I was sitting at work the other day, bored out of my gourd as usual, when I decided I would flick on a video to watch in the background while my boss wasn't looking.
I am a regular watcher of Geek and Sundry on Twitch, and by regular I mean every Friday at noon when Critical Role comes on (thank you time zones!). If you don’t know Critical Role, it is nine of the best voice actors around playing D&D live and uncensored. I started watching a few sessions in and got hooked – I even bought the T-shirt. I try to watch it at work, but it is kind of hard with an open planned office. I end up putting it on the more private of my two screens and tabbing out whenever I hear someone start to move from their desk. Anyway, I think I have gone a little off point…
So I switched on to the Geek and Sundry Twitch stream from E3. I wasn't really into it, so I flicked over to Felicia Day’s channel (the founder of Geek and Sundry), not expecting it to be live, but just to check it out. It turns out she was streaming live whilst playing “Cook, Serve, Delicious!”. I had previously watched a video of the game being played by Felicia and her brother Ryon, so was familiar with the premise.
Firstly, I was amazed by how well she multi-tasked. I was having trouble reading chat and watching the stream at the same time, and yet she was playing the game, reading the stream, and carrying on a conversation to those watching (swearing like a sailor). I have seen her in a few things and am always amazed at how happy and vibrant she is. I don’t know if it’s an “on camera” thing, but it is quite inspiring to someone who is rarely as happy. Again, I digress…
I liked the stream so I subbed and started making some comments in chat (all nice, no trolling). Felicia was answering some of the messages and I was trying to make some intelligent comments in the hopes that she might respond. No luck. I kept trying to make insightful and/or witty remarks however they never made it to her attention. C’est la vie…
As is my way, when I get to the end of the day and go to bed my brain starts buzzing – coming up with new ideas, reviewing old ones, fantasizing about what I would do if I were a Jedi – the usual stuff one thinks about at the end of a long day. I started thinking about why I was commenting on the stream. After a few hours of following various trains of thought I kept asking myself a simple question: why was I looking for validation from someone I don’t know?
I like to consider myself as being a fairly intelligent person. I not particularly social and spend much of my time on my own, which I am comfortable with for the most part. I don’t like being the centre of attention and shun the spotlight. I always thought of myself as a classic introvert. I’m rather introspective and like to exam both my thoughts and actions. This can often get me into trouble with my own brain as while a little self-examination can be good, a lot can be dangerous, and time + lack of external stimulus = very dangerous.
Don’t worry, there is a point to this...
So, given all those aspects of my personality, why was I making comments on a Twitch stream hoping that someone would answer me? Despite all my tendencies this would seem to be the opposite of my own psyche. This invariably led me to one conclusion:
Everything I thought I knew about myself was wrong.
Case in point: I play D&D once a week (usually). My current character is Finkle Fizzlebottom, Gnome Wizard Extraordinaire (his back-story will go up on my other blog after I have finished that of Raxogar the Paladin). For anyone that knows RPGs, wizards don’t wear any armour and should never be at the head of the group. Yet, as I now realize, I was always trying to lead the group, more than often from the front. I had done this with my previous wizard character, one Lord Argul Montok (a fire Genasi who was a bit of an ass), and he promptly died on his first outing after a spectre popped its head out of a door he was trying to open and proceeded to rip his soul from his body (ahhh… good times…). Looking back at previous D&D characters I saw that I had the same tendencies to try to lead the group. It also led me to realize that I often end up playing the “tank” (a character with high armour and health that is designed to take punishment) in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic. Despite me thinking that all I want to do is hide in the background and go unnoticed, all along I had been standing out front as the most visible member of the group. Being the tank also means more often than not you are the leader of any group, which further exacerbates the point.
My best friends recently had a baby and called him Felix. He’s a nice little bub, although I am deathly afraid of holding him. He doesn't really add anything to this story, I just wanted to use the name in the title as it made for good alliteration…
So because I skived off work for about half an hour and watched an internet entrepreneur play a video game about cooking food in a restaurant I realized I had been lying to myself for the last thirty years.
Thank you Felicia Day. I am in your debt.
