maybe he just don't like you no more
Hello again dear readers,
Sorry for the delay—I caught the flu. In fact, I still have the flu and have not had solid food in days. That means I’m also stuck in New York and away from family for the holiday, which feels par for the course for a miserable fucking year.
Despite my personal misfortune, I have one more piece of writing to share: I wrote about the differences between Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld for Game Developer.
There are some things Rimworld excels at in comparison to Dwarf Fortress, and they’re all things that smooth the edges off the former. Rimworld has a much easier to understand UI, and you spend a lot less time hunting and searching for the features you want to use. It’s streamlined, with fewer options allowing players to really dive into the mechanics that are there. It’s a game that, through its simpler features, gives you greater control over outcomes. Combat, in particular, is much more comprehensive than in Dwarf Fortress, allowing you to individually select each colonist and place them in specific locations. In Dwarf Fortress, you can tell dwarves to attack things, but after that, all bets are off. Rimworld isn’t interested in giving you a simulation of an entire world and history; it wants to give you a very good video game, and it concentrates on that.
If you’re a podcast listening type, I have also been on a few podcasts. I was on Three Moves Ahead to talk Dwarf Fortress, which was a blast. I was also on Fangs for the Memories, a Buffy rewatch podcast, discussing maybe my least episodes from the least favorite season (You know the one. The one with Parker). I love podcasting, which is basically like saying “I love talking” but it’s true. I do love talking.
I’m looking back on things, it being the end of the year and all. Although there were some very high highs for me, like getting engaged, the lows were equally low. I do not recommend getting laid off in an airport if you can avoid it. As much as I try to move onward and continue to persevere, there’s some unresolved pain that lingers for me. My partner lost his grandmother this year; we’ve both been under-employed; the economy is tanking and it feels like it’s taking our future with it.
In a year where I could have really used good friends, I have lost them for reasons I still do not entirely understand. Most of these people I’ve known for over a decade. One of them was someone that is still on my notes app list of wedding invites to send. I haven’t had the heart to take them off. In my rational mind I know that all things end, and that logically these friendships have run their course. But there’s nothing quite as punishing as waking up one day and realizing that someone that just yesterday you were talking to cordially has abruptly cut you off.
I saw Martin McDonagh’s latest feature, The Banshees of Inisherin, before these friendships collapsed on themselves. At the time, I was able to watch it with a kind of critical distance. Now, it all feels up close, in my face, as if the film is gripping me by the lapels and screaming in my face. The smallest, weakest part of me still wants to know what I’ve done—but I haven’t done anything. These people just don’t like me anymore.
McDonagh is pretty undeniably a genius writer, having been an accomplished playwright before his first feature In Bruges. I like all his work but I don’t always think it’s successful. Although it’s been years since I’ve seen Seven Psychopaths it felt half baked to me at the time, and the less we say about Three Billboards the better. Banshees doesn’t quite reach the same heights as In Bruges to me, but the way the two lead characters, Padraic and Colm, circle the drain has stuck with me since I first saw it.
Colm doesn’t want to be Padraic’s friend anymore. Padraic is kind, hasn’t done anything wrong, and at worst is just a little bit simple, but nonetheless Colm finds their friendship unfulfilling. On an island off the coast of Ireland, where there’s nothing much to do, Colm needs fulfillment. But Padraic needs, just like anyone else, company. Losing his closest friend through no fault of his own sends his simple mind into an existential funk.
There are many more elements to Banshees but the unsolvable nature of this problem is what I find most interesting. It’s hard to say that either character is right or wrong for how they feel. I’ve often felt like Colm, full of a deep melancholy that demands that something in my life change, and change drastically. I do also understand Padraic. I am lonely, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get over the fracture of bonds that were once so important to me. What are either of them supposed to do? Even if they didn’t descend into a feud, could they have overcome this, or at least co-existed peacefully?
The fictional island of Inisherin is beautiful in the film and when I saw it in theaters I spent most of my time longing to be on that island and to feel the salt on my face. Characters often have deeply tragic conversations, and meet their tragic ends, in some of the most scenic vistas I have ever seen. The deep greenness of the meadows contrasted with the grey blue sea is so vibrants that it feels like another world entirely. I joked afterward to my fiance that despite the subject matter, I thought the movie sold me on visiting Ireland.
Colm’s deep misery in a place so beautiful seems to confound and frustrate him throughout Banshees. He talks about having a despair inside him that he cannot shake. His music is the only thing that makes him happy, but eventually the misery overtakes him there too. Because Padraic won’t leave him alone, Colm ends up cutting off his fingers and leaving him at Padraic’s door to make him stop talking to him. By the end of the movie, his left hand is full of bloody stumps.
But the misery never leaves Colm—and neither does Padraic. By the end of the film they are locked together in hatred rather than friendship. And Colm is still just the same, sad old man on a dead end island, only without his music, and without a friend. Not alone, but lonely still, lonely as he ever was, destined to die on a rock he hates.
I guess what lingers for me now is just, I can’t understand the point of that. There’s a slipperiness to Brendan Gleason’s performance as Colm; there’s another, unspoken feeling under his skin whenever he rises to anger. The gloom that he carries within him only ever bubbles to the surface occasionally. Padraic ends the film a much more complex character than he first seemed, having found a reserve of his own anger to feed on, but Colm's journey feels less clear to me. He’s a man who doesn’t seem to understand himself, but knows that he is unhappy. He’d rather just destroy himself from within.
But I suppose I wouldn’t understand Colm. Despite everything, I still want that friend at my wedding. I still want to know what I did wrong. Probably it won’t fix things, probably it would only make me hurt more. But to wake up one day knowing with so much surety that you are disliked by someone you still hold dear is not something I would wish on anyone. Eventually, you’d rather hate them.
Hopefully by next Tuesday I’ll be eating solid food again and this can become a more regular newsletter. For now, I will go back to sleep. Thanks for reading.
Best,
Gita