threeplusfire | rambling because it is five am

So there was a party in my apartment of sorts. Not much to say about it, other than the usual. I'm always the last one left, chasing people out, cleaning up. Sigh. And the PS2 needs to be cleaned or something, because I can't get a DVD to work to save my soul. All I wanted was the insane Frenchmen damn it. And now the dreaded lj cut, which I never use it seems. Reader beware and all that shit.

Something that's been percolating under my skin lately is this idea of voice. Not the one I use in my throat, but the voice in my head, or voices as the case may be. Because I've always thought in a number of different ways and each one is different. Each one is something unique, something personal. There's only one with a proper name, and that's just because he fits so well into my character in the rpg of doom.

It pisses me off that I have the feeling my friends look down on me for the rpg thing, despite the prevelance of video and computer games in our crowd, and that so often I'm spoken of as a bit of a freak for it. Pot calling the kettle black in my opinion. Mostly I laugh it off, try to be funny instead of defensive. I'm tired of it though, quite tired. The next person who hassles me, even in jest, will probably get their head bitten off.

I play these games this because I find rpgs fun. I do this because it satisfies some vain impulse in myself. I do this because I like drawing out the character psychology, the development of how and who and why that goes into a story. I do this because it's like writing a story in collaboration. I do this because I want to, because it is a bit escapist, because it gives me a chance to exercise different creative voices in my head and think about lives that are not my own, that I will never have the chance to live. That is one of the saddest, most awful thoughts in my world. That I have only one life to live, and I can not go through all lives, because I'm limited by this mortal body and mind.

Because I was that kid who wanted to know everything, and when I learned how impossible that would be, I cried for it.

I talk about my character as if he were flesh and blood in the waking world. Because he is very real to me, and I don't think that is something bad. He's vivid, like van Gogh sunflowers and roses, and creating an internal dialogue is just part of the process. You can't tell me writers and artists don't have some attachment to the things they create. It may be on a smaller scale, but it's similar. He may have a name decided by someone else, but in my head, this voice is mine.

All that aside, he's had a rough day or so, and it's bleeding over into my headspace now. I think the profound tragedy of his life is that he lost a great love because he was so incapable of being mortal and frail. He's so wrapped up in this idea of control that he can't fathom a life in which he doesn't need to be that way. He sees a bit of it now, and he's on the edge of losing it all again. The thought kept going through my head tonight What use is it for me to be good, to be honest, to be noble when all it earns me is silence and pain? Why would I choose this now? and he's right. It's not something one wants to choose, all that. It's a bitter thing that the two times in his life he's done something noble, it has only brought him grief. I see him, standing on the beach in Greece, watching the water for hours under an overcast sky, the wind tangling his hair.

So I'm going to drive up and down the highway until I stop feeling so sad for a life that does not exist, that is not mine.

I'm sorry.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I know the feeling. But as one who went too far in, I want to say this:

Be careful.

The lure of leaving this for a life where the problems are more...exotic? manageable? less permanent? is tempting. Just be sure to remember where you begin and the character ends, it gets hard to live when you forget.

Well, given the nature of the game it is an easy line most all of the time. I tend to think he sticks in my head the way an exceptionally good story does. He is not me though, and I am not him. Thank god, because I wouldn't want to be that really.

But do not fear, I'm not likely to abandon the waking world for it. There are things I enjoy about my regular life far too much for that. Like ice cream and the DVD player. ;)

So many things I want to say. But. At the moment, I'm just going to hold you, while my boys wrap their arms around your boys and do the same.

I have this funny image of the mirrors in the upstairs bathroom at my grandparents' old house, where there were two mirrors across from each other and they would reflect an infinity of whatever stood between them.

I'll get out a polka record for you this evening. ;)

It doesn't happen every time, but every once in a while, I'll discover something in a character that'll cue into something that's personal for me, and in the process of exploring the character's reactions to other people, other situations, I'll simply find the character saying "No- not that. This." It'll stop being about simply going through the plot- or even the improvisational-style exercise of interacting with others- and become a discovery of sorts, a dialogue between you and them (I still miss my character from my last PBEM- a priest. I still miss his gentle, caring grief; his faith in humanity, his utter, pure belief, even in the most trying of circumstances.)

Quite so. I've seen that sort of thing before.

i love to game and still talk about a character that i haven't played in years as if i could call her on the phone.

good to know that there are others and that they all aren't 17 year old boys hiding in their parents' basement with a bag of cheetos and a 2-liter of mountain dew.

Mmm cheetos and mountain dew. But alas, no basements in Texas. ;)

we have basements here in the south east, they flood a lot (especially during monster downpours like we've been having). i'm actually going to start gaming in a once a month thing in raleigh, nc.

rpgs are fun. it lets me be one extreme part of myself, not the toned down, pg self that i have to be in the real world.

:-) Sometimes I think my friends look down on me for the things that are most me, and that can be pretty painful. Maybe it's because they don't understand. Regardless, you are so lucky to have such a rich and deep inner world.

T's mom was talking about a book she read about a woman who was paralysed for over a year. The only thing she could do was blink her eyes. What she wouldn't have given to have a mind like yours.

Thank you Miss Natalie. You are always very wise, and I am glad for it.

..witness my "grok me" post from Saturday.

I talk about my character as if he were flesh and blood in the waking world. Because he is very real to me, and I don't think that is something bad. He's vivid, like van Gogh sunflowers and roses, and creating an internal dialogue is just part of the process. You can't tell me writers and artists don't have some attachment to the things they create. It may be on a smaller scale, but it's similar. He may have a name decided by someone else, but in my head, this voice is mine.

*nod*
And I can't see anything wrong with that.
At. All.
The voice for the writer came from somewhere - it resonates with you - why shouldn't it be real for you?

Precisely.

And there's nothing in the air but sleet now! Ick. I want to skip work.

Prophetically spoken... :/

So glad you're ok.
*hug*

Damn. I knew I should have stayed home, and never taken the highway. Ugh.

*random wordless warmfuzzy thoughts*

rambling because it is five am

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