[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

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[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

Postby Ulric on December 12th, 2011, 12:22 am


11 DEC 11 – IN WHICH EVERYTHING TASTES LIKE SAWDUST

Y’know, there’s always that terse, brutal instant, caught in the throes of a fever, when you begin doubting what it means. By it, I mean everything. The friends you keep, the car you drive, the labors you perform so you trundle around with a basket, with a cart, wasting a handful of hours. And for what? So you can buy that can of tuna, or perhaps that ugly, too-tight pair of jeans. Every night, you go through your pockets, extracting the motley coins, the forlorn stub of a movie ticket. Wallet, check. That brief interval when deft fingers jam into a back pocket is the only physical contact you’re getting this evening, my lad. Phone, check. Check for texts, ignore them. Mostly, it’s just people trying to talk, but saying nothing.

Empty words, that’s what you are, a big sack of wind, a scrotal itch that refuses to vanish. Hit me in the face, why don’t you. I’d like to hit you, but I won’t. This sort of vapid dancing is easier, and guess what? Palahniuk is making me a monster, and I want to get laid.

Holy fuck, Fight Club is so vogue, isn’t it? Everybody loves that film, but if you’re a purist, you might as well read the book, and Choke, too, so you can be haughty with your friends that haven’t. I’m How about

Now, shut up and listen, because I want to beat the smirk from you face, perhaps sunder that insipid scarf of yours, even tear up your infant’s crappy drawings. We don’t share our real thoughts, mostly because we’re dumb. I’m not, not even now, because there are deeper thoughts behind the thoughts, and that emotion thing that scares the fuck out of us, or maybe it’s just me. Even so, these are my thoughts, at this juncture, caged by a crinkle of rabid discontent, by a lack of purpose.

Blotchy, vaguely aloof blobs of color on the monitor, a scouring of confuscated static, apathy melding with perplexity as we fumble with the rabbit ears. Yeah, I was around for those.

You don’t get to know me, though.

Nobody gets to know me, even if I speak to you, tell you of that one, gut-wrenching night tragedy, even if it ends up being a chimera. I can pretend to like you. I can insult your back, and even your face. Heck, I might even want to fuck you. I’m fickle, I’m blunt, I’m caring. I savor my hypocrisy.

I am a paradox, just as you are a paradox, and your fucking hyperbole is just evoking a depressive rage from the cogs of my machinery. Chief Bromden, your tribe got the shaft. Sorry.

At least they didn’t bugger you.


For the record, neither has my comely ass, and I wipe standing up. I prefer the leverage. It’s funny, but I’d say anything, nearly anything of myself, if it related to me, the organism. Not me, the person with the gray cells. Oh, and fuck you, Poirot, for raking in the bucks to reefer crazed, haughty heirs, while my friends (and I use this term loosely) exist in penury, and have car loans, credit card debts. I’m not, though. I’m too lazy to buy things. And guess what, I just judged a bunch of people, just because I can, even though it’s wrong. Respect for the person, and all that hippy-dippy bullshit. Heck, do we really care for the sanctity of you when there’s a gun at your head, or a drone ready to spread your insides over the desert.

By the way, the MQ-1 Predator isn’t what you see in the movies; everything is fake, because films are escapism, just like reading, and in fact, the kind of fucking you do just so you can, not for any greater meaning. Ha, did I just use ‘fucking’ and ‘meaning’ together? I’d probably get some if I wasn’t so cynical.

That’s right, what I’m writing is raw, just as the slabs of bloody meat the illegal, badly impoverished workers carve from steers, caught in a chlorine spray, maybe even missing a finger or four. Don’t play with knives, son. If you want to play with yourself, fine. If you buy a vibrator, fine. I’m kind of grumpy, if you haven’t figured that out, and no, I don’t want you to post cats.

Know why?

You’ll find out.
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[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

Postby Ulric on December 13th, 2011, 2:44 am


12 DEC 11 – IN WHICH THE WEEK TURNS TO SHIT

Ever suffer the jaded stare of a stranger? Every day, you’re just a raw, orangey-pale blob on the serpentine conveyor of a sushi bar, revolving forlornly, feigning apathy from the steely glare of industrial artistry. Every day, they peer at you, but do they only see what they want? I’m guilty, that’s for sure. I won’t make any bones of my tendency to judge based on looks, on bearing, on wayward whispers. I don’t want to, but I do anyway. And you know what? So what? I feel as though we want to see bugbears. I think we want to see admirers. If we can dream, why not?

