And if you're a miracle, I am the madman...
So I'm having to deal with bleedover liek whoa today -- for those who don't now, I roleplay quite a bit, and one of my flagship characters at Beyond the Rift is a pre-canon Suzie Costello from Torchwood. Since she hasn't dealt with the Resurrection Gauntlet yet, she's comparatively sane, but she's still got a boatload of issues, and the fact that everyone she used to know remembers her going mad and betraying Torchwood doesn't help.
Now, allfireburns plays Toshiko Sato, and since we both ship Suzie/Tosh, the fact that Suzie and Tosh were once in love became part of their backstories. But now that Suzie's there, it's bringing up a lot of the old heartache and betrayal. Despite that, they're still in love with each other. Things are messy.
They've been doing a slowtimed thread for about a month now, and it went from awkward and somewhat adorable to absolutely heartbreaking, especially since Suzie is not accepting Tosh's insistence that things are fine when she's obviously miserable. (Suzie isn't the most patient of women, especially when people she loves are hurting themselves.)
So... things kind of exploded. Especially since, while Suzie hates what she would've done, and was horrified to learn just how far her paranoia would have taken her, she can see exactly how she would've justified it. And she's admitting to that, painful as it is. Just because she never did those things, it doesn't make her any less the person who would have, under those circumstances.
If I'm writing or roleplaying a character, it's usually because they have a strong presence in my head. Original or existing fandom characters, it really doesn't matter. It's why I write in the first place... I don't so much come up with ideas as people show up and start sharing bits of their lives with me, and I turn those bits into stories. I'm sure to most non-writer folk, this kind of thing sounds really weird and makes people doubt my sanity. However, quite a few pro writers have admitted to writing in pretty much the same way, so if this is part of my nonstandard brain wiring, at least I'm in excellent company. (Except for Anne Rice -- that woman's pretty high on the weirdness scale even for writers with headvoices. None of the characters I type for have ever felt the need to write letters of protest about local restaurants and have them published in newspapers. Nor have I ever turned down suggestions made by people looking over my work because the character insists things happened a certain way -- I'm a storyteller, and the point is always to tell a good story, first and foremost.)
Anyway. The Suzie bleedover's been kind of a bitch, which always happens when I hit a deeply emotional writing groove. Thus, me listening to Charlotte Martin's "Madman" over and over again.
Madman [Charlotte Martin] (YouTube)
I woke up this morning, in my head I started roaming
Now nothing's right, nothing's right
Don't remember being born, don't know why we're being torn
Now nothing's right, nothing's right
I open up my mouth just to let the demon shout
'Bout my dirty little schemes, that the wettest of my dreams are you
Nothing's right, nothing's right
Over and over I'm feeling the same old loneliness
And under me, under me feeling the madman
I'm breaking off a piece of what's left of what was me
But it feels all right, it feels all right
I'm laying on your road 'cause I thought that it might hold
It feels all right, feels all right
Do I wanna take a bet, is this as good as it'll get?
And I cannot get away from the comfortable, familiar chains
Nothing's right, nothing's right
Over and over I'm feeling the same old loneliness
And under me, under me feeling the madman
Over and over it's chilling, the things I've let you miss
And if you're a miracle, I am the madman
And I'm sorry I didn't build your walls and
I'm sorry I had to go and fall and
I'm sorry I had the whole thing wrong and
Well I guess I'm the sorriest of all
And I'm sorry that you are feeling small and
I'm sorry that I'm not used to crawling
I'm sorry the writing's on the wall and
Well I guess I'm the sorriest
I guess I'm the sorriest of all
I woke up this morning and my head, it started roaming
Now nothing's right, nothing's right
Don't remember being born, don't know why we're being torn
Now nothing's right, nothing's right
You said you don't identify with my sort of petrified outlook
On the pride that I've managed to ignore so long
Nothing's right
Nothing's right
Nothing's right
Nothing's right
But it seems all right
...Yeah, that sound was my heart breaking into a thousand pieces.
Now, allfireburns plays Toshiko Sato, and since we both ship Suzie/Tosh, the fact that Suzie and Tosh were once in love became part of their backstories. But now that Suzie's there, it's bringing up a lot of the old heartache and betrayal. Despite that, they're still in love with each other. Things are messy.
They've been doing a slowtimed thread for about a month now, and it went from awkward and somewhat adorable to absolutely heartbreaking, especially since Suzie is not accepting Tosh's insistence that things are fine when she's obviously miserable. (Suzie isn't the most patient of women, especially when people she loves are hurting themselves.)
So... things kind of exploded. Especially since, while Suzie hates what she would've done, and was horrified to learn just how far her paranoia would have taken her, she can see exactly how she would've justified it. And she's admitting to that, painful as it is. Just because she never did those things, it doesn't make her any less the person who would have, under those circumstances.
If I'm writing or roleplaying a character, it's usually because they have a strong presence in my head. Original or existing fandom characters, it really doesn't matter. It's why I write in the first place... I don't so much come up with ideas as people show up and start sharing bits of their lives with me, and I turn those bits into stories. I'm sure to most non-writer folk, this kind of thing sounds really weird and makes people doubt my sanity. However, quite a few pro writers have admitted to writing in pretty much the same way, so if this is part of my nonstandard brain wiring, at least I'm in excellent company. (Except for Anne Rice -- that woman's pretty high on the weirdness scale even for writers with headvoices. None of the characters I type for have ever felt the need to write letters of protest about local restaurants and have them published in newspapers. Nor have I ever turned down suggestions made by people looking over my work because the character insists things happened a certain way -- I'm a storyteller, and the point is always to tell a good story, first and foremost.)
Anyway. The Suzie bleedover's been kind of a bitch, which always happens when I hit a deeply emotional writing groove. Thus, me listening to Charlotte Martin's "Madman" over and over again.
Madman [Charlotte Martin] (YouTube)
I woke up this morning, in my head I started roaming
Now nothing's right, nothing's right
Don't remember being born, don't know why we're being torn
Now nothing's right, nothing's right
I open up my mouth just to let the demon shout
'Bout my dirty little schemes, that the wettest of my dreams are you
Nothing's right, nothing's right
Over and over I'm feeling the same old loneliness
And under me, under me feeling the madman
I'm breaking off a piece of what's left of what was me
But it feels all right, it feels all right
I'm laying on your road 'cause I thought that it might hold
It feels all right, feels all right
Do I wanna take a bet, is this as good as it'll get?
And I cannot get away from the comfortable, familiar chains
Nothing's right, nothing's right
Over and over I'm feeling the same old loneliness
And under me, under me feeling the madman
Over and over it's chilling, the things I've let you miss
And if you're a miracle, I am the madman
And I'm sorry I didn't build your walls and
I'm sorry I had to go and fall and
I'm sorry I had the whole thing wrong and
Well I guess I'm the sorriest of all
And I'm sorry that you are feeling small and
I'm sorry that I'm not used to crawling
I'm sorry the writing's on the wall and
Well I guess I'm the sorriest
I guess I'm the sorriest of all
I woke up this morning and my head, it started roaming
Now nothing's right, nothing's right
Don't remember being born, don't know why we're being torn
Now nothing's right, nothing's right
You said you don't identify with my sort of petrified outlook
On the pride that I've managed to ignore so long
Nothing's right
Nothing's right
Nothing's right
Nothing's right
But it seems all right
...Yeah, that sound was my heart breaking into a thousand pieces.