Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 10

the shady bunch

Here’s the story of a dork named Donnie
And every single thing he touches dies
Like the steaks the Taj Mahal and the election
He lost in court sixty times.

Here’s the story of a crazy lady
Who told a lot of crazy crazy lies
And she got together with some looney lawyers
To steal some votes they tried.

Then the loser set his mob upon the Congress
And Giulani’s hair dye ran right down his face
And the crazy lady said the vote was stolen
By Jewish lasers shot from satellites in space.

And when they all got caught for doing some light treason
Chesebro flipped and Kraken lady, too
And Donnie you’re in real big fuckin’ trouble
Because Fanni Willis is coming for you

And the Treason Bunch
The Treason Bunch
A criminal conspiracy called
Treason bunch

the post about assassin’s creed and baldur’s gate

At the beginning of summer, as I was nearing the end of The Witcher: The Wild Hunt, I asked the Internet for a game recommendation that would tick some very specific boxes for me, including open world, entertaining combat, some crafting, all that stuff I loved about The Witcher.

My friend Will texted me and said “The answer to your question is Assassin’s Creed: Origins. I know you’re going to look at every recommendation you get, because you’re a nerd like that, but that’s the game you want to play.”

We call sharing good, insightful ideas like this with each other, “Wil(l) thinking.” Of course, he knows me that well and of course he was right. It only took an hour of Assassin’s Creed: Origins for me to know I was going to be spending quite a bit of time in ancient Egypt for the near future.

So in late July, I while I was playing it, I wrote this on my Facebook, and for some reason I didn’t post it here. I think it’s pretty entertaining, so allow me to correct that right now:

I was playing Assassin’s Creed: Origins last night (61 hours in, level 31. Not sure how far I am into the story) and I tamed this hippo, because I thought it would be amusing to have a giant hippo waddling around with me.

I have this cool chain assassination skill, so I like to wait for Romans to ride by in a line, grab the one at the end and follow up with the one in the middle before any of them realize what’s going on. More often than not, the one in the front keeps on going and doesn’t notice his two buddies aren’t with him.

(SIDEBAR: Unless you want to kill an entire village, don’t poison the corpses. I’m real sorry about that, formerly-populated tiny village against the mountains.)

But last night, the guy in the front turned around and threw a spear at me … which REALLY PISSED OFF Harriet the Hippo, who charged the guy, knocked him off his horse, and proceeded to murder the fuck out of him.

So I’m like, “Harriet, you are such a good friend! Thanks for helping me fill the streets with the blood of my enemies. I’m going to set you free to celebrate!”

And that’s when I discovered that Henrietta the Hippo has two states: tamed and aggro. I was like, “Here you go,” and she was like “THANK YOU NOW I WILL MURDER YOUR FACE TO DEATH!”

I want to tell you that I ran away and climbed up a tree or something, until she calmed down and went on her way. But we all know that wouldn’t be true, and Bayek needed some hard leather to upgrade his armor, anyway.

So I thanked Henrietta the Hippo for her service and her sacrifice, looted the corpses, and went about my business.

Every villain is the hero of their own story.

So I finished the story about 10 hours ago, and since then, I’ve been running around the map, as a massively overpowered Bayek with a flaming sword and everything, Leeroy Jenkinsing my way across the world. I’m hunting the Phylakes, and have two left.

Hey, speaking of those guys, here’s a fun thing that happened. I was trying to draw a Phylake away from a populated area, so I could focus on him and not risk his allies showing up to distract me. I mean, I’m just trying to cut his head off with my flaming sword and honestly who can blame me he and his friends have been hassling me for literal months. GOSH.

I pull him into a field, and hit him in the face with an arrow that does not do nearly as much damage as an arrow to the face would do. But considering I climbed all the way up a mountain and then fought a bunch of Romans without pausing to catch my breath, maybe I can just agree to suspend my disbelief for a minute.

He comes at me in his fancy chariot, and I’m like “Yeah, buddy! Get ready to be set on fire!” and I roll out of the way, slash at him, and set him on fire. It was so great, until the grass I was in also caught on fire, which then caught me on fire.

Thinking quickly, I ran out of the grass, did the STOP DROP AND ROLL I’ve been preparing for my whole life, and jumped up onto the top of a … something with a grass roof.

This Phylake dude is super mad that I set him on fire (fair) so he starts throwing fucking JAVELINS at me (also fair). I switch to my secondary bow, a predator bow that is both on fire and able to be controlled by me in a first person view that is so much more fun than I thought it would be, I wish I’d bought it earlier.

I target the Phylake, and lock on. As I track him, the fire on my bow catches the roof on fire. Which catches me on fire. Which kills me.

I’m not saying I didn’t deserve all of it, because I was clearly the aggressor, but I will say that when I respawned, I put the fire weapons away and fought this dude with a spear, a pair of fuck you up swords, and poison arrows.

When I defeated him and looted his corpse, I got a Legendary flaming sword, because the universe has a sense of humor.

Okay, so I’m pretty much wrapping that up and looking for something new, which turns out to be Baldur’s Gate 3.

I haven’t played one of these CRPGs since the late 1900s, and I didn’t like it at first. It felt so different from the games I’ve been playing for the last twenty years, it took about 30 hours, spread out over a week or so, for me to understand how Baldur’s Gate 3 wants to be played, what kind of game it is. From the camera controls, to the turn based combat, to the very real consequences for every single thing I do, it’s just nothing at all like the Assassin’s Creed and Witcher RPGs I’ve played this year.

It took me all this time to stop trying to make it Baldur’s Gate: The Witcher’s Assassin Redemption, and actually play Baldur’s Gate 3. I did a TON of savescumming while I failed over and over to inderstand that this game will not to reward my choice to be a Murder Hobo at level 2. Instead, it rewards commitment to character and class choices, role playing, and careful battle strategy. It’s just as fun as being an OP Murder Hobo, but it’s much more satisfying. When I get through a difficult encounter or challenging series of role playing choices, I feel the same kind of accomplishment and joy I’ve gotten both of the times I rolled Critical Successes in my life.

