Life Goes On

Here’s an update of sorts on my life. I’ve had way too many thoughts to come up with a single subject to write about this time.

Lately, I’ve not been doing much aside from playing Mass Effect 3 for a few hours a day. On Sunday I clocked over 4 hours which to hardcore gamers is nothing but to someone who likes to divide their time by doing a variety of tasks I was beginning to feel a bit…non-functional.

You see, I have this problem where I can get stuck on doing just one thing and then forget to take care of my basic needs, like buying food and making my own healthy meals. I showered today, right? Yes. OK, good.

So, as I was saying I’ve been playing a lot of Mass Effect 3 and getting pretty far with it. It’s always surprising when I’m actually good at a game. I’m expecting to get so stuck soon that I’ll just quit the game in a fit of rage.

Something interesting to note about playing through ME:3 is that during the dialogue scenes where you get to choose what Commander Shepard says and decide where the game gets to go, I’ve not only been learning that my decisions have some real consequences but I’ve also picked up some extra social skills along the way. I’ve noticed how Shepard does take care to speak warmly to people even when you just select ‘goodbye’ as a piece of the dialogue. He doesn’t just say ‘bye then’ but will gently reveal that he’s going but will try to reassure the other character he still cares about their situation. If it was left up to me I’d probably just say ‘bye’ and leave it at that. Another thing I picked up which could help me with my erm, defiant reactions, is that I’ve learned not everyone will be pleased with the decisions I made within the game even if a few others might. For example I helped a race called the Krogan get more power by having them cured of the genophage; it sort of limited their growth as a species. The Salarians weren’t impressed with that. Even my own General Hackett wasn’t impressed that I freed a creature created by the Reapers, our enemy. Maybe I was a bit naive in believing her when she said she’d help fight them. At least I didn’t free a psychopath or work with a ruthless gang just to help win the war. However, I think I made a bad call not letting the Grissom students join the fight. Fortunately, I have saved my game on several slots and I can replay the mission to see what having the students fighting alongside me will be like.

Yep. A video game is teaching me social skills. Add it to the list of emotional family drama shows and science fiction which have also helped me develop socially.

Ever since I came back from seeing and photographing The Ape I feel like I’ve lost the spark of life. At least I had been. I don’t do very well with transitioning from one thing to another and once it was over it was over. I really wanted to meet them and my anxiety seemed to resurface at the moment the opportunity arose. It was a fine mix of social anxiety and avoidance that made me decide neh, I don’t want to do this. I was so set on going to Free Comic Book Day the next day that I thought it justified making a quick exit. Plus I had to work on the photos. Enough excuses, kid.

Then I felt incomplete and for several days just wanted to go back to try again. But I have to wait a really long time to get that chance again. My main aim of the night was to take certain type of photos of them, particularly what I call ‘rock moves’ which I kinda aced, but I missed out on few good shots, mainly because my lens wasn’t wide enough and the one lens I needed I decided to leave at home.

Leading up to the gig I had this whole theme of loneliness surrounding me. I had been struggling to talk to other MARVEL comic book fans and knew that I would literally know just one person at the gig who I also couldn’t go up to talk to. But fans did start talking to me. I had never realised that just hanging alone by the stage with a drink would make me appear to be so isolated. I guess I do look that way but I’ve got one aim: take the best photos at all costs, and that is what I accomplished that night. I even spent two days post processing the photos and was glad I sacrificed all that time to produce some pretty damn good looking photos.I kind of wonder at times whether using flash was the right call. The Ape’s lighting has always been challenging to work with and when I used the flash I barely noticed it. Actually, I think I was too over focused. I barely noticed anything going around me.

It took me awhile to get back into my interests or to even want to keep living my normal life. There’s a lot coming up but at the time I didn’t want to do it. I basically have two functions: zero motivation or extremely excited about my life and everything. So, I may just have been lacking motivation again. Then I made the decision to start playing Mass Effect 3. I didn’t think I could even get past the first cutscene because it was so damned long and then there were so many options I felt like pulling my hair out. But I was able to focus for a bit longer this time and carefully selected how I wanted my soldier. I’ve clocked about 15 hours of gameplay so I’m pretty happy about that. I even want to play a few more games.

