not really fandom, but a little thing about myst
I remember when I was little, just for a short while, I had a babysitter ("kidsitter") named Brandy who was one of Mom's college students. And even though other kids my age would probably have thought she was boring, I loved her because she was such a fangirl and so very unashamed of it, and I was a fangirl-in-training (although I didn't know it at the time). I remember she liked her chocolate milk with more chocolate than milk, because that was the part of dinner I always got to make. I remember she always let me have dessert, sometimes before dinner, and always with one extra brownie or whatnot sneaked in and a whispered tease of "don't tell your Mom, she'll fail me." I remember the first time she came over she went into my parents' bedroom, stared for an awed second at all the loaded bookshelves, and then she asked me if I minded if she looked at books instead of playing with me and I replied that of course I wouldn't mind, in fact I could show her where everything was. Which I did. And then we spent the next three hours fighting for sprawl space on the couch, me enveloped in C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader and her in Anne McCaffrey's The White Dragon.
The other thing about Brandy -- of whom I have so few memories, but each memory vivid and crystalline-clear -- was that she played Myst. Well, I assume she played Myst. During the brief time she babysat me, Riven was the new game with all the attention, so I really only know of her playing Riven; I can't speak for the rest of the game series except through assumption. But I spent hours and hours (or so it felt like; it may have only been once or twice) leaning on the back of Mom's desk chair while Brandy sat at Mom's computer and played. I had watched Mom play Myst before and even dabbled in it myself, although I had to stop because it creeped me out and made me all paranoid when I played it alone. But watching Brandy play, I developed a new love for that sort of game. I stopped paying attention to Brandy's missteps and failed puzzles and running commentary (she actually ran out of the room and called all her gamer friends when she figured out how to open the golden dome), and lost myself in the game. I was too young to play it myself; I wasn't even aware that it had a storyline, much less that it involved difficult logic puzzles. I was just so awed by the beauty of it. It was like wandering around with Brandy in one of the worlds I'd always wandered alone in my head. I fell in love.
I've always been creeped out by Myst, although I did finish it. I never finished Riven, though. I think I probably could, given several months and a lot of aspirin, but I've never really tried my hardest on it. Maybe I don't want it to end.
I bought Myst IV totally on impulse -- because I was bored, because I had money to burn, because it was sitting right there in front of me, tangible and real, not just a few pixels and a ghost price on Amazon. But having been playing it for two, almost three days now (and just beginning to realize how freaking long it's going to take to finish), I've found myself caught up in all this misplaced nostalgia. I didn't get all wistful over Myst III; so why now, why this? Maybe the design reminds me more of Riven than Exile's did; or maybe it's that I'm about to be the same age Brandy was when she solved the golden dome puzzle and spazzed out so bad that she had to call everyone she knew; or maybe it's the sudden, concrete and alarming knowledge that this is the second-to-last Myst game that will ever be made. I don't know. All these little things just seem to come together... it's so odd how the 2-D view from a cliff's edge over endless water and a rust-colored sky can bring back so many memories.
I wonder if Brandy still games. I wonder if she's got Myst IV and if she's as amazed as I am when the branches quiver and the leaves blow in the wind and all the surfaces you can reach make distinctly real sounds when you tap on them. I wonder if she'd be proud that I got through a whole Age all on my own.
I don't have any friends I can call when I finish a really hard puzzle and that warm flash of excitement and pride drowns out all the headache and carpal tunnel caused by the hours spent solving it. But at least I have memories of someone who did, someone who I know felt the same way I do, if she only felt that way in the past. That makes me feel good. And a little sad.
There's something to be said for that... although I'm not sure I have the words.
Deep in the jungle fighting with quarrelsome monkeys and an impossible lever,
-Rave