For many of us, our middle school years were in a large part comprised of tears from reading John Green’s tragic books. As we grew up, most of us grew out of books like Paper Townsand The Fault in Our Stars. I rediscovered John Green’s Youtube channel “Vlogbrothers” that he runs with his brother Hank Green, the summer after my senior year of high school. But last summer, I discovered what has been perhaps my favorite Youtube series ever: “John Green is a Fortnite Pacifist.” I have absolutely never seen the appeal of watching people play videogames, and I have played Fortnite all of one time, and was absolutely terrible. Yet, I have been absolutely enthralled by this video series. In it, John Green attempts to play and win Fortnite, as a pacifist. Now, as I am sure nearly everyone knows by now, the premise of Fortnite is that people are playing in a battle royale on an island. Out of one hundred players, each player’s goal is to be the last player standing. Thus, the modus operandi of each player tends to be killing as many other players as possible. However, John Green’s goal whilst playing is to only shoot if someone shoots at him first. While as of YET, he has not been the last person to survive, he generally tends to make it quite far. I am not entirely sure why I have been so drawn in, but the videos are endlessly entertaining. While people who actually play Fortnite would almost certainly be annoyed by his playing style, I find it more fun to watch someone who isn’t really taking the game seriously. To me, Fortnite is weird and confusing, and while I have nothing against people who really enjoying, the game’s animation style, “skins” and dance moves juxtapose with the violent goals of the game. The irony of a playing a bizarre game that the primary goal is survival through killing the other players as a pacifist is supremely entertaining. So, if you’re already into let’s play tutorials and twitch streaming, this series probably won’t entertain you at all, but if you’re like me, and video games are a funny alien world, this might just be the series for you to enjoy and learn a little bit about Fortnite. (Then you can use the knowledge you’ve gained to convince your older brother that you actually understand Fortnite, or maybe that’s just me).
Here is the link to the first episode of the series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0on2x1YE8c