I was still having trouble motivating myself to keep going to gigs and taking photos, mainly because it was hard enough to get the clearance to take photos. I can’t always rely on one helpful band member to get me in to take photos. So, I resigned myself to the fact that I’m probably just going to have to risk taking in my camera to Dallas Crane and I no longer felt like going. Then the support band, Greta Mob said they could get me in and ask me to take press shots of them. Nervous, excited and so very ambitious I decided to take them on. Then, I hear back from Pete Satchell from Dallas Crane. Sure, we could get you in.

Now the spark has returned to me, though it does wane at times. I’m pretty good at thinking the worst about a good opportunity. For now, I’m just waiting to see what happens on Saturday. I’ve kind of put myself into quarantine to keep me hidden away from the masses of sick sniffling and coughing people who carelessly spread their germs on someone who can’t affect to get sick.

Still, it’s hard to get through each day. Not long ago the only thing that could bring me happiness was the prospect of playing Mass Effect 3 for a few more hours a day. Could be depression or it could be that I don’t really care about anything except going to this gig. I was like this with The Ape, although with less anxiety. I was looking forward to Free Comic Book Day too. Then on the day I had extreme anxiety and then depression (thanks beer) but you know, I got over that. It might have taken a week but I got over it. I was a little ashamed of my behaviour that night and some thoughts I had that were just ridiculous to have because things turned out to be the opposite. Life goes on. And can I be any more vague than that?

But I do have things to look forward to. Tomorrow night (or tomorrow – depends on my patience) new Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D premieres and it’s the season finale. I also have my S.H.I.E.L.D Origins comic book to read. Are you detecting a pattern here? Plus I’ve got new Big Bang Theory to watch as well as a few re-runs of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Tomorrow I’ll add Parenthood to the list. Yeah, don’t ask. Two characters have Asperger’s syndrome in it – we could be best friends! They make me feel normal, like Sheldon Cooper does. Ray Romano surprisingly makes a good autistic character.

I seem to be the kind of person who has to constantly give themselves things to look forward to do to keep my motivation going. I think it’s got to do with my ADHD. My mind is often struggling to focus while my thoughts are racing so to give myself some few minutes of stability I will just come up with a variety of things to do. When I don’t do this I get bored, under motivated and become easily depressed, empty, longing for something that I can’t see. I jump at any opportunity when my mind finds that focus, even if it’s just for an hour. And I’ll stick with it until exhaustion.

And after Dallas Crane there’s WAITS to see who are made up of ex-members of After the Fall including my buddy Mark, so I can actually talk to someone at a gig again. Then there Charles Jenkins and the Zhivagos. Such band members include Davey Lane and I’m always going to go up and say hi to Davey.  During this time I should also get more prepared to go to Portland. At times it’s the last thing I want to do but it could be a good experience for me. Also, I get to see one of the more likable members of my family. I’m kidding of course. I do miss my big sis though. And I want to become best friends with her pug.

I’ll miss seeing my Australian bands. That’s why when I’ll return I’ll be seeing The Used and Taking Back Sunday. Heh. I’ll at least get to see Darren Middleton again. I just love Australian music more than any other type of music. I still love my welsh rockers Funeral For a Friend and Thursday/Bayside/Jawbreaker/Cursive/Anberlin/etc who all come from the US, but my loyalty lies with the Australian music scene. People in my family have been hinting to me falling in love with Portland so much when I’m over there I will move there, but I won’t. I want to move to Melbourne, or Wales. Or Canada. Nah. I’m not that obsessed with Stargate anymore.

As I’ve been getting older my music taste has been changing so I’ve been going to a lot of gigs where the music and music scene is quite new to me. Sometimes I neglect to listen to the bands from the old scene. I kind of feel a bit left out about not knowing much about the history of the Australian rock scene or most bands people talk about. I can make more sense out of Star Trek than I can Rockwiz, but I am learning. At times I feel like I’ve missed out on a lot, but then I’m glad I never just stuck with one genre or sub genres throughout my life. At different parts of my life I’ve been pretty obsessed with a variety of music. As varied as emo/punk/hardcore is. I also like folk music and recently I’ve been getting into You Am I, Dallas Crane, The Gin Club, etc. I still listen to bands like The Used with a sense of guilty pleasure and I listen to bands like Jawbreaker, Refused, Thursday and Brand New as though I’m experiencing something incredible few people have, because I hardly know people who listen to them anymore. Basically put those bands make me experience far deeper emotions than most of the Australian rock bands can. Scientists say that we always feel nostalgic about the music we listened to as a teenager and because I’m autistic and a few years emotionally delayed my teen years were experienced more in my early to mid 20s. Some of those songs made up the soundtrack of what was happening in my life at the time. At least two or three were break-up records.

