Pretend Violence is Amazing

 I should write something. I need to be working on something. I had work planned. Projects planned. Wanted to write a show. 

Lately, all I do is putter around the house and play Fallout: New Vegas. It's an obsession. I've logged over a hundred hours in just one save alone. I don't like guns. I know nothing about guns. Yet, I enjoy the first person perspective and the walking. And the violence. I love it. It soothes me. It's relaxing because it's pretend. 

The game is my special interest tbh. I enjoy the lore, but one thing I've noticed during my deep dives into lore essay videos on YouTube is that for some of the folks who do these deep analyses, I'm unsure if they know that what they're talking about is a creation. A work of fiction. 

It's easy to find alternative histories, speculations, and other rich explorations of a fictional world's history, that from the language used, it's clear that for them this game's world is as real as the one we live in as consensus reality. Maybe it's true that we live in simulation. 

I think on this because right now, we're 8 months into a full scale final solution style ethnic cleansing of Gaza and over a year of brutal war and ethnic cleansing in Sudan, and the continued genocidal slavery in Congo as well as Western rooted unrest in Haiti as well as many other locations globally. In the US, we have a convicted felon running for president, and a war criminal wanted by the ICJ as his opponent. In many ways the game's world seems more orderly. At least it's clear who the bad guys are. 

I played the game the most when I was bedridden ill. It was fun to take "walks" through the wasteland. I'm no gun nut. I don't even like guns, but I improved my skills and leveled up. Where was I going with any of this?

I wish wars were waged as games. It's horrific to see people wantonly destroy other human beings for no good reason. I believe there is no good reason for war. Not for resources, not for land, not for honor. No reason. 

It's especially gutting to see day after day small children blown to bits, beheaded, murdered and with US dollars. Money that could be spent on crumbling infrastructure. Money that could be applied to the US's $600 trillion debt to us the descendants of enslaved Africans. 

Maybe a fantasy world is better. At least there, you get to be invincible.