn’t weep, cry or even think that what I did was wrong and horrible. No. For many people the act of killing is about revenge, about anger that spun out of control, that the action of taking somebody’s life is the evilest of the crimes one person can do to another.

Looking at my mother now, bundled up in her numerous blankets, I deeply pity her. From the other side of our living room, which is also my parent’s bedroom, I can see only her hair; black at the ends and grey at the roots. She’s sleeping, or maybe just lying awake, for the tenth hour straight. I’m not sure she’s breathing. I hope she’s breathing.

If I was my mother I would get rid of the one thing that has caused so many problems in my life. Even though that problem is her only child, well. What more can I say than “It happens”? Am I a monster? Probably. But killing her child – killing me – would made her life better. It is easier to breathe when the thing that is stealing your precious oxygen is dead and gone and buried six feet underground.

I stand near the door watching for any signs of life. The Cocoon – my mother, that is – hasn’t moved in about thirty-five minutes. The same radio station that I turned on before going out five hours ago, is playing songs of the past, of the time I wasn’t even born, of my mother’s childhood or maybe teen years. The yellow blinds are down even though it’s middle of the winter and sun hasn’t showed up in a week and won’t show for another five days. Only one little lamp is lit, the room smells like sweat and something musty. The breakfast I left a couple hours ago is still on the table, half eaten. I take one step closer to the Cocoon – still not moving, still no signs of breathing – to discover she – it – at least drank the cup of water I brought in the morning.

I kind of stopped worrying about my mother. Not that I don’t care for her wellbeing; she’s my core, one of the things that moves me forward.

I think she cares about me too. At least she did when I was a child, a wee thing with two blond ponytails, running around, never stopping. When I was eight years old I kicked a boy in my class and I still don’t know why. When I was ten I threw pencils, one by one, at least ten of them – my whole pencil case - at one of the boys in my school yard. I calmed down a little bit at the age of thirteen, stayed at home, had a few close friends, and up until the age of sixteen I partied rarely, never drank and thought smoking was gross. I liked to stay at home, preferably in my bed, and scroll all day long.

When I was thirteen years old my mother started wearing colourful clothes. Not shades of grey or brown, but colours. Blue, pink, red, black only to office, even yellow which didn’t suit her at all but she still wore that god awful yellow pencil skirt with matching jacket. I remember the skirt and jacket clearly, as it was something that my grandmother would wear is she was still alive.

A year later she got a promotion, and a raise, she moved to a better office, she went out more with her friends. I envied her in some way; my mother who was way past her teenage years was going out more than I did, a fourteen year old in the prime of her years.

Sometimes I hated mother for that. Hated for colourful clothes – even though she did buy some pink and violet t-shirts for me – when I wore black, constantly, twenty-four hours a day. Hated her for countless skirts, jackets, trousers. Every penny she spent was a penny lost, a penny for which I could buy so many better things.
When I was fifteen I wished my mother was miserable, just for one day. I wished for the tears to come, wished for the sound of scissors cutting all those dresses and skirts and trousers to shreds.

Yeah, I know, I was a daughter from hell.

Now, stepping closer to the Cocoon, I wished that things would go differently.

My mother was still there, somewhere. Did I dare to break the spell? Reverse the time? Change places with her?
If I was my mother, I wouldn’t let me be born. I would say “No, this child is going to curse me, curse my life, destroy everything. It’s going to suck the life out of me. Let it die.”

Because I did. I did everything.

Girls as old as fifteen shouldn’t envy their mothers. They should be loved and cherished. They should be listened to, allowed to go out more, to have more friends, to wear short skirts in minus two degrees Celsius just to see how quickly they can get cold and that their mother was right, you shouldn’t wore skirts in the middle of fucking winter.

Being a girl is hard. Being a teenage girl is a nightmare. Being a teenage girl with a more outgoing, younger mother than all of hers friends is a disaster just waiting to explode, killing everything and everybody, mutilating mother’s and daughter’s body.

I did not curse my mother, but if that really happened the explanation of the whole situation would be much easier. I also did not poison my mother nor put a spell on her. Things just… changed.
I started to go out more.

My mother started to go out less.

For my sixteenth birthday party I wore a cobalt blue dress, the first colourful thing I bought by myself in three years, and I looked fantastic. I can still remember the feeling of happiness, its taste on my tongue as sweet as honey. If this is what youth tastes like I would get in debt just to keep that feeling alive for the rest of my life. My mother also looked fabulous, in her dark brown gown with a golden necklace and matching rings. She looked classy, like a real woman who knew she was worth something.

Since that day I started to buy more things that weren’t black. My mother bought more things that were in various shades of grey.

Something started to crumble, in me and in my mother. The difference wasn’t noticeable, not at first. My aunt told me I grew up out of my ‘everything should be black because black is the best colour ever’ phase but she didn’t comment on my mother’s lack of colour. Nobody did at first.

My mother still went to work and met her friends but when she got home she had less energy to do, well, anything. She stopped doing the things she used to, like reading or cooking. Bed became her favourite place.
The more I went out the more my mother stayed at home.

And one day she didn’t go to work.

