Dark Clouds

I had plans for a blog post this week. I wanted to continue off the thread I started two weeks ago where I looked at the story of King’s Quest III and break it down for game ideas. I have the start of a draft of that post. But honestly? With everything that’s going on right now – the creative well is dry. I got about five hours of sleep last night. And ignoring what’s going on and just writing a typical Saving the Game blog post feels just a little too weird right now.

If you are the praying sort (and I would hope most of you reading this are) your prayers for the state of the US would be very much appreciated. We could really use it.

For those of you who don’t live in the US and aren’t aware of what’s going on, a short while ago, a group of four police officers in Minneapolis, MN killed an unarmed black man on camera. I could go into the specifics, but they’re easy enough to find from better and more professional journalistic sources than me. His name was George Floyd, and his killing was egregious enough that my friends from across the political spectrum here in the US are aghast. Even some of the staunchest supporters of law enforcement having broad latitude that I know have agreed that it was out of line.

As people in countries that aren’t the US probably are not surprised by, this has provoked a massive number of protests nationwide. Those protests have gotten pretty violent and destructive in the last few days. There are reasons for this – chief among them is that various groups have been doing everything they can to escalate things. So they have been escalating. However, the measures being discussed to restore order by our government are significantly more frightening than the already-scary rioting. If you remember what happened in Ferguson, MO a few years back – all of it, including the over-use of force by the authorities – imagine that on a national scale. That’s what we have, and remember, the US is big.

And, oh yeah, the pandemic is still going on, so even best-case scenario, this turns into a huge problem on that front.

I wish I had some kind of deep, brilliant analysis. I don’t. I do have some thoughts, but frankly, this is not the place for them, and in my sleep-deprived state, I doubt I could string them together in a way I’d be happy with anyway. I was born in 1978. I’ve never seen anything like what’s currently going on out there. I am doing my best to work within our apolitical restrictions here, but this situation is not making it easy for me. I am horrified, but sadly, I’m not shocked. Given the way that things have been building here, something like this was bound to happen.

What I can say is that given the unprecedented and gravely serious nature of what’s going on out there, I feel like continuing on as if nothing was happening would be inappropriate or even grotesque.

Image by Keli Black from Pixabay