After Much Delay . . . Questions, Part the Third
It's only been weeks, but I do remember. A while back, when I offered to answer random questions, a few squeaked under the bar, and missed the second post by inches. Without further ado, here they are, in all their vaguely-embarrassing glory.
seferin thinks I have the answer: "Do you believe in "True love" vs someone you like and love?
"How do you know when you are in love?"
Well, as to the first, I used to believe in "true love." Now I'm not so sure. People want true love to exist, and I think it does, but it's not what most people think. Folks want to believe that the "perfect" love will come naturally, that it will require no effort on their part to either acquire or sustain it, and that's just painfully not true. Even if, at the beginning, things are effortless, the debt is always called in - there will always be hard times. And someone who expected love to be handed to them on a silver platter, self-sustaining and self-nurturing, will be sorely disappointed when the going gets tough. Someone who knew from the start that it's damned hard work will expect the rough parts, and is more likely to navigate them intact, if not with good grace.
Defining love for purposes of knowing that you're in it is tough, too. I mean, how do you know when you have a friend? How do you know who you can trust? It's a synthesis of too many things to describe. Love is chemistry, it's common ground, it's a wild longing, a heartsore wanting, a wacky chemical dance, it's everything. You just know, and odds are, if you have to ask if you're in love, you aren't, and probably never have been.
When you really love someone, you no more doubt it than you doubt that the feet you dance with are yours. You know you love someone when you don't have to ask that question. When that question ceases to have meaning because it no longer has any value - you don't need to ask it because you no longer need to concern yourself with whether or not you've found the "right one." You're happy as you are.
If you're thinking it all sounds like a bunch of Zen bullshit, you're right. It's very much like that. It's not mysterious, any more than any wholly unique sensation is mysterious. What it is, is impossible to describe to someone who has never felt it. Poets have written more bad doggerel trying to do so than it's healthy to think about, and even the best novelists barely scratch the surface.
I should also add, for honesty's sake, that love is scary as hell. If you aren't scared at first, it is either the most wonderful, comforting, warm-socks-and-tea kind of love in the world, or it isn't really love at all.
Everyone's favorite madbonnycaptain asks the sixty four billion dollar questions: "What kind of roleplaying do you like? Tabletop, live-action, interactive writing, sexual, all of the above? If there's one character (or more, for that matter) who first showed up in your mind because of a roleplaying game, and then stuck around until now and beyond, tell us about him (or her, or them), if you would?"
I prefer tabletop roleplaying, a modified version of the Chaosium rules system with an emphasis on character. I pretty much only play with Sargon anymore. I know. Dorktacular.
All of my daimōnes are roleplaying characters who have set up housekeeping, and they're available for comment pretty much 24/7 (barring this past nasty episode, which has all my creativity sunk, and my inner voices silenced, which is just plain terrifying).
There are, depending on the day, three primary and any number of secondary people passing in and out of the Bar of Lost Souls. They come and go. Most often present, based on the past year: Argent, Nick, Damon, and possibly Stormy, Judas, and/or Paladin/Doomsday.
Argent is the nurturing, creative one. Gentle, playful, hopeful, accepting, and forgiving; he is really the best part of human nature, the best part of my own. Somewhere between seventeen and thirtysomething (I played him at both ages). Wizard of some note. Sings extravagantly, can play piano like nobody's business. He's not all sweetness and light, he has a bit of a darker side; he is prone to manipulation, playing games that go too far, and spinning elaborate webs of lies which he regards as the utter truth (a trait he very much has in common with me). He falls in love very, very easily. Also lust - and his sexual identity has always been mercurial. He can develop a crush on anything and anyone. Argent is the one I call on when I have people problems that can't be solved with practicality or with force. He's often the one who comforts me when I'm feeling utterly bereft. He also pines, quite notoriously, for things that are lost, or were never had to begin with. Argent knows saudade, hiraeth. It gives him a total hard-on.
