Title: A Cold Shoulder
Author: RuwinReborn
Status: Public

Link: http://forum.nogoblinsallowed.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3834

I already said my main piece over on the thread. For summary purposes here, I'll just say that I think this story is fabulous. It's emotionally resonant in a way that somehow manages to make you feel happy about feeling sad, which is one hell of a trick.

"Yea" until my fingers bleed.

At least I have two weeks to read everything people are putting up... -_-

You know, both times I've finished the stuff I've been working on recently, I've thought quietly to myself "You know, I'm just putting something else on Lord Luna's plate, and I should really stop and think about whether or not I want to risk stressing him out in order to showcase my work."

Then, a somewhat repressed and unpleasant side of me screams,

"HE CAN SUFFER!"

I think the fact that I post anyway is, uh, rather more telling of my personality than I would like. O_O Sorry about that.

I'm serious about missing you, Ruwin. Don't you ever change.

Is there a more emphatic option than "Yea"? Like, some sort of time travel option to have gotten this in the archives before it, or they, existed? Well, for now, a simple "Yea" will have to be enough.

Oh, man.

You weren't kidding. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't have read it at the point in time I chose to, but I'm left feeling... Melancholic is the word that comes to mind. Like, I'm controlling my body from very far away yet at the same time very aware of being inside my own skull.

I just... really emphasized with Fisco's feelings over his life. Like, yes his life is full, but at the end of the day it all seems to lack a measure of meaning; that it seems what he does doesn't really define him.

Hmm... Again, I think it might partially be the timing in which I read it, but it's left me kind of numb. I did not cry like others did, but that's more because it didn't push me in that particular direction hard enough, and I probably wouldn't have finished it now if it had been. The fact that it affected me so is a major point towards it, and the continuing characterization of Fisco is another major point. I doubt I will feel like revisiting this story anytime soon, but that isn't because I think it doesn't deserve to be in the Archives -- it is a powerful piece that definitely deserves a spot.

Yea.

Standing offer: If anyone needs a hug after reading this story, you know who to call.

(But, if that person doesn't answer, try me next. I got hugs, too.)

Thanks for all your kind words.

Having typed that, I immediately regret typing that, because after reading all of the aforementioned kind words, I got the strange sense that I was the grieving party at a funeral, and was thanking the attendees. At the moment, the feeling isn't really telling me who it was that died.

Wow, that's creepy.

@LordLuna: You know; the first time someone ever said to me, "write about what you know.", my first thought was this: "But, what I know is so boring.". I remember vividly the person who told me this - my eighth grade English teacher - and how he was a stickler for "relatable" stories and "real-world" experiences. I ended up failing my creative writing project for the year because it "didn't make any sense".

Admittedly, probably not, because I was an overactive fourteen year old and thought that a story about time-travelling dragons was a worthy story in it's own right, but I digress.

In any case, when I took the paper home and explained to my parents that I had failed, (normally, my parents weren't aware of the day-to-day happenings at my school, but I had been so excited about the paper that I had told everyone about it earnestly) the FIRST thing they asked me was if I had done what he had asked, and replying in the affirmative, the SECOND thing they did was assure me it was very good anyway.

I think this was around the time I started hating rules.

Not laws, mind you. I'm not an anarchist by any stretch of the imagination. But by GOD, after a certain point, if you told me "you cannot do something this way!" I would do everything in my power not to do it like that. Most of the writing prompts I would encounter later in my life were so vague and open-ended that I, being a particularly crafty and unpleasant student, was able twist and spin something like "Write an essay about your favorite character from King Lear" into a five page dissertation on superheroes and how the Earl of Kent was analogous to the Incredible Hulk.

(I got an A on that paper.)

The more strict, and therefore, less enjoyable teachers would have entire booklets worth of procedures and guidelines listing what they wanted from any particular essay. It felt like I was just copying and pasting all the ridiculous stuff I had just read onto another piece of paper, even though I was typing it with my own hand and not reading directly from the source material. There was no challenge. They wanted me to regurgitate what I had learned, not offer my opinion on it - and when they DID ask for exactly that, I was often informed, politely and in red ink, that my opinion was wrong and needed to be "revised".

