I have a feeling I’m at the part of the story where it gets worse, a lot worse, before it gets better.
I used to teach a storyboarding college course and I wrote all of my own lesson content for the class. One of my favorite things to teach was the Hero’s Journey (Joseph Campbell and others). It was fun to find examples in pop culture and draw the correlations but also to ask students to reflect on personal stories that might have similar narrative patterns. Students seemed pretty engaged by all that. 🙂
One of my favorite video games that follows a heroic journey model is The Flame in the Flood (NPR even has a short segment on this game: KCUR Review), a brutal survival game set to the backdrop of an apocalyptic, post-rapture world. The UX of some of the menus is clunky, and the game isn’t perfect, but the story and growth you experience as a player is elegant in design. It has that old-school unforgiving quality (think early NES, or like the more modern Binding of Isaac). Your predicaments often make you feel like you haven’t been given enough time or training to adequately prepare, it feels random (partly because it’s architected this way), or frustratingly unfair, not unlike real-life.
The world is shadowed in a layer of dystopian despair, mostly devoid of human life. Your character has to learn quickly to survive, be resourceful, and overcome unexpected challenges and even if you do everything right, luck may not be on your side and you still might die of thirst (surrounded by water lol), making you restart your journey all over again. But when you reach the end; it’s beautiful and somewhat cathartic. The sound track (Chuck Ragan) for The Flame in the Flood is one of my absolute favorites (and I don’t typically listen that style of music, so that’s saying a lot). The art style for the game is also delightfully morose. I made a fanart piece (see above) of me and Suki in a similar style to that of the heroine Scout and her dog Aesop because I feel like that is 100% me right now. That’s me navigating this deep dive into my past traumas on this rocky ever-moving river.
It might be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I’m getting eaten by wolves and starving half the time. I’m fighting off illness and getting by on my shoddy raft, but we’re still moving, because we don’t have a choice, because deep down, we have hope for what lies at the end. So, one day at a time. I’m learning to craft better tools, to strengthen the stability of my raft so I can navigate the tumultuous waters, to keep my backpack carrying the self-care items I need. Hoping with enough luck and perseverance, I’ll make it to the light at the end of the flood.
“And I don’t care where you come from or,
What your papa taught you.
All we are is, what we leave behind.”
Chuck Ragan, What we Leave Behind, The Flame in the Flood OST