Excuse me while I muse philosophically and somewhat creepily.
As a young child, I was exposed to radiation.
This was no damaging radiation, it should be noted - in fact, this radiation was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. It got me hooked on the most pervasive sort of drug; the sort of drug that, unless you're dragged into starting another one, you can't ever give up. This is the sort of drug that you wish everyone were on, just because it would make the world a better place, and if you're a hardcore addict, you wish that you could deal this drug. But it takes a certain kind of person to craft it; if you happen to be that type of person, then you have the chance to expose a new generation to the very same radiation that got you addicted on this drug in the first place.
Confusing? Probably. Cryptic? Yes. What am I talking about?
I'm talking about literature.
Writing and reading, to me, is as wonderful and devastating as cocaine can be. Those of us who take it regularly worship it and hate it at the same time - after all, how many of us have been able to live peacefully when there's a new book out that we really, really, really want? Yet, when we get our hands on that book and open it - yes. This is what I wanted. This is what I was looking for.
We get high on the words on the page. This is our favorite trip, for us word-addicts, the feeling of falling through into a world that is disconnected from our own. Sometimes the drug is made incorrectly, and when that happens we get sick and we swear it off for a while, but it always draws us back - insipid and sweet-tongued, literature will always call to us until we go back to it. We're helpless in its grasp.
Those who don't understand the word-addiction will look down on us, scoffing and disgusted. To them, we're like the bone-faced meth-women who haunt street corners - we're creatures to be pitied. No one can help us because we don't want to be helped. Don't they see what's happening to them? they say to each other, behind their cupped hands, don't they see how it's destroying them from the inside?
We ignore them, lost in our own drug-fueled adventures. They don't understand; the word-addiction could never hook them.
Yet there can be no drug without a supplier, and there are those of us who take the task upon us - we craft each word carefully, extracting its power from it, ensuring the maximum high for our fellow addicts. The crafters of the literature drug are a peculiar sort; their own words stone them, almost as much as the words made and published by others. Maybe it's not in our best interest for such intoxicates to make for us our own bitter drug, but we take what they give us, and it seems through the haze of their own high their crafted words intensify until we're floating, floating, on the words they've given us.
We all have preferences, of course - a nip of fantasy might not be our taste, so we take a cup or two of sci-fi until we're flying high on the worlds they've created. Or perhaps realistic fiction is for us. All genres, all of our addictions, are there for the finding.
We flock to communities like runaway_tales, or tamingthemuse. These places hold copious amounts of our various addictions, ready for the taking - we don't need to pay, we don't need to beg, we only need to love. There's the high without the cost, the giddy dope of words given to us for free, at the cost of only a few sentences describing how intoxicating these words are to us. They need our love; we need their words. It seems to us a fair exchange.
Roleplay is a new type of drug. It is the addiction to words, to be sure, but it is the addiction to others' words and your own - unlike books, you do not know what happens in the end. The words change on you, unexpected and unplanned-for, and the panicked scrambling to reforge your own words is what shoots you into the upper atmosphere. This is supplier and junkie at its finest, a dizzy swirl of taking and giving so intense that the characters forged to play the game are sometimes more wonderful and strange than the game itself.
There are downfalls to the roleplay drug. You've seen them; perhaps you've been one - the player without a reply, left hanging without a way to sate your need. These are the wordfiends with their drug jerked away from them like a bullied child's toy; sometimes, most of the time, they move on, find another person to play the give-and-take game with. But the worry is always there; they will take it away from me again.
Those of this type who have become crafters... they are the worst, the most pathetic of this type of fanatic. They become paranoid with the fear that their words will never be replied to. They are struck with terror when their words do not recieve instant feedback. Sometimes the loss of immediate notice shuns them from the word-addiction altogether, until they become ex-lovers of the word. They move on to less benign addictions. They read the words as they used to, but with less love, less passion for the letters on the page. It's never the same for them.
Literature is not an unkind drug. I'm a happy addict; for me, the only fall is once the book is done, once the piece is finished, once I am waiting for the next installment. I need my fix when the words have passed. I can stave off the burn with music, song, writing myself - but there's no denying what I need.
I always go back to the books. In that way it's like a drug. The word-addiction is persuasive and doesn't want to set its followers free. The oldest literature is my cocaine; like fine wine, it grows stronger as it ages.
My goal in life is to bring this addiction to those who don't know it. I'm an amateur crafter, yes; I do not yet know how to make the words dance, draw in those who knew little of the word-addiction before. But as I'm sure drug-makers do, I intend to get better with practice.
Perhaps the word-addiction is invasive. After all, who asked the crafters to inflict their personal worlds on them? And perhaps, like other real drugs, it should be outlawed.
But the most pervasive, most terrifying part of the word-addiction is this - they always stay with you. Burn all the copies; there was still a Romeo and his doomed Juliet. Throw the books into the ocean; Harry Potter still killed Voldemort. Destroy the files; a long time ago, a princess still let down her hair.
but alice was a fool and ventured out of wonderland; and that's how our story begins.