Lord, I hate public schools.

So, it was because of my growing hatred for guidelines that I dismissed the, admittedly sound, advice of to write about what I know because it came from the mouth of a man whom I did not believe could instruct me. I went out of my way to write about things I knew NOTHING about - because I would just make it all up. I did not choose to look at the advice in a different light, or turn it over in my mind. I just packed it away in my (increasingly shoddy) memory. Until one day, feeling particularly lethargic and miserable, I remembered it.

And while I have turned the advice over in my mind since then, I decided, first, to just do exactly as the advice implied: to write about what I know. And, as anyone who goes through depressive phases can tell you, I know about this. I know about the staring, the discomfort, the unpleasant boredom with everything that excites you. The increasing frustration at mundane and trivial things. The fleeting desire to get up to GO and DO something because you can't just sit here, really - but it flees and you've got this little hollow in your chest where your motivation used to be. They're old acquaintances, these feelings. And though I've never been compelled to react as drastically and permanently as Fisco does in this story - This malaise is what I know. And so, I wrote.

The bit with Diana came later because I realized that, sometimes, we all need an angel.

What I'm getting at with this rather depressing yarn is this: I understand what you're saying, because that's exactly how I felt as I was writing this. This may be the most emotional thing I ever write (unless I become a famous author. If I do, you can all expect signed copies, gift baskets, and thank you notes) because I wrote about what I know. And, I'm glad for that advice, because this - this was good for me. Getting this down, even vicariously, through Fisco, was a relief. I'm not an interplanar loan shark. I'm not half as hard-boiled or courageous as Fisco Vane - and I certainly don't thrive as well under pressure as he does. Fisco Vane is not me, not by a long shot (I'm waaaay more good-looking than he is), but he's human. Everyone feels. A lot of the people I interface with don't remember that very often.

Alright, I'm all out of Baja Blast and really, really, need to heed the porcelain call of nature. Thanks for reading, Luna! And I'm glad you found it emotionally compelling. This community continues to be the best thing that ever happened to my craft as a writer, and I'm not sure I'd ever really by able to repay you all in a way that is as meaningful to you as this has been - and will continue to be - for me.

Ugh, I'm going to go punch a wall or something. That seems to work for batman when he's feeling things. O_o

@Ruwin: I love you, man! And I can relate to a lot of what you're saying here.

By the way, I think you'd have enjoyed my class! (Although, admittedly, I teach college, not public school...)

Hail, my King! I live in your kingdom, but don't know where you're castle is.
(or, to put another way, I don't have your google/skype/email)


How is that concept not?


So far, I've had half of the same experience as you, in all the schooling I've ever had: I am taught, I regurgitate what I was taught in a differently-worded manner, and I am rewarded despite not really giving anything of myself (not that I've taken any creative writing classes). I actually fairly liked my philosophy course because like 50% of the grade was just discussion among classmates over the philosophical points presented in the course.

But, I've never yet had to really give my opinion nor told I was wrong -- I am a straight-A student simply because the schooling system does not ask more of me.


Says the gray-skinned troll with candy-corn horns >;]

@Raven: Oh, I'm sure I would have. If nothing else, I know I wouldn't be marked down for something like "talking about dragons in a research paper about Catcher in the Rye!

@LordLuna: OH, AND BECAUSE I AM PART OF AN UNFAMILIAR SPECIES I SUDDENLY LOSE MY CAPACITY FOR EMOTION? "OH, HAHA LOOK AT THE ALTERNIAN MUTANT HE CAN'T POSSIBLY BE ON THE SAME COGNITIVE LEVEL AS OUR OBVIOUSLY INFERIOR SPECIES."

UP YOURS, BULGESNIFFER.

*cough*

Time traveling dragons are cool. ;D

I hope you don't mind, but I shared this anecdote with Mrs. OL.

See, when she was applying to law school, one of the essay questions was to name a famous person who you admired and to explain why. I suspect that most law school applicants choose a president, or a supreme court justice, or a human rights campaigner - someone like that.

