Skyrim Gave Me Romantic Advice (And It Was Right)

Skyrim may be one of the most grind-y, same-y, boring games that I’ll ever consider too addicting to stop playing.

It’s a lot like Fable‘s bigger, smarter, less herpes-infested brother.

It does more right than Fable did, but that’s not to say it’s great–just very good. It’s very unique and I suspect everyone’s experience is different, but for my money, I can’t help feeling like it was an MMO that they forgot to put online… or add multiplayer to.

It plays a lot like one in that frustratingly limited way, while at the same time rewarding you for leveling up every worthless skill they could think of. But for some reason, none of those issues made me put the game down. In fact, try as I might, I couldn’t stop playing the game.

But I figured I may as well enjoy it.

We were best murder friends. Because we did do that… lots of that, really. Murdered all kinds of things. 

Why not? Everyone else loves the game, I should too. I even started to grow fond of my companion, Lydia. She’s the first companion you get and, if you try really hard, you won’t get another one for a long time. So I took her all over the world, showing her dungeons and new cities. We were best murder friends. Because we did do that… lots of that, really. Murdered all kinds of things. 

Think of it as a team building exercise.

And suddenly, I found that I was actually invested in one of the characters in the game.

Interestingly enough, one with just about no backstory. Lydia was just my occasionally sarcastic partner who would draw attention while I snuck up behind enemies, shanking them with my sword.

But her lack of prominent personality or any notable traits made me kind of fond of her, because it allowed me to project characteristics I liked on to a blank canvas. Like a buddy who doesn’t talk back, or ask you to help them move on a day they already know you have off–and wanted to spend sitting alone, playing Skyrim. She was perfect.

Living the dream.

Skip forward a bit, and now I’m looking up mods for Skyrim.

I use mods to customize a game that I already enjoy, but would like to enjoy even more. Helps me gloss over the bad ideas developers had… like the inventory system.

I came across one mod that I took notice of.

A mod that allows me to actually have sex with NPCs in the game. And, of course, this is something I go for immediately because when I like a thing, the first thing I want to do with it is incorporate it into my rigorous masturbation schedule.

“This combines two of my favorite things:
Masturbating and Combining things with Masturbating”

When the mod was done installing, it was like Christmas had come again (no pun intended). I was so excited that I immediately took to bed the one I had waited for… Lydia. It was perfect, after weeks of feeling like it wasn’t an option, suddenly there she was. Someone I had been through hard times and dangerous times with. We’d been to jail together. We killed a woman for a very satanic little child who didn’t want to go to an orphanage. We were so in sync and now we could celebrate it. It was marvelous.

I had us do it everywhere. In the bed of a house I had broken into. Under the stars, in a river, on the table in the middle of the Inn. The sky was the limit. And in the end, I felt even closer to her than before.

Think of it as another team building exercise.

I actually spent the next day thinking about how nice it was to have an awesome friend like Lydia, who really understood that being close together and doing things as a team really broke the boundaries, and we could just be ourselves around each other.

But everything changed when the fire nation attacked. And by that, I mean, my next log in.

When I signed on, Lydia stopped following me.

She would appear whenever I entered a new zone, like she’s supposed to. But when I’d walk away, she’d walk in place and never travel. A glitch? Maybe… Or maybe something more.

I spent hours uninstalling and reinstalling the patch to try and get it to work. Finally I just uninstalled the patch. And all my patches. All the mods. Uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Something… I needed to get her back. But try as I might… she was stuck in her bubble, unable to get to me as I walked away.

But I supposed that there certainly was a moral to this story. And the moral was this. I had a good thing. A solid friendship that was based on lack of communication and the slaughter of hundreds of cannibals, cults and bears.

But that’s what it was… a friendship. And when I tried to push past that, we did eventually have sex. It was great. Everything I’d always wanted from her. But the friendship was never the same, and we drifted apart. Now, I have neither the friend, nor the lover. And my life is less full. I regret what I did. But I learned a valuable lesson.

I guess I’ll try to move on, and I hope she does the same.

I’m hoping that somewhere out there is an adventurer who treats her well, and doesn’t spoil it by hopping up on a table during dinner rush at the Bee and Bard Inn and begin performing the ritual of the Jackhammer.

As for me? Maybe I’ll check in on Aela the Huntress.

“How do you feel about Team Building exercises?”