There is probably nothing as satisfying as a good game session, then hopping on the associated wiki. As far as nerd wikis go, the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Page reigns supreme. Its depth, independence, and history lends itself to a wonderfully immersive experience, and trawling the wiki has been an enjoyable nightcap lately.
Yes, I am back into the Elder Scrolls again (thanks to this video), and I am loving every second of it.
It would be remiss of me to not mention that Bethesda Game Studios is a BDS target, due to it being owned by Microsoft, which largely contributes to and profits off of the genocide in Gaza. However, considering the latest Bethesda/Zenimax layoffs, it seems no entity is as determined to undermine the studio as Microsoft itself. In this current societal configuration, concentration of power comes from fucking up existing cultures, destroying livelihoods, and looting what you can from the rubble.
Why?
Anyway, since I still remember every hotel, city, and questline in Oblivion decently, that wouldn’t do. So instead, I went back to Morrowind! Yes, my beloved Bellita, the most beautiful and noble warrior-thief in the world, has finally fulfilled the prophecy and brought temperate weather and clear skies back to her people. Yay!!!
Morrowind is a little difficult to get into the groove of, but once you get into it…oh! How it hits. To this day, there’s nothing quite like it. And once you start digging into the end game lore, you just want MORE!
So when I got to the end of the Mournhold expansion… once again…I started playing Skyrim.
I have been playing Skyrim on the PS3, on and off, for the last 9 years. And I am still not bored.
It’s pretty nuts, actually.
They key is getting into the role playing systems. When I first played Skyrim, I didn’t see a point to eating or sleeping, but now I realize it’s everything — your character’s story can be as epic or as small as you’d like. Whatever scope you’re feeling, you have everything you need to create a compelling character.
It’s like playing with dolls. But metal \m/
Yes, blood and skulls and snow and cults — Skyrim is 100% on the metal wavelength.
When I play this game, I remember being fourteen, torrenting gigs and gigs of every single metal album internet people said was good, discussing them on MSN messenger with forum friends. While I feel a heady sense of nostalgia for those days, I also remember the cold, all-encompassing chill that radiated from the pit of my stomach from when I learned a terrible truth.
So much of what I’ve done in my waking life is just…gone, yet this I remember clearly.
A typical evening alone on the family computer, listening to albums I’d probably never revisit. I finally started picking at black metal recs, which everyone agreed was the most true and brutal genre. Today’s hunt was a random release from Nokturnal Mortum.
It was awesome! Everyone was right, this was great!
When the album finished, I promptly hopped onto Wikipedia to learn more, then found out that not only were Nazis still a thing, this album I had enjoyed so much was literally Nazi music!
Now, in the present day, this is not so shocking– the fucking vice president of the United States is a shameless Nazi who throws up a variation of the fourteen words every chance he gets, for Christ’s sake.
But then?
That was the first time in my smothered sheltered life that I realized that because of the way I looked, because of the way I was born, some might not consider me fully human.
I think, being so plugged in the net in my youth was a both a bane and a boon. A deep bane in that, having poured so much life energy into it in the past, I burnt out the capability of me directly, immediately connecting with others through it in the here and now.
But seeing as modern net culture swims downstream from the sewers of forum culture from back then…isn’t it kind of good to not feel the need to participate it in the modern day? It’s the same nerd rage, same racism, same Nazis. Except now, it’s blown up and amplified and everyone in the whole world is forced to look this shit. People you care about IRL can have their brain liquefied through right wing YouTube/facebook/tiktok, and there’s not much you can meaningfully do about it at this time.
I feel the only thing really connecting me to social media is the latest covid news and pictures of Kitaro. Incidentally, those are topics I both feel deeply for and have difficulty speaking about to most people.
While I have adjusted to life flying against social reality, I will probably be forever mad that information that was supposed to be public health was instead disseminated in the manner of private hobbyist info. A hobby is something that’s low-stakes, enjoyable, done to pass time. Your health…not so much.
But it is what it is.
My current Skyrim character is a large, strapping Imperial warrior with a love for Dark Elf culture and expensive mead. The looming threat of dragons destroying everyone he’s ever met and causing the end of the world terrifies him, but he persists regardless.
Real life isn’t as obvious and epic, but at the very least, we to have believe a better world can exist.