Put simply, it’s the most faithful recreation of playing D&D I’ve ever experienced with a CRPG. It reminds me of everything I loved about the OG Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout: 2, but it’s refined by time and has clearly learned from all the great Bioware games. I just love it.

I love it so much that last night, I realized I need to start setting an alarm for my bedtime, because if I don’t do that, I’ll sit down when Anne goes to sleep to “just play for a little bit”, and the next thing I know it’s 2am. That’s also something I haven’t experienced since the late 1900s, and WOW does it turn out I’m a lot older now than I was then, and my body has comments when I stay up too late.

you are loved

A little over a month ago, I was having a rough day with my brain goblins, so I wrote myself this note to remind myself that Depression Lies.

I stuck it to my monitor, next to another one that reminded me to relax my shoulders and breathe.

At some point, it fell off and I forgot about it. Just now, I got under my desk to move some cables and sweep up the dust and animal fur and various Eldritch Horrors that manage to find their way down there and fill all the available space, like the traffic in Sim City. While I was scooping out just way more fur than I imagined existed in my entire house, and at least half a bowl of granola, and a few dollars in tarnished change, I saw my little sticky note. It must have been knocked off and fallen behind the desk when I wasn’t paying attention.

I glanced at it, scooped it up, and automatically put it in the trash, on top of just so much fur and dead leaves and way more rubber bands and twisty ties than would be considered “a reasonable amount”. I turned to go back to cleaning up the rest of the bullshit, when I stopped for a moment, turned back, pulled my little note out, and read it aloud.

“I am loved,” I said, sitting on the floor underneath my desk, the fan of my server quietly blowing warm air across my feet. “Thank you, past me, for the reminder. I don’t need it today, but maybe someone else does, and I’m going to post this for them.”

You are loved. You are enough. I see you.

I was nine years-old when I had my first crush

Author’s note: these memories are extremely old. I’ve done my best to convey the emotional truth of this story, but I’m sure some of these details are not perfectly accurate. Names and other details have been changed.

In the summer of 1981, my friend Jenny, who lived next door, had a friend from Northern California visit for a couple of weeks.

Her name was Candice, and she went by Candi. She was my first — and biggest — childhood crush. That summer, the Stars On 45 medley was blowing up, and whenever it came on my transistor radio, I’d sing “sugar, ah, honey honey, you are my candy girl” from the deepest well of my little first crush having heart. Listen, do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Maybe she would be my candy girl, whatever that meant (holding hands, I was pretty sure). I could sing it right in front of her and she didn’t even know! Delightfully devilish, young Wil.

We were playing in the sprinklers in Jenny’s front yard, when her mom called them in for lunch before they went to the zoo. (The kids next door got to eat all the stuff I wanted: Frosted Flakes, Kool-Aid, Ding Dongs, Otter Pops, everything that was marketed to kids that I wasn’t allowed to have because something something sugar. Here’s some carob. It’s exactly like chocolate, except it’s waxy and flavorless and all kids hate it. Enjoy!) I went home to get something for myself and figure out the rest of my afternoon, until they got back.

So with blades of grass stuck to my feet and legs, my hair smashed down by sweat and water, and this fluttering in my stomach that was new to me, I ran out of the summer heat and into my house. The swamp cooler was doing its best to cool the house down, which left a lot to be desired, if I’m being honest. The kitchen was to my right. The living room was in front of me, and the hallway to our bedrooms and the bathroom was on my left. My dad was in the kitchen sitting at the table with his back to me. He was on the phone with the long cord, and didn’t notice me come in.

It only took a few seconds for me to figure out that he was talking to my uncle, who I thought was the coolest dude on the planet. I inhaled, preparing to ask my dad if I could say hi to him, when I heard that Dad was talking about me.

He was telling my uncle that I had my first crush. And he was making fun of me about it. Behind my back. He was laughing about how I didn’t think anyone knew. He said something about how I was picking my clothes out for the first time, choosing them carefully, brushing my hair, and singing this song over and over. To a normal parent, it would probably be adorable and sweet, but to my dad was a point of shameful weakness to be mocked. He was having a big laugh at my expense, and he was laughing with my favorite uncle.

I was humiliated, embarrassed, and deeply hurt. I felt betrayed. I was instantly aware of my bare chest, wet swimming trunks, skinny legs and arms. I was overwhelmed by shame. I was stupid. I’d been embarrassing myself all summer long in front of everyone, and like the idiot my dad knew I was, I didn’t think anyone knew.

I cried out, “It’s not true! That’s not true! I don’t! I don’t!”

My dad jerked his head around and looked across the kitchen at me. It’s been 43 years, but I can still see his face in my memory. He went from surprised, to annoyed, to laughing even harder.

“Okay, cut!” He said, like I was doing a scene, not expressing genuine feelings. This was one of his favorite ways to mock and belittle me when I was upset, and it had the desired effect every time.

I burst into tears.

“Cut! Cut! Print!” He put the phone between his shoulder and his ear and clapped his hands.

I cried harder. “Stop it! Don’t do that!”

“Oh, you are so sensitive! Don’t be so dramatic,” he said, sarcastically. Then, into the phone, “…nothing. It’s nothing.” He walked out of the kitchen and into the dining room, the long cord slowly stretching out behind him, a single knot tightening where it sagged.

After a moment, I ran to my bedroom, threw myself into my Star Wars bedspread, and cried like I’d been beaten up by a schoolyard bully. Which … well.

My dad never came in to talk to me, to check on me, to … you know, be a dad who loved his son. (I brought this up when I was in my twenties, hoping for some resolution to a deeply painful moment in my life. WHe dismissed me then as being too dramatic, so … at least he’s consistent?) So I stayed in my room with my door closed, and cried until I fell asleep.

Eventually, my mom came home with my infant sister. I had the puffy eyes, heavy chest, and weird mouth feeling of sleeping too hard in the middle of the day. But woke up when I heard the car pull into the driveway, and the screen open and close. I heard the keys drop into the bowl, followed almost immediately by the familiar, inscrutable thrumming of voices through the walls as my parents argued, just seconds after mom came into the house. They did this almost every day, and I hated it. It was upsetting. It felt unsafe. It felt chaotic. I never had friends over, because I didn’t want them to see my parents the way I did. The anger between them filled the air in our house with this faint, ever-present haze of resentment and power struggle. It was emotional smog. Some days, it was so thick I couldn’t breathe, other days it was barely visible. But it was always there, poisoning everything.

