This isn’t the first time that I’ve used this title, and I don’t think it will be the last. I imagine writing this over the top of the pages of the last essay to bear its name. A repetition, a return; a thread that doesn’t just get longer but knots around itself over and over and over and over again. The first time I saw the word, palimpsest, it was on the cover of a Gore Vidal memoir that I didn’t buy. I wanted to write like Vidal, once; when I was poring over the torturous and the tragic, bearing something that felt unbearable. I no longer want to write like Gore Vidal; I’ve overwritten that desire.
Whenever I exit a game, I save once, twice, three times. The same question appears: DO YOU WANT TO OVERWRITE YOUR SAVE DATA? THIS CANNOT BE UNDONE. A year or two ago, I started playing Blasphemous. A game in a long line, indebted to Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. According to my save file, I’m eight hours deep into a cryptic tale of gothic horror and sin. I can’t remember the last boss that I killed, and I don’t know where to go next. But the point of games like this is to go back; to find new ways forward, to trace something new over the outline of an old map.