Nick is the gatekeeper to the subconscious, a harmless-looking gentleman with a left-leg limp and a deceptively friendly grin. Underneath that innocuous exterior, he's really the kind of asshole who drinks port, quotes Swinburne, and bangs your daughter, probably all at the same time. Ex-warlock, burnt himself out. As I mentioned, has a limp on the left side. I injured my left leg after I played him, so I share his limp, which is weird. Is forty-odd but acts older. There's something of Bluebeard about him. He's the most sexual of all my daimōnes, even moreso than Argent. All of my darkest desires live in Nick, all of those clotted black things I will never let myself express, never even hint at. He's been there, done that, come out the other side. A proficient warlock, he burnt himself out and spent years as a scratch. Though he's regained his mojo, he knows what it is to lose everything that you are, he knows how it feels to live an empty life with no seeming purpose. He's the one who shows me how to endure when life is too painful to bear. He's the voice of practicality, too. If I can't devise a solution to a problem, odds are good that Nick will have some idea how to fix it, or at least endure it. Also, moral dilemmas are his forté; the world is not black and white, it's all grey, and as someone who has always straddled the thin edge between both sides, he knows grey better than anyone. His sense of morality is not orthodox but it is absolute; some things he will not do, and betraying a friend or a confidence is one of them. He's been my primary daimōn for quite a while now, and now that most of my voices aren't talking to me, he's the one I miss the most. I'm still breathing because of Nick, so you should all thank him most kindly, if he's listening.
Damon is the injured soul questing eternally for redemption. A purpose-bred vampire hunter turned against his will into the thing he loathes most, he has devoted his existence to eradicating the very thing he has become. In his pursuit of this task he's created a great brotherhood of kindred souls, all working to preserve the light in the darkness. Damon quests eternally for the redemption he cannot have - even the holy sword he carries burns him. It does not stop him from yearning, and Damon's neverending quest for the numinous and divine, for unattainable forgiveness, is my own search for meaning in a world where I am damned simply for being what I am. Damon, too, knows saudade, but he possesses none of Argent's gentleness. Damon is a chilly bastard. Very all-or-nothing. Interestingly, he's the only one of my primary daimōnes who is not, himself, a magician or warlock; instead, he's prone to hunting and killing them. He's useful for solving problems that will require painful decisions, or when working with moral absolutes. Damon insists the world is black and white, and yes, sometimes being able to see things that way is a valuable trait. He and Nick are . . . not always friends. His specialty is iron-clad, unyielding righteousness, even in the face of proof that he is wrong. He's also good at denial.
Stormy is usually my only female daimōn, and is Argent's descendant. She's a witch, naturally, and is quite confident, practical, and intelligent. I go to her when I have people questions that require long-term answers. She knows the value of everything and everyone, and is very calculating. She's not as warm as Argent, not as coolly experienced as Nick, not as driven as Damon. She's the most businesslike of all of them, and of the lot, she's the one I think would do the best in the "real" world. Her specialty is illusions and enchantments, which should tell you right away that she is a creature of carefully maintained façades. She's well-developed, but doesn't speak up often. A primary, but only by the skin of her teeth.
Judas is a broken wing, the lost puppy who just wants love, but who can't stand being loved. Orphaned warlock with nobody to turn to, and a strong streak of black magic running through him. Not necessarily a nice guy - self-serving and always looking out for number one. Also, powerfully sexual; right up there with Nick for being the most sexual, but in reverse: for lack of more accurate terms, Nick is a die-hard dominant, interested in the subtleties of wielding power. Judas is a very strong-spirited submissive who finds his strength in finding the limits of what he can handle. Nick's into pain - other folks'. Judas is into pain, too - his own. Like Argent, his gender boundaries are a little ill-defined. Judas isn't nurturing or playful at all, though. He's pushy, demanding, and generally speaking dead serious. He's my intensely emotional, brooding side. Not well-developed enough to be a primary for sure.
Paladin/Doomsday is the villain turned hero who isn't even sure whether he's good or evil any longer - good for playing devil's advocate on any given position. Damon hates him, so naturally Nick thinks he's all right. He has a great deal in common with Stormy, though they'd both find that thought ridiculous. He doesn't really understand Argent, but Argent is fascinated by him. He thinks Judas has potential (there's some overlap there; they are in some ways quite similar). Again, not that well-developed, but definitely present. He's the one who turned Salt Lake City into a glass parking lot, by the way, and razed Mt. Rushmore.
