Achievement Unlocked

by Annabeth Leong

I've been a gamer all my life, and so I'm trained to think of quests in very specific ways.

The way it works these days in video games, I run my character around and explore every nook and cranny of the world that's been designed. Quests are marked on the map with little arrows, or with exclamation points over characters' heads.

I want to think about the character I'm playing and whether he or she would be interested in doing the things that are offered. For example, would my goody-two-shoes mage, who turned his own best friend in during the prologue for breaking the Circle of Magi's prohibitions against forbidden magic, actually agree to help hide bodies for a shady organization based in the capital city? I'm guessing no, but I'm not incentivized to have that much integrity.

If I refuse the quest, I'll miss out on experience points, which I need in order to make my character more powerful. I'll also fail to get the achievement the game offers for helping out these shady people. (It's amazing how much motivation an animated plaque can provide). Besides, I won't get to discover that part of the game. The statistics that mark what percentage of the world I explore will wind up flawed. There will be conversations I didn't have, people I didn't kill.

There's also a great coldness to the way quests work in video games. Your character is assigned to save, say, five slaves from a dungeon. You run in, and the game has provided you with an abundance of slaves. No need to wait around or search too hard—there are plenty to choose from. You save your five, and then you get out, because anything else would be a waste of time. Never mind how weird and inhuman that behavior is if you think about it from a different perspective. (The web comic Penny Arcade famously lampooned this mechanic in the controversial strip, "The Sixth Slave." The core criticism in the comic is spot on, though I do see why there was trouble over the callousness of the humor employed to make the point).

All this, however, represents a twisted version of the true concept of a quest. According to my dictionary, a quest is "a long and arduous search for something." According to what I recall from Arthurian legend, that search may not lead where it was supposed to, it may not end when it's supposed to, and it may not be summed up neatly by progress bars, percentage points, and achievements.

Maybe we're not all heroes, but I think we're all on a long and arduous search to figure out what the hell to do with our lives, or if what we're doing with our lives is meaningful or satisfying or useful or positive in any measurable way. I've played enough video games that I think of this life quest in video game terms, even when that's destructive for me.

Let's talk about grabbing quests, for example. In real life, indiscriminately accepting every opportunity that comes one's way is a great way to waste a lot of time and obliterate one's sense of self. There is a part of me that wants to write for every anthology call I see, but what about the times when that's not right for me? Sometimes, that's because of personal reasons or because of my interest or lack thereof or because of my need to protect my own time. Other times, it's because of my beliefs.

A while ago, a publisher put out a call for an anthology that would sport a cover image of a woman with very serious thigh gap. I've read fairly extensively about body image, including a lot of really disturbing stuff about the current obsession with thigh gap. I was interested in the concept of the anthology and even started a story for it, but I kept feeling uncomfortable about that cover image. I imagined posting it on my blog and talking about how beautiful it was (because I do like cover art a lot, and usually make a habit of doing that). I couldn't stomach the thought. I imagined critiquing the thigh gap issue when I posted the cover, then worried I would be seen as unprofessional. In the end, I decided not to grab that quest. Maybe I gave up some gold (heh) or experience points as a result, but in real life I'm not going to get the 100 percent exploration achievement, and I care more about defining my character and values than I do about reaching arbitrary statistical markers.

It disturbs me how often the desire to grab a quest tempts to me to violate my own values for what is likely to be a very small reward.

I've got to think about who I am, what I really want, and what purpose I've got. I'm not a character in someone else's world. In a game, I'm missing out on opportunities for fun by refusing to do things. In real life, there are plenty of great reasons to refuse things all the time.

Achievements are another twisted thing. In video games, I'm wild for those progress bars and percentage points and little shield icons. I want to level up. I want a high GamerScore. I thrill to the sight of the words, "Achievement unlocked," and when my numbers reach X/X, I feel a real sense of, well, achievement.

As a writer, I've unlocked some achievements, too: Story publication. E-book released. Novel out in print. Story singled out on an anthology's back cover. Invited to contribute. As in games, some of the achievements are negative: Bad contract. Deep disappointment. Cruel review. Laughable sales.

I think, though, that this idea of achievements is what saps a lot of the soul from my writing. If I've achieved this thing, then I should feel this thing. If you've achieved this thing and I haven't, then you're beating me. If you've been struck by a negative achievement that I've managed thus far to avoid, that means I'm somehow cleverer than you.

That's not the person I want to be. I don't want to think that way at all. I don't believe in measuring my life in sound bites and neat, pat phrases. I don't really believe in simplicity, either.

What's been even more poisonous for me than the idea of achievements is the idea of measuring progress the way a video game does. Some writers put progress bars for their novels up on their websites, as if a novel is a file downloading at a speed of, say, 1,667 words per day. (With NaNoWriMo approaching, that example speed seems apt). I've learned from writing to daily word count goals, but at a certain point I learned I needed to let them go. I'm not saying it's okay to fool around and pretend to be working when I'm not. Writing is a lot of hard work, and I believe in putting in the time. I'm not a machine or a program, though, and I've done myself a lot of harm by expecting myself to work as if I am. I've done myself grievous harm by expecting my quests—especially the quests as personal as digging a novel out of the collective unconscious and seasoning it with pieces of my soul—to proceed in neat, measured ways.

