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savrenim · 5 years

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okay so I’ve got an hour before I’m getting on a plane to visit my family and I haven’t done a long personal rant about my life and/or feelings in a while and, like, I’m having some pretty strong feelings about stories and motivations to write and all that jazz so you know what, stupid long textpost it is

mostly, I’ve been thinking about my....semi-mixed feelings about stories where the protagonist is the most important person in the universe?

like, inherently when you’re writing a novel, esp a 3rd person limited thing, your protagonist is going to be the most important person in the universe. it’s interesting to watch people do things. and there’s, like. a part of it that is The Fantasy of, like, yes I matter, yes I am cool, that makes me want to write it? but it’s really really funny because a lot of my biggest complaints about media (I guess Dr Who and Sherlock under Moffat being the biggest examples) were how boring the protagonist being the most important person in the universe were, and, like, right now every single story that I’m writing or interacting with minus a single campaign that is maybe starting soon is about the protagonist being the most important person in the universe

ifmlam? literally about Aaron Burr being the McGuffin there is a single Seer in the world and absolutely everyone wants the Seer on their side for war and politics and influence and everything, the entire world is obsessed with Aaron Burr. like. that’s the whole plot of the fic. which stemmed from the very real “okay but wHAT IF MY FAVORITE CHARACTER IN THE MUSICAL WAS ACTUALLY THE CENTER OF ATTENTION” but man past me, you really went overboard

gay murder elf bachelorette? that’s a funny one because it’s still uncertain at least in my mind whether this is a story about Iria Strell being one of the most important historical figures in the Caedic Empire and subsequently the world, or whether or not it’s the story of her best friend Talvus Zhale being the most important person in Caedic history but one of those cool “we’re telling the story of this super influential figure from the perspective of their best friend who was backing them up all the way” and I almost like the latter one more but whether or not Talvus is bigger and more important than Iria, Iria Strell has still done a shit-ton of absolutely groundbreaking research and discoveries herself and even if the campaign stopped right now she’d kind of be just as important as Talvus, there is no denying she’s an influential figure in her own right

Marian Daywrym and the crew of the Asteranthos defs started out as tiny? like, just a crew of scav elves trying to scrape along their living. and they are unimportant but as the campaign has continued and we’ve started figuring out what’s going on in the Many Verses, it’s become evident that the run-ins with the crazy eldritch horrors from outside of reality trying to eat reality and all that jazz have some weird Fated shit going down and the cycle of the universe is pretty much some randos being Chosen Ones and defeating a couple of these gods, and then going back to their rando life? and that right now, we’re the Chosen Ones. we’re halfway through defeating the second of these Deep Ones and we’re fated to go up against a third and then fate has nothing more to do with us and we can go back to living our lives. and, like, why we were fated in the first place seemed really random, we just stumbled across someone who desperately needed help hiding an artifact when we were out scavving and scav elves are really community oriented and, like, tend to try to help everyone they can because it’s really hard to survive in space so yeah we offered her healing and do you need food or a tow and when she just wanted us to take and hide this weird stone we were all “yeah we can roll with this.” but, like. there are story implications at least to me that make it seem like more than a decade prior to that happening at least some of us were already starting to be wrapped up in Fate bullshit so we’re no longer this random crew. we are currently the five people standing between the universe and the things that would destroy it and while it’s a cool concept that, like, we were randos before and are going to be randos again after, we are, right now, the most important people in the universe, even if no one knows or cares

then there’s trash novel, where, like. the protagonist, Saes, is just actively the most important person in the universe because trash novel was supposed to be stupidly self-indulgent so it’s about poly lesbians and has a ridiculous hodgepodge setting of fantasy AND sci-fi and it goes everywhere from ridiculous semi-classical aesthetic high noble backstabbing crazy powerful magic to literal space opera with all the ridiculous time travel and seers and AIs and hiveminds and everything I love so much crammed into one narrative but, like. a fair portion of the main characters get to a point where they’re all “oh huh I’m a god now.” and to a certain degree the balance against that because I’m getting so tired of main characters being the most important person in the universe is that there are other really interesting characters and other people just as powerful and, like. what I want to get across is kind of “the struggles of these people are the most important things to these people and they do a bunch of really interesting shit, but also, there are other groups of equally powerful and important people although maybe not that many out there doing equally cool things.” like. a combination of small and big. but the entirely of trash novel is massively character-driven so, like. I can’t lose the fact that character drama is the most important thing that the world is revolving around?