Their voices got louder and more intense. One of them slammed a cabinet and my sister began to cry. I heard my dad’s familiar, mocking laugh and knew that my mom had slammed the door. I heard heavy footsteps and my sister’s crying get louder and closer as my mom carried her past my door and into my parent’s bedroom at the end of the hall. She slammed that door so hard it shook the bookcase in my room. It was really scary. Lots of my friends had divorced parents, and when I saw parents on television behave like mine did, they usually got a divorce. Even though I secretly wished my parents would get divorced, that was scary, too. I thought about picking a parent to live with, like my friends did. Most of them lived with their moms, which is what I would have done. She forced me to work and wouldn’t let me be a kid, but at least she wasn’t a bully to me like dad was. She was … I don’t know. She was a lot, but she wasn’t mean.

It’s totally normal for a 9 year-old kid to hope his parents will get divorced, so he doesn’t have to live in their angry chaos. It’s equally normal for parents to think that their screaming, door slamming, wall kicking, and tantrum-throwing is super okay and won’t have a negative effect on their children.

I pulled the covers around my head as tightly as I could, to muffle the sounds of crying that I wasn’t entirely sure was coming from my baby sister. Totally normal, not traumatic at all.

I didn’t come out of my bedroom until it was time for dinner around 5. We all sat at the kitchen table, my sister in her high chair, my brother across the table from me, my parents on either side of me. We had goulash, which was basically canned corn, ground beef, I think some noodles, and a whole lot of tomato-based sauce. I usually liked it, it was kind of like a sloppy Joe, but the last thing I wanted to do was eat. So I sat there and pushed it around with my fork while my parents silently seethed at each other. My brother and sister obliviously devoured their respective dinners.

My brother finished his dinner, put his dish in the sink, and went to watch TV. Dad finished, left his plate on the table, and joined my brother. Mom began to clear his dish and looked at me. “What’s wrong with your goulash?”

I sensed an impending interrogation and did my best to avoid it. “Nothing. I’m … just not very hungry.”

We looked at each other, both of us having been run over by the miserable fucking bulldozer that was my father. Please don’t make me talk about it, I thought.

“Okay, well, put it in the refrigerator and we’ll warm it up for you later.”

I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

“Okay. Can I go outside?”

“Just come in when the streetlights come on.”

I got on my bike and rode it up the street. I felt angry. I felt hurt. I felt confused. I felt scared. But at least I wasn’t inside with them. With him.

I stood up and pushed the pedals as fast and as hard as I could. I wondered what it would be like if I just kept going and didn’t come back. I wondered about that a lot, when I was a kid. I got to the top of the street, jumped up the curb, rode down the sidewalk for a couple houses, jumped off the curb, and raced back down the street as fast as I could. Over and over, as hard as I could go, skidding to a stop as close to the end of the sidewalk as I could, leaving as much rubber behind as possible. Up the street, around the cul-de-sac, power skid, then back down the street, another power skid. I was good at riding my bike. Maybe if I got good enough at riding my bike, my dad would notice.

Jenny’s mom pulled her Ford Pinto Wagon into their driveway as I sped past them on my way down the street. My heart skipped a beat and I gripped the handlebars as professionally as I could, stood up as tall as possible, and pushed even harder on the pedals. I tensed my entire body until my bike and I were one, joined at a spiritual level to become a marble stallion that commanded the attention of all who were blessed by its presence.

I aimed toward the edge of the nearest driveway, so I could take a little jump off the curb. A small flourish to let the audience know I appreciated them. Push, push, push. Pump those legs, Wil. Maximum speed! Get ready to lift those handlebars and soar.

Now, a lot of you expect me to wipe out here. I get that. It’s a perfect time for a sad trombone.

But I didn’t. I nailed it. I pulled off the sweetest jump, got to the end of the street, triumphantly slammed on my back and font brakes, a laid down an epic skid that I’m pretty sure is still there to this day. The kids who live there now whisper stories about it, so I’ll print the legend.

I turned my bike around as slowly and cinematically as I could, ready to receive my audience.

Only they were still in the car, the doors just beginning to open. They’d missed it all. There’s your sad trombone.

Just like that, all my energy was gone. My arms and legs felt heavy and slow. I sat back onto my bike and pedaled toward my house.

Jenny and Candi were waiting for me at the end of her driveway. They were both smiling and blushing. Whoa! Maybe they did see me!

My brakes made an embarrassing squeak when I stopped next to them. I tried to lean my bike to one side, very carefully leaving one foot casually resting on one pedal, like I’d seen on TV. What I managed to do was slide off the seat, spin the pedals around in a backwards loop, smash myself in the shin with one of them, and drop my bike underneath me.

“Are you okay?” Jenny asked.

“Yeah. I’m just riding my bike,” I said, awkwardly, trying not to wince.

They giggled.

“I’m getting pretty good at doing skids,” I offered.

Jenny suppressed a smile and Candi licked her lips.

“Uh … how was the zoo?” I asked.

“Good,” Jenny said, holding back most of a giggle. Was she making fun of me? Why was she laughing?

She elbowed Candi, who I noticed had her hands behind her back.

“We saw the elephant exhibit,” Candi said. They shared a conspiratorial glance.

“Go!” Jenny whispered, urgently.

“Okay!” Candi whispered back.

She took her hands from behind her back and shoved a gray plastic elephant into my hands.

“They have this machine that lets you make models, so I got you an elephant one.”

It came out like, “TheyhavethismachinethatletsyoumakemodelssoIgotyouanelephantone.”

It was damp and warm in my hands as I looked at it. I turned it over and glanced up at her. She was looking back at me, expectantly.

I didn’t know what to do. I felt a little out of breath all of a sudden.

“…. do you like it?” she asked, cautiously.

That’s what she said. But what I heard was, “do you like me?”

“YES!” I practically hollered.

They both jumped a little bit, then giggled. I felt my face get hot.

“I mean, yes. Thank you. It’s great.”

