#idealise

our love story I glorified  thinking there was something otherworldly when we looked each other in the eye it all seemed pure and sweet 

oh how I deceive myself  our love was neither pure nor sweet it was not true it was not real  it was possessive and all-consuming 

that what we had is beautiful and passionate love must yet be the greatest lie the world has told us  oh we still have a lot to learn what it means to love someone truly 

The Telltale Cycle, the ‘Crazy’ Exes, and the Crazy-making

Gwendolyn (Narcissism Recovery) talks about the narcissistic abuse cycle (idealise, devalue, discard), as well as a strong warning sign that the person you have just started dating is a narcissistic abuser—namely, his ‘crazy’ exes.

Be sure to take notice if you’ve just started to date a person, and he is slipping in comments that dismiss, degrade, or otherwise smear his ex (or exes). Especially take notice if he is characterising his ex (or exes) as worthless or crazy. Going to special effort to slip such comments into early conversations is slightly odd behaviour, but it is easy to ignore if you’re not on the lookout for it. Knowing the early warning signs of narcissistic abuse is imperative. Without this knowledge, it’s easy to fail to recognise that you’re currently being narcissistically idealised, and not being genuinely loved, or selflessly respected or admired, or what have you (depending on the type of relationship). If you are being narcissistically idealised, then knowing the signs might provide you with the certainty and strength to be able to see through the euphoria and the blinding effects of the love-bombing, which (by design) can be addictive and hard to turn away from. If you are being idealised, then the pleasure and the apparent profundity of the experience is setting you up, psychologically, for what could be the most painful and traumatic experience you’ve ever had.

Idealisation (by itself) is inherently narcissistic, insofar as it is all about the person who is doing the idealising, rather than the person who is being idealised. Unless the idealisation is a function of a deeper and more stable attachment, such as genuine romantic love, it is entirely a projection of how you are making the other person feel about himself, and how you are meeting whatever needs he happens to want you to fulfill. The empty idealiser is building you up, so that when you build him up (with compliments, praise, love, affection, etc.) it will have more of a positive impact on his ego.

However, because idealisation is entirely projective, it is not stable; it only appears to be attached to something stable; it only appears to be attached to who you are as a person. Empty idealisation inevitably gives way to devaluation. Sooner or later, the narcissistic abuser will get bored, or you will start to notice his inconsistencies and ask too many troublesome questions, or he will hurt you and you will look to him for accountability or reassurance. Whatever it is, there will be a point at which you stop being sufficiently useful to the abuser.

If someone is prone to projectively building you up in order to make him feel better about himself, then this same person will be just as prone to tearing you down for the same purpose. As soon as you stop being quite as much of a boost to the narcissistic abuser’s ego (you get to be too much effort, or you’re old news, or you’re trying to address interpersonal matters in a fair and even-handed way), his building you up will start to have the opposite effect on his ego. If you’re not presently building him up in an uncomplicated manner, then his building you up only lends credence to your perceived challenges or criticisms, and robs him of precious ego supply. He was only ever in it for the supply, and he only made all of those reassurances and proclamations and promises in order to secure that supply. So now, for the very same selfish purpose, he must treat you in an extremely opposite manner. In order to build himself up as much as possible, he now has to stop building you up, and start putting you down. He has to push you abruptly from the pedestal, and represent you as intrinsically bad, or otherwise someone not worth caring about; someone whose thoughts and feelings don’t matter. Eventually, the narcissistic abuser will simply discard you like trash, and look elsewhere for his ego fix.

People narcissistically abuse because they will do whatever it takes to build themselves up and feel better about themselves, and whatever it takes to avoid perceived criticism, vulnerability, and feeling bad about themselves. To be willing to do whatever it takes towards these utterly selfish ends, one must be unable to afford empathy, and one must be willing to use and abuse others as though they are mere objects. When a narcissistic abuser discards you, it is because you are more trouble to his ego than you are worth (from his perspective). You are useless to him now; written off. He wants nothing to do with you. Since he will do anything to protect his ego, he must convince himself that you never meant anything to him; that you are worthless. He has to convince himself that he has not really caused you any pain, despite appearances to the contrary; or he must convince himself that you deserved the pain that he has caused you; or that your reactions are melodramatic and attention-seeking and ridiculous (or just crazy), rather than reflecting the true extent of the damage he has done. Ironically, it is exactly this sort of distorting, denying, manipulative behaviour that is aptly described as ‘crazy-making’.

Post-discard, then, the narcissistic abuser will project and blame-shift. He will demonise you and attempt to discredit you. His narcissistic drives mean that he has a vested interest in convincing himself, others, and even you (if he can) that you are crazy, worthless, or despicable; perhaps even abusive.

The next game to be designed in GDevelop is an Asteroid-style game. However, we were told to think about what the core mechanics, style, or themes are and to try to apply them in different ways. In my opinion the core mechanics of Asteroid are destroy and evade, destroy the asteroids or avoid being hit by them to continue playing. The style is generally pixelated and/or simplistic, common for older games as they did not have the understanding or technology to make it more in depth. And the theme is around space, spaceships, aliens, asteroids. The mention of Asteroids got me thinking about other older, simplistic games and the one that came to mind the most was Breakout. The objective of Breakout is to destroy all the platforms without losing your ball, but what if it was flipped what of your objective was to stop the ball from breaking the platforms. And that is the basis for my Asteroid-style game.

Elevator Pitch

‘Stopping a Breakout’

‘Stopping a Breakout is a combination of 2 simple yet iconic arcade games, Asteroid and Breakout. The player must destroy asteroids to either stop themselves losing a life or to stop the asteroids from destroying the platforms that keep the player alive. The player should evade asteroids and missing platforms to stay alive as long as possible and destroy as many asteroids as they can to gain points. To spice things up power-ups will fall to assist the player like, multiple bullets or lives. How high do you think you can score?’

The game is to be played with WASD keys and platformer behaviours for the player, so the player can move across the breakable platformers. The mouse controls the direction of the player model, and the left mouse key controls buttons and bullets.

3 unique selling points for this game in my opinion are:

Simplistic: The game has simple concepts, WASD and Mouse, shoot, destroy and evade. The visuals are also not overwhelming.

Neverending: The game has no win condition so as long as the player doesn’t die, they can continue to play.

Nostalgic: A lot of older games are heavily pixelated, and Breakout and Asteroid are some of the most popular 70s games ever made. For those games most people have played them and if they haven’t there easy to obtain and understand.

The audience for this game would be those who enjoy simplistic 2D platform shooter.