Let’s face it—most of my muse’s half-life is spent on anime, movies, and games. And you know…it ain’t such a bad thing.
On Saturday I dropped my mother-in-law and mini-me at the airport and came home. Couldn’t do a thing until I knew they were on the ground in Maryland. Once she called me and I heard mini-me’s voice, poof. One minute I was sitting on the bed making out my To Write list and then out.
ZZZzzzzzz….
Woke up about 4:00 with a cat-butt in my face. Minion was demanding attention—and yes—her food bowl was empty. Made coffee. Fed cat. Sat at computer with DARK RESONANCE Scrivener file on the screen. Was having the WORST trouble differentiating between nodes, augmented reality, Matrix, submerging, Technomancer sprites vs Hacker programs, gremlins…my head was mush. Just holding together the concept of being in AR vs being in The Matrix.
Got on AIM (yes now there’s a solution, right? When all else fails launch the world’s largest time-sink) and a friend was online and I complained. She laughed at me and the conversation went as follows:
>HER: You need to play a game.
>ME: No, what I need to do is write. I have a backup of cosmic proportions.
>HER: Ever played .hack//?
Pause.
>ME: Gesundheit?
>HER: Baka. It’s an anime and game. You say it like Dot Hack. It’s about playing a game like WoW, only it’s called The World. Don’t know if it’ll help—but you do get your influences from the silliest places.
>ME: This is a game?
>HER: And an anime. Go here (URL snipped out) and watch the first series. .hack//SIGNS
>ME: Why?
>HER: Because it’s about a kid who can’t log off from The World. It’s a virtual computer game and every time he logs off—he reappears on the root server. And eventually what you find out is that he <—-bleeped out for those who haven’t watched it—->.
>ME: !!!
She had me there. So yes—I spent the next three hours watching anime. At 7:00 I drove to GameStop (put a copy of Pokémon Platinum on reserve for the next day) and bought .hack//Infection. The guy there—you know it’s sad when they know you by name at GameStop—told me I was behind the curve on this one—”Oh but you gotta watch the anime too…”
“Watched .hack//SIGNS already.”
“Oh then you’re good. You should play all of the first 4 games and then get to Haseo in the series for .hack//G.U., but you wanna watch .hack//ROOTS first before you play those games.” 
I played that game for 3 hrs (what a cool concept!), logged off (both from the game and The World—SWEET!!) and wrote 8,000 words. Collapsed. Woke back up in the morning. Watched more anime. Played more game. Drank coffee. Wrote another 3,000 words and then met a friend Sunday afternoon for some Dr. Who catchup time (and I hadn’t seen Joe in a while).
Went home. Snacked for dinner and wrote another 3,000 words before allowing myself more game and more anime.
Oh by the Great Electron: I am such a geek!