It was the first day of my life as a university student.

The Cocoon stirred a little bit and something that sounded like a yawn escaped it’s dark depth.

“Mother?” I stepped closer, bracing myself to see the worst. Hollow eyes, grey skin, everything.
The Cocoon stirred some more. Finally, she moved, long fingers with long pointy fingernails grabbed the blankets and for the first time in what seemed like forever I saw my mother’s eyes. Dark brown, they used to remind me of the colour of a melted chocolate. Now brownish and dirty swamp took its place.

“Do you need anything?”

She looked at me for a moment as if she didn’t know who I was, frowning slightly.

“A breakfast” she started breathlessly. “A breakfast would be nice.”

“Of course. Anything else?” She murmured something to herself, going back the Cocoon. “Ok then, breakfast it is.”

I went to the small kitchen and turned the stove on. I knew that scrambled eggs with chive was her favourite so I opened the fridge and took three eggs out. Walking to the kitchen table I glanced at a mirror on the wall and stopped for a moment to see if the other person was still me because sometimes I looked more like my mother than myself.

Chocolate eyes were staring at me. I touched ends of my black hair and lifted them to see if the dye still held. My nose was much like my mother’s but slightly bigger. A shame. Nevertheless, my face was round, cheeks rosy. No dark circles under the eyes, no signs of old age. I knew the wrinkles were coming, could feel them near my eyes and at the corner of my lips. At the age of forty I would probably look just like my mother.

I cooked scrambled eggs and added chopped chive. After two minutes another breakfast was ready and I would serve it on another plate. Then, after few hours, I would take the half eaten eggs, throw them away, just to make them again and again and again.

I sighted, pouring water into a cup, stirring it with crushed sleeping pill.

At least I hoped my mother dreamed of the past and not of the present nor the future that would never, ever come.

I, on the other hand, had to go out in an hour. I couldn’t be late for a coffee with my friends. I even picked out an outfit: a gorgeous yellow pencil skirt with matching jacket. It looked vintage, something my mother would wear, or even my grandmother.

sobota, 20 lutego 2016

Too many games, so little time

Being immersed in a world is everything a gamer can expect from a game. To be one with the character, to forget about our mundane problems just for a few hours.

But there comes a time when even the most passionate gamer needs to leave the console or the computer alone. Whether is it to go to work or to have, you know, a social life, gamers needs to take breaks. It’s hard to go back to real life after eight hours of demons slaying because some gamers are so immersed in the game that they think about it over and over again, and they don’t stop until they finish it. And let’s be honest, nowadays it’s really hard to stop playing; the games are getting better and better, their world building is getting more imaginative.

They are also getting longer. Much, much longer than they were in the past.

And this, for a casual video game player, is a problem.

Long games are sometimes problematic for casual players

“You said that being immersed in a world is a good thing, so why suddenly games being too long is a problem?” you may ask. Well, let’s start with the facts:
To finish The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – and by “finish it” I mean not only finishing the main plot but also the majority of the side quests - you need more or less 100 hours. It’s a lot. Now, 100 hours is basically four days of playing the game non-stop, which is so unhealthy so please, don’t try this at home!

So, we have 100 hours of the game, and let’s say the player has a day job, eight hours five times a week. We also have to take into consideration the time it takes to get ready for the job and to the job. Next, we have food preparation (our gamer is a healthy gamer who makes their own food, with vegetables and meat and so on), and social life. Also, sleep.
With all that let’s say that it will take two months to finish the game, which is more or less the time I finished the Witcher 3.


Even gamers need free time for other things 


But! Yes, there is a but! We need to remember: The Witcher 3 is not the only game available. There are other games that are being released and they all seem very tempting. They’re different than the Witcher, some shorter, but most of them aren’t shorter at all.

The Witcher 3 was released on 19th of May, and to finish I we need two months, so 19th of July should be the time of hitting the end credits. In the span of two months 23 games were published, including Batman: Arkham Knight, LEGO: Jurassic World, and God of War: Remastered. Even if we finish the game by the end of August we still have big titles that were also released in this month, including Dishonored for PS4, Gears of War Ultimate Edition, and finally Until Dawn.

And yes, I know not all of these game might be the ones that the Witcher 3 player will be willing to play instead of slaying monsters as Geralt, but there are always new games to play. AAA games, indie games, mobile games, they all take time to get into, figure out mechanics and the plot and such.
There are also games that we miss to play, because they’re so dear to us. Few times I had just started a game, but in the end I came back to my old favourites to meet characters and welcome the world they live in yet again.

I often come back to my favourite games 


The games are getting longer, and there are more available than there were even before.
I can understand that some developers want to make the experience of playing their game more unique and exceptional.  But they’re not creating that atmosphere by telling the player – yet again – that he needs to go to the other end of the map to find this thing, bring it back, and then go and find another thing and so on. You’re not playing as a postman, for god’s sake. Also that kind of narrative, the ‘fetch something and bring it back’ is repetitive and gets on my nerves so much.

The story doesn’t have to be long to be amazing. Of course, it can, but with so many games out there it would be a shame to just create a plot and quests for the sole purpose of making the game the longest it can be.


