Epiphanies of Inspiration
January, 2000

I'm sure most people have had a profound moment in their life, a time when they suddenly realized a truth about their life. Offhand, I can come up with two that helped influence this page.

First came some time in '98 (knowledge that comes from buying books as they come out ;), when I was reading the last few pages of the X-Men & Spiderman, Time's Arrow Trilogy, Book 2: The Present. Quite a mouthful, neh? Comic books are one of my weirder weaknesses, even though this was a novel, and I love reading about the X-Men. Go figure. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!! Anyway, to trim down to minimum details, in an alternate universe, the X-Men were evil and rounded up as many mutants/superhumans/whatever as they could catch and squirreled them away in suspended animation, including Professor X. As you might guess, by the end of the book, the resistance forces (led by Magneto. Surprised? I thought not) have broken the generators that kept them frozen and now they are escaping. The whole escape scene took about 4 pages. It was mostly names of heroes, villains, and plain weirdoes in funky spandex as they flew, climbed, or whatever out of an old, gigantic silo to fight. But I got shivers down my spine. It probably almost qualifies as a spiritual realization.

It certainly doesn't make any sense. Super powered vigilantes in an impossible world, and I'm getting chills? But I was. I had to stop reading to just absorb this. A few months later, when the sequel came out, I devoured it ASAP. There were about 10 more pages to conclude the fight. The X-Men were royally whipped, and about 5 minutes later, the entire universe was destroyed. That got me so pissed off. The destruction of the universe, not that the X-Men lost.

But the emotion these two short scenes called up was amazing. I mean, come on. Getting emotional over comic book characters, American icons or not? It's silly. But nevertheless, I was getting emotional.

And I wanted to do that so bad. I realized I wanted to get people to laugh, to cry, to feel for silly people that only exist in my imagination and on the computer screen.

That is why I write. Forget deeper meanings of life, I wanna make people spontaneously laugh when somthing triggers a memory of the story, or hate me for killing off a particular character. I don't care what the reaction is, I want to make them feel for the characters. I can't say I've quite got it down yet, but I'm trying.

 

Now, on to a lighter note.

Why I bother role-playing. It hit me last September when Mendon and I did a little impromptu session to figure out how our characters knew each other. We're talking about a few hours conversation on ICQ here, nothing new. But I was having the time of my life, especially when I started changing it to story format.

Again, the contrast. Nothing new, just RPing online, yet I was having a blast. Halfway through the fic, it hit me. We were just telling a story. Not much of a revelation there, but sometimes it takes me awhile. I've heard lots of attempts to describe RPGs, but I finally found one that suits me.

It's communal story telling. Which is probably why I enjoy it so much; I get to tell a story with others, and I don't have to take the time to get it from my brain to the computer. Sure it's occasionally frustrating, and always weird (with my friends, it has to be ;), but I enjoy it.

I just like to write.

Comments can be e-mailed to Norcumi@backtick.net, or Instant Messaged to the same address.

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