But despite that, never, ever look at somebody, wanting them to be something, because chances are they won’t be, they can’t be what you want.

Back at basic, they informed us that perception is reality. It doesn’t matter what’s right or what’s false, only how it seems. If you don’t know a person, you don’t have to care about them. It’s how I used to deal with the gimps, dragging their bowed, polio and ricket-wizened legs on tiny carts, or grubby, vacant-eyed boy and girl-beggars. I see a face and eyes, but I don’t have to care.

Besides, beggars are just cogs in larcenous machinery. Mostly. And then, as the faded colors flash by my eyes, I think of those five months. They taught me everything. Hyderabad, how I miss you. Even the whitely turgid stench of drying urine on harsh, crumbing concrete, horns blaring under the searing heat, the clang of thali cups and the ruddy, pungent gobs of betel. And now, I can’t go back.

Sad, huh?

Naw, it was just an escape - though I enjoy mocking myself for having reversed The Razor’s Edge. Larry, Isabel, and Gray (check), but where’s my Sophie? If you haven’t caught on, I enjoy these partly boastful, self-gratifying tangents. And perhaps too deeply, because I don’t even want a Sophie.

Just say no to suiciders, m’kay?

Even if you have a dire, even vague yearning to be needed, don’t get caught up in that crap. But what the fuck do I know? I’ve never talked anybody off the roof. I’d probably just dare them to jump. No, that’d be lying. I’d try, but I’d fail, because I can never think of what to say. I can write, though. I’d have to get an easel, some big paper for drawing, and a huge sharpie – by which time, they’d probably be dead. Well, fuck. Who’d have thunk that life doesn’t cater to our fortes? Just get a pet. Just yank off the rubber and have a child. Just don’t try to be a martyr, because you end up pretending, usurping, betraying everything you care about for the sake of spreading your arms wide, and with that creepily beatific grin, casting around for your crown of thorns.

Don’t trip out, please.

You may enjoy the r-coaster of your murky passions, but don’t expect us give a fuck. If you’re looking for empathy, fine. But don’t expect us to care. Don’t toke up, please.

(See: public service announcement)

Step away from the gin.

You’re not a unique snowflake. You’re just smart enough to know that. You know that nobody wants you, on a larger scale than say, your blood-kin, your buds, your buddy of fucking, your bride. You aren’t meaningful. Not after you’ve read about matter and anti-matter, or half-slept through one of those scientific monstrosities about how the solar system is going to be enveloped by flames in a few million years, set to the eerie sort of cacophony you’d hear in The Shining.

Oh, fuck.

Really?

Can’t say I care.

Y’know, the Mayans were allegedly smart enough to augur the apocalypse from the flinging the severed testes of their best friends into the (starry) sky and crowing over where they landed, but they couldn’t find a cure for the pox? It’s our regular second comings, our moon landing nuts. If any hooey occurs, I vow to spend my finally, invariably dismal hour sprawling on the bare roof of an art museum, colored a sickly hue by the jade sky, perusing torn pages of Dickens. And of course, sporadically jerking off into a bowl of corn flakes.

Now that’s dismal imagery.

But where was I?

You can’t scour away peaks. You can’t hurl lightning. You can’t drive the car you want, you can’t pay your mortgage and keep that second kidney (obviously, the equivalent of a summer home), you can’t nudge away your mania, your unrelenting love for angel-sluts and douche-titans. You’re just a speck of dust.

So?

Doesn’t matter if you don’t care.

You want a greater purpose, fine. You say the power of thought severs us from the beasts. I’ve always wondered if they’re happier than we are. And finally, viciously ignoring yet another text, I watch a clip like this, and I think, so what?

Don’t make your life a psychodrama. Don't think so much. And for once, just take your own advice, you smug prick.
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[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

Postby Ulric on December 18th, 2011, 9:57 pm


18 DEC 11 – DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200

I can be grumpy, but that doesn’t make me a cynic. I’m too droll, or perhaps paradoxical. I won’t ever be absorbed by art, or dance, or even the boozy, half-blind stupor of smoky evenings. I won’t be the slave of a daguerreotype, or to the vinyl-retro hipster chic, just as I can’t bring myself to answer phones next to some gabby, noxiously perfume-laden lady, blatantly hiding her crow’s feet, at the hanging-panel barn of a do-gooder money funnel.

