I arrived in Michigan excited, curious, and half-asleep. I was an explorer in a strange, foreign land, which the natives called Detroit Metropolitan Airport. I knew where I was headed, I had committed to the University of Michigan for months, yet, this was my first time in the state. It created a peculiar state of unknowing that I had never felt before. It was a feeling that I did not take much time to reflect on. I was too busy corralling two wayward suitcases. And so the grandest adventure of my life thus far began, not with a bang, but with a half-stifled yawn as I walked past a closed McDonald’s.

Over the next few weeks, I began to learn more about my new home. One of the most quintessential experiences of the out-of-state student, is the “weather talk”. I had never experienced more than two feet of snow, much less a true blizzard. Every time, I asked, I saw the same reaction. A slight widening of the eyes, a hesitation that was just a little bit too long, and finally, a nervous, forced giggle. “Of course, you’ll be fine”, reassuringly said, but not with any hint of true belief. I supposed that it was only the natural course of events, the circle of life. I would freeze in the winter storm and be reborn in the fickle sunshine of the spring. I swore to myself that I would become a true Michigander (Michiganian? Michiganite?). Soon, I, too, would be able to nod my head cynically and wisely assure a wide-eyed, unworldly freshman, that they were going to survive with most of their fingers and toes intact. I was ready to be the student on the cover of every college brochure; strolling down the sidewalk, smiling, confident in their destination.

Unfortunately, life is constantly taking turns, not unlike a squirrel distracted by a nut. I woke up one day and it was midterms already. Fall was in full blossom. Colors had crept up the leaves like a slow disease. It was all a bad dream, moving in quick flashes. One moment, I was studying at midnight. The next, I was staring down at the test writing down my U-M ID number. I didn’t even know when I had memorized it. And then, it was over and graded and done, and I was left wondering if I had experienced college at all. If college was supposed to be place of monumental change, then it must have passed me by.

Yet, as I walked back to my room, I realized I had. I experienced the freedom of waking up without parents. I got the opportunity to study where I wanted, when I wanted. I ate more chocolate chip cookies than I can count, jaywalked, and fed a squirrel. As a freshman, I wanted dramatic change. I wanted to be the winter storm, blasting through the door, entirely new. I got the small stuff instead, as imperceptible as the reddening of the autumn leaves, until it is all around you, swirling in the wind.

We begin in, “Onett, a small town in Eagleland.” At the outskirts of town, there is a home, inside there is a boy sleeping and then the world shakes, and our hero, Ness, wakes up in the middle of the night. Outside, there are cops standing around doing nothing except prevent you from getting to the meteorite that landed on a cliff to the north of town. Since the adults prevent you from checking it out, you, naturally, go back home and go to sleep. Then, later that night, furious knocking wakes you up. It is your neighbor, Pokey – his younger brother has gone missing. The two of you, and your dog tags along as well, you and Pokey go exploring. The cops are gone; instead, wild brown dogs, green snakes, and cool crows with sunglasses replace them. They attack you, and all you can do is defend yourself with a cracked bat. Eventually, you get to the unguarded meteorite and it is here you finally meet an alien – its name is Buzz Buzz and it is a bee.

He tells you a prophecy…that you are the chosen one…blah blah…but wait, he’s a bee? So is he an alien or what? Well Buzz Buzz joins your group, and as you head back, a Starman beams down from the sky and engages you in battle. This isn’t a crow, a snake, a dog, this is a metallic looking alien with his tentacle-like arms resting on his hips, exuding confidence as if he is just going to tear your child body apart by just standing there, or even worse, send you through some galactic head-trip by shooting astral objects as you, forcing you through some Kubrikian stargate, leaving you as some star child floating through space saying, “WTF?”. But you have Buzz Buzz remember? Buzz Buzz protects your entire party with a shield and you win, easily. You’re untouchable; this game is going to be a breeze. So you go home, again, for the third time in one night, and what does your mom do? She freaks out about the bee and smacks it and kills Buzz Buzz.

I realize I haven’t even told you what I’m talking about yet. What I’ve essentially just summarized is the beginning of the game called Earthbound. It was a game that was released, coincidentally, the year I was born, 1994. However, I never played it when I was a child, I only played it just recently, in college, when I should have been doing other more productive things. Being a cult classic, this game already has numerous articles and videos dedicated to analyzing its perplexing oddities and absorbing story all over the Internet. People talk about the boss at the very end, they talk about the colors, the story, the odd enemies like a crazy looking duck or a floating Dali clock, they talk about how vagina symbolism, fetus symbolism, and on and on and on. So what can I say about a game that I never grew up with?

