i spent most of my (younger) formative years writing. i, like many others my age, would sink into forums arguing, creating, questioning, and otherwise interacting. there was something so alluring about the constant connection, and knowing that others just like you were sitting there, one leg up on the seat, the other dangling to the ground, writing about vampire high school antics. it was oddly comforting to know you weren’t the only one who dealt with your raging hormones this way. as i aged out of it, i left most of that creative writing behind, outside of the occassional piece crafted to illicit praise from my favorite teacher.

despite my waning interest in creative writing, when i was 18, i enrolled in school to get an english degree. i wanted to be an essayist. specifically i wanted to write literary analysis. i fell in love with it when i was reading the great gatsby in high school and we were given the task of analyzing a single page. rather than focusing on chapters or themes, we were asked to go as deep as we could on a section as small as we could find. i ended up choosing a passage where tom is idolizing the idea of his love interest. rather than seeing her as she was, she was, to him, an idea. fragile, and bound to shatter the second he reclaimed his grip on reality. i remember spinning this off into the objectivist theory of the novel, researching the ideas, finding individual words that fit my thesis. in a way i was idolizing the book. it was enthralling to find more in a person’s work than perhaps even they saw. it was powerful.

so i spent my first year of college commuting from home and doing a lot more reading than writing. and to be honest, there wasn’t much reading to be done. the first year was full of more general courses than i’d have liked, and much less social interaction than i’d hoped for. i eventually transferred out and left english and writing behind, which led to far fewer general courses and much more social interaction. as sometimes happens, i got the education i wanted by leaving the thing i loved behind. i split my time between a formal education in programming and an informal one in a few specific arts. theater, improv, film. i suffocated myself in every minute of creation. it left time for little else. these outlets sustained me, providing clarity and community during my most transformative period of life.

perfect tides: station to station is a “memoir game”. written, directed, and developed by meredith gran. it takes place during college student mara whitefish’s first year at SUCS (SVA) in New York City. despite her obsession with writing and the game’s focus around it, it is not a game about writing. in fact it might be the most writing-centric piece of media ever created that is not about writing. it’s first and foremost a coming-of-age tale, but beneath every moment is a yearning of creativity. through every line is the unmistakable truth that art, true art, good art, worthwhile art (whatever you may think of that phrase) is not born from suffering, but the time that passes during it. mara is messy and young and full of so many relateable mistakes that it makes the act of experiencing it at an older age both beautiful and harrowing. those mistakes are bygones but they still echo. you want to help her, you want to stop her from being who she is but you know that you can’t. and while you’re tearing at your hair, unable to decide which ill-advised comment she should make next, you’re also forgiving her, and in turn yourself. all without her ever wanting or asking for your forgiveness.

what sticks out to me most about this game though isn’t the ways in which you can see yourself in the various characters. sure, the raw connection the game provokes is powerful, but more powerful is the constant comforting roar proclaiming that these mistakes were necessary. despite the despair of the moment, these mistakes don’t define her, they create her. the mechanics back this up, reshaping her brain with every new book or interaction. bringing up the wrong topic with someone might lead to an unexpected “aha!” moment, further deepening her understanding of an idea. where other games might punish you for trying to talk with your aging grandmother about death, perfect tides: station to station embraces it. the messiness is the point.

this carries beyond the mara as well. every single one of the characters, even the most guarded, wear their heart on their sleeve through the brutal and understanding gaze of gran’s writing. they are hurtful and wrong and right and honest. there were many, many, moments throughout my playthrough that i struggled being in mara’s head. but more difficult than understanding her experience was the pain that surfaced when i found myself connecting with others in her story. i was bombarded by shame and fear and anger. in side characters in her story i saw myself and my mistakes. and even worse, saw mara’s reaction to me. rarely does a game offer you the chance to engage with the hurt of another life. PT:S2S invited me to accept that i was (and of course sometimes still am) an absolute piece of shit. and it did so leading by example. the tapestry of characters and events it creates never excuse themselves or their actions. they instead lay it bare. and in doing so, invite connection.

my break with creative writing happened at the exact life moment in which we play as mara. i retreated into the work of others. analyzing it, performing it. even improv was a beautiful shroud where you could be anyone, so long as it wasn’t yourself. i’ve ventured back into creative writing, but even in that, even in work i felt i gave myself to and that i’m immensely proud of, every character has walls. when the climax hits and they pretend to take them down, the author shines through, perhaps in the most unintentional moment of honesty. the characters look to the audience and beg for a pat on the back. “see! i did it. i transformed. i’m not who you thought i was. i’m not who you know i am”. there is not a single character in perfect tides (well outside of one particular DJ) that asks anything of the audience than to be observed. they are irredeemably themselves and we are all better off for it.

and perhaps the most vulnerable piece of all sticks with me the most. mara’s bravery. throughout the game’s runtime, her most common routine was to take a deep breath, sit down at the computer and (after some understandable procrastination) write. sure she had assignments, and the pressure of deadlines, but regardless she wrote. she wrote for her upcoming class, she clashed with other forum frequenters, she messaged friends. she chose, over and over, to give herself to the world not knowing it was the only way to get anything back.

so i sat down today. i opened a document. and i wrote.

i worried about the characters you would see in me. the pieces you would not approve of. the embarassment that would come of anyone finding my old forum posts. but i wrote. hoping that maybe, just maybe, it’s the only way i’ll get anything back.