I feel like a dork-ass for having such . . . chatty characters, for genuinely caring about them. I'm a grown woman, for the love of god, but I've always, always been this way, for as long as I can remember. It's clearly an indelible feature of my inner world.
Except, you know, when it's totally . . . err . . . delible. As I said, lately it's been awfully quiet in there. I miss them.
I'd complain about this more, but I don't really think my doctor or therapist would understand that I only start to think I'm going crazy when I don't hear voices.*
And from the non-LJ-enabled sister:
"You die, and realize with delight that your consciousness has survived the ordeal in a pure form, unriddled by physical limitations. However, by some metaphysical miracle it is sent to a holding place remarkably like earthly life, in which you are temporarily incarnated. (Limbo maybe?) Now, describe, if you will, what your version of heaven would be under those circumstances, and even more interestingly, hell. You will retain your sense of self in both cases, as well as remember your former life. You will have access (or not) to people living and dead you once knew. Discuss."
Frankly, I would also want access to people who never existed in the first place. I almost know more worthwhile imaginary folks than I know "real" ones. See above.
If it were truly heaven, I imagine I'd "live" very much the way I'd ideally like to live in real life: in a really badass manor house far removed from everything and everyone else, with occasional jaunts outside to see friends or whatnot. An important part of heaven for me would be the ability to watch the suffering of those I hated in life so that I could enjoy their misery. I wouldn't need to be instrumental in their suffering, but that would be a pleasant bonus. The ability to return to earth at will as some sort of guardian or guiding spirit would be a bonus, since I rather doubt that I'd stop caring about people when I died, and it would be interesting to see whether I could alter events for the better.
Of course, I'd have no fixed shape and could assume at will the semblance of any person or creature I desired. I've always wanted to be able to do that.
For hell, I can't imagine it as being anything other than junior high all over again: constant harassment and cruelty from everyone, paired with depression, panic, and a blistering case of self-loathing. Top that off with helplessness and random violence interspersed with seemingly endless periods of boredom.
Yes, seventh and eighth grade were hell, as far as I am concerned.
I owed you guys the responses. They've been written for a while now; sorry it took me so long to remember to post them.
* Which isn't all that unusual or harmful, as it turns out.
seferin thinks I have the answer: "Do you believe in "True love" vs someone you like and love?
"How do you know when you are in love?"
Well, as to the first, I used to believe in "true love." Now I'm not so sure. People want true love to exist, and I think it does, but it's not what most people think. Folks want to believe that the "perfect" love will come naturally, that it will require no effort on their part to either acquire or sustain it, and that's just painfully not true. Even if, at the beginning, things are effortless, the debt is always called in - there will always be hard times. And someone who expected love to be handed to them on a silver platter, self-sustaining and self-nurturing, will be sorely disappointed when the going gets tough. Someone who knew from the start that it's damned hard work will expect the rough parts, and is more likely to navigate them intact, if not with good grace.
Defining love for purposes of knowing that you're in it is tough, too. I mean, how do you know when you have a friend? How do you know who you can trust? It's a synthesis of too many things to describe. Love is chemistry, it's common ground, it's a wild longing, a heartsore wanting, a wacky chemical dance, it's everything. You just know, and odds are, if you have to ask if you're in love, you aren't, and probably never have been.
When you really love someone, you no more doubt it than you doubt that the feet you dance with are yours. You know you love someone when you don't have to ask that question. When that question ceases to have meaning because it no longer has any value - you don't need to ask it because you no longer need to concern yourself with whether or not you've found the "right one." You're happy as you are.
If you're thinking it all sounds like a bunch of Zen bullshit, you're right. It's very much like that. It's not mysterious, any more than any wholly unique sensation is mysterious. What it is, is impossible to describe to someone who has never felt it. Poets have written more bad doggerel trying to do so than it's healthy to think about, and even the best novelists barely scratch the surface.
I should also add, for honesty's sake, that love is scary as hell. If you aren't scared at first, it is either the most wonderful, comforting, warm-socks-and-tea kind of love in the world, or it isn't really love at all.