So many of my expectations for myself and my quests amount to techno-babble. They're not true to what we really know of story, if we stop to think. They're not true to what our fairy tales tell us.

Writing is a tough act of balance. Me versus you. Fulfilling reader expectations versus delighting and surprising. Listening versus speaking (or reading versus writing). White space covered by black words, which need the space or they won't sing. Working toward goals versus allowing room for exploration and discovery.

I don't want to write for maximum efficiency, because there's no joy in that. I need forward motion, yes, but I don't want to see it as a waste of time if I stop for the sixth slave. A real quest involves a lot of time logged in the wilderness. There are many hours when the compass seems broken and the map seems to have been drawn for another land altogether.

Lately, my writing is changing, and I'm not sure how. I am trying to balance the need to keep working and fulfilling my obligations with the equally important need to let myself develop and search. The only way I know to survive is to keep the older, mythical concept of a quest in mind. The video game concept of a quest can be fun, but it provides so much false comfort, and all too often it reveals how hard it still is for us to simulate the deep truths of the world in which we live.

I Could Have Died: Red Flags

by Nikko Lee

Have you ever contemplated jumping out of a moving vehicle? The movie stars do it all the time. Just before the car explodes or drives off a cliff, the hero opens the door and jumps without hesitation. Lacerations, road rash or broken bones are nothing compared to the certain doom he or she is narrowly escaping.

I'm no movie star, action hero or daredevil and by no means do I have a death wish. In fact, the likely injuries and sheer desperate insanity of the act were all that kept me from doing it. One beautiful Sunday afternoon a few years ago as my then boyfriend and I drove through a serene national park I pictured myself undoing my seat belt, opening that car door and escaping. There was no bomb or imminent cliff, but the certain doom I was facing in that car could have just as easily killed me.

I had met him online years ago in an online role playing community. His character was known for being quick-tempered and a womanizer (red flag #1). After years of role playing together and getting to know each other out-of-character, we finally decided to meet in person. He had just left the military on a sour note (red flag #2). With no place to stay and no job, he needed a few dollars for the flight (red flag #3) to come meet me. Naively, I offered him a place to stay as he got back on his feet. Almost immediately he started talking about our future together (red flag #4).

The attraction between us was intense, overwhelming and all-consuming (red flag #5). I was fascinated by every aspect of him and accepted his faults along with his qualities. He seemed supportive at first, but soon he started in with these sexist and demeaning jokes (red flag #6). It only took a few arguments before he stopped that. I was a strong and independent woman after all – or so I thought.

We had a rocky relationship from the start. When we argued, it was an all out battle (red flag #7). He never laid a hand on me. He didn't have to. Instead he would yell at me, insist that I had mental problems or even laugh at me when I expressed my feelings (red flag #8). In many subtle and not so subtle ways, he undercut my opinions, beliefs and feelings (red flag #9). When something went wrong, the fault rested with someone else (red flag #10). Each time I tried to end the relationship he would always vow to change(red flag #11).

Little by little I was losing myself. He had me convinced that I was being selfish, neurotic, or unreasonable when I expressed concern about his online activities – infidelity was a recurring theme with him (red flag #12) – or lack of stable employment (red flag #13). It always came down to his word and against my perception. I no longer trusted that little voice inside that kept telling me how wrong things were. My friends and family couldn't understand why I stayed, and eventually I stopped talking to them about my problems (red flag #14). I was isolated and worst of all didn't even trust my own judgment (red flag #15).

The red flags just kept piling up, but by then I was in so deep I didn't see a way out. I believed that relationships involved working through the hard times. But there were always more hard times than good times. When I was dragged into yet another argument that Sunday afternoon, all I could think about was jumping from that car just to get away. I wanted to escape from him, my choice in staying with him, the sadness of feeling like a failure, the hopelessness of a never ending cycle of pain, the loss of a relationship that never was, etc. I was willing to pay almost any cost at that point, except my life. That's when I realized that this relationship was killing me.

I spent several more months nurturing the false hope that he had finally changed, followed by the inevitable agony of finding out he hadn't. Little by little my own life was changing for the better. I started taking martial arts classes again. Medication for depression and seeing a therapist helped get my brain out of the darkness that was consuming it. Eventually I developed the fortitude to end things for good the last time I found evidence he was being unfaithful. At the time, all I could think about was hiding away from the world and healing.

For months, I had nightmares that I was back in that eternal relationship loop with him refusing to leave. If he had hit me, I would have left immediately. Emotional abuse is just as insidious as physical abuse. It rots a person from the inside out. There are no bruises or scars to show anyone. Slowly, but surely, it eats away at your very sense of self until there is nothing left but the husk of a person.
Now I can see so many red flags and how ignoring them could have killed me. I'm just glad I found my way out before the damage was permanent. Saving my life didn't take anything as dramatic as jumping out of a moving vehicle. It just took regaining trust in my self and valuing myself enough to do what was best for me.
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