Yesterday’s musing left me unfulfilled. I opened the final paragraph by saying, “I had high hopes of describing what it was about More-pugs that I enjoyed, but it’s obvious I won’t get there tonight. I’ve written too much and said too little.” I was sitting on my couch when I wrote that and I felt my energy level dropping. I knew that if I didn’t finish writing and start editing, the musing would languish, but I also knew that by leaving the second part for another day, I was assured that it would never be completed. (See, e.g., Snippets of a New Yorker Dragged Against His Will to Houston (Part I) or any of my unfinished, and probably never-will-be-finished, stories.) How could I predict that the very next day I would write a follow up? In retrospect, I should have placed a “To be continued…” paragraph at the end. That way I would have at least one musing where the TBC statement was not a lie. The only explanation I can come up with for my sudden prolific writing is the sweet Seattle air. I doubt you’ll see this much writing once the sun drops behind what I’ve heard described as an endless winter cloudbank (that is, I heard described in my head as I was writing this).

And with further ado, here are more discussions about More-pugs—you remember: the cute little video games that Doolies and I spend too much time playing when we should be doing productive activities, like reading and becoming better people.

I don’t have a good memory. I remember nothing before twelve years old or so, and everything from then through, let’s say, yesterday is rather fuzzy. What I do remember are my desires, and one of my earliest desires was to manipulate the world. I wanted to be magical. Part of the explanation lies in fantasy novels. I read my first fantasy novel at an impressionable age, and I went on to devour all the genre had to offer. (The first fantasy books I read was C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. After finishing the first book, I made my parents—think screams and tantrums and threats and all the sweet manipulations children have at their disposal—buy me the six other books in the series. I didn’t read past the first couple, but as I aged, I found other, more palatable fantasy series to fall in love with (and actually finish), such as David Eddings’s The Belgariad, a series that I read and reread until the covers and pages of the books started to tear away.)

What I loved most about fantasy books was the description of magic and the disadvantaged young boys (most of the early fantasy authors were men and had male protagonists, which left me with a skewed view of female authors and their abilities—but that’s another story), who grew up to wield powerful magic and manipulate the world around them. I wanted to have their powers and live in their worlds. I still return to fantasy books now and again, but to further NEQID, I’ve been reading many “classics” and “works of literature,” both of which, with the recent exception of Tolkien, hardly describe the fantasy genre.

I played a number of video games growing up, including arcade games and computer/console games. While I enjoyed them, I never became addicted to any of them. They were more like a puzzle to solve than an experience that I couldn’t get enough of. Even back then, the most fun I had was playing games that involved another person. The second player usually played against me, but it was a social environment. The Gauntlet arcade games come to mind, particularly with their four-player action and fantasy upbringing.

Of course there was much more I wanted to say, but that will have to wait for yet another day. The thoughts were there, but they were not completed and could not be completed. A large wall formed in front of me, and nothing I did would get past it. This is the most you’ll get from on this topic today. Sorry.