Demon Seed, Holy Land

After my last post, I was struck by a bit of nostalgia.  More specifically to post up one of my earliest attempts at narrative poetry, which was also one of my last attempts due to my disdain for writing poetry.  I had begun to think it was lost entirely, but now I have finally managed to find it.  Unfortunately I didn't find the more recent edit I did of it, so I'm going to have to subject you to what I have rediscovered on its decay-yellowed notebook paper.

This was written in roughly an hour starting just before midnight on 1/31/1998 and ending sometime after midnight on what would then technically be 2/1/1998.  There's too much of a Druid in me to not try to eternally preserve something made during such a transitional time frame, because surely it must be sacred as a result.  Anyway, just see if you can endure the droning narrative poetry of my 15 year old self who obviously had a love for echoing verses(seriously, I used the echoing voices things a few times in my non-narrative poetry of that period as well), not the mention the half-assed attempts at rhyming.

The armies marched,

Thunder at their heels,

Up to the fortress hill.

They would kill the Fool King.

The thousands arose,

Slaughter of one they chose.

North a hundred miles

Was their choice to defile.

Through bergs and towns

They raped and pillaged.

Through every last village

They spread their Demon Seed.

The populace cursed

Good and noble armies.

Murderous soldiers

Pacified the countless.

The clash of steel

Won't overthunder

Their river of murder,

Nor the years of evil.

Blood flowed through the land

That's now covered with sand.

Still after their march

The evil remains large.

As the years passed,

The armies battled

Countless foes and rabble.

All this for their honor.

Honorable men

To the honor of sin,

The ultimate end,

Was where their paths would bend.

As soldiers died

And joined the river,

The army grew weaker,

The Demon Seed still spread.

 The blasphemous priests

Desecrated deceased.

They had seen the chance,

And would begin their fight.

Clergy sent forth

Knights and paladins

Before armies of sins

To join and rule soldiers.

The churches began

To guard their Holy Land

By taking the lead

To spread the Demon Seed.

Reinforced troops

In the Holy Land

Destroyed many a band

Of the righteous rabble.

The holy armies

Would face many furies

In their year long march

To the Fool King's fortress.

Paladins mate

With scores of the raped,

Spreading up to the hill

Demon Seed, Holy Land.

The sun would soon set,

But the hill was in sight.

The moon took the sky.

King Cirdresse would soon die.

Darkness had fell

On the hill fortress

Of the Fool King, Cirdresse,

Before the armies climbed.

The horses and men

Crashed up to the hilltop.

King in tower top

Laughed at the Holy Land.

The door lay wide.

As armies entered,

The harsh stone floor splintered.

Paladins fell to Hell.

Welcomed by no guard

Against approach inward

The paladins led,

And were doomed to be damned.

Knights ascended,

Feared the Demon Seed,

And cursed the Holy Land

Before falling always.

Avoiding a fall

Were the knights strong and tall.

They ran up the stairs

And into Hell's Great Void.

Soldiers cowered

As the Great Fool King

Heard loyal promising

Of forever service.

The defeated men

Lay pledging allegiance

To Fool King, Cirdresse,

Fearing Demon Seed's Nest.

Cirdresse's armies

Of former foes marched,

The Fool King escorted,

Out to the closest town.

Surrounding their King,

Armies began heading

Close to the cenral

Holy Land, Demon Seed.

Curious stares

Poured from the rabble.

Armies lay on marble

Which created the floor.

The Great Fool King led

Armies to the centerbed

Of the Holy Land.

Demon Seed's marble nest.

Rabble attacked

Pinning armies down,

As they placed their gold crown

Upon Cirdresse's brow.

Fools pledged allegiance

To the King of Penance,

And the Great Fool King,

Cirdresse's reign began.

Clergy were killed,

Their churches were burned,

And then Cirdresse removed

His robes and all below.

The order of King

Was to kill old ruling,

And desecrate all

That was the Holy Land.

His robes removed

He ripped off his skin.

The Demon Seeds within

Prepared to fertilize.

The Dark God exposed

To all his Demon Seeds.

The time had arrived

To corrupt Holy Land.

The pledged ones ran

As the Demon King

Started into claiming

What had been pledged to him.

All the Demon Seeds

Fertilized those that pledged

To the Demon King

Their very existence.

Their Demon Seeds

Took all that they were.

The Holy Land would stir

As food and Darkhaven.

The Demon King won

Darkhaven with no sun,

Fertile Demon Seeds

In the new Holy Land.

Now if I could only find the version from a few years back where I had tried to fix all the problems with that original piece up there.  Ah well, that's all I've got for today.

Video Games and Art

It's Time to Accept Video Games As Art

The above links to a rather interesting interview by Mike Diver of Matt Sainsbury including an excerpt from his book Game Art, and it has gotten my mind moving a little so I decided I'd give you a chance to read it before subjecting you to my own rambling.