Read: Oxfam, Red Cross, Amnesty Int’l

I don’t have many strong beliefs. I gave up trying to defy consumerism, jingoism, and the usual whitey, hob-nobber creeds a few years back, mostly because I began to comprehend the vagaries of our planet, rife with instability, and asked myself, what’s the point? I’m a bit jaded, honestly. I despair of detached, showy academic pomp and its snideful ways, cringe at the crudity of the proletariat, with its focus on obtaining ever more guns and butter, and being happy. I’ve got the plaster of a smirk on my face.

I’m always confused, though.

Imagine, you could just be a fragment in the quarter-finished sprawl of a jigsaw puzzle, swept up a few times, only to be jerked away in frustration. It’s not as if I have this raging discontent, a cry for your eager, somber ears. If I’ve got a problem, I don’t walk about it, just wait for it to fade away. And that’s my equivalent of self-sabotage, like plunging a used needle in your arms, except everybody does that sort of thing, so it’s not really a problem. But I digress. I just want to know what my piece borders. I know how hard you’re trying to change, she hushed to me, as if I was doing it for her.

Fuck that.

You see, life would be simpler if these existential quandaries didn’t keep dogging us, but that’s just another burden. I don’t see why I should care. I read The Economist and Foreign Policy, wear Levi’s and Fossil, spout the lyrics of Metric. I enjoy gems like Waltz With Bashir and Powwow Highway, devour Chekhov, Zelazny, Peake, and Murakami. I’m the rice paper cut-outs, crafted by the deft, tawny fingers of child laborers, that languish in forlorn sheafs. I want to be elegant, yet even then, I can’t help but savor the confines of cheap, dingy taco joints, the harsh grimace of cheap beer. I gorge on rashers of bacon, refuse to go without the healthy fibers of sweet potato or asparagus, lace on my pink-soled sneakers and swiftly lope over expanses of asphalt, closed in by confines of barbed wire, to sedate raw nerves.

Happens a lot.

Weeks ago, a girl (in the flesh, mind you) alleged that I only get so annoyed because of what’s churning in my head, not the quirks, or purportedly deviant behavior of my peers. I gave her a taut glower. Um, yeah - I already thought that out, but does knowing scour it away? If you haven’t noticed, I don’t need yet another haughty ponder.

I’m proudly wracked by jealousy, too, but even that doesn’t break the surfeit of what’s ordinary. But there’s no ordinary, you might remark, in that outwardly innocuous, yet perhaps smart-alecky furl of a wet, pink tongue, that just evokes the urge to crush your face to jelly. Don’t give me that crap. Don’t nitpick on me, with your smug, fickle detail, just trying to elevate your ego, pretending you’re too prim and sterile to ever take a dump, let alone cringe when you hear the fateful plop. Don’t argue for the sake of arguing, for that’s just sour hollers.

Even if you know better, we get confuscated by the squelchy, globular morass of our inner feelings, paralyzed by doubts.

But seriously, who gives a flying fuck?

Just, y’know, accept that you’re imperfect, tear down your masturbatory self help shelf, for they’re just meager ripples in a pond. If you can’t control how you feel, take joy in the ride, at least. I go high, I go low. I hover in gray.

And yet, there are inky nights where I stir, half drenched in an achy, prickly sweat, vaguely wanting to cry out for the myriad ways, the wept, meaningful prayers, the augury that I can’t grasp. If not, I want to look past the painted veil. I’m Larry Darrell, Tyler Durden, Toru Okada from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, gazing up from the dry floor of a well. And lately, I’ve even begun to wish that I was a character in some tawdry novel. I don’t know what I want, though.

I wonder if I even know me.
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[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

Postby Ulric on January 7th, 2012, 2:42 am

06 JAN 12 – GREAT JOB, CAPTAIN AHAB

So, here’s me being angry. I wasn’t going to do this, but I’m fairly certain it’s going to keep me from lashing out. That’s good for everybody, right? Thing is, I can’t talk about anything. That’s the trouble. For half a year, I’ve been treading through the realm of military intel. I’m on the verge of earning my badge, leaving for my duty base, analyzing imagery. It’s what I want.

It’s what I love.