Jenny’s mom called out from the porch, “girls, come in and wash your hands to get the zoo off of them. Then you can go back out and play.”

“Okay, mom!”

They hesitated. Candi and I looked at each other for, like, way too long. I just saw these huge brown eyes and I really wanted to hug her. I didn’t want to kiss her. That was gross. But a hug would be pretty great. The Archies started to hum a chorus in my head.

But what if my dad saw? What if Jenny’s mom saw and laughed at me? What if Jenny’s mom told my parents? What if Candi didn’t like me that way? What if what if what if (welcome to the rest of your life, Wil).

“Let’s go, girls,” her mom said. “They’ll be right back, Wil.”

“We gotta go,” Jenny said, like we were standing on a train platform in 1943. “But we’ll be right back.”

“Okay.”

I dropped my bike on the ground and ran across my lawn. When I got to the edge of the garage, I hid the elephant under my shirt and looked around the corner. I could see my mom in the kitchen window. It looked like she was washing dishes. I waited for her to turn away, and ran quickly and quietly up the driveway, avoiding her attention as I slipped into the house and sneaked down the hallway to my bedroom.

I closed the door behind me and looked for the perfect place to put Candi’s Elephant. Next to my bed was the most obvious place, but it felt weird (too intimate, is how I’d have described it, if I’d known what that meant).

My bookcase was pretty full, and all the space on top of my dresser was taken up with the rebel base on Hoth. That left my desk, a recent addition to my bedroom set that was handed down from one of my cousins. I had real homework, now, in 4th grade.

So I sat at my desk, and put it right on the edge, under my springy lamp. I clicked it on to create a spotlight. I smiled. Candi got this for me when she was at the zoo. She spent her own money on it.

I heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall toward the bathroom.

“Cut!”

“Cut! Cut! Print!”

“Oh, you are so sensitive! Don’t be so dramatic.”

“…nothing. It’s nothing.”

The laugh. That cruel, contemptuous laugh that I can still hear today, though I haven’t seen him or heard his voice in nearly eight years, and hope I never do for the rest of my life.

I grabbed Candi’s elephant and shoved it into the top drawer. I buried it under some papers, to be sure nobody else would find it.

I listened for him to walk back to the other side of the house, then crept down the hallway until I could see my mom in the kitchen. I made sure she couldn’t see me and sneaked back out of the house, and around the corner of the garage. I ran across the lawn (I wanted to skip so much, but even I knew that wasn’t cool) and met them on Jenny’s porch. We played Pay Day until the street lights came on.

I never hugged Candi, or held her hand, or even told her that I liked her. She was only visiting for another week, and whenever I felt the impulse to express my innocent affection for her, the specter of my dad got up in my face and ensured I kept it all to myself.

I think she knew. How could she not? And I think she liked me, too. I have the elephant to prove it.

About Seven Years Later.

I was almost sixteen, right before I had my driver’s license. We’d moved from Sunland to La Crescenta, and I was working on Star Trek. My mom and I were in my bedroom, going through my clothes. I had to do a photo shoot for Tiger Beat or Teen Face or Nonthreatening Boys Magazine or whatever, and she insisted on choosing all of my clothes for me. “So your fans can see your best self,” she said, reaffirming for me that my best self was not good enough until she signed off on it.

I wanted to wear an Oingo Boingo T-shirt, and in her manipulative way, she pulled every button-down shirt I owned to try on “just to be sure”. She exhausted me, and I wore whatever she wanted me to wear. I did get to wear that Boingo shit a few years later, though; a small, pyrrhic victory.

On her way out of my bedroom, she looked at my desk. Next to my Macintosh II with 13 inch 256 color monitor and massive 35MB SCSI hard drive, was Candi’s elephant.

My mom zeroed in on it like the Terminator. “What’s that? I’ve never seen that before.”

Why was she so suspicious of everything about me? Why did I constantly have to explain myself to her? Why was she so fucking needy all the time? She was just exhausting.

“It’s an elephant.”

“I can see that. Where did it come from?”

“The Zoo.”

“You haven’t been to the Zoo in years.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“So how did you get it?”

This little spark of defiance that was always kind of floating around in the air currents of my mind suddenly hit some dry brush and blazed into an inferno. This was mine. Candi gave it to me. I’d kept this secret for over half my life, just for myself, because I knew they’d fuck it up if they found out. After Stand By Me, I’d felt more and more like a thing in my home. I was Debbie’s Thing, and everyone else in the house was part of her family. My sister still let me be her big brother. But to the rest of my family, I was a thing. I was a thing my dad hated, my brother resented, that my mother jealously guarded like a rare and valuable porcelain doll. And that still wasn’t enough for her. All of my successes and accomplishments in the entertainment industry, all that stuff that I worked so hard for, she reliably found a way to insert herself into it and claim it as her own. Well, this plastic elephant was mine. And it was going to stay mine.

“I traded it for sex and drugs, mom. It’s full of drugs. Call the National Enquirer. I’ll be on the cover.” I picked up Candi’s elephant and struck a big, cheesy, Barker’s Beauties pose with it. “Quick, get the camera before I change my mind.”

“Well you don’t have to be such a pill about it,” she snapped. “I’m just asking. Is it so terrible for a mother to be interested in her son?”

No, mom. It would actually be wonderful if you were interested in your son. Maybe you could talk to dad about that, try something new together.

From across the house, the phone rang. Holy shit. I was literally saved by the bell.

“Debbie!” My dad hollered, “The phone!”

“Nothing is more important than family,” she admonished me on her way out of my bedroom.

I sat down at my desk and gently held Candi’s elephant in my hands. I remembered what it was like before I was a thing.

years gone by like so many summer fields

Author’s note: these memories are extremely old. I’ve done my best to convey the emotional truth of this story, but I’m sure some of these details are not perfectly accurate. Names and other details have been changed.

In the summer of 1981, my friend Jenny, who lived next door, had a friend from Northern California visit for a couple of weeks.