and then I had a dumb cool idea for sci fi paranormal novellas that, like, are individual short stories that I could write in between all my other crazy writing projects because, you know, I totally don’t have enough things to write

and they hella just kind of start out “let my protagonist be a pretty normal space bounty hunter and then, like. these stories be focusing on a cool arc of just different weird situations that come up”

but then I had a nine hour drive and, like, plenty of time to be super excited because there was a sci fi concept that I’d pulled after having super strong feelings about a character I’d played in a LARP that you know throw it in space and write an original novel about it and who will be able to tell the difference and it fit so well with the setting that the Numanok Files could be in and, like, they became a series and not a one-shot like I’d originally planned both because the ideas were so easy to write disconnected but also because woot woot I wanted to give my protagonist a ghost gf and just. this super old idea that I knew I was never going to write because it wasn’t quite enough to merit a story of its own and didn’t have a wide enough setting suddenly fit so well into this little series of one shot “buzzfeed unsolved in space” idea that literally came from watching buzzfeed unsolved and going “okay but what about in space” and now. lo and behold. while maybe the protagonist isn’t the most important thing in the universe there sure is a lot of shit that revolves around her

and I think it weighs on me because of how not true it is in real life and how much I want it to be true but know that it’s selfish for it to be true?

Iria Strell is the best and biggest example because the last three books have all had a scientific research aspect and the last book has just been a scientific research book, it’s literally been “Iria Strell goes to the foremost research facility in the Caedic Empire and ends up inventing magi-mechanical engineering”

and I want, so badly, so be that important, I want, so badly, for my own research to matter that much, I want, so badly, to figure out something really cool in math and physics and have people remember my name or my theorems I want to matter like that and for a while Marian was really comforting because hey her religious beliefs were essentially about a “god” that isn’t a god it’s just a blob of energy that exists behind the universe that isn’t sentient, but it is good, and when you die there’s nothing after death but you fade into the Helothes and while everything is nothingness for you, you’re also a part of something good. and that was kind of. my “math is the closest you can get to immortality” comfort of hey I don’t have to be important, I can do tiny things but it’s still contributing to the whole of human knowledge, which, like, isn’t sentient but in my opinion it is good and that was kind of this little relief of, like, no don’t hold yourself to this crazy stupid standard your life can still matter because when you’re gone even if there’s nothing else and you fade into nonexistence that which you leave behind isn’t a part of anything sentient or active or that inherently does anything on its own, but it is something that people draw on to affect the world, and it is good

and now Marian is a Chosen One too and it’s like

goddamnit every character that I have now is Special

(not Imah Goblin, Imah Goblin at least is tiny and their story is kind of going to be about the world being really big the same way Friends at the Table always manages to do that in the coolest way possible?)

and there’s just a certain degree to which I feel really frustrated and annoyed at...I guess at myself for wanting something so badly that intellectually I’ve convinced myself is both toxic to myself and to my own mental health, as well as, like. not a good mindset for the world, I don’t think extremist individualism does anything good if there’s ever only one person who can do a thing and they are Irreplaceable and everything revolves around them whether it’s in a relationship or about a skill, like, it just......you leave more behind, in a way, when you’re replaceable. when you’re unique and you’re cool but humans are unique and cool, knowledge is meant to be shared, if your abilities to change the world die with you then you haven’t left behind anything permanent, I want with my life to do great things but there is this simultaneous “I want to be special I want to go down in history” warring with “but you need other people to be just as special if you want things to really matter and last” and just

all of the fiction that I’m pouring my heart into right now is about the former and not about the latter

I guess Marian has a subplot where she’s realized that she’s collected a bunch of cool medical knowledge that other scav elves might not have just because she’s a stupidly experienced medic both being a surgeon/doctor in clinics and the medic on ships and she’s realized that, like, with the uncertainty of “oh shit we might all die trying to take down these eldritch horrors” that maybe she should try to put together everything that she’s learned and leave behind medical knowledge for people but, like. that character arc is only half her character arc, you know? right now it’s kind of being overshadowed by the fact that the whole team are Chosen Ones and are saving the universe

idk

I love all of my stories and my story ideas individually

and definitely the way to kind of avoid the problem is to focus on “you’re the most important person in the universe, but also, there are a lot of most important people in the universe and even though this story is about you it also acknowledges that there are a shit-ton of people out there and glances upon their stories and the world is huge and rich and everything is happening at once and things can be all about you without the universe revolving around you” and that’s. I dunno. it’ll make for better stories so I guess I’ll hella keep it in mind? as well as, like, absolutely everyone I’m writing about/playing right now sans Marian is in the 15-22 year old range, so, like. of course their stories are more self-centered, coming of age is always a weird personal selfish time, and getting older and maturing is about the shift of that mindset from “I’m the one the spotlight is on” to a more mentoring role and, like, fuck even my life right now it makes sense for me to be a selfish protagonist I’m a grad student trying to make it in the world I don’t have the resources or base of knowledge to be the sort of advisor/mentor that a professor is