And yet, I just feel alienated.

Right now, there’s just dust in my wake. I didn’t study law. I shed my friends. I let the woman I loved walk away. I’d say the usual, half-baked regrets. They don’t matter, though. The past is like angry gusts fraying a tawdry banner, yet it never tears away. The colors fading, but never vanishing.

I’m not like you. I haven’t been for a while. I can’t go where I want. I can’t do what I want. I give it up for you. I’m not going to sugar coat it, though. I know we’re serving our country, but we’re also taking the wages, the care, the support for a young family. I know of people serving because they can’t afford college, or they can’t get a job. I mean, we’re here for ourselves, too. It’s a motley group of rednecks, shitheads, douchebags, megacunts, and geektards. I’ve never had such good friends, or thought I’d enjoy just waiting around, screwing around, taking the shaft together.. I’ve got them, yes. In a way, they’re more real to me than just about anybody. It’s harder to hide from yourself. I look back at my college days, and I’ve got a roiling vat of disdain in my gut for young, vapid dreamers, majoring in english, sociology, and psychology, thinking they can get jobs and change the world, drinking their lattes, dancing to autotuned crap, wearing their trendy clothes, entirely unaware that they’re just cogs and gears in a vast machine. I may sound bitter. I am, very surely, jealous. I’ve seen life in the rawest form. I can’t get over that.

There’s something about working all day, every day, that comes over me, making me want to keep going. I had about a meal a day, and perhaps seven hours of rest, and work. It’s over, though. I won’t have to watch any feeds, make any products, or give any briefings for a couple of days. I feel kind of lost. I went to write, and I couldn’t. It makes me wonder, what do I really have in my life? I’ve got my stripes, my wingmen, and my writing. It’s kind of pathetic. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have kids. I don’t have a place of my own, or a parcel of land, or a religion. I’ve got a few clothes, etc. I don’t have time, either. I’m just drained. I don't want to write this. I want to write insightful scraps that I don't instantly regret. I don't want to keep cursing myself for being whiny. I can't be as weak as the rest of you. It's just hard, because the screens I stare at for so many hours are my lover, my best friend, and my god. I just disappear.

It’s desultory. I can write, and I can run. I run to feel free. I write to get the demons off my back, to create and communicate what’s deep inside of me, and of course, to escape. It’s all about escape, really. I mean, I’ve lived vividly, but there’s only so much you can do, only so much you can be. I found my greater purpose, only to discover that I can’t set down roots. It’s like a desperation, a sort of hysteria that I can’t shake. I need something to grasp, but there’s nothing around me, and the people I hold closest are swept up by the deluge, too. It’s just us, a bunch of squints. It’s hard to relate to anybody else now. I can’t really feel for you. I just hear trivial, trivial, trivial in my ears. I find it hard to care. I don’t think I’m that much of an asshole, though. I mean, I may like you, but it’s hard for me to see you as real. I condescend because I enjoy feeling better than you, because that’s the sort of perverse glee that I require. I’m tired of duplicity, weary of strife, arrogance, and petulance, jaded by idiocy. I’m jealous of people that don’t gaze through my fucked up kaleidoscope, that are consistently happy, not just sporadically. I hope they exist. They’d better, or else it’s just a pipe dreams. Then I’d be annoyed.

For a while, I’ve begun to feel like a narrator, caught between the bland, vaguely distant raconteurs of Maugham and the dismally adrift heroes of Murakami, feeling less of an actor than an observer, hearing more than I speak. I feel like Big Bob, just impotently sloughing away. I don’t know what I want. I mean, there’s this primal impulse to create, whether it’s fire, fetuses, or forts, but we can’t do that these days.

We’re living in a world that’s so complex, we’re starting to forget things, important things, like perishing hunger, the lash of harsh skies, the gnawing uncertainty of the next day. Things that make us understand who we are. The simpler, the happier. That’s a big maybe. The thing is, we’re tarnished. There’s no going back. The ice age is over. There’s only myriad skeins of dystopia, slowly creeping over us. And slowly, perhaps, we’ll drown under so much treacle.