Her name was Candice, and she went by Candi. She was my first — and biggest — childhood crush. That summer, the Stars On 45 medley was blowing up, and whenever it came on my transistor radio, I’d sing “sugar, ah, honey honey, you are my candy girl” from the deepest well of my little first crush having heart. Listen, do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Maybe she would be my candy girl, whatever that meant (holding hands, I was pretty sure). I could sing it right in front of her and she didn’t even know! Delightfully devilish, young Wil.

We were playing in the sprinklers in Jenny’s front yard, when her mom called them in for lunch before they went to the zoo. (The kids next door got to eat all the stuff I wanted: Frosted Flakes, Kool-Aid, Ding Dongs, Otter Pops, everything that was marketed to kids that I wasn’t allowed to have because something something sugar. Here’s some carob. It’s exactly like chocolate, except it’s waxy and flavorless and all kids hate it. Enjoy!) I went home to get something for myself and figure out the rest of my afternoon, until they got back.

So with blades of grass stuck to my feet and legs, my hair smashed down by sweat and water, and this fluttering in my stomach that was new to me, I ran out of the summer heat and into my house. The swamp cooler was doing its best to cool the house down, which left a lot to be desired, if I’m being honest. The kitchen was to my right. The living room was in front of me, and the hallway to our bedrooms and the bathroom was on my left. My dad was in the kitchen sitting at the table with his back to me. He was on the phone with the long cord, and didn’t notice me come in.

It only took a few seconds for me to figure out that he was talking to my uncle, who I thought was the coolest dude on the planet. I inhaled, preparing to ask my dad if I could say hi to him, when I heard that Dad was talking about me.

He was telling my uncle that I had my first crush. And he was making fun of me about it. Behind my back. He was laughing about how I didn’t think anyone knew. He said something about how I was picking my clothes out for the first time, choosing them carefully, brushing my hair, and singing this song over and over. To a normal parent, it would probably be adorable and sweet, but to my dad was a point of shameful weakness to be mocked. He was having a big laugh at my expense, and he was laughing with my favorite uncle.

I was humiliated, embarrassed, and deeply hurt. I felt betrayed. I was instantly aware of my bare chest, wet swimming trunks, skinny legs and arms. I was overwhelmed by shame. I was stupid. I’d been embarrassing myself all summer long in front of everyone, and like the idiot my dad knew I was, I didn’t think anyone knew.

I cried out, “It’s not true! That’s not true! I don’t! I don’t!”

My dad jerked his head around and looked across the kitchen at me. It’s been 43 years, but I can still see his face in my memory. He went from surprised, to annoyed, to laughing even harder.

“Okay, cut!” He said, like I was doing a scene, not expressing genuine feelings. This was one of his favorite ways to mock and belittle me when I was upset, and it had the desired effect every time.

I burst into tears.

“Cut! Cut! Print!” He put the phone between his shoulder and his ear and clapped his hands.

I cried harder. “Stop it! Don’t do that!”

“Oh, you are so sensitive! Don’t be so dramatic,” he said, sarcastically. Then, into the phone, “…nothing. It’s nothing.” He walked out of the kitchen and into the dining room, the long cord slowly stretching out behind him, a single knot tightening where it sagged.

After a moment, I ran to my bedroom, threw myself into my Star Wars bedspread, and cried like I’d been beaten up by a schoolyard bully. Which … well.

My dad never came in to talk to me, to check on me, to … you know, be a dad who loved his son. (I brought this up when I was in my twenties, hoping for some resolution to a deeply painful moment in my life. WHe dismissed me then as being too dramatic, so … at least he’s consistent?) So I stayed in my room with my door closed, and cried until I fell asleep.

Eventually, my mom came home with my infant sister. I had the puffy eyes, heavy chest, and weird mouth feeling of sleeping too hard in the middle of the day. But woke up when I heard the car pull into the driveway, and the screen open and close. I heard the keys drop into the bowl, followed almost immediately by the familiar, inscrutable thrumming of voices through the walls as my parents argued, just seconds after mom came into the house. They did this almost every day, and I hated it. It was upsetting. It felt unsafe. It felt chaotic. I never had friends over, because I didn’t want them to see my parents the way I did. The anger between them filled the air in our house with this faint, ever-present haze of resentment and power struggle. It was emotional smog. Some days, it was so thick I couldn’t breathe, other days it was barely visible. But it was always there, poisoning everything.

Their voices got louder and more intense. One of them slammed a cabinet and my sister began to cry. I heard my dad’s familiar, mocking laugh and knew that my mom had slammed the door. I heard heavy footsteps and my sister’s crying get louder and closer as my mom carried her past my door and into my parent’s bedroom at the end of the hall. She slammed that door so hard it shook the bookcase in my room. It was really scary. Lots of my friends had divorced parents, and when I saw parents on television behave like mine did, they usually got a divorce. Even though I secretly wished my parents would get divorced, that was scary, too. I thought about picking a parent to live with, like my friends did. Most of them lived with their moms, which is what I would have done. She forced me to work and wouldn’t let me be a kid, but at least she wasn’t a bully to me like dad was. She was … I don’t know. She was a lot, but she wasn’t mean.

It’s totally normal for a 9 year-old kid to hope his parents will get divorced, so he doesn’t have to live in their angry chaos. It’s equally normal for parents to think that their screaming, door slamming, wall kicking, and tantrum-throwing is super okay and won’t have a negative effect on their children.

I pulled the covers around my head as tightly as I could, to muffle the sounds of crying that I wasn’t entirely sure was coming from my baby sister. Totally normal, not traumatic at all.

I didn’t come out of my bedroom until it was time for dinner around 5. We all sat at the kitchen table, my sister in her high chair, my brother across the table from me, my parents on either side of me. We had goulash, which was basically canned corn, ground beef, I think some noodles, and a whole lot of tomato-based sauce. I usually liked it, it was kind of like a sloppy Joe, but the last thing I wanted to do was eat. So I sat there and pushed it around with my fork while my parents silently seethed at each other. My brother and sister obliviously devoured their respective dinners.

My brother finished his dinner, put his dish in the sink, and went to watch TV. Dad finished, left his plate on the table, and joined my brother. Mom began to clear his dish and looked at me. “What’s wrong with your goulash?”

I sensed an impending interrogation and did my best to avoid it. “Nothing. I’m … just not very hungry.”

