Up to this day, I’ve published 687 posts (including this one), of which I’ve posted 442 on a daily basis (again including this post) on this blog. I like the streak although I don’t think I’m too obsessed with it. Not having a post lined up for the next day isn’t something that would cause me a lot of grief, although I still want to write a post for the following day as it brings me joy. Today, I wanted to talk about a question that my better half asked me the other day: “Don’t you ever run out of topics to talk about?” – And frankly the answer to that is a “no” but I don’t want to end this post just yet. I found the question quite interesting and wanted to dive a bit deeper into writing about what interests or affects you as well as about games, prompts, and all of that stuff. Hope you’ll enjoy this post.
So, while the short answer is “no”, the longer answer has many faces to it. On the one hand, limiting yourself to games or books or movies can limit the number of things you can write about. On the other hand, most of us live in a society where people have the freedom of expression and where people can express themselves in a plethora of ways. You can write stories, paint pictures, create whole universes, develop games, and do whatever you want to do. And that’s amazing. Every day, there are dozens of games getting released onto platforms like Itch.io and Steam, which provides plenty of things to talk about. Jeff Vogel, a veteran Indie Dev, exclaimed in a post of his that this abundance of games is a bad thing. The game industry booming and 11,773 games being released on Steam in 2021 is – according to him – an indicator of sorts that there are a lot of people developing games instead of actually contributing to society in a meaningful way. This in itself is just an observation, so don’t run off here. We’re not talking about Jeff Vogel or his opinion today. Don’t worry!
Today, after all, I didn’t want to talk about his post but rather about how the expression of oneself is a glorious thing and about how these tens of thousands of games mean tens of thousands of potential posts – covering just one per cent of these games already is more than a handful to deal with for me as a single person on a relatively small blog.
Expressing yourself is amazing and if you write posts on a blog, that is a wonderful thing. You not only get to express yourself but you also get to create something that someone may read at the breakfast table or before they head to bed. Blogs in general are often a very personal thing as well. There are plenty of people that write about books they like or movies they watched. There are other people that talk about interesting prompts issued by happenings in the society they live in. Other people write about games they play or their achievements in popular titles. I personally write about a mix of all of this because I love reviewing games and I love talking about the things I’m passionate about but I also write about my achievement hunts, politics, my mental health, or weird things that I tried out.
Back to the topic though, because blogging is so personal, there are frankly an infinite number of things you can talk about. I could write about how I have this weird thing where I don’t immediately recognize myself in the mirror whilst not having any issues with pictures. I could talk about how I love mayo while I completely hate ketchup. Similarly, I could write about how I hate how absorbed I get in games that I love, which sounds contradictory but it’s honestly an interesting topic.
What’s more, is based on the topic, I could probably come up with plenty of prompts to write about. If someone was to ask me what they should write about (and I’ve proven this a few times, actually), I could probably list a few dozen prompts in a matter of minutes. If I were to struggle with coming up with an idea for a post, that wouldn’t be as easy for me to do. It’s myself I’m talking about after all. I struggle with ideas all the time. Hence, I start a draft for every prompt that I think about – before I forget it. Drafts stay drafts for the longest time but eventually, I come back to them and they may see the light of your screen here and you may be able to read my thoughts on some weird topic that I thought about at one point in my life.
Similarly, coming up with a prompt can be incredibly easy based on the subject. If we were to talk about Pokémon, for instance, we could talk about…
- the lore and mythology of the Pokémon universe,
- our favourite evolutionary lines,
- our favourite starters in each generation,
- our favourite type and our favourite Pokémon in said type,
- our favourite ability/attack/shiny form/mega evolution/etc.,
- our favourite feature,
- the feature we like the least,
- how Pokémon get weirder with each generation,
- what our favourite game/gen is and why,
- the anime and how Ash would suck at Pokémon,
- and more!
The point I’m trying to make here is that it’s easy to create topics to talk about once you brainstorm for just a little bit. I mean, maybe “easy” is a bad word to use here but coming up with topics to talk about is easier when you write down every single idea, even the stupid ones. The stupid ones, after all, can have some merit in themselves as well.
