All my darkness is belong to you...

ostro_goth seems to be off to a good start in Milliways. Playing somebody that dark and gloomy is a strange sort of fun. While he takes himself painfully serious, I don't - not quite! He's the impossibility of a 'good' Nietzsche Wannabe, now stuck in a place that contradicts and negates his entire negative, atheistic and nihilistic worldview. I will be glad to have the bizarre happen to him while he keeps scowling, shaking his head and perhaps sometimes hitting the bizarre with his axe if that is OOC-ly feasible and agreed. He's already met a little Womble (which he of course doesn't hit with an axe!!), and I hope people will be by, eventually, with glitter, magic brownies, strange curry, magic, mud-slinging, karaoke, murderous dolls, diabolical carnivals, talking animals, weres and vamps and trilobites and whatever else Milliways has to offer. He's a nineteenth century cardboard character -- the scent meme has reminded me that such don't smell, canonically, but somebody freshly in from a battlefield on an active volcano? Probably pongs to high heaven. Milliways gives him not only the magical and bizarre to deal with, levels that his own world doesn't have (even though one could argue his accurately prophetic dreams make him the only sort-of magic user in a completely nonmagical story). Milliways also gives him the sort of everyday stuff that his canon simply ignores. Canonically, he lives in the ruined Gardens of Sallustius in Rome? Pur-leeeaze!! Where does Teja go when it rains? What does he do to make sure nobody steals his forge and the things he makes while he's out and about politicking and fighting? And so on.- Still, I mustn't let him change too fast. The fun of the charrie is that he doesn't have fun. If he softened up and mellowed out, adapted, laughed, cried and found somebody to love*, he'd be a character like any other, and I'd probably lose interest in him, as Milliways is character-driven and there are limits to finding plot for your pup once the natural character-induced story arc has been done.-

There is something else that I find highly interesting - Teja doesn't cause character bleed. I'm not one of those bleedy, intense and spontaneous players that muck up plot and wail a lot, but I do get the emotions and basic outlooks from the characters I'm concerned with most at any given time. Teppic was the first; then Captain Tantony, Asar-Suti, Andras, finally Marek and Emm/Manny. Their story is starting to unwind, the end has already been plotted and set in motion, even though I am still looking for plottishly stringent justification. That may be just round the corner, too. The central question left might just be, 'What does Marek have to do for Arawn, and how will it infuriate Vision and his legions?' and then it's all set for the final act and high drama by the maze. - But they all bled or are still bleeding, to various degrees. Teja doesn't. It's wet and cold and icky outside in RL, I have to work directly with customers which is something I always refused and hated, I have to work 50% more without pay, towards an increasingly hypothetical time account -- I've already got 60 hours overtime, by the end of this week, which means 3 weeks of extra vacation for somebody working 20 hour weeks and getting the customary 6 weeks of annual vacation anyway -- there is work to be done, too! I really dislike working almost like an ordinary mundane, long hours, no days off, and all that while the damn trains are likely to be on strike on any given Thursday or Friday. I really ought to be bad-tempered and gloomy -- but I am not! I walk through the miserable village with a spring in my step, cheerfully pondering the possibilities in the Web We Weave** while bouncy reggae-esque world music from Cat Empire or whistful Jethro Tull songs play in my cheap little MP3 player. I have taken to handling customers like a fish that has accidentally been dropped in the water - with the result that in the last few days, I have actually been selling some pages in our catalogue project, which is running so well with me to smooth it along that, off from a catastrophic start, we have ended up meeting the illusionary 'turnover forecasts' that are never met, just exist to browbeat employees into submission. And I have tamed two horrible Austrians using Jack Sparrow magic, just saying 'savvy?' to them! All my darkness, I can siphon off into Teja; he can have my gloom, and is welcome to it! As any character, he's an entity in the sense teriel uses in his books; but unlike any I have had before, I don't have to embody him. I don't walk through the world whistling 'Make way ye people to our steps/We are the last of the Goths'*** or anything. This entity is a vessel where I can drop the darkness and let it seep out as I play him while I sail easily above adversity.

So, for these two reasons, I do hope the emo Goth won't cheer up**** all too soon...


* His canonical love interest Myrtia might be different; she is even applicable for another mun which none of his other canonmates are due to impenetrable canon. Her entire canon, every last word, is comprised within the parts I translated. If anybody brought her, things would most likely result in interesting times with interesting questions asked, after which it would be just as likely that both went their separate ways.-

** You can't say 'plot' when talking about Milliways; too many unknowns. You can only say 'If that happens, than this is likely to happen later.' Pondering the branching web of possibilities is lots of fun. One of the first 'if's was alrady fulfilled yesterday, by the way. Whistler mentioned Sweden and said it was a respected country. I had hoped somebody would.-

*** His canon used to be quite a fandom to some of my ancestors and their contemporaries; there is an early 'fanon' melody for that song that he dreams of and Adalgoth finishes at the very end of the book, which I have learned from my grandparents when I was, say, eleven.-

**** An icon with chibi Teja, a battle axe and the caption 'Cheer Up Emo Goth' comparable to the one burning_bryght has for Námo is something I will have to get him eventually, nevertheless, as I would have to use that for posts and comments, especially in ways_back_room, where I can indicate that I don't really take him seriously!