When we last left our hero, Superguy was getting increasingly surly and acrimonious. Or, rather, it had gotten about as surly and acrimonious as it was going to get, and it was just a matter of sitting about until things started breaking. At least for me, it was. Although I really didn't think about it at the time in these particular terms, I was pretty much looking for an excuse to leave, but was too damn persistant to just give up and quit while I was ahead. So, instead, I detonated explosively during a dispute over... sheesh, I don't even remember. Something incredibly petty and pointless. It's one of those things that you look back on, years later, and shake your head sadly in a "Damn, what was I thinking?" sort of way.
It's not that I wouldn't have left anyway, eventually, but geez, I could have picked a method of doing so that made me look like a bit less of a goober.
To no longer be part of Superguy. Years later, this still, ludicrously, rankles, probably because of the method I used to leave, see also ' goober mode'. A significant part, hell, almost my entire creative identity had become mushed and muddled into it, which was a dumb thing to do. It's impossible to really create without some emotional investment, and when you've managed to entangle yourself so thoroughly, the emotional investment is rather massive indeed. Regardless of the fact that it all sounds so darn goofy in retrospect. It should have been nearly impossible to take a scuffle over something called Superguy seriously, but there you go.
I suspect it was this way with a lot of others, only less so. Most of the rest of them had, well, not focussed quite so monomaniacally upon one single point. Still, Superguy output slacked off gradually after this point, with the noted exceptions of Gary "Swede" Olson and Chris "Frobozz" Angelini, who are pretty much unstoppable juggernauts o' writing.
And here we meander away from Superguy, which, while still an influence, became less of one. We also meander away from what might be termed the 'public record'. Now, up until this point, things like Superguy, surl between authors and all, and Calvin and such, were all pretty much open, and major events were not really kept under wraps at all.
Openness was, perhaps, part of the problem. But we digress. Regardless, a lot of what happened afterwards was private by design, and shall, at least here, remain that way. Superguy is old news, and nobody really cares except curmudgeons. When you get closer to a year or two ago, however, things become more... immediate. So we'll play the delicate balancing act of keeping secrets secret, without overly compromising the thrust of our tale. I guess this'll spoil my surly ol' curmudgeon image, but hey, I'm not that old, dammit.
It was a dark and stormy nigh... no, wait, that won't work.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Much better.
The place was the little chatserver we called Calvin, which had accumulated both a large assortment of Superguy-related persons, and Superguy Authors(tm). Many of these had joined into the "channeling" phenomenon, which was in full swing at that time. Because, as was stated before, as Superguy became less of a workable outlet for a lot of people's writing urges, like mine, Calvin became all the more attractive as a role-playing venue, with its flexibility, possibilities, and occasional pirate attacks. The problem was, it had arisen pretty much out of nothing, the concept tweaked and bent as necessary to fit what we wanted to do with it. Except... well, except the only way to get a bunch of writers in a free-form situation where they can't ignore what everyone else is doing to not screw up is if they're all at least roughly reading from the same page, so to speak.
We weren't, for the most part. Or, at least, there was a core group that really had it together and knew what they wanted to do, and a bunch of people spinning around them who 'got it' to various degrees. Much confusion resulted from my belief that I was the former when my own, well, level of surl made me in the latter. Many of the players were trying to do things that just weren't gonna work, and I, embarassingly, was one of them. If you put Harlan Ellison and Piers Anthony in the same group, eventually Harlan's going to leap over the table and start throttling Piers. It's just unavoidable, really.
I managed to be a bit more coherent in my eventual departure from Calvin than I did from Superguy. Namely, at least this time, I was persuaded to rationally explain what my problems with how things were going were. It didn't work, but at least the attempt was made.
Somewhere along the line, I'd developed an irrational dislike for the whole open sort of concept thing. You know, the one the Internet was originally conceived around? Oh, at first, I loved it. But the bitter pill of experience was turning, had turned, me against the whole idea. At one point, I'd thought that any group could be persuaded to work together coherently, given time. At the highest point of surl, it almost seemed that the opposite were true.
Still, if at first you don't succeed... For the first time, after this, instead of coming upon something fully or partly formed and jumping in, I got in on the ground floor. No, more accurately, I laid the foundations. And so, what happened in its inception can be pretty much considered to be entirely my fault.
You see, it was clear to even people at the very core that there were at least minor problems with the whole Calvin system, although we were (naturally) divided on what, precisely, those problems were. I don't think anyone thought, gosh, everything's working just fine. So, after one incident finally unleashed a massive horde of surl upon the land, I started proposing a new idea to people. Secretly.
See, I'd gotten tired of several people at that point, it really isn't necessary to go into exactly why. It's pretty much a given that not everyone gets along with everyone else. But the majority of people were fairly rapidly clued into the new idea, which was, essentially, start things over with as clean a slate as possible, clear up various metaphysical problems that had cropped up, clear up various things that had clearly become issues, et cetera. The debate that ensued was pretty heated, but for the first time in a while, it was an actual debate, with a set number of things that were going to be problems, and when they were settled, through arguements pro and con, that would be it. And it was. Sort of.
What's the line about "The Best-laid plans..."