Fuck that.
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[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

Postby Ulric on January 8th, 2012, 4:26 pm

08 JAN 12 – HAND TOSSED DOUGH

I just wanted to share today. I've been working, ever so slowly (randomly) on a work of magical realism. It's set a few decades in the future, relies heavily on culture, but defies concepts like location, nationality, or time. I want it to be a blur. Sergey, the narrator, is a former soldier of the Red Army, who survived the siege of Stalingrad only to be confined to a Gulag for two years, only to discover that he is immune to aging. He is presently a clerk for a major refinery, living the life of a drone until a former comrade, 'The General,' calls out of the blue, thrusting him into a labyrinth of discovery.

* * * * *

Korkaya Station, a roaring, squealing clockwork jigsaw of a masterpiece, forged of shiny metal, wires and polymers and molded, recycled glass, caught up by tawdry columnars and a slither of debased circuitry. Neatly swept, unbarbarously lit by natural light. The huge panes, hung by the finest organic bamboo shades, mechanized, defying whimsy. The vents, vaguely slanting, hurling cold air. The hard, high metal seats that speak of a ruthless modernity. Nearby, the comely barista in a jet apron, nearly as crisp as her chagrin. Hair kept back, milky skin. Nobody vends fruit.

Faintly, the grind of hydraulics.

Korkaya.

Everywhere, the wonder of eyes jaded by wonders. The myriad of an abstract, glazed mosaic, clashing with sullenly hung, vaguely cubist scrawls, speaking to some inner mutiny. Taking ease, the bright colors of a Warhol print, edged by sheaves of bronzed hybrid plastics, agonized by meager conjecture. Humanity, refined. Humanity, usurped. Muzak, canned stodge of the 1980s and its bushy mustaches and vinyl couches, vanishing before Jazz revival, Wynton Marsalis on the trumpet.

So long, Motown.

Everywhere, sleek. Everywhere, busy.

Incongruity in the far corners. Harsh, ugly beige plaster, drywall foam, a bereft screwdriver lying behind cornflower tape. Here the drains, plunging to inky catacombs of rats and damp, exuding roaches. There the tapering cruciform of pipes, tubes of white, stagnant plastic, turgidly resisting the squelch of flotsam. The labor of drudges. The gray, locked door, and behind, a dingy mop.

Back to the glitz.

Korkaya, the miracle of mag-lev. High, airy bays swept by corporate ploys. The whorl of so many pearly incisors, vast faces on vast screens, keyed in by red, winking sensors and the power of industry. Patent leather loafers. Heavy platinum watches stowed in cut crystal displays. Blue pills. Red lozenges. No more flab. No more heartburn. No longer the erectile dysfunction. Lose yourself in a Benzedrine haze, scour the rest away. Lush handbags, shiny cars, more fiber in your cereal. Want is need, they say. The gauzy contours of an insect, scant breasts poking, hung by sheer pewter chiffon, yielding to taut pectorals and a sulky pout. Paragon.

Retro chic, the blare of neon. Harsh jabbers of banter. Harsh faces limned by power, eyes caked with mascara. The cacophony of cellular phones. The meager plate of greens, a smidge of apricot jam and a wash of vinegar. Forlorn papers cups in shiny receptacles.
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[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

Postby Ulric on January 25th, 2012, 2:56 am


24 JAN 12 – NUTS. GET OFF THEM.

That’s what I want to write about today. It’s pretty awful, wouldn’t you say? I barely cared until now, because suddenly my nuts are being hugged. I don’t like that. It’s just so blatant. I don’t say a lot, I don’t try to be your friend. I come here to write, and when your shit gets in the way, well, I get cranky. I’ve seen what some of you are doing. I’ve known players to come here, jump in chat and stay there all the time, trying to be somebody’s best friend. I know friendly people, but there’s another type. I’ve known established players who’ve been freaked out by the familiarity, as if they’re just some kind of ladder to be climbed to the glass ceiling of being a special snowflake. It’s also happens to storytellers, and certainly founders. I see what you’re doing. I don’t like it. I’d prefer if you kept it real.

Doing what I do every day, I’ve got a great bullshit sensor. I’d instantly get called out on that stuff. It’s about integrity. I don’t have patience for these charades, these asinine japes. I just remember, ‘There’s no value in something given, only something earned.’ TSgt C taught me that. To do well, you just have to work hard, do the right thing, and look out for each other. There’s a huge dislocation in going from my reality to this motley cabal of writers. The discipline isn’t there. There’s nearly a fallacy that you can do whatever you want. That you can get your cake and eat it, too. ‘I want gnosis, I want expert, I want to be the head bull goose loony.’ I’m sick of game over story.

