(no subject)

[camwyn]

Dear Father:

You're not getting bumped up the brain priority list. No. I don't care. Benton Fraser and the icebound community of Inuvik has the first slot and you do not get to boot him from it. I don't care how much you screw around with my iPod playlist so your songs come up- and I swear to God if 'Numb' comes out next I will make you regret it*.

GOD DAMMIT NOBODY IS GETTING ANY PROZIUM AT ALL IF YOU DON'T LET GO OF MY BRAIN RIGHT THIS INSTANT.

Thank you. Yeesh.

*I am not sure how you do this to an emotionless dystopian dictator. Possibly it involves watching movies where his actor is extremely silly and has spiky blond hair.

Comments

[the-reda.livejournal.com]

You know, sometimes... you scare me ;-)

[camwyn]

If it helps at all, I don't actually believe I have separate people in my brain, or that the characters have independent existence as anything other than collections of memetic characteristics that happen to resonate strongly with this or that bit of my subconscious or unconscious mind. It's just that I find it easier to face a problem if I anthropomorphize it. It puts a face on what would otherwise be a rather nebulous case of 'why am I even thinking about this' and gives me something to yell at, so I feel better afterwards.

... also, it means I get to treat some fairly scary concepts as if they were in fact five year old children, which has its own sort of appeal to the juvenile side of my mind.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

*snickers*

Thanks, Cam. I now have a mental image of said emotionless, dystopian dictator going to his room in a profound sulk.

[camwyn]

It wouldn't be so bad if he weren't such a damn academic. He just won't. Shut. Up. It's like the professor who ran my model UN team in college- I don't think I've ever had to just tune someone out because they simply wouldn't stop talking before.

[the-reda.livejournal.com]

//I don't actually believe I have separate people in my brain, or that the characters have independent existence as anything other than collections of memetic characteristics that happen to resonate strongly with this or that bit of my subconscious or unconscious mind.//

Why not... inner Snape is telling me that he is real enough alright and the rest of them is having a debate.

I was not being sirius serious.

We will now stop the bad puns and go to bed.

[the-reda.livejournal.com]

Is his name by chance "snape"?

He sounds familiar.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

*grins*

Try imagining him in a tutu. Then you can laugh at his droning.

[camwyn]

Female professor, alas. I don't remember her name.

I think I actually worked myself into a state of 'I have to throw up REAL SOON NOW' so as to get out of going to dinner with her and the rest of the team because I just couldn't deal with her not shutting up.

[camwyn]

Doesn't work. Sorry. It just doesn't happen.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Even if you imagine him in drag? ;)

[camwyn]

Well, about that point Harry Wells starts muttering about defamation of character and how having to watch himself wear that dressing gown thing on screen during Macbeth was weird enough, thank you very much.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

But at that point you've got someone to drown out Father, don't you?

[camwyn]

It's not as helpful as you'd think. He just gives this little I'm-only-smiling-because-you-pre-war-people-expect-me-to-make-a-facial-expression-now smile and wanders off because he knows he'll get brain time when my guard is down.

The bastard.

*sigh* I suppose there are worse embodiments of inner bastardry to have.

[rimestock.livejournal.com]

>>I suppose there are worse embodiments of inner bastardry to have.

Yes, there are, but they're fscking scary.

... admittedly, the reasonable ones top that list of fscking scary.

*has, um. a couple.*

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Then you should hit him with a waterballoon full of lime jello just as he wanders off. ;)

[camwyn]

I have two- no, three- Reflexive Bastards that I know of in my own brain. They're basically the publicly recognisable faces of the really unsavoury bits in the black muck at the bottom of my skull. No, I'm not being emo or anything; everyone's got that muck. It's the bits of the psyche we don't like but all have somewhere. That's where John Constantine comes from, and where Father comes from- and, lord help me, the White Rider. Not Blodwen Rowlands, but the Rider of the Apocalypse- and I do not mean something so simple as Pestilence, either. The third member of the inner Bastardly Trinity is Conquest- the one who knows exactly, exactly what has to be done to crush and break and demoralise and bring the enemy to heel, forever. She is not so much of battlefields- though there is some of that in her, the White Rider comes after. The Red Rider is War and that is fine, but the White Rider is the Roman occupation and the assimilation of your children, the death of cultures and people as they're seduced away from what they used to be, the overwhelming brutal blow that strikes out of nowhere and reduces all plans to rubble so there is nothing to resist with- and the silent presences, the words in the night that leave spirits bleeding and broken. She lives in my skull and never speaks in words, but I see her hand in some of the things I start to write, in some of the strategies I pursue in games, and I fear her deeply. Because I know between her and Father, there is a great big steaming HEAP of nasty in there.

[blackswanevent.livejournal.com]

Threaten him with disembowlment! Threaten all who oppose you with disembowlment! *laughs evilly*

....And I totally spelled that wrong didn't I? I swear I need a spellcheck program for this blog.

Anywho. My inner Dystopian enforcer has volunteered to come and kick the Crap outta father if he refuses to heal. And If you like he can bring a hyperactive and scary 15 year old with a giant robot. Asuka has always taken Preston's side in reguards to matters of state.

[batyatoon]

... that right there?

That was genuinely scary.



I think I have to hug you now.

[camwyn]

Disembowelment, dear. It's not too far off.

And I don't think that'll really help. Like I told batyatoon once, Father doesn't fight. He just won't be there when the trouble starts.

[camwyn]

I've actually badly frightened two out of three Geoffs by explaining why I like culture-fu victories in Civilization 3 and 4 so much, because the explanation always comes from the White Rider part of the brain. (The third Geoff is quintus and I think he just finds it a turn-on.)

Honestly, the White RIder is not so very different from what Father was trying to do; he's one of hers, though he doesn't know it. Evil anthropologists are best at remaking people after their own image and likeness.

[rimestock.livejournal.com]

... what terrifies me is that there is a voice in the back of my mind, as I read this, going "... ♥"

*twitches quietly*

[camwyn]

Yeeeah... she's like that.

[blackswanevent.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the hallmark of most politicians though? "Mission Accomplished!" Yes-and where were you while said Mission was being accomplished o' commander in chief?-that sort of thing?

[camwyn]

No, no, not 'not be there' in the sense of running like a girl. 'Not be there' in the sense that while someone's looking to attack him, he'll be casually walking around the long way to direct the forces arrayed to sweep into their home and make off with everything they hold dear 'cos they're not around to protect it. The man picks his battles.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

I think policepenguin has the right idea. Threaten him with disembowlment. Take away all his bowls! Let's see how he likes that!

[batyatoon]

Remind me, have you ever read Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana?

[camwyn]

Never read any of Kay's stuff, alas.

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

But we liiiike your scary characters. (Says someone with a few of her own.)

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

P.S. Ok, how do you get the characters who aren't smirking bastards to stick? Not that I don't like the majority of them, but really, I can't write anything if I can't get the rest of the surrounding characters to at least stick a little bit...

[camwyn]

Just because the bastards come from a part of my brain that exists on a fundamental level, doesn't mean the good guys don't as well. Sergeant Preston of the Yukon lives in my head just as surely as John Constantine, and I like to think that I've done better with him than a mere two-dimensional This Is The Good Guy, Dammit stereotype. He grows out of what I wish I were and hope sometimes that I can be, and the stuff I know for certain other people are. Constantine's what I wish I weren't, but what I know is there. The characters who stick are the characters with purpose. If it's a purpose I can either share in or fear on a visceral level- that helps.