Everyone's favorite madbonnycaptain asks the sixty four billion dollar questions: "What kind of roleplaying do you like? Tabletop, live-action, interactive writing, sexual, all of the above? If there's one character (or more, for that matter) who first showed up in your mind because of a roleplaying game, and then stuck around until now and beyond, tell us about him (or her, or them), if you would?"
I prefer tabletop roleplaying, a modified version of the Chaosium rules system with an emphasis on character. I pretty much only play with Sargon anymore. I know. Dorktacular.
All of my daimōnes are roleplaying characters who have set up housekeeping, and they're available for comment pretty much 24/7 (barring this past nasty episode, which has all my creativity sunk, and my inner voices silenced, which is just plain terrifying).
There are, depending on the day, three primary and any number of secondary people passing in and out of the Bar of Lost Souls. They come and go. Most often present, based on the past year: Argent, Nick, Damon, and possibly Stormy, Judas, and/or Paladin/Doomsday.
Argent is the nurturing, creative one. Gentle, playful, hopeful, accepting, and forgiving; he is really the best part of human nature, the best part of my own. Somewhere between seventeen and thirtysomething (I played him at both ages). Wizard of some note. Sings extravagantly, can play piano like nobody's business. He's not all sweetness and light, he has a bit of a darker side; he is prone to manipulation, playing games that go too far, and spinning elaborate webs of lies which he regards as the utter truth (a trait he very much has in common with me). He falls in love very, very easily. Also lust - and his sexual identity has always been mercurial. He can develop a crush on anything and anyone. Argent is the one I call on when I have people problems that can't be solved with practicality or with force. He's often the one who comforts me when I'm feeling utterly bereft. He also pines, quite notoriously, for things that are lost, or were never had to begin with. Argent knows saudade, hiraeth. It gives him a total hard-on.
Nick is the gatekeeper to the subconscious, a harmless-looking gentleman with a left-leg limp and a deceptively friendly grin. Underneath that innocuous exterior, he's really the kind of asshole who drinks port, quotes Swinburne, and bangs your daughter, probably all at the same time. Ex-warlock, burnt himself out. As I mentioned, has a limp on the left side. I injured my left leg after I played him, so I share his limp, which is weird. Is forty-odd but acts older. There's something of Bluebeard about him. He's the most sexual of all my daimōnes, even moreso than Argent. All of my darkest desires live in Nick, all of those clotted black things I will never let myself express, never even hint at. He's been there, done that, come out the other side. A proficient warlock, he burnt himself out and spent years as a scratch. Though he's regained his mojo, he knows what it is to lose everything that you are, he knows how it feels to live an empty life with no seeming purpose. He's the one who shows me how to endure when life is too painful to bear. He's the voice of practicality, too. If I can't devise a solution to a problem, odds are good that Nick will have some idea how to fix it, or at least endure it. Also, moral dilemmas are his forté; the world is not black and white, it's all grey, and as someone who has always straddled the thin edge between both sides, he knows grey better than anyone. His sense of morality is not orthodox but it is absolute; some things he will not do, and betraying a friend or a confidence is one of them. He's been my primary daimōn for quite a while now, and now that most of my voices aren't talking to me, he's the one I miss the most. I'm still breathing because of Nick, so you should all thank him most kindly, if he's listening.
Damon is the injured soul questing eternally for redemption. A purpose-bred vampire hunter turned against his will into the thing he loathes most, he has devoted his existence to eradicating the very thing he has become. In his pursuit of this task he's created a great brotherhood of kindred souls, all working to preserve the light in the darkness. Damon quests eternally for the redemption he cannot have - even the holy sword he carries burns him. It does not stop him from yearning, and Damon's neverending quest for the numinous and divine, for unattainable forgiveness, is my own search for meaning in a world where I am damned simply for being what I am. Damon, too, knows saudade, but he possesses none of Argent's gentleness. Damon is a chilly bastard. Very all-or-nothing. Interestingly, he's the only one of my primary daimōnes who is not, himself, a magician or warlock; instead, he's prone to hunting and killing them. He's useful for solving problems that will require painful decisions, or when working with moral absolutes. Damon insists the world is black and white, and yes, sometimes being able to see things that way is a valuable trait. He and Nick are . . . not always friends. His specialty is iron-clad, unyielding righteousness, even in the face of proof that he is wrong. He's also good at denial.