Beyond the fact that it excited my own gaming fandom by referencing both the Mass Effect series and a game from the Persona series as well as introduced me to two games I now really want to play, it also hit on some points which tie in to why I became the gamer I am today.

The expansive nature of video games in reference to their styles of art is covered better in the linked article than I could manage, so instead I'll just focus on my own awakening to and enjoyment of video games as art, which predictably enough focuses on the narrative aspect.

As with many children of the early 80's I did more than my fair share of gaming before any sort of artistic awakening, with my own introduction being the NES.  I spent many an hour with Megaman, Mario, and assorted other characters, even once sat and played the Rescue Rangers video so long that my eyes formed a crust which sealed them shut and required a bit of home first aid to remove.  That taught me a lesson about moderation in gaming at least.

It wasn't until the SNES that I had my awakening however, specifically with what I believe to be the best in its series - Final Fantasy 6.  Here was a game with fully developed characters.  They truly reacted to the events that were unfolding beyond just the gaining of new items/special abilities I was used to from every other game I'd ever played.  They were dynamic, real people with hearts and minds that were both scarred and strengthened by the hardships they endured, which ranged from world-shaking to entirely interpersonal.  More than this though was the fact that due to the fact that I was directing their actions, and there with them for every moment of the story, I not only bore witness to their story, I lived and felt it right alongside of them.

I was already an avid reader by that time, but this was a new time of narrative immersion for me, a type I couldn't get from a book.  It so struck me that for years afterward I would rarely play anything other than RPG's.  Even now I still tend towards games with a strong narrative style, but thanks to the growth of games as a story-telling medium I have a much wider genre base to choose from - horror, sci-fi, fantasy, on and on even to more real world related games.  While I would never give up books entirely for games, since I do still very much love the particular styles of immersion they offer, I could also never imagine given up gaming for this same reason.

Ultimately this love of gaming as a narrative art combined with my already present love of written fiction as an art, and my desire to create my own fiction.  This combination is what ultimately led me to pencil and paper RPG's, that ability to create and interactive story for others to play through, and more often than not to totally scramble so that I would be forced to catch up to where the story had suddenly veered.  My enjoyment of such in person game-storytelling also led to my desire to create my own system, so that I could have rules and mechanics that fully reflected my own stories and their worlds.

So to sum up I suppose I would just say that I fully view video games as an art form.  There's just not much else other than art that I can conceive capable of so fully striking awe, inspiring creativity, and pushing to constantly act towards the creation and practical worship of both as they have in me.  Ultimately for me, gaming and narrative fiction are my two greatest loves, and they are in my view merely two facets of the same priceless gem.

On the illustrious art of telling lies.

I've been meaning to write this for a few weeks now, but I remain a procrastinator.

A couple of months ago I was asked for advice on writing.  Being horrible at giving advice my answer was long winded, and could be summed up as, "Just wing it."  Of course, there wasn't any other advice I could give really, since the only way I've ever been able to be productive myself is to just let the story take over and carry me where it wants to go.  As with every time I am forced to think about the process of writing, this got me fully contemplating it and myself in regards to it.

Since no one asked just where this led my brain, and since I'm sure just as many of you care where it led me I'm going to share.  I'm horrible at summing up my thoughts in that vein, but thankfully other writers are not so in the interests of (relative)brevity and laziness, I'll just use their words with slight notes on how they interact with myself.

First off we'll start with my favorite, a bit from Peter S. Beagle's short story "Oakland Dragon Blues".  Anytime I've heard him speak about his writing process its been apparent to my that he at the very least also seems to just let the story carry him where it will, so I can't help but feel a bit of kinship towards him regardless of the fact that I will never write as well as him.  If you get a chance you should read the actual story sometime, its a wonderful bit of meta about storytelling, but for now here's the particular exchange which I will begin quoting at what is most likely a confusing point for anyone who hasn't read the story, so read it.

"But you didn't finish it," Guerra said.

"He will.  It's his fairy-tale world, after all - he knows it better than I do, really.  I just showed him the way back."  The author smiled with a certain aggravating compassion.  "It's a bit hard to explain, if you don't - you know - think about magic."

"Hey, I think about a lot of things," Guerra said harshly.  "And what I'm thinking about right now is that that wasn't a real story.  It's not in any book - you were just spitballing, improvising, making it up as you went along.  Hell, I'll bet you couldn't repeat it right now if you tried.  Like a little kid telling a lie."

The author laughed outright, and then stopped quickly when he saw Guerra's expression.  "I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at you.  You're quite right, we're all little kids telling lies, writers are, hoping we can keep the lies straight and get away with them.  And nobody lasts very long in this game who isn't prepared to lie his way out of trouble.  Absolutely right."  He regarded the ruined strip of lawn and winced visibly.  "But you make same mistake most people do, Officer Guerra.  The magic's not in the books, not in the publishing - it's in the telling, always.  In the old, old telling."