There are a few ways of getting along. There’s always just writing, and trying to earn respect that way. That’s what I’ve generally done, though lately I’ve had to confront my own conceit. There’s also just playing the crowd. Hug enough nuts, maybe you’ll get what you want. That’s a sordid certainly. The worst part is that many people enjoy being on the receiving end, which fosters this horrid chain of sycophantry that, to be entirely frank, makes me want to quit every so often. Mizahar is important to me, though. That’s why I stay. There are players that I really like, and others that just annoy me constantly. That’s just life. The more shit you’ve got to wade through, the more you despair of what you’ve lost – the writing. That’s what I want to do. To just pour out what’s closed up inside of me, because that’s really the only way I’ve got.

That being said, just stay off my nuts. I’m definitely not a bugbear. I just don’t really feel the need, nor have the energy these days, to passively be your buddy. I just do me. If I get annoyed, I usually don’t talk.

By the way, I’m okay with the few people who’ve been daring enough to speak with me outside of chat. I wouldn’t want to jilt you.

Also, don’t reply to this because I’d just get angry. I don’t enjoy getting responses. I’d rather just say what I have to say. I'm not going to speak about it any longer.
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[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

Postby Ulric on January 25th, 2012, 10:55 pm


25 JAN 12 – FINALLY, THE BADGE IS MINE


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[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

Postby Gossamer on January 26th, 2012, 12:44 am

Congradulations. Ive enjoyed watching the evolution of your scraping. The last one before your photo proof of achievement felt the most real. I think thats incredibly important.
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[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

Postby Ulric on February 8th, 2012, 10:12 pm

02 FEB 12 – ULRIC IS NOT YOUR FUCKTOY

That’s not exactly what I’m trying to say, but so what? There’s a time for griping and here’s where I say what I haven’t already. Ulric isn’t a brute. Ulric isn’t a godling. Ulric isn’t a gore crazed maniac. Ulric may seem to be these things while not being any of them, which means you’re mistaken if you haven’t caught on yet. There aren’t many people that take him at more than face value. There’s a character there, not just the caricature of some barbarian warlord with skulls of defeated foes hanging from his shoulders. That’s japery, and it insults me quite deeply at times. There’s a lot going on his head. There’s poetry, philosophy. The guy isn’t trying to destroy the world, he’s trying to save it. The nature of his inner struggle isn’t about the crudity of love, loss, or worldly gain, but about the uncomfortable truth that he’s on a conflicted path that inevitably results in the greatest possible sacrifice.

Thing is, I play in layers. I’ve got recurrent themes, with more constantly emerging. I conceal things. I mean, I hid a huge fragment of his history for over a year, just waiting for the right time to pluck it from the coals.

Ulric is highly troubled. That’s understandable, considering that his life consists of brainwashing and deceit. There’s where we get to fathers and sons. There were a pair of men in his life, the father that was flayed to bloody rags before his eyes, and the disgraced former paladin that made him a man. Though he dreams of being an idealized version of his father, he’s unable the defy the man he became. The result is that he’s ruthless, blunt, and pragmatic. Ulric doesn’t care for chatter, he just does what he wants. He’ll defy anybody who tells him what he can’t do. That’s where we reach choice. The decisions we make define us. That’s why he behaves as he does. The insults, the disregard for personal space, the presumed lack of concern, he only does that because he can. He wants you to defy him. He doesn’t care if you’re weak, craven, or crippled. If you can’t assert yourself, he’ll regard you no higher than a dog.

The inner strength to carry through your difficult choices is something we’re losing. That’s why I harp on it. There’s a tide of mercurial emotions in him, usually concealed because that’s what men tend to favor. He’s definitely a commentary on what it means to be a man, among others.

Ulric is also a caged beast, or at least that’s how he used to behave. That’s just me trying to strip away the motley trappings of technology to display the primordial, feral hunter-gatherers that we could always be again. Thought defines us, they say. That’s true, but we are from what we sprang. The hunger, the thirst, the fear – that’s what most inherently defines us, but unlike the beasts, we can transcend just as easily as descend. That’s related to the ‘infernal rapture’ that leads to his eventual usurpation by a multiple (homicidal child) personality, and its subsequent destruction by love. That’s how he found his redemption.

