Last night was interesting: I tried, for the first time in a long time, to remind myself to dream, and to remember my dreams. Of late I’ve only been remembering bits and pieces here and there, though what I have remembered has been short and vivid.
So I reminded myself, set myself a goal to do this.
And it somewhat worked out. Congratulations. Next thing you know I’ll be kicking Freddy Kurger’s ass around.
For one I remember being in a control room, handing out advice and help where I could. The other one, part of it took place on a road in the town where I grew up, and part of it involved being on a train with someone and getting off at the wrong stop, but no one would believe that we were where we were suppose to be . . . it’s a dream, remember? Oh, and a lot of the motif seemed right out of some strange Art Deco world.
Now, once more, an interesting face: everyone in the dream other than me were women. There wasn’t a guy in sight. Once more, ramp down the idea that I’m having some strange little party going on in my head where I’m the only guy in a world of good looking women. Not like that. In the first I was sort of like the friendly guy who helps out with everything, and in the second . . . well, I was traveling with someone I know. Not a kinky feeling or sex toy in sight, just straight up being nice.
Very strange to go there, or so it feels. I’m going to keep trying this, see what happens. And you know, I might just get a good story out of one of these suckers.
Yesterday was more world building, and when it comes to figuring out how magic works–oi! I know it’s been done before, but I have to, have to know how it works in the story I’m doing for NaNaWrtMo. There is a certain elegance to world building, because it allows you to really fine tune things considerably. I know that some writers just go lazy on you, start making up shit from the start and then when things seem like they’re going pear shaped, they give you the, “It’s all supernatural, dude” line like that should be cool, don’t worry.
I guess it’s the old programmer in me that says, “Hey, this has to make sense, there has to be some internal logic to the story, if a person is called a sorceress instead of a witch, there has to be a reason.” And there is in my story, which means I have to work into the natural order of things why she’s a sorceress and not just a witch . . . Yeah, really, it’s a lot of fun when it comes right down to it, because you have to work that brain of yours, you have to get the imagination rolling, you need to work that brain the say way you should be working out at the gym instead of typing away at the computer. (Yeah, like that’s going to happen.)
Yesterday saw something else: I jumped back into the role playing game that I’d started a while back. Between all the writing I’ve done and various other things, it seemed like myself and the friend I play with had to step back for a while and regroup. The total time away was almost a month, and once we got back into it, everything seemed to flow smoothly–although my friend stated that she thought her character has “changed” while we were away . . . It seemed her character had gotten a little more relaxed, a bit less stressed out over the way things were going.
This isn’t a bad thing, mind you. You step away for any period of time from a game character and start looking at them, and then start looking at how you play them . . . and then start looking at your life, and suddenly you began to get a different feel not just for them, but for everything.
A lot of times a person will come back and go, “Fuck it; I can’t play this character any more,” because they feel as if they’ve hit the wall and discovered that if they keep playing they’re going to turn into a psychopathic killer who can only love a person they know they’ll end up disemboweling with a garden trowel (and in some games this is pretty much a standard life path), but with my friend that’s not the case. We both know where her character and my character are headed (hint: it will involve a white dress and babies), so there’s no need to think about a huge amount of gaming drama. It’s just that–suddenly her character let something slip away, and she not only noticed it, but I noticed it as well.
I feel, if you were to put it in some type of gaming vernacular, it happened at the right time. Our characters were with a group of people–fellow students and the instructor–and we were relaxing after what could be described as a grueling class. But the mood was cordial; the discussion wasn’t about what we’d just did, it was about ancillary things, about things people enjoyed, a little about the school . . . it was about us. And with the examination of the character, I feel it fits well that all of a sudden, BAM! She relaxed and develops something of a new outlook.
So there is more gaming to come, more to our character’s stories. Eventually we’ll get older, we’ll begin to see things with the eyes not of children but of young adults . . . hey, who are we kidding? We both know where they are going, and what is going to happen to them during the next few years.
The story of their lives is there; all that remains is the writing.
