This choice: "play a video game together?" • Go Back... "C'mon, little bro! Let's play a round together... think you can teach me a thing or two?" Stephanie smirked coyly, tucking her hair behind her ears. She crossed her legs neatly under her denim jeans, leaned back against Evan's bedpost, and motioned for him to sit down next to her on the carpet.
He grabbed a PlayStation controller and sat next to her, while she toggled the controls to start a one-on-one death match. While she was fiddling with the layout, weapon drop, and other settings, Evan got ready to trounce his older sister. This was a first person shooter he loved playing; he knew all the tricks, optimizations, drop locations, every minor detail that could give him an advantage over his hapless sister. Evan didn't recall Stephanie ever actually playing video games in her life, with the exception of a few casual PC games on social media with her friends. Though she boasted an impressive amount of kills, she could also be taking the piss out of him. He almost felt bad playing against her. Maybe, Evan resolved, he might give her a few pity kills at the beginning so it doesn't look too lopsided.
The match began on a military base surrounded by a jungle landscape. But...
... Waitaminute.
What was Evan supposed to do again?
He stared down at his controller. What the heck did all these symbols mean?
Gah! It's like something was clouding his mind... making it difficult to grasp the knowledge he knew he should have. Like grains of sand falling through a sieve, Evan struggled to recall even the basics of how to play the game. But the harder he tried, the more those memories faded away. He glanced over at Stephanie, who was intently viewing the television screen and roaming her delicate fingers over the buttons like a maestro runs his hands over piano keys. Meanwhile, he tried pressing a few buttons to see what happened on screen, taking a very deliberate and slow process re-learning the controls.
His thumb grazed over the control stick, and he saw his character jerk forward. Of course! That big rotating doohickey makes the guy move around. He tried it a few more times before his character suddenly crumpled over in a bloody mess. Fatality, the screen flashed in grim lettering.
Stephanie had sniped his character from a ledge halfway across the stage.
"Pow! Head shot!" She exclaimed, giggling like the 19-year old college girl she was.
"Lucky shot!" Evan scowled. "That was a freebie."
Evan's older sister glanced over smugly. "Was it? Really? Or am I now the pro and you're the 'noob' at video games?"
He decided not to dignify her with a response, especially because he wasn't sure whether 'noob' was a good thing or a bad thing. Again, he felt like he should know but at the moment it sounded like a put down.
"I didn't realise how detailed and intricate this game is," Mentioned Stephanie as Evan's character re-spawned somewhere else in the jungle. "Playing this game just feels so right, y'know?"
He wished he could agree, but the more Evan played the worse he felt he was getting. Evan's character re-spawned several times, and within seconds each time Stephanie found some clever way to bring about his demise. To his frustration, most of these kills came as a complete surprise as he was still spending most of his time figuring out how to pick up and use the many shooty-things in the game. (To Evan's chagrin, Stephanie helpfully identified each weapon's model, make, and degree of usefulness in jungle terrain. What the heck is a FAL, anyway?)
"You might want to look at the radar in the lower part of your screen," She suggested. "It shows you where other players and power ups are located, including--"
"I know what it does!" He snapped. A few more minutes passed, and she killed him a few more times. The cheeky girl was now tea-bagging his corpse after each death, which would have been annoying if Evan's friends were doing it. But his own sister, who wouldn't know the difference between Super Mario Brothers and Super Smash Brothers? That was mortifying.
The round mercifully ended, with Stephanie having killed Evan no less than 43 times. He hadn't managed to kill her once. The loading screen reappeared and Evan stood up angrily.
Stephanie was trying not to laugh. "Wow! You're right Evan, this game is a lot of fun. Hey... where are you going?"
"Out!" He replied tersely, wanting to be anywhere but in his own room watching his sister dominate at his favourite game. He had never felt so disgusted: at her for being so much better, or at himself for ever liking such a stupid game. Did he only like playing it because he was good at it? Or could this be something of Stephanie's that got swapped along with his video gaming skills?
"Wait, don't go just yet!" She called out to her brother, chasing after him as he was about to step outside. "Don't think of it as me beating you... more like your gaming skills are so much better than mine. It's a compliment!"
Evan turned around and sighed. "You're right. Sorry for snapping at you back there. It's just..."
"... You don't like getting btfo'd at your own game?" Stephanie finished his thought. Seeing his confused expression, she added, "BTFO? Y'know... blown-the-fuck-out. It's leet speak."
"Leet speak?" Evan frowned.
"Geez, was I really that clueless?" Stephanie remarked. She changed the subject, "Look, I think I know what will cheer you up! Follow me!"
---
"Very good!" Stephanie beamed, beholding the acrylic painting Evan whipped up in no time in his bedroom an hour later. "You'd give Bob Ross himself a run for his money, I'd wager!"
Evan dipped a thin paintbrush back into the cup on a stand next to the easel. The canvas, white just an hour ago, now showed a dazzling sunrise over a lake. The composition, perspective, and relief provided by the mountains against the water in the foreground were exquisite, far better than anything Evan had ever attempted before. He felt at home gliding the brushstrokes against the canvas. Mixing colours and shades together on his palette to get that slightest tinge of cirrus blue here, a smack of forest green there, a loud sailor's delight red against the sky.
What's more: Evan somehow knew a wealth of information on art. And not just contemporary techniques, but historical movements too. He felt he could speak intelligently about the differences between Impressionism and Expressionism, between a Manet and a Monet piece, why Jackson Pollack was so tragically misunderstood yet Degas was the biggest shithead who ever lived. He felt he could analyze art. It wasn't all pretentious rubbish like he thought.
All of these explosions of insight and beauty were thanks to Stephanie, whose skill as an artist Evan had overlooked until now. He had always viewed art as the kind of limp-wristed fruitiness reserved for... well... for girls. Not for red-blooded guys like him.
"I can't believe how good I am!" Stephanie caught herself, "I mean, how good you are, ha ha." The canvas and art supplies were in Stephanie's bedroom just like the PlayStation console was still in Evan's bedroom. Apparently, the swap only affected the minds of Evan and Stephanie with respect to skills; there was no transfer of owned items. Stephanie suggested swapping ownership over those things, which Evan naturally agreed to. In a flash, all of Evan's art supplies now rested in a drawer next to his nightstand, and several blank canvases stacked up against his bed. His video game disks, consoles, controllers, and other equipment now belonged to Stephanie.
What happens next?
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