We looked at each other, both of us having been run over by the miserable fucking bulldozer that was my father. Please don’t make me talk about it, I thought.

“Okay, well, put it in the refrigerator and we’ll warm it up for you later.”

I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

“Okay. Can I go outside?”

“Just come in when the streetlights come on.”

I got on my bike and rode it up the street. I felt angry. I felt hurt. I felt confused. I felt scared. But at least I wasn’t inside with them. With him.

I stood up and pushed the pedals as fast and as hard as I could. I wondered what it would be like if I just kept going and didn’t come back. I wondered about that a lot, when I was a kid. I got to the top of the street, jumped up the curb, rode down the sidewalk for a couple houses, jumped off the curb, and raced back down the street as fast as I could. Over and over, as hard as I could go, skidding to a stop as close to the end of the sidewalk as I could, leaving as much rubber behind as possible. Up the street, around the cul-de-sac, power skid, then back down the street, another power skid. I was good at riding my bike. Maybe if I got good enough at riding my bike, my dad would notice.

Jenny’s mom pulled her Ford Pinto Wagon into their driveway as I sped past them on my way down the street. My heart skipped a beat and I gripped the handlebars as professionally as I could, stood up as tall as possible, and pushed even harder on the pedals. I tensed my entire body until my bike and I were one, joined at a spiritual level to become a marble stallion that commanded the attention of all who were blessed by its presence.

I aimed toward the edge of the nearest driveway, so I could take a little jump off the curb. A small flourish to let the audience know I appreciated them. Push, push, push. Pump those legs, Wil. Maximum speed! Get ready to lift those handlebars and soar.

Now, a lot of you expect me to wipe out here. I get that. It’s a perfect time for a sad trombone.

But I didn’t. I nailed it. I pulled off the sweetest jump, got to the end of the street, triumphantly slammed on my back and font brakes, a laid down an epic skid that I’m pretty sure is still there to this day. The kids who live there now whisper stories about it, so I’ll print the legend.

I turned my bike around as slowly and cinematically as I could, ready to receive my audience.

Only they were still in the car, the doors just beginning to open. They’d missed it all. There’s your sad trombone.

Just like that, all my energy was gone. My arms and legs felt heavy and slow. I sat back onto my bike and pedaled toward my house.

Jenny and Candi were waiting for me at the end of her driveway. They were both smiling and blushing. Whoa! Maybe they did see me!

My brakes made an embarrassing squeak when I stopped next to them. I tried to lean my bike to one side, very carefully leaving one foot casually resting on one pedal, like I’d seen on TV. What I managed to do was slide off the seat, spin the pedals around in a backwards loop, smash myself in the shin with one of them, and drop my bike underneath me.

“Are you okay?” Jenny asked.

“Yeah. I’m just riding my bike,” I said, awkwardly, trying not to wince.

They giggled.

“I’m getting pretty good at doing skids,” I offered.

Jenny suppressed a smile and Candi licked her lips.

“Uh … how was the zoo?” I asked.

“Good,” Jenny said, holding back most of a giggle. Was she making fun of me? Why was she laughing?

She elbowed Candi, who I noticed had her hands behind her back.

“We saw the elephant exhibit,” Candi said. They shared a conspiratorial glance.

“Go!” Jenny whispered, urgently.

“Okay!” Candi whispered back.

She took her hands from behind her back and shoved a gray plastic elephant into my hands.

“They have this machine that lets you make models, so I got you an elephant one.”

It came out like, “TheyhavethismachinethatletsyoumakemodelssoIgotyouanelephantone.”

It was damp and warm in my hands as I looked at it. I turned it over and glanced up at her. She was looking back at me, expectantly.

I didn’t know what to do. I felt a little out of breath all of a sudden.

“…. do you like it?” she asked, cautiously.

That’s what she said. But what I heard was, “do you like me?”

“YES!” I practically hollered.

They both jumped a little bit, then giggled. I felt my face get hot.

“I mean, yes. Thank you. It’s great.”

Jenny’s mom called out from the porch, “girls, come in and wash your hands to get the zoo off of them. Then you can go back out and play.”

“Okay, mom!”

They hesitated. Candi and I looked at each other for, like, way too long. I just saw these huge brown eyes and I really wanted to hug her. I didn’t want to kiss her. That was gross. But a hug would be pretty great. The Archies started to hum a chorus in my head.

But what if my dad saw? What if Jenny’s mom saw and laughed at me? What if Jenny’s mom told my parents? What if Candi didn’t like me that way? What if what if what if (welcome to the rest of your life, Wil).

“Let’s go, girls,” her mom said. “They’ll be right back, Wil.”

“We gotta go,” Jenny said, like we were standing on a train platform in 1943. “But we’ll be right back.”

“Okay.”

I dropped my bike on the ground and ran across my lawn. When I got to the edge of the garage, I hid the elephant under my shirt and looked around the corner. I could see my mom in the kitchen window. It looked like she was washing dishes. I waited for her to turn away, and ran quickly and quietly up the driveway, avoiding her attention as I slipped into the house and sneaked down the hallway to my bedroom.

I closed the door behind me and looked for the perfect place to put Candi’s Elephant. Next to my bed was the most obvious place, but it felt weird (too intimate, is how I’d have described it, if I’d known what that meant).

My bookcase was pretty full, and all the space on top of my dresser was taken up with the rebel base on Hoth. That left my desk, a recent addition to my bedroom set that was handed down from one of my cousins. I had real homework, now, in 4th grade.

So I sat at my desk, and put it right on the edge, under my springy lamp. I clicked it on to create a spotlight. I smiled. Candi got this for me when she was at the zoo. She spent her own money on it.

I heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall toward the bathroom.

“Cut!”

“Cut! Cut! Print!”

“Oh, you are so sensitive! Don’t be so dramatic.”

“…nothing. It’s nothing.”

The laugh. That cruel, contemptuous laugh that I can still hear today, though I haven’t seen him or heard his voice in nearly eight years, and hope I never do for the rest of my life.

I grabbed Candi’s elephant and shoved it into the top drawer. I buried it under some papers, to be sure nobody else would find it.

