Eyes wide, glittering at every little element of the B.C. Piezophile demo and every so often when encountering some bold, obnoxious, heavily self-indulgent user unfriendly batshit nonsense decision on the part of the developer, I whisper quietly under my breath "I need to get more fucked up..."

It's a cute goofy affirmation and quiet celebration of the kinds of things I enjoy, the kinds of games and art targeted at exactly 12 mother fuckers, whose sense of style, tone, design and usability are so deeply unwilling to be convenient, accessible (in the general sense), or even remotely civil as to drum up a deep unreachable core inspiration in those 12 afformentioned mother fuckers, and a vague displeased discomfort and bewilderment in everyone else.

I need to get more fucked up, and I know how.
But if I'm going to make something for exactly 12 sideways facing weirdos, I have to do something which goes against a load-bearing concept that's been keeping me upright for the better part of 20 years.

(This gets pretty heavy after the cut so buckle the fuck up)

Avoiding people comes so naturally to me that I often forget it's almost always at the front of every decision I make, I've come to understand it's the direct result of RSD and acute CPTSD- a lifetime of violent trauma, physical and mental abuse and a few spots of homelessness tend to sow a certain kind of seed in the soul.
People meant trouble, not always but frequently, people meant evaluating if a situation would be worth the risk.

Unfortunately for my agonies I was born into a social species and despite the difficulty I would try an exhausting number of ways to make friends growing up, and even more unfortunately I discovered some consistent and promising methods which were relatively straightforward.

The most dangerous of these is a method I'm told is a popular one among a certain kind of mentally anguished people.

Become Valuable.

Oh it is like drinking the sky during famine, and comes with the same consequences: you who now possess what others want how keen are your senses? For there are leeches many in the soil and your innocent gentle flesh is warm and yielding.

"I need to become more fucked up.." it was funny at first, but my awe has turned to a confused grief. I've spent how long sharpening my vast library of skills so I can become valuable to every kind of person imaginable? Yet somehow this beautiful work of art feels like something I could never have produced without guidance? I must be missing some element of creation, some inspiration or motivation that would correct my overly cautious.. sense of....

"I need to become more fucked up.." I say to myself accepting $100 for a $4000 job in 2014. I hear it echo, down the steps and through the passages it reverberates off every moment I have yielded to nothing to ensure I was valuable to ensure I had a place in the world, hard fought with blood and dirt under my chipped and broken claws.
"I need to become more fucked up." I say, quietly, leaning over some crumpled sobbing image of myself, a kid who changed his whole life to revolve around others just to avoid the possibility of rejection.

So I play these games and I obsess over this art, feeling seen at the deepest level and grappling with a painful feeling that I can't shake, because in order to be truly indulgent I have to be willing to make something without pouring my absolute overly-polished best into every single piece of it.
It must reflect the person making it accurately for it to have such genuine heart and potency, and even though I tell myself how much I value imperfection, I can't get that kid to let things be imperfect, he's still trying to make everyone like him and now he's not sure how to do anything less.

I need to become more fucked up.
So I find him occasionally chasing it, glimpses of this kid I once knew doing what he can to just let himself be happy first, finding the 12 people who like that about him and making something just for them to say thank you.

It often feels easy when you're playing these kinds of games, like surely this just came pouring out of a person without stops, but that would also betray the heart of these works wouldn't it?
Creating something so specific takes a kind of feverish determination and frustration, and a meek little hope that someone else will share this fixation with you, be exactly your kind of bizarre and love it the same way you love your own strangeness, that curiously shaped strength which doesn't look like anyone else's, whose name means everything to precisely 12 very good people.