I can tell you that this experience was by no means unproductive. I firmly believe, that I am the most productive when I don’t feel like I’m working. Essentially, when others believe I’m wasting time, doing nothing, I’m actually doing far more than I’d be if I were working on some essay that I had zero interest in. This game was a piece of art and I’d love to analyze if it weren’t for the fact that it hadn’t been analyzed to oblivion by now. So harking back on the comment about others judging me about playing games during college, in a similar light, I’m not exactly in a position to be analyzing Earthbound with any real integrity. In reality, those who grew up with it, who played it when they were young, and revisited the timeless game when they were older, those are the people that can truly understand what the game is about. To some, or to many, it’s a game about growing up, about seeing a world that is the meeting point between childhood and adulthood, to see a world that isn’t all nice and filled with friendly caricatures, instead, it is occupied by cultists, brutish police officers, apocalyptic alien threats, and abstract embodiments of everything evil in the world. All you have is a bat and some friends – three to be exact.

Am I a gamer? Given that I’ve played games more than once in my life, yes, I’d say I’m a gamer. But am I an expert on the gaming world? Definitely not. But I can recognize that Earthbound is a game that certainly goes against the grain. It is at the peak of its deconstructive powers when it brushes up against storytelling clichés or video game tropes for it revels in dialing up the absurdity meter regularly, taking each step into the unknown, the strange, with a sure idea of where it is going. But that is the thing, isn’t it, the player is the one that is confused, not the game. The world is just the world – it doesn’t know it is weird, only you do. But as you play the game, the strange becomes the normal and you understand the logic that was at first foreign. In other words, the game felt accessible to me because it never thought that it was strange. It never wavered in its identity; it was more stable than me.

This game hasn’t changed my life drastically, unlike some dedicated fans claim (which I must say, had I played it as a child, would be very understandable). But it made me care about it, unlike some Jane Austen novel I had to read or something. I was upset, but at the same time, laughing, when Buzz Buzz met an untimely death. I was horrified when I finally saw what the Giygas looked like. I gave a shit about a world that doesn’t seem weird at all anymore. This is more than just growing up as a child. Even today, I don’t care about everything. How can I? The world is expansive and I don’t understand 99% of it. But when you get naturally immersed in something new and you start to understand, it is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

Being drunk around one’s family is always a sensitive subject to approach. For most people. their family has not seen them drunk until well after their first time drinking. This is true for me as well, but there is the extra layer of uncomfortableness regarding my drunken self with the rest of my family.  I am gay, and the drunker I get, the gayer I become. Most of my family knows that I’m gay, but how comfortable are they with my expression of my gayness?

I have freely gotten drunk with my family, but there has always been a barrier to protect me. The drunkest I have ever gotten has been at my cousin’s graduation party, but that gave me liberal cousins as a barrier to the rest of my family. I could act as effeminate or “gay” around them and it wouldn’t lead to drama with the rest of family. It was freeing to be able to have this much fun with the rest of may extended family around me. But that is not always the case…

This is something that every queer person has to come to terms with in their life. How queer can I be around my family? They want to be their true selves, everybody wants to be their true selves, but rejection is not something that everyone wants to face. It becomes a very difficult terrain to navigate as one must find their own path to openness with their family. How much is too much for our family to handle?Being completely open is incredibly freeing, but runs the risk of disownment. Where can an individual draw the line?

Even with a completely supportive immediate family, it is hard for me to draw the line. Today was a celebration and I did  not want to get too drunk be cause I did not know if my immediate family could handle how I actually present as a gay man. I had to limit myself in order to not be ostracized at this family event. In the company of extended family it becomes even worse. My extended family disagrees with me on so many political areas, that I’m honestly not sure if they would ever accept me as truly gay. It’s damaging to think that your family would never accept you.

It is hard to navigate openness with the people around you, and it becomes even more difficult when alcohol is involved. I want to drink to forget how my family might not accept me, but the more I drink, the more I reveal myself to my family. This is a part of the gay experience that is so difficult, but cannot be understand by our straight allies. I love my family, but I do not want to love them if they disapprove of me. How do I navigate this and how do I navigate being my true self around them?