I listened for him to walk back to the other side of the house, then crept down the hallway until I could see my mom in the kitchen. I made sure she couldn’t see me and sneaked back out of the house, and around the corner of the garage. I ran across the lawn (I wanted to skip so much, but even I knew that wasn’t cool) and met them on Jenny’s porch. We played Pay Day until the street lights came on.

I never hugged Candi, or held her hand, or even told her that I liked her. She was only visiting for another week, and whenever I felt the impulse to express my innocent affection for her, the specter of my dad got up in my face and ensured I kept it all to myself.

I think she knew. How could she not? And I think she liked me, too. I have the elephant to prove it.

About Seven Years Later.

I was almost sixteen, right before I had my driver’s license. We’d moved from Sunland to La Crescenta, and I was working on Star Trek. My mom and I were in my bedroom, going through my clothes. I had to do a photo shoot for Tiger Beat or Teen Face or Nonthreatening Boys Magazine or whatever, and she insisted on choosing all of my clothes for me. “So your fans can see your best self,” she said, reaffirming for me that my best self was not good enough until she signed off on it.

I wanted to wear an Oingo Boingo T-shirt, and in her manipulative way, she pulled every button-down shirt I owned to try on “just to be sure”. She exhausted me, and I wore whatever she wanted me to wear. I did get to wear that Boingo shit a few years later, though; a small, pyrrhic victory.

On her way out of my bedroom, she looked at my desk. Next to my Macintosh II with 13 inch 256 color monitor and massive 35MB SCSI hard drive, was Candi’s elephant.

My mom zeroed in on it like the Terminator. “What’s that? I’ve never seen that before.”

Why was she so suspicious of everything about me? Why did I constantly have to explain myself to her? Why was she so fucking needy all the time? She was just exhausting.

“It’s an elephant.”

“I can see that. Where did it come from?”

“The Zoo.”

“You haven’t been to the Zoo in years.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“So how did you get it?”

This little spark of defiance that was always kind of floating around in the air currents of my mind suddenly hit some dry brush and blazed into an inferno. This was mine. Candi gave it to me. I’d kept this secret for over half my life, just for myself, because I knew they’d fuck it up if they found out. After Stand By Me, I’d felt more and more like a thing in my home. I was Debbie’s Thing, and everyone else in the house was part of her family. My sister still let me be her big brother. But to the rest of my family, I was a thing. I was a thing my dad hated, my brother resented, that my mother jealously guarded like a rare and valuable porcelain doll. And that still wasn’t enough for her. All of my successes and accomplishments in the entertainment industry, all that stuff that I worked so hard for, she reliably found a way to insert herself into it and claim it as her own. Well, this plastic elephant was mine. And it was going to stay mine.

“I traded it for sex and drugs, mom. It’s full of drugs. Call the National Enquirer. I’ll be on the cover.” I picked up Candi’s elephant and struck a big, cheesy, Barker’s Beauties pose with it. “Quick, get the camera before I change my mind.”

“Well you don’t have to be such a pill about it,” she snapped. “I’m just asking. Is it so terrible for a mother to be interested in her son?”

No, mom. It would actually be wonderful if you were interested in your son. Maybe you could talk to dad about that, try something new together.

From across the house, the phone rang. Holy shit. I was literally saved by the bell.

“Debbie!” My dad hollered, “The phone!”

“Nothing is more important than family,” she admonished me on her way out of my bedroom.

I sat down at my desk and gently held Candi’s elephant in my hands. I remembered what it was like before I was a thing.

days of swine and roses

I get a ton of junk email, like we all do. I have aggressive filtering, like most of us do. But something gets through every day, because reasons.

My personal favorites are the ones that address me as if I am, personally, Barnes & Noble. They frequently offer cleaning and reputational services (for me, Mr. Barnes & Noble), as well as something about putting Google Maps directly into my stores. Good stuff.

Today, something got through, and in those few preview words you can see without opening the email, I read the phrase “Million dollar bacon.”

So I said to Anne, “I mean, million dollar bacon sounds great. But who can afford that?”

“Someone who is living high on the hog,” she replied.

gotta machinehead

I asked Spotify to play me some rock. It’s horrifying how well you know me, I said, but do what you do so well. I may as well make the most of this Faustian bargain.

So Spotify went to work. Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Love and Rockets, Placebo, Eagles of Death Metal, you get it.

Nice work, Spotify. I’m absolutely positive this has no Monkey’s Paw consequences in my future.

Then it gets to Reptillia, by The Strokes, and I realized that the last time I heard this song, I was playing it in Rock Band.

And that just really hit me right in the Old, you know?

I know you’re not going to believe this, but it just started playing 3’s & 7’s. Guess what game I was playing the last time I heard it?

I’m gonna go put my feet up for a minute, while I continue rocking.

Fucking Monkey’s Paw.

the best laid plans

I haven’t had the spoons to write for a few weeks, but today, something was different, and I finished my breakfast with an ambitious, totally realistic plan to do a little work on Project Daffodil.

So I walk into my office, sit down, and realize that my desk is a clusterfuck of notes and magazines and stickers and … batteries? okay, batteries, I guess … and more than enough dust to complete the metaphor.

I stand up, and begin Unfucking my desk. It comes along nicely. I move the pile of New Yorkers I’m totally going to read to the top of the other pile of New Yorkers I’m totally going to read, careful not to disturb the pile of WIREDs I’m absolutely going to read.

I declare magazine bankruptcy; into the recycling they go.

Back to my desk. These sticky notes that fell off my monitor can enjoy their retirement catching up on the New Yorker. And I’ll just pick up this — what the? Okay, who even uses 9 volt batteries and why do I have one on my — oh, the smoke detector. Right. This should have gone into the trash when I put in a new battery on Daylight Saving Time. I glace around, furtively, Commander Hoek with his Beloved Ice Cream Bar. Real quick, before I toss it away, I taste it. Just to be sure.

Hm. These Gym Mats have very little battery zap in them. A surprisingly high number of 90s animation references, though. Into the bin.

I sort the stickers. Most will be added to project Cover This Box With Layer After Layer of Stickers. But one of them victoriously emerges from the rest, as a laptop contender. I place it on the desk where it will be … considered.