You see, while my ideas on how to set up the role-playing end pretty much worked out okay, my ideas on, well, administration didn't. I won't go into the precise details, because they're still a subject of surl with some, but that there were difficulties became a public issue. Namely because the people we hadn't included found out what was going on.
Level of caring varied. I, for one, was so bitter and surly at this point that I simply didn't care at all if people's feelings were hurt (there should be a distinct lack-of-surprise at this point among regular readers). I did, however, at least have the tact not to come right out and say it at the time. This, too, was settled... well, no it wasn't. It was the first in yet another long series of increasingly surly debates that continued cropping up.
Eventually, problems that would have been minor issues if not for this perpetual dredging up of surl (hmm... why's the Irony Alarm blaring in my ear... damn it, turn that thing off!) simply became insolvable. And it was becoming apparent that things weren't working for me. Unlike Calvin, however, it was equally clear that it wasn't really the system that was the problem, it was actually me.
The system was sound (after all, I'd designed it), the players were good, but I was trying to do things that it really wasn't designed for, and that the people I was trying to work with weren't really inclined to do. Now, you'd think, after storming off twice from things involving this group of people, I'd muster up at least a bit more of a clue in leaving the last time. But no! I went back to the original Superguy playbook and toddled off at some final provocation that was the proverbial straw to the proverbial camel. And didn't even clean up after myself.
Now, you, gentle reader, may ask, what the heck does this have to do with writing?
Well, Calvin and all that followed were, pretty much, writing. You could have done a bit of editing, put in linking bits and some scene description, and a lot of it would have been at the very least passable story material right then and there. This is, in fact, what some people ended up doing. It's like 'Writing Lite'. Get a rough outline, get some other authors together, and just play the thing out. And we did a lot of it. A really, massively, staggeringly huge amount. And even during the personal surly bits, it was still really fun.
On the other hand, if I can't keep a bunch of co-writing going with a system that was enacted pretty much directly as I conceived it, and a bunch of people who, almost without exception, are all talented writers, then basically I'm pretty well fucked as far as big collaborations go. This, I've learned, at least. Well, unless I'm in charge. But then, if I didn't keep around the delusion that things would always be better if only I was in complete control, I wouldn't be much of a monomaniacal genius, now would I.
Would it have worked? It could have. It seemed, I suppose, as if Murphy vigorously conspired against it, in the form of wonderful little helpings of trouble that seemed to cause 'Cascade Angst', as it was termed, every time anything needed discussing. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned in taking things too seriously, there. Or perhaps we should just mutter vile imprecations about fate. I like the second option, personally.
And since then?
Well, played in one Pbem (Play-by-E-Mail) game (more 'Writing Lite') which was too popular and overwhelmed the GM. Game-Mastered another one, which overwhelmed me, which was depressing because it was also really cool.
Tried once to recapture some of the fun spontaneity of Superguy, sort of succeeded but petered out.
And then, wrote again for Superguy. (Yeah, I know, I said it was a thing of the past a few paragraphs ago. Deal.) It was different this time, though. The great activity-fests of the past were, well, in the past. Several new Authors had popped in, and, while they weren't awe-inspiring, they were new, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves. And, although it'd taken me about four bloody years to learn it, I'd finally gotten a clue about caring too much about things. And so I was actually able to write something again, pure fun and wackiness like the old days. So maybe, I guess, I can learn, although it seems to take me a really obscenely long time to manage it.
And now, of course, we're up to the present. Where I write magazine articles and surly journal entries that are occasionally entertaining to someone other than myself, and every now and again a dribble of fiction will leap out of my brain and onto the computer. And think about the good ol' days.
Now, it's a valid question to wonder "Damn, man, most of this was four years ago, what's the point of bringing it up now?"
Several, really. First of all is the fact that I'm not surly for no real reason. It helps to understand the basis for someone's surliness to really get a grip on who they are. Not all of my experiences are fun laugh-fests like whizzing on the grass outside a French Chateau or eating an entire loaf of Wonder Bread that I'd compressed, one slice at a time, into extremely small cubes and then feeling very ill afterwards. To a large extent, my political philosophies and other such fun things are dictated by sequences of events like this. We're all a product of our experiences. Good and bad.
Secondly, because I'm one of those incredibly annoying people who can't ever forget their own foul-ups (or other people's, for that matter). It's one of the things that makes me a good computer programmer; I can't stand leaving a solveable problem alone. It's not so good in the Real World, where problems aren't solveable. So, really, I'm just venting random snippets of past mistakes to reduce my own chances of ulcerousness. I mean, really, it will be hard to entertain y'all if I just suddenly up and die one day.
Thirdly, because it's my damn journal. So neener neener neener. If I'm forced to dredge up the past so as to have something interesting to write about, it's your own darn fault for not contributing to the "Entertain Jesse" fund. Give early! Give often! Operators are standing by!
So there you have it. A glimpse into the sordid past of a Jesse. Tomorrow, I'll get back to the fun stuff.
Rant 'o the day contains no additives, preservatives or alien spores of any kind. Use only as directed. Do not expose to direct sunlight. Do not fold, spindle, multilate or remove identifying tags. Handle with care. Contains less than 3% milk fat by weight, not by volume. Certified 'Syndicate Approved'. Squeeze the lemon. Four out of five dark elves surveyed agree: It's surl-a-riffic!
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