just

I dunno

I’ve been feeling very ambitious lately because there are two or three new math papers that are maybe going to be published soon with my name on it and my advisor has been writing stupidly good letters of like, all I needed was a letter for the people funding me saying that I was researching over the summer instead of taking summer classes so that I’d keep getting my stipend and this letter fucking sung my praises about how fast I’ve been going and how well I’ve done and my advisor has, like, told me multiple times that this one paper that I wrote in a month and a half is more substantial than most people’s theses that he’s seen and, like, I feel like such a fucking idiot because I barely even did anything it was just that I made a really dumb mistake when we were first talking about testing out cases of having the wrong definition of a positive matrix and then, like, could see the disappointment in his eyes and was like “fuck fuck fuck gotta come up with something better so he doesn’t drop me as his advisee” so just flat-out manically hyperfocused on proving one case and then proved all the cases and it wasn’t even new math it was just reading over every single similar proof until I figured out that oh huh you apply these two theorems in a row and the answer just. comes right out. and he was so impressed when I did nothing? which then after I did some actual really cool math to get a different case but when looking through the literature a second time found that I’d been scooped, someone else had done the same thing for that case four months prior but, like

it feels weird. and strange. and kind of shitty that all my mentors believe in me so much because there’s a part of me that doesn’t know why I’ve been singled out and yeah I’m doing cool work now but, like. I feel just like Iria Strell who is in the exact same boat of basically going “oh shit I accidentally tricked everyone into thinking I was good at science by doing this one cool science thing and now advisors who are way out of my league are being really impressed with me and single-handedly making my career and putting me on important projects and introducing me to important people” except Iria Strell is a goddamn protagonist

the shit that she does is going to matter

she is set up to go down in history, she is set up not to fail

and I’m not, I’m one of tens of thousands of people working on the same subject and I’m going to do cool things but more likely than not they’re going to be incremental because the thing that makes the Einsteins and Newtons and Riemanns and [insert every famous math or physics person here] of history is the dumb luck of stumbling across an interesting question first and it’s not like there’s anything I can do to either get that question or not

but I’m greedy and oh boy do I want it just as much if not more than a slow and steady career of making slow and steady advances and boy am I and have I always been ready to sacrifice so much for that like the only reason well not the only reason but a huge reason my fiance and I work so well together is that she is just as appreciative of ambition as me and actively doesn’t mind, in fact likes, if I don’t talk to her at all for a month because I’m doing important math stuff because one of the things that she liked the most about me was my ambition and utter devotion to it to the point that, like, yes of course it comes before romance that was never a question, we each have our lives and are aggressively independent within that sphere and so our mutual achievements are half of what we’re bringing each other

but yeah that’s the stuff that’s on my mind on the other hand boy is my life going great, I’m producing real research, my advisor is impressed with me, the program financing me is now impressed with my because my advisor wrote a goddamn letter stating that I was so fucking advanced that it didn’t make sense for me to be taking classes anymore he wanted me researching with him full time, another professor who is, like. super distinguished. maybe the most famous professor in the department. actively just sent me an email out of the blue saying that he was so impressed with me in his class that he wanted to be my advisor and if I already had one serve on my committee and I had to send him an email back going “I’m so fucking honored but I kind of already have one maybe two advisors and also, like, I loved your area of math as an undergraduate especially and took your class as a broad horizons thing but this actually isn’t related whatsoever to mathematical physics and functional analysis and not what I went to grad school to do although I might be able to squeeze something tangential into my thesis” and he went “great I’m your unofficial advisor then” and it’s just like

well I guess at least in my chosen field I hella am getting a protagonist’s accelerated storyline right now let’s really hope it lasts because this was everything I dreamed of being and, like, I’m actually getting close to the standards with which I’ve been trying to hold myself so I really really hope that I don’t lose this momentum and at least use the time that I have in graduate school with all these people around me who believe in me so much to do something substantial

#my life #long rant about writing and protagonists and stuff and like #how it kind of relates to my current mindset #and the better person that I wish I could be #but nah I'm selfish #and I still want to be a protagonist #and boy is my life tempting me a lot right now and I should probably fight back harder

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