My old blog’s name used to be “Indiekativ” which was based on Kant’s categoric imperative (don’t ask me how I went from that thing to my old blog name) and I honestly liked the idea… the execution was bad though and on top of that, I didn’t really publish many posts on there. Eventually, I moved on from blogging because of how frustrating Blogger/Blogspot was to deal with (especially when it came to pictures and their positioning… grrrrr) but then I got back into it and hey, I had to come up with a name… and well, I love the word “indicator” and I used to science fair projects, so something “indicating” something else was the first thing that came to my mind.
Talking about how fishing in games indicates that it’s a good game, for instance, would be pretty “on brand” for my blog… but more importantly, I just wanted to fit “indie” into that blog name, somehow, even if it’s incredibly far-fetched. “Indietail” is a play on “In Detail” (see also: reviews) and I smuggled “indie” into that, I think? It’s been ages since I came up with that and honestly, it may even have been someone else that came up with it. I wouldn’t know. At least I think that I came up with it? I could be wrong. I digress!
They are silly puns in a way but also make sense and sound cool and all of that… but they started as silly prompts. Some of my more popular posts started as stupid prompts. A “review of specific pokémon based on their cuteness” was a silly idea I had at one point and from that, I got ideas that sparked a bunch of other prompts that eventually ended up… not really getting anywhere. Maybe I’ll write about Pokémon soon? But until I am in the mood to do so, those kinda cool posts will sit in the drafts… potentially forever.
And well, creativity is a fickle pickle. It’s hard to come up with stuff on the spot but if you just write down every prompt you think of, you’ll have plenty of things to write about. Will I ever run out of topics to write about? No, probably not. I’m an unstable person with many issues, so I can talk about my mental health a lot. I can talk about my procrastination issues because I procrastinate a lot. I can talk about languages and stuff I learned at university because it interests me and it may result in interesting prompts in itself. I mean, who wouldn’t love to see some Hegel on their timeline, right? No? Nobody? Yeah, me neither. Similarly, I have to get back into reviewing more things as I frankly haven’t had the chance to sort through my emails these past few days, installing games I was sent and writing up posts. “Just One Percent” (as mentioned in the beginning) is in itself a huge project that could offer you a hundred posts… or 118 posts, I guess? Similarly, there are plenty of light novels, manga, anime, movies, shows, PC and mobile games, streamers, art shenanigans, recipes, and even political topics to talk about… and there is just not enough time to get to all of them in our short lives… but I’d love to do write about as many as possible… because I frankly enjoy doing it.
Even if I ever get stuck with prompts, I have my trusty drafts to rely on, I guess, and future-me will probably curse like a sailor once they see that I always forget to add notes to my drafts, just like how my past me forgot to do it for me. Frankly, you can come up with dozens of ideas and as long as there is anything happening in the world or the internet or the gaming industry, there will always be something to talk about. I know that Humble Choice is already a monthly post that is secured and then there are also the Steam Next Fest demos coming around every so often, as well as new releases getting announced here and there.
Similarly, I could revisit past reviews and oh, wait, I really wanted to rework my Moonlighter Review as it’s nearly four thousand words long, which is way too long in my opinion. As you can see, I won’t run out of posts to write about and I don’t think anyone should be able to? Every blog, every website, every magazine is unique and because of that, there will always be something that may inspire one blogger to write about the said topic as well. I know that I get inspired to write about a game after discovering it through some of the blogs I follow. Similarly, others may find games through my blog and add them to their wishlists. It’s a great thing honestly.
Alas, there’s the end of the post. I feel like I went into plenty of detail for the most part, although I may have rambled for pretty long as well. I included a bunch of screenshots here and there to break up this wall of text a bit and to make the reading experience more pleasant. Do you have any thoughts on the matter or do you think you’ll run out of topics eventually? Do you think that there are too many topics to choose from or do you like that aspect of writing as a hobby? Did I not talk enough about something in particular or do you think that I may have even worded myself incorrectly at times, resulting in points being mispresented? Let me know!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
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