Mrs. OL wrote her essay about how she admired Wolverine.

When she started getting thin envelope after thin envelope in the mail, I remember that told me that she regretted having answered the question honestly, and that she wished she had just written the sort of answer that the self-important people who work in law school admissions departments wanted to hear.

Then, finally, one day, we got a thick envelope in the mail. I will always remember the look on her face when she showed me where, at the bottom of the standard form letter, the admissions officer had scrawled in ballpoint: "I think Wolverine sounds like an excellent role model."

I think you and she are kindred spirits.


Honestly, the thing I will always remember from my own low point was the insomnia, which stemmed from my fear of falling asleep. Not because I was afraid of sleep itself, but because I was terrified of waking up the next morning - waking up and not feeling better. Because the longer I went without feeling better, the more desperately I had to cling to this belief that things were going to change and that, one morning, I would wake up and I would have turned the corner. But there was that terrible little voice in the back of my head saying: What if that isn't true? What if there is no corner? What if this is just the way things are going to be from now on? So that, by the end, I was doing pretty much anything I could to stay awake at night, because if I didn't fall asleep, I couldn't be disappointed the next day when I woke up feeling the exact same way.

So, yeah, I know what you're talking about.


Amen to that.

Sometimes, though, people will do in a pinch. And I thank God for that.


Ruwin, my life is enriched by your presence.

Not just because you're a wonderful writer - although, Lord knows, you are that, and reading your work is a source of great, uncomplicated pleasure for me.

But also because I believe that you're a genuinely good guy, and my world is made that much better by your presence in it.

To crib a sentiment from Aloise, there's nothing to repay. That's not how this works. We all give to each other of our time and experience and empathy, and that giving makes the world a little bit brighter and a little bit happier. We enrich ourselves and others at the same time. Anything you get out of this community, I get as well. In my book, meaning and joy are additive experiences.

Thanks for sharing your work and your thoughts. They are each of them valuable.

Woof. That bit about not wanting to go to sleep hit me hard, OL.

I think this story is valuable, among other things, for the conversations its sparked here.

Actually, I don't know how often I've seen actual mental illness as opposed to generic "Madness" addressed in fantasy...

Thank you so much. I kind of needed that after being affected by your story. While I'm not a Lord in my King's land -- I pronounced OL King of the Warm Fuzzies a while back and have been rolling with that metaphor since -- I really have to thank you for brightening up my life, as well. All of you here, really, give my life a certain sense of meaning that I haven't yet found elsewhere (even if you are all keeping me as busy as a stockbroker on Monday morning with all the new material I have to read).

I am so glad I joined this community all those years ago, and decided to stay with the M:EM at that; I don't know if the F&S would have kept my interest for as long or brought a smile to my face nearly as often. My indulgence in another fandom (pony, specifically) has done more to pique my interest in creating art and/or music, but in writing (almost) anything, I first think of it in terms of the M:EMultiverse (which I'm not sure works as a portmanteau). I really hope I can someday make some sort of triumphant comeback and actually get something all my own into the Archives.

But yeah, what I'm getting at is I love you all, even if I can't express it as well, nor express it as often, as OL does.

I need to get a tabard designed for this.

(By the way, if anyone ever feels like I'm over-fuzzying them, please let me know. I don't have much of a medium gear when I'm getting all sentimental, and I know that other people may have a different sense of boundaries than I do, so please shout out if I overstep. I guarantee that you won't hurt my feelings, and I never want to make anyone else feel awkward.)


I think you see it some, but in the same kind of tropey roles as in other literature. Either it's an exhibit of the villain's badness (hearing voices, paranoia, etc.), or it's a kind of tic which gives the protagonist their superpowers (look, his OCD makes him a great detective!). I think you seldom see it as a simple affliction that someone is just living with.

Yeah. I'd agree with that, and I think I'd like to see more of that latter type of just living with disability. I don't know, maybe Kirsh and Huinn and Asher will provide opportunities to do that a bit in the future... It's tough when you're writing in a setting where madness can and often does have a magical component, and I'm still not sure how to best grapple with that.