I’m not going to lie, I truly struggled with that storyline. I didn’t know where I was going, and I nearly killed him off.

But then, enter Xhyvas. There you go, a god that you’re supposed to resurrect. The kicker is that you don’t have any powers to do it, and everybody wants you dead. That actually kind of sucks.

And yet, it’s what I needed. I can’t thank Goss enough, because that letting him fight for transcendence is really a huge point of the character. There’s no saying what’s going to happen. That angle can probably linger. Ulric is desperately trying to preserve his agency, the sanctity of himself as an individual, but he’s also shackled by his duty to Xhyvas. He desires justice, and power to make the world a better place.

Ulric also doesn’t, or at least he’s afraid that it’s just going to come to nothing. He’s caught by a vicious cycle of nihilism. I just want to be me, is his creed, but he doesn’t understand what me is any longer. His life is a shifting tapestry of regret. The Bone Hunter is where I’m trying to show that. The man slowly losing himself, yet defying the cages around him, because that’s the only thing he can do. There’s no way that anybody will remember him after he’s gone.

That’s also important. The chain motif. The thing you do stay with you. There’s always a logic to my imagery. The storm, the frost, the decay – they’re symbols of a greater awakening of consciousness. The crows are there for a reason, too. Then, you’ve got my recent partiality for mechanical imagery, cogs and gears, mixing with locusts, drones, and hives to question the vanishing of the individual, the vanishing thoughts about the systems around us that dominate our lives. I don’t write absent reason, mostly. I’m saying quite a bit, if only you’d care to listen.

There’s nothing worse than feeling as though your depths are wasted. Me, I can’t write overtly. I’d just feel clumsy. I don’t enjoy thinking about the world around me for its own sake. It’s a waste of time, trying to make sense. I just want to ask questions, to pluck strings of doubt. That’s part of the reason I write.

That being said, I’m not proud of everything. The early stuff was crap. Those threads weren’t very insightful. The only thing I remember liking was a part in my second thread where he talked about fathers and sons, which has always resonated because I’ve never been very close to my own father. I always struggled with ‘game’ and ‘art’ in my roleplay, but slowly I’ve emerged from that jungle. I’ve got my guilty pleasures, my farces (both partly assuaged by my growing lyricism), but my focus isn’t really there.

I’ve got to say something. I need my words to jump from the page, to be part of you. It’s kind of ridiculous to say. Murakami, Solzhenitsyn, Ginsberg and Peake. They’ve influenced me, changed who I am. That’s the point.

There’s many writers here. There are myriad characters, and many, motley threads begun every day. Heck, I don’t read most of them. There aren’t many characters that I actively pursue, like Kit Rowan, Wrenmae, or Sairque, so I’m hardly going to be irrational and selfish in expecting you to do the same for Ulric. If you’re ever reading his stuff, I just want you to listen.
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Ulric
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[Ulric's Scrapbook] Pithy Conceit and Cursing

Postby Ulric on February 8th, 2012, 10:12 pm

06 FEB 12 – IN WHICH I DISPLAY A POEM (THAT SUCKS) IN THE STYLE OF ALAN GINSBERG


Hyderabad

Boeing or Airbus gray & red painted monstrosity of Air India turbines carrying me to cool sweltering embrace of marble, shiny chrome glass cases customs tea & spices beyond conveyor,

Throwing out to ruddy brown dirt miles on miles new black road with no traffic, modernity surmounting necessity as the sprawl of ruddy ovular boulders streaks faster than the breeze in my hair,

To the tinny blare of a horn,

The edges rising squat & white, jumble of power lines & verdant green patching through bare desert & blocks of concrete lashed by so many scaffolds, so many skinny legs in gaudy jeans, bright shirt & brown faces broken by rotten red betel teeth doddering backs bent over by thirty,

The muezzin calling over the old city, Chowmallah Golconda Qutb Shahi yielding to bustling sprawl of Laad Bazaar under the Charminar, shoe alley & tiny bangle shops, brought to strings of cheap lopsided pearls by dirty white compacts & rented driver,

Black & yellow rickshaw clattering with a putt-putt of small transplanted engines with tight-fist rupee haggling refrain,

Thick stench of urine from white stained concrete, sweat heavy drips on back groin legs & brow, hot dirty oppressively everything so much noise,

Scrawny cows in the street eating trash can’t do anything because they’re sacred,