I’m an analytical person and much like Data from Star Trek or Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory study the behaviour of people to get a better understanding of them, I’ve decided to focus on the different demographic of music fans and how it manifests in them, i.e teenagers probably get the most obsessed. They have posters on their wall, frequent fan forums, wear the band’s merch and learn pretty much all they can about the bands. I’m partly still in this demographic though I’m not really into the hero worshiping thing like they are. I’d rather have a drink with a band than get an autograph. I’m over collecting 10,000 set lists too. Then, I wondered how the older fans (40+) differed from this. I’m still conducting my research so I don’t have much to put forward yet. But in time I might be more capable of articulating my thoughts on this matter. One can speculate they spend less time in fan communities and being obsessed and their love of the band is pushed to the background as they work, raise children and whatever else they do. And gigs are a place they can unwind. They stand back in the crowd and watch from afar. Unless they’re my best friend. But I’m basically looking for a general picture here and not the exception to the rule.

Moving on.

It’s disappointing to me that the bands I used to always see and photograph have become difficult to get photo access to. Anberlin are playing one last show ever and I probably won’t get to take photos. I’m seeing Taking Back Sunday and probably won’t get to take photos. All I really need is the Dwarf to send me an e-mail asking people to apply to take photos at those shows and I’m in. But at least now I can rely on The Ape, Dallas Crane and You Am I to get me into take photos. And depending how much Matthew Davies wants to help me I might get some photo access to Funeral For a Friend.

So, life goes on. It goes to Portland, returns to buy video games and read more comic books. It goes to more Australian gigs (and a few overseas ones as well) and takes photos. It reignites and loses the spark to enjoy everything that comes its way.

Eventually it will get a job and on some medical treatment plan.

An Excuse to Talk about MARVEL’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D While Trying to Explain My Lack of Social Skills

 

Ah yes, I finally get to talk about my current no.1 obsession: the TV show MARVEL’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I’m just going to go ahead and mention that this post may contain spoilers for the most current S.H.I.E.L.D episodes because I like to keep pretty up-to date on them and I would hate to ruin the excitement and nervous anticipation of fans waiting for another installment like I have been over these many weeks.

For about 5 or 6 months now I have been developing into a very huge MARVEL comic book fan and enthusiast, but I’ve not been able to share my love with other comic book fans. It’s not just being a failure to connect to the comic book world but I first realised I struggled to get along with other fans when I joined a Stargate online fan message board. Before I was into the MCU I was and still am a very huge fan of the Stargate franchise.

I’ve acquired a lot of knowledge about Stargate so it’s never hard for me to talk about the facts from the Stargate Universe (not to be confused with Stargate: Universe) but when it came to discussing the episodes in depth is when I started to realise I focused on different parts of the show than those around me. Basically other fans were talking about the show as if it was real and getting quite worked up about it too. To them the characters were free to make decisions and their actions were not solely at the hands of some very creative writers, and as someone who wants to become a writer I saw it the other way. At times I would praise the writers for creating such a thrilling episode with mystery and intrigue and drop hints throughout the series so we the audience could try to work out what was going to happen on our own – take note, Alphas.

But I just did not connect with the fans. I found them emotional and almost delusional for not getting that it’s just a show.

One of my favourite characters (Agent Fitz) and one of my favourite moments on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

After seeing Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the S.H.I.E.L.D episodes that linked with it I became so passionate about the show that I wanted to connect to other fans. There were the odd trolls who would nit-pick certain parts of the episode they didn’t like or whatever news that came out about future episodes or they would basically just say the show should be cancelled because commenting on the official Facebook page of the show you hate is just such a good way to spend your precious time, right? Those people are easy to ignore, though some people just can’t help but give them a piece of their mind.