This was no damaging radiation, it should be noted - in fact, this radiation was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. It got me hooked on the most pervasive sort of drug; the sort of drug that, unless you're dragged into starting another one, you can't ever give up. This is the sort of drug that you wish everyone were on, just because it would make the world a better place, and if you're a hardcore addict, you wish that you could deal this drug. But it takes a certain kind of person to craft it; if you happen to be that type of person, then you have the chance to expose a new generation to the very same radiation that got you addicted on this drug in the first place.
Confusing? Probably. Cryptic? Yes. What am I talking about?
I'm talking about literature.
Writing and reading, to me, is as wonderful and devastating as cocaine can be. Those of us who take it regularly worship it and hate it at the same time - after all, how many of us have been able to live peacefully when there's a new book out that we really, really, really want? Yet, when we get our hands on that book and open it - yes. This is what I wanted. This is what I was looking for.
We get high on the words on the page. This is our favorite trip, for us word-addicts, the feeling of falling through into a world that is disconnected from our own. Sometimes the drug is made incorrectly, and when that happens we get sick and we swear it off for a while, but it always draws us back - insipid and sweet-tongued, literature will always call to us until we go back to it. We're helpless in its grasp.
Those who don't understand the word-addiction will look down on us, scoffing and disgusted. To them, we're like the bone-faced meth-women who haunt street corners - we're creatures to be pitied. No one can help us because we don't want to be helped. Don't they see what's happening to them? they say to each other, behind their cupped hands, don't they see how it's destroying them from the inside?
We ignore them, lost in our own drug-fueled adventures. They don't understand; the word-addiction could never hook them.
Yet there can be no drug without a supplier, and there are those of us who take the task upon us - we craft each word carefully, extracting its power from it, ensuring the maximum high for our fellow addicts. The crafters of the literature drug are a peculiar sort; their own words stone them, almost as much as the words made and published by others. Maybe it's not in our best interest for such intoxicates to make for us our own bitter drug, but we take what they give us, and it seems through the haze of their own high their crafted words intensify until we're floating, floating, on the words they've given us.
We all have preferences, of course - a nip of fantasy might not be our taste, so we take a cup or two of sci-fi until we're flying high on the worlds they've created. Or perhaps realistic fiction is for us. All genres, all of our addictions, are there for the finding.
We flock to communities like runaway_tales, or tamingthemuse. These places hold copious amounts of our various addictions, ready for the taking - we don't need to pay, we don't need to beg, we only need to love. There's the high without the cost, the giddy dope of words given to us for free, at the cost of only a few sentences describing how intoxicating these words are to us. They need our love; we need their words. It seems to us a fair exchange.
Roleplay is a new type of drug. It is the addiction to words, to be sure, but it is the addiction to others' words and your own - unlike books, you do not know what happens in the end. The words change on you, unexpected and unplanned-for, and the panicked scrambling to reforge your own words is what shoots you into the upper atmosphere. This is supplier and junkie at its finest, a dizzy swirl of taking and giving so intense that the characters forged to play the game are sometimes more wonderful and strange than the game itself.
There are downfalls to the roleplay drug. You've seen them; perhaps you've been one - the player without a reply, left hanging without a way to sate your need. These are the wordfiends with their drug jerked away from them like a bullied child's toy; sometimes, most of the time, they move on, find another person to play the give-and-take game with. But the worry is always there; they will take it away from me again.
Those of this type who have become crafters... they are the worst, the most pathetic of this type of fanatic. They become paranoid with the fear that their words will never be replied to. They are struck with terror when their words do not recieve instant feedback. Sometimes the loss of immediate notice shuns them from the word-addiction altogether, until they become ex-lovers of the word. They move on to less benign addictions. They read the words as they used to, but with less love, less passion for the letters on the page. It's never the same for them.
Literature is not an unkind drug. I'm a happy addict; for me, the only fall is once the book is done, once the piece is finished, once I am waiting for the next installment. I need my fix when the words have passed. I can stave off the burn with music, song, writing myself - but there's no denying what I need.
I always go back to the books. In that way it's like a drug. The word-addiction is persuasive and doesn't want to set its followers free. The oldest literature is my cocaine; like fine wine, it grows stronger as it ages.
My goal in life is to bring this addiction to those who don't know it. I'm an amateur crafter, yes; I do not yet know how to make the words dance, draw in those who knew little of the word-addiction before. But as I'm sure drug-makers do, I intend to get better with practice.
Perhaps the word-addiction is invasive. After all, who asked the crafters to inflict their personal worlds on them? And perhaps, like other real drugs, it should be outlawed.
But the most pervasive, most terrifying part of the word-addiction is this - they always stay with you. Burn all the copies; there was still a Romeo and his doomed Juliet. Throw the books into the ocean; Harry Potter still killed Voldemort. Destroy the files; a long time ago, a princess still let down her hair.
but alice was a fool and ventured out of wonderland; and that's how our story begins.