Quicunque

This year I've decided to sign up for Reverb 10, which delivers daily creative prompts for the month starting 1st December. I'd heard several of my online circle refer to it as an interesting challenge and I do need something to slow the steady decline of my active brain cells. A month isn't too long a time to commit to a bit of daily activity, so I'm firm in intention and hopeful of keeping up.

Reverb 10 describes itself as "an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. The end of the year is an opportunity to reflect on what's happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead." You can read all about it and sign up on their website here.

Fanny Fae at Panhistoria asks: "Do you find that your real life leaks out into your fiction and vice versa? How do you deal with that?"

I find my real life leaks into my fiction surprisingly infrequently. My male characters tend to share my sexual and cultural interests because I suppose we all tend to write what we know best, even if its subconscious, but very little of the actual events and situations in my life find their way into my stories. Maybe because I write for escapism, to be something else or something more than all the crap in my real life? My real life does occasionally provide inspiration for my fiction in a very indirect way, I suppose. For example one of my characters was born from the jokes about gold teeth I shared with a Pan buddy following a RL visit to the dentists years ago now. No, I never got a gold tooth *chuckles* but the character born of the jokes about my wish for one remains.

My mood leaks, though, even if my actions don't. If I'm sad, depressed, angry, then (if I write at all) I'll write one of my moody characters. If I'm feeling giddy and high-spirited, then I'm more likely to write something off the wall.

As for fiction leaking into my real life, well that would just be scary! Try explaining at job interviews that you ticked both the 'male' and 'female' box on the application form because you're actually a mystical hermaphrodite...

Fanny Fae at Panhistoria asks, "Who is the last person that made you really angry?"

And after I'd run through the list of the Usual Suspects when it comes to getting me riled up and spitting fire, I discovered that person was actually myself. Didn't really surprise me too much.

Thinking about it - it's because of my own responses and reactions that I get angry. I know that because I blow up at people that others can tolerate or blithely ignore while I'm doing a fair impersonation of a firework with too much gunpowder in it. Those saints say to me, "Jer, what are you getting your whiskers in a twist for? What's the big deal? Just chill!"

Actually, I am pretty chilled most of the time. There's just a few people that can reliably make me flip my wig at a hundred yards.

Apropos of probably not very much but it seems to fit in here, this morning my Buddhist friend taught me a mantra to neutralise an enemy and prevent them doing harm. I'm suppose to chant this twenty times instead of bristling at them *gets out scrap of paper and intones solemnly: "Aum samo bhagavate shatrunam budhi stambam kuru kuru svaha."

Yeah, I'm really going to remember that in the heat of the moment, aren't I?

All this talk on the Dailies at Panhistoria about the difference between roleplay and roleplay (and a very useful talk it is too) reminds me of the other kind of roleplay. I mean the pseudo-pychological crap inflicted on you as part of those work training courses where they think humiliating you makes you a better manager or more docile employee. I was sent once on a course on to learn to be a better supervisor. I thought it was a odd idea since I wasn't a supervisor in the first place so unlikely to become a better one, but it was a day out of the office soooooo.......

Anyway, the afternoon of the course was spent with five bright-eyed self-improving supervisors and one cynical minion (me) roleplaying a situation where a factory boss had to lay off half his staff. The Factory Boss was played by a very nervy girl, I somehow got elected as the Trade Union Steward, and the other four were the Sacked Workers. The problem was, some of the trainees got into their roles too well. One of the Sacked Workers must have been a fan of method acting. Before long the Factory Boss was weeping on the Trade Union Steward's shoulder while the other three Sacked Workers berated their colleague for his insensitivity. Afterwards, the tutor just looked at us wearily and said, "I don't suppose anyone wants to tell the rest of us what they learn from that exercise?" Smartarse Sacked Worker: "Never trust the union steward to back yer up if the boss is crying down his neck."

I much prefer the kind of roleplay I do at Pan. And I haven't played a Trade Union Steward here yet.

Fanny Fae at Panhistoria asks, "If you could travel in time, which era would you visit and why?"

This is one of those questions where you find yourself spoilt for choice *chuckles* I immediately ran through all the obvious choices: Egypt (nah, too pompous, bad wigs and an unhealthy obession with death), Imperial Rome (also pompous, though the mad emperors might be fun as long as you didn't meet any), Classical Greece (lots of naked men after my own heart, but a sad tendency to scrap with the neighbours) or Renaissance Italy (good for artists, not so great for peasants) and eventually I realised where I would most have liked to be was - none of these times and places. Okay, time to read the question again.

Then I realised Fanny had said "era". No mention of chosing a different location, only time. That simplifies the options! So, what era of God's Own County (Yorkshire) might be worth a visit?

This is where I realised there were HUGE gaps in my history knowledge. I know we staunch Yorkshiremen fought the Romans, and after the Romans left we fought the Angles. We lost both times, but at least we put a decent fight. Then my own ancestors arrived - the Great Heathen Army!! (aka the Danish Vikings). We probably put up a staunch resistance before losing to them. Jórvík (York) was the capital of the Danish Vikings and the Kindgom they established here. Oh, and then we fought the Normans, and lost again, but not without putting up a good fight (spotting a theme here yet?) I have to admit Yorkshire was a boom area under the Normans and during the Middle Ages - until the Black Death arrived and we lost a third of the population... *sighs*. Then we have the Wars of the Roses, one of the most fascinating periods in English history, but - alas, the Yorkists lost (not without a damn good fight though!). During the English Civil War, Yorkshire supported both sides (hah! not risking being total losers again!) then we got into wool and coal and pranced about on Ilkla Moor Baht 'at...

And out of all that, what would I visit if I were a time-traveller? I decided to get back to my roots and chose the Kingdom of Jórvík in the 10th century. Not because I want to go a-Viking like my ancestors (though I can think of a few folk I'd like to swing an axe at) , but because it must have been a truly fascinating time. The Kingdom of Jórvík was established by the Danes, passed to the Norse, but much of the general population was still Celtic and Anglo-Saxon. In the centre of this melting pot, the city of Jórvík itself was enjoying an economic boom thanks to Viking trade links that extended as far as the Byzantine Empire and beyond. Yes, it was a relatively peaceful time, all things being considered. And imagine telling your mates when you get back that Eirik Bloodaxe was really a sweetie under all that hairy bluster, and that Sigtrygg Caech the Squinty didn't squint.

Fanny Fae at Panhistoria asks, "What makes you feel powerful?"

Assuming this to mean personally rather than politically, I don't actually know that I ever feel powerful. Not really. I mean, I can feel confident, or capable, but -- powerful? No, I don't think so. What makes one person more powerful than another anyway? My ego/dick/bank balance/Uzi 9mm/gob is bigger than yours?

But now I come to think of it... there is something that makes me feel powerful. Withholding the salmon in the fridge from the cats despite their pleas and demands. It makes me feel like I have at least a modicum of control over them... mwahahahaha. *Sighs* okay, so who the hell am I kidding? Excuse me while I go feed the cats.