Then people yet again started to talk about the characters as if they were real and the story was real and I just felt uncomfortable again. These people were just empathising so much more with the characters than me, which isn’t exactly a bad thing. When I watch the show I can be moved in the same way as they are. I know that after Agent Phil Coulson was brought back to life by regenerative DNA of a blue alien that he is kind of a broken man and that he didn’t want the cellist to know he was alive because it took so long for her to get over him, though a few other fans did reveal some of the finer details for me. Fitz big speech in ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ when standing up to Garrett while crying was touching but again it was very hard for me to understand why. I needed other people to explain to me what it meant to them. It even took some time for me to empathise with Skye who was looking for her parents but then it turned out they were dead and she was being protected by S.H.I.E.L.D because she was an 0-8-4 (meaning an object of unknown origin – she could have special powers) and some bad people were out there looking for her. Most likely Hydra, because unless you’ve been living under a rock or are kind of you know popular, you know they had been infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D for 70 years and since Captain America helped take them down S.H.I.E.L.D is now seen as a terrorist organization, so they are still kind of in power.

You can see why I filed this under ‘autism’ now can’t you? I even feel my above descriptions of some of the series’ plot is coming out a bit stale. Could it be anxiety? Perhaps. I have lots of that. Is it a bad time to mention that I’m writing this while hearing Agent Phil Coulson’s voice in my head, kind of reading out the post to me? It’s something else I do to help me write. It’s common on the autistic spectrum. I’ll stop talking about it now.

It may take me some time to feel emotions toward the characters but I do feel them and when I watch the show I am taken into the fantasy of it all, but for some reason when I talk about it to other people I can only regurgitate the facts of the show, you know, recite the story in a very technical way (my psychologist said I explained everything in a technical way too) and then when I tried to explain the emotions of a character  I would start to sound less intelligent than I am. When I talk about the neuronal processes in the brain or recite any law of physics or even share a theory I have about black holes I can just articulate it so much better that I sound like I’m smarter than I am. But when it comes to explaining how something can move me emotionally, well I just I, well I, I just feel dumb.

There would have been a time where I thought it was better to think more logically and not worry so much about emotions. After all, emotions are distracting, confusing and exhausting things. They get it the way of our reasoning skills and all my achievements have been a cause of my logical problem solving skills. They create unnecessary social drama and keep us stuck in our rumination, so we remain longer in distress whereas if we ignored them we would reach a solution faster and not be as emotionally affected by our reactions as we usually are. I have a bit of a mood disorder too so my emotions are usually explosive. I am like a real life Vulcan when I suppress them and focus mainly on logical solutions.

But I’m starting to think that maybe it is better to get stuck in the fantasy of a show. It’s strange, in any social situation, usually offline, I will just want to talk about anything related to MARVEL comics and my most recent successful conversation (yeah, I count them) was when I rather drunkenly gave a very long and spoilerish run down of the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and how they linked up with S.H.I.E.L.D episodes from episode 14 and up, to someone who probably had no idea what I was talking about. And when I get really into show or story, especially if it’s related to science fiction, the line between the real world and fantasy becomes a bit blurred. I just don’t understand why I can’t go into that mindset when I talk to other fans.

So, now I’m trying to feel deeper emotions from the characters in S.H.I.E.L.D so I can get a better understanding of how other fans of the show empathise with them and maybe I could have longer and more in depth discussions with them without thinking ‘this person realises that’s just a TV show right? Whatever happened in it was how the writers wanted it to happen.’ No, I must silence those thoughts. There are times for logical thought and times to be more emotional. It’s not really that fun being a robot. I’ve met others who take things more literally than me. They have told me that they literally have no visual imagination and I can make movies up in my head and I would hate to live without that. Likewise, the more empathetic among us would hate to live without feeling such deep emotions for their fellow man, or woman.

I’m planning to go to Free Comic Book Day and experience the comic book fandom that I’ve been missing out on because I hardly know anyone well enough to go to these events. And yes crowds are a problem but we must fight through uncomfortable or even scary situations so we don’t miss out on opportunities to make new friends or have new and enjoyable experiences.

I’m really excited about this next episode of S.H.I.E.L.D by the way. I think Skye is going to be taken to Hydra and we get a see Maria Hill again. And I’m just so excited I can’t even speculate properly.