That’s when I get a closer look at the dust. I don’t know how thick a single layer of dust is, but this is enough to qualify for a blanket.

PRO TIP FROM UNCLE WIL: Iif you’re super lazy like me and hate dusting, you can put the air filter in your office to maximum, close the door, and use your compressed air thing to blast the dust off your desk, right into the air. The filter will suck it all out and you get to decide if you want that to be a dirty joke or not. This is not recommended for people with allergies. Wearing a mask while you do it is encouraged.

The dust settles. And now my work area is clean and orderly.

Well … except for that cable.

SOME TIME LATER

Fucking cables my god why does everything have to be so hard all I wanted was a Pepsi.

But the desk really does look great. In fact, I can feel the creative energy building around me and flowing…

…right into that stack of boxes in the corner, next to the bags of stuff I brought home from cons last year that I was going to sort through right after I got caught up on the New Yorker. It’s kind of pooling there, sloshing up on that Lego set I’ve been hoping to build since the 1900s.

Shit. Okay. I guess we’re doing this. Having unfucked the desk, I now turn my attention to unfucking the entire office.

I make three piles: recycle. trash. keep.

The keep pile is sorted into categories: Presidential Library, Art, Badges, Books, and so on. They will be put away in due time, but I linger on some of them: dice. drawings. notes from people who didn’t trust themselves to remember the words when they met me (I see you SO HARD, friends). And I remember how fun it was before Covid, how hard we’ve tried since Covid to make it fun again, and how much I’m sincerely excited to see my friends, castmates, and fellow nerds again in Austin next month.

I put the keepers away in their various proper places, handle the rest, and look around my freshly unfucked office. Now! I can get to work!

Into the chair. Okay, shake off the cobwebs, open xed and … oh. Wow.

Wow that’s … wow.

My keyboard is so dirty. Like, I need to write myself up for this. How did I not notice this before? Why is that key sticky? Is that cat fur? And is that … is that fucking barbecue sauce down there between the K and the L?

The keys come right off for easy cleaning. I have a little tool and everything.

Shit.

I’m not going to write a damn thing today, am I?

If not now, when?

In 1960, SAG and WGA struck to force management to adapt to the new technology of television. Without that strike and the agreement it birthed, residual use payments would not exist.

Wil Wheaton and Gates McFadden support SAG-AFTRA and WGA at Paramount Studios

My parents forced me to be a child actor, and stole nearly all of my salary from my entire childhood. My Star Trek residuals were not much, but they were all I had, and they kept me afloat for two decades while I rebuilt my life. I have healthcare and a pension because of my union. The AMPTP billionaires want to take all that security away so they can give CEOs even more grotesque wealth at the expense of the people who make our industry run.

We must now fight for the future of our industry in the face of changing technology, the same way our elders fought for us in 1960.

To give some sense of what is at stake: There are actors who star in massively successful, profitable, critically acclaimed shows that are all on streaming services. You see them all the time. They are famous, A-list celebrities. Nearly all of those actors don’t earn enough to qualify for health insurance, because the studios forced them to accept a buyout for all their residuals (a decade of reuse, at the least) that is less than I earned for one week on TNG. And I was the lowest paid cast member in 1988. They want to do this while studio profits and CEO compensation are at historic highs. Nearly 9 in 10 SAG-AFTRA members does not earn the $26,470 required to qualify for health insurance. Meanwhile, studio executives are pocketing tens of millions of dollars of bonuses and compensation. Each. (CNN: “When Iger rejoined Disney as CEO in November 2022, he agreed to an annual base salary of $1 million with a potential annual bonus of $2 million. The agreement also includes stock awards from Disney totaling $25 million [and] Netflix’s co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters made $50 million and $28 million, respectively, in 2022, according to a company filing.”)

Those billionaire CEOs complain that what we are asking for is unrealistic and unsustainable. They say we — we — are destroying the industry that was so profitable and successful for a century before they arrived.

I realize they want to remodel their third vacation home so they don’t embarrass any of the guests they take there on their yacht. My heart just aches for them as they struggle to keep up with a changing business model. Here’s the thing: if the current business model of the industry only functions when labor allows itself to be exploited so that executives make thousands of times their salaries, that business model should be destroyed.

If workers refusing to be exploited makes a CEO’s bloated salary unsustainable, I think that’s kind of the point.

We in Labor aren’t hurting our industry. We’re fighting to save it from predatory sociopaths who will gleefully watch people lose their homes and go hungry, rather than release 2% of their grotesque wealth to ensure a healthy industry for everyone.

I mean, if not now, when? And I haven’t even touched on AI and working conditions. I’m only talking about the fundamental ability and opportunity to make a living, to survive and hope to thrive, in the entertainment industry.

We must now fight for the future of our industry in the face of changing technology, the same way our elders did for us in 1960. So today, my Spacemom and I went to the place where it started for us, way back when, to do just that.

I see all your support. It means so much. Thank you.

Still Just A Geek is a Hugo award finalist

Well, this is certainly unexpected. I thought making the New York Times list was the most surprising thing that would happen with Still Just A Geek, but … Still Just A Geek is a finalist for the 2023 Hugo, in the Best Related Work category!

I have been nominated for a few things in my life. I’ve even won a few. But I have not won way more often than I have. Based on my experience, the “I won!” thing is awesome for a short time, but where that euphoria fades quickly, the genuine honor of “I was nominated!” lasts forever. With that in mind, I looked at the other nominees this morning, and … I think it’s very unlikely I’ll be making space for a Hugo statue in my house. But that’s okay! I got to reach out to my TNG family today and tell them about it, and everyone who replied made me feel the love and pride that I imagine kids feel from parents who love them unconditionally.

If Still Just A Geek wins in its category, it’s going to be awesome. I’m not going to lie: I think it would be pretty great if I got to have a Hugo in my house, next to my Tabletop trophies. But if it doesn’t, the excitement, joy, and gratitude I feel that my story even made the finalists this year will never go away, and I get to have that whether I get the statue or not.

Voting on the final ballot begins on July 10, and we’ll find out who gets the award at World Con in October.