Stormy is usually my only female daimōn, and is Argent's descendant. She's a witch, naturally, and is quite confident, practical, and intelligent. I go to her when I have people questions that require long-term answers. She knows the value of everything and everyone, and is very calculating. She's not as warm as Argent, not as coolly experienced as Nick, not as driven as Damon. She's the most businesslike of all of them, and of the lot, she's the one I think would do the best in the "real" world. Her specialty is illusions and enchantments, which should tell you right away that she is a creature of carefully maintained façades. She's well-developed, but doesn't speak up often. A primary, but only by the skin of her teeth.
Judas is a broken wing, the lost puppy who just wants love, but who can't stand being loved. Orphaned warlock with nobody to turn to, and a strong streak of black magic running through him. Not necessarily a nice guy - self-serving and always looking out for number one. Also, powerfully sexual; right up there with Nick for being the most sexual, but in reverse: for lack of more accurate terms, Nick is a die-hard dominant, interested in the subtleties of wielding power. Judas is a very strong-spirited submissive who finds his strength in finding the limits of what he can handle. Nick's into pain - other folks'. Judas is into pain, too - his own. Like Argent, his gender boundaries are a little ill-defined. Judas isn't nurturing or playful at all, though. He's pushy, demanding, and generally speaking dead serious. He's my intensely emotional, brooding side. Not well-developed enough to be a primary for sure.
Paladin/Doomsday is the villain turned hero who isn't even sure whether he's good or evil any longer - good for playing devil's advocate on any given position. Damon hates him, so naturally Nick thinks he's all right. He has a great deal in common with Stormy, though they'd both find that thought ridiculous. He doesn't really understand Argent, but Argent is fascinated by him. He thinks Judas has potential (there's some overlap there; they are in some ways quite similar). Again, not that well-developed, but definitely present. He's the one who turned Salt Lake City into a glass parking lot, by the way, and razed Mt. Rushmore.
I feel like a dork-ass for having such . . . chatty characters, for genuinely caring about them. I'm a grown woman, for the love of god, but I've always, always been this way, for as long as I can remember. It's clearly an indelible feature of my inner world.
Except, you know, when it's totally . . . err . . . delible. As I said, lately it's been awfully quiet in there. I miss them.
I'd complain about this more, but I don't really think my doctor or therapist would understand that I only start to think I'm going crazy when I don't hear voices.*
And from the non-LJ-enabled sister:
"You die, and realize with delight that your consciousness has survived the ordeal in a pure form, unriddled by physical limitations. However, by some metaphysical miracle it is sent to a holding place remarkably like earthly life, in which you are temporarily incarnated. (Limbo maybe?) Now, describe, if you will, what your version of heaven would be under those circumstances, and even more interestingly, hell. You will retain your sense of self in both cases, as well as remember your former life. You will have access (or not) to people living and dead you once knew. Discuss."
Frankly, I would also want access to people who never existed in the first place. I almost know more worthwhile imaginary folks than I know "real" ones. See above.
If it were truly heaven, I imagine I'd "live" very much the way I'd ideally like to live in real life: in a really badass manor house far removed from everything and everyone else, with occasional jaunts outside to see friends or whatnot. An important part of heaven for me would be the ability to watch the suffering of those I hated in life so that I could enjoy their misery. I wouldn't need to be instrumental in their suffering, but that would be a pleasant bonus. The ability to return to earth at will as some sort of guardian or guiding spirit would be a bonus, since I rather doubt that I'd stop caring about people when I died, and it would be interesting to see whether I could alter events for the better.
Of course, I'd have no fixed shape and could assume at will the semblance of any person or creature I desired. I've always wanted to be able to do that.
For hell, I can't imagine it as being anything other than junior high all over again: constant harassment and cruelty from everyone, paired with depression, panic, and a blistering case of self-loathing. Top that off with helplessness and random violence interspersed with seemingly endless periods of boredom.
Yes, seventh and eighth grade were hell, as far as I am concerned.
I owed you guys the responses. They've been written for a while now; sorry it took me so long to remember to post them.
* Which isn't all that unusual or harmful, as it turns out.