I've already covered the obvious way that relates to my own thoughts, but the ending hits on another point of connection for me.  That being that the truest point of magic for me, that time when I feel my absolute most pagan, most connected to whatever gods and goddesses have decided to turn their eyes upon me, is the moment when I'm first scribbling down words in my notebook, hoping my pencil doesn't break at the worst moment.  I still enjoy the stories after, but they just don't feel truly alive to me after its all been written down.  After that point, while I'm revising and pondering just how I can try to convince people to buy my work, it feels more like I'm chronicling a dead history rather than birthing fully vibrant beings.  So yeah, the magic is most definitely even in the telling specifically the initial telling, even if you're like me and have no knack for verbal storytelling.

Moving on from that always brings me to contemplations on how much I'm influenced by that urge to write, and more specifically on how it affects my interactions with everyone, most obviously friends and family.  This brings me to a quote that a first read while reading a book on theoretical physics("New Theories of Everything" John D. Barrow).

In the preface while commenting on the miserable business that writing a book can at times be, he quotes Sir Peter Medawar:  "... it is a proceeding that makes one rather inhuman, selfishly guarding every second of one's time and becoming inattentive about personal relationships; one soon formed the opinion that anyone who used three words where two words would have done was a bore of insufferable prolixity whose company must at all times be shunned.  A danger sign that fellow-obsessionals will at once recognize is the tendency to regard the happiest moments of your life as those that occur when someone who has an appointment to see you is prevented from coming."

For the most part that should be self-explanatory, especially to anyone who knows me, but a moment from just this past Saturday pops into my head as illustration of just how fully I relate to it.  My brother had made plans to come up and visit me on this day, but on the day he was to come up he let me know he was gonna take a nap first.  This combined with the fact that both of my roommates where going to be out of town until late that night to make me wish he would nap longer than intended and decide not to come up after all so that I could spend all day in solitude working on one or more of my various projects.  I felt slightly guilty about wishing so, but more excited about the possibility of getting more done.

Usually these two elements are enough to satisfy me in my contemplations, but this time I stumbled upon a new bit of writing on the nature of writing/being a writer that I fell in love with.  I can't relate fully to it on account of being too much of an introvert to fully test all of its assertions, but it certainly illustrates well how bi-polar my personal eccentricities make me feel at times, most of which I feel stem from the fact that I feel the need to constantly be creating something, even if it is just in my head.  Not to mention my tendency to chop people up and put bits of them into stories in often incongruous ways.  It's from Mik Everett and can also be found here: http://karenfelloutofbedagain.tumblr.com/post/14327141634/what-happens-if-you-fall-in-love-with-a-writer

The fact that I didn't know about it sooner considering that it had been making the rounds of the internet for a while before that just shows how out of touch I tend to stay.  Anyway, here it is in its entirety for anyone who didn't feel like clicking on the link.

"What happens if you fall in love with a writer?
Lots of things might happen. That’s the thing about writers. They’re unpredictable. They might bring you eggs in bed for breakfast, or they might all but ignore you for days. They might bring you eggs in bed at three in the morning. Or they might wake you up for sex at three in the morning. Or make love at four in the afternoon. They might not sleep at all. Or they might sleep right through the alarm and forget to get you up for work. Or call you home from work to kill a spider. Or refuse to speak to you after finding out you’ve never seen To Kill A Mockingbird. Or spend the last of the rent money on five kinds of soap. Or sell your textbooks for cash halfway through the semester. Or leave you love notes in your pockets. Or wash you pants with Post-It notes in the pockets so your laundry comes out covered in bits of wet paper. They might cry if the Post-It notes are unread all over your pants. It’s an unpredictable life.
But what happens if a writer falls in love with you?
This is a little more predictable. You will find your hemp necklace with the glass mushroom pendant around the neck of someone at a bus stop in a short story. Your favorite shoes will mysteriously disappear, and show up in a poem. The watch you always wear, the watch you own but never wear, the fact that you’ve never worn a watch: they suddenly belong to characters you’ve never known. And yet they’re you. They’re not you; they’re someone else entirely, but they toss their hair like you. They use the same colloquialisms as you. They scratch their nose when they lie like you. Sometimes they will be narrators; sometimes protagonists, sometimes villains. Sometimes they will be nobodies, an unimportant, static prop. This might amuse you at first. Or confuse you. You might be bewildered when books turn into mirrors. You might try to see yourself how your beloved writer sees you when you read a poem about someone who has your middle name or prose about someone who has never seen To Kill A Mockingbird. These poems and novels and short stories, they will scatter into the wind. You will wonder if you’re wandering through the pages of some story you’ve never even read. There’s no way to know. And no way to erase it. Even if you leave, a part of you will always be left behind.
If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die."

Well, I think I've done enough rambling and showing just how much better at writing other people are than me.  I'm gonna go worship the sky gods now or something.