What do you guys think: are games nowadays getting too long? Or maybe you would like to play only 100+ hours games? Let me know in the comments!


wtorek, 5 stycznia 2016

The end is only the beginning, or how video games shouldn't have clear-cut endings.

“Oh, crap I did not see that coming at the end! When she met with him and that thing from the beginning became clear! Holy crap that was amazing!”

That’s a quote from me when I’ve finished a particularly good book which blew my mind. I screamed that internally, intensely staring at the last page of the book, hoping, even praying for some new words to magically appear.



Sadly, that was the end. The story was no more. The characters shook their hands, nodded politely to each other and went their ways.

The End.



“Yet, it's the end, Friend of mine.” Sang Sibylle Baier. The end is simultaneously a thing we love and hate. We love it because it gives us a sense of completion and we hate it because it means the story – a part of our life – has finished. We can try to revive it by starting the whole thing from the beginning, but there’s no fun when we know how things end, right?

Humankind was always obsessed with stories and particularly their endings. We always wanted and always will want to get to the very last chapter, the last episode, the last cut scene. We need things to end so that we can move on to other things and then to others and so on. How a story ends matters, because as a reader or viewer we want that moment of “oh crap I did not see that ending coming!” to happen. We crave that sense of completion.

Oh, the end is so tempting, isn’t it?

I am too, like the rest of the world, obsessed with endings. I like to finish things, not because I like them but the completing part is important. Can I sit and read for six hours just to end one book which I don’t particularly like? Hell yes, I can. I’ll read the epilogue even if it means more facepalming and headdesking.

However, video games endings are quite different.

You’re not only playing as the main character but at some level gamer becomes the main character. His worries are gamer’s worries, his adventures are gamer’s adventures. So when the ending doesn’t include the most important part of the game, the player is sure to revolt.

But should endings be clear-cut?

With games like, for example, the Witcher 3 it would be hard to not have a clear-cut ending. First of all, there are so many plots and characters that at least some of the quests had to end early and then the player’s choices would be visible on a beautiful art that accompanied major quests. But what about the “find my daughter” mission, which is the drive for Geralt and Yennefer? What about those seemingly unimportant quests like killing Radovid and reconciling Ciri with her biological father? These quests had an effect on the main ending of the game, but should they? I mean, the whole game was created out of a not clear-cut ending, in which the reader basically didn’t know what the hell has happened. Did Geralt and Yennefer survive? What happened with Cirilla? And how the hell did Andrzej Sapkowski dared to finish the saga the way he did? The Witcher – three games made by Polish developers – one of the biggest fan fiction in the world presents you with a possible, non-canon in Sapkowski’s eyes, ending.



Before I even got to the first half of the main quest, I looked the possible endings of the Witcher 3 up. Not because I really needed to satisfy my curiosity, but because I wanted to do everything just right for Ciri to survive. She was my teenage hero, as I read the books when I was 13 (NOT a good idea to be honest, but well, at least, I didn’t have nightmares), and I needed this game to end on a good note for her. Screw Geralt and his incapability to stay faithful to one woman, Ciri needs to have a happy ending! So, I watched all the endings and chose the perfect one of Ciri (and me).

Geralt and Ciri / via: thewitcher.com


After some time, when I was thinking more about how the story ended I thought “wow, wouldn’t it be so much better for the games to end on the same notes as books?” Not only games are using characters and places created by Sapkowski, they’re also using the unfinished, not clear-cut ending to continue the story. It would  be amazing for CD Project to acknowledge that they have created their own story but still establish that after all there wouldn’t be The Witcher: Wild Hunt without the books.

Wouldn’t it be so much more awesome for the game to have a similar ending as Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture had?

via: wikipedia.com


Published in 2015 by The Chinese Room, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a game about seemingly normal English town. Everything is beautiful, the sun is shining, the people…well, the people are not there, as they have vanished and the player doesn’t know what happened to them. By walking around traditional English countryside, following light that transforms into human silhouettes, the player pieces together the story by listening to characters in non-linear order.
The ending is peculiar, one that has stuck in my mind for quite some time. The ending… doesn’t say anything. We still don’t know fully what happened, where the people have gone to, what was the light and were did it came from. There are no answers, only questions.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture / via: www.stuff.tv


And this type of ending, this not clear-cut story which doesn’t present answers just more hypotheses, speaks to me on a special level. It a) provides me with different alternatives to how the story could end, b) treats me as a highly intellectual creature and c) you can’t spoil it to anybody because what is there to be spoiled?

Of course, putting not clear-cut ending after the player has spent hours and hours creating the characters, levelling them then beating the game, is risky. Some players might hate the ending and they might rant on Internet about how horrible it is. They may even pressure the developers into creating a DLC with a ‘proper’ ending that will not only add few hours of gameplay but will also neatly close loose plots. Some may say that the ending depends entirely on what kind of story developers want to create. It may be so, however, the ending is only a part of the story, not the sole purpose of creating it.


What kind of endings do you prefer? What was the most disappointing ending in a game you played? The most satisfactory one? Let me know in the comments!