So many pale eyes staring always from crowded trains, wary unfamiliar maybe don’t know but better ignore them like beggars, until Anglo oratory supersedes gibberish tongues,

Gachibowli Lingampalli with dirty string of shapes ditch near so tracks with murky gray stagnant water pieces of trash meandering past fat bristly hogs,

Thali bland rice & yellow lentils fingers as scoop, roti samosa dosa & spicy biryani, raita please,

Telugu cinema with huge mustaches emblazoned over hugely fat women in bright saris, annoying techno pop through snarled dance numbers plot beyond me can’t speak Telugu,

Hindi writing on the walls, not pretty flowing ink script of Urdu but they’re the same language who cares,

Am means mango and something else, just two letters alif and meme no connectors new alphabets are hard,

Can’t figure out aspirating words can’t stop laughing nobody else can either most fun I’ve ever had,

Old Monk Hercules Kingfisher Imperial Blue Royal Challenge need I say more,

Night falls only men no salwars saris burqas, shapeless fabric over everything dark hair slicked by palm oil & body odor, baggy trousers restrained eyes can’t talk to them ever don’t really want to,

Later fucking on a chair with too tight ridged condom guillotining my cock face pressed sweaty between her tits the slap of hips gyrating over my thighs, thought I didn’t love her then realized I did,

Trudging through hundred ten heat so dry over desert scrub don’t see clouds for months oh well, two miles to the rickety charging bus with hard seats & segregated by glum woman in green khaki, five rupee coin to Lingampalli get back on train,

Secunderabad, trees & nice colonies relatively, Banjara Hills rising like paradise but strewn with yellow phones tiny sheds selling betel red wads of spit on the dirty ground,

Nate drunk all the time brown skin Kolkata salvaged, don’t know what’s wrong don’t ask but try to fight the world when pipe busts his head, pretend to sleep while he gets head,

Heft a coconut machete cuts off the top drink the sweet water & scrape out pale meat with a sliver of husk,

Hard dusty earth outside cricket games everywhere bat & ball & shrieking skin all nut brown like the earth,

Tiny man nearly black in dirty lungi, breaking ground with pointed metal rod & ugly wife carrying it away in a bowl seems like too much work for a ditch but here people are cheap,

Wretched masses in rags shouting grunting suffering don’t know what’s going on but it’s okay I’m white,

Sahib pronounced like sob, that’s what I want to do sometimes but I can’t when I always have to be a man,

Kite harvest festival just missed but rooftop wirth it loved every one of them now they’re gone mostly my fault,

Shinedown on a loop wake up you dumbass you’re probably destroying what’s left of your hearing,

Hindu temples rising so many tiers painted gold so many rainbows colors & people there can’t go in unless you pay,

Dark squalid chamber no shirts water on damp stone & flowers coconuts breaking hold your fingers over the flame hit the gong,

Chewing on stalks of sugar cane making a mess but I don’t care sweet juice drips down my chin,

Can’t find any fucking buses dudes always holding hands & riding on bicycles & scooters two on the back,

Boards plastered with slogans emblems Airtel Reliance Tata & Sky faces of corrupt politician fatcats in white robes & Nehru caps,

Shiv Sena beating up foreign women in Mangalore bars BJP fucking nationalist cunts,

Right hand for eating left for wiping it’s just as disgusting as you’d imagine when you sluice water on your dirty arse,

Hussain Sagar walk the banks dirty gray waters slowly receding before the monsoon comes, Buddha statue judging me from tiny islet,

Leaving, can’t get back & staring at kilos wondering what could’ve been if I’d stayed in concrete rising dirty factory air,

Hauling at my case, carved boxes woven cotton & straw glued boards, rolling again to the same white SUVm Sai Baba ornament & orange flowers on the dash,

Don’t remember shiny marble airport, tickets taken waiting for boarding they’ve even got fried chicken it’s better there don’t know why,

Back home damp green JFK terminals rise up from fog, dirty brick & cars everywhere round concourses my last sweet taste of chaos,

Returning to a life of cordial feelings drowning under progressively deeper layers of bullshit & monotony,

Hyderabad I miss you
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Ulric
The Warrior-Poet
 
Posts: 554
Words: 629666
Joined roleplay: May 20th, 2010, 5:51 pm
Location: Ravok
Race: Human
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