Well, I guess my head hurts

Okay, this is going to be a very self-centered and not very funny blogpost, and I as you all forgiveness for this.

One of the simultaneously glorious and pathetic things about being in a fandom – and there are a lot of things that fall under this description – is that you tend to fall helplessly in love with complete fringe-characters. You know, the kind of characters that have no real bearing on the story in itself, and possibly only turn up to be charming/annoying/out of their fucking mind at one point.

Take the Harry Potter fandom and the love for the young Marauders as an example. We only get to see them at one point – well, correction, we get to see young Sirius and James again in Deathly Hallows – and yet a whole huge section of the fandom orbits around these four boys – did I say four? I meant three-and-sometimes-Peter, of course – and their antics. True, their grownup selves have a somewhat more central role in the actual story, even James in his absence, but from what we can see, their grownup selves seem to be rather different people for a number of reasons – prison, betrayal, loneliness and… and, er...  And yet… the shipping, the slashing, the mary sue-ing… the fanfiction and rpgs… the heated discussions, the fandom stereotyping (if I read about one more Remus with golden eyes I might just SCREAM)… All of these are signs that at least three of these guys are loved and adored, despie appearing only briefly in the HP books, and then as bullies.

What is my point? My point is that in my current fandom, the Havemercy fandom, all of this is abundant, mostly because it is rife with interesting fringe-characters of the big, hunky, man-candy variety for fangirls to play with. That’s not to say that the main characters aren’t fascinating, because they are, but there’s something special about taking a fringe character and, by means of fanfiction or roleplaying, making him your own and giving him a bit more than just the brief breath of life that the author allowed him. I think this is probably one of the reasons why one of the most popular pairings in the fandom is Raphael/Ivory, despite them barely even having five lines each in the entire book.

That, and they turn into pure sex when written right…

All this aside, even small hints of a personality can make you feel a deep and wonderful connection with a character, just like that. And that’s the case with me and my current favorite character, Evariste.

He’s really a no-character, even by the means of the more obscure airmen, having only a couple of stray lines and a hiss to him. But my heart still goes out to him somehow. And because I have nothing better to do at the moment, and because I have been working the night shift and I am therefore prone to rambling, I will tell you. In excruciating detail.

This is his first appearance in Havemercy:

“Mer­ritt, I swear by the bas­tion, if you don’t sit still I am go­ing to lynch you in the show­ers.”

At the op­po­site end of the line, a man en­tire­ly too freck­ly for his own good scowled in hurt dig­ni­ty. His com­pan­ion, the one who’d spo­ken, turned in his chair to face me.

“This train­ing, will it make Mer­ritt less ir­ri­tat­ing?”

Now, there is a lot of sniping among these men, but for some reason I always took this as an honest question; as in, he is actually interested in hearing whether or not this training will make Merritt less annoying. I don’t know why, but I really imagined him as sincerely considering this as an opportunity. And, sad as I am to say this, so would I.

I am not among the people who would ever dare to ask that question – a lot of trial and error has proved to me that saying things like that make people think that you’re rude and obnoxious, and I'm terrified of that – but I would think it. Oh how I would. Because people quite frankly annoy me, but I have a very limited understanding in how you all truly work, and so I wouldn’t disregard the alternative that some kind of training could be applied to make everyone less annoying. I’m quite sure that this makes me into a really unlikable person.

The one who’d com­plained—Evariste—chewed at his lip. His hair stood at ends, like he’d of­ten tugged at it in thought. “I fly Il­lar­ion. What about me, what about me . . . oh yes! Once I ate a pound of but­ter.”

I really wish that this wasn’t something that I totally couldn’t be goaded into if teased enough/ given enough alcohol. I really do. But alas, I am a moron.

Let’s move on to another scene. In this, the main character who does all the thinking in the above scene, Thom – or, as he is often referred to, ‘the professor’ – has handed the group of men he is supposed to be training in the art of being civilized people an assignment of sorts. They’re all given a slip of paper describing a role they’re supposed to play, hopefully managing to describe the sensitivities and motives of that individual. And how does Evariste fare here?

“Um,” said Evariste. “My card says, ‘That Kid Ghis­lain Hit on the Head When He Dropped Mer­ritt’s Boots out the Win­dow.’”

“It was re­al­ly an ac­ci­dent,” said Ghis­lain mild­ly.

“Yes,” said the pro­fes­sor.

“Well, I guess my head hurts,” fin­ished Evariste.

Ah, yes. And there we have it again, because that too would be my gut reaction to an assignment like this. Don’t get me wrong, I am rather good at constructing scenarios inside my head, and use it frequently for writing, but what meager skill I have has very little to do with any real ability to understand what someone else is feeling. No, it’s a learned skill, gleaned from reading and painstaking observation. It’s like mathematics for me. Fear + stress = anger. Lust + fascination = attraction. Unexpected boots + head = what the flying fuck?

I can feel sorry, in an abstract way, for that poor kid, and reflect, like Evariste somewhat later does, that, “All right, I get it now (...) I wish who­ev­er had been drop­ping heavy boots had been more con­sid­er­ate of . . . who might have been stand­ing there. Be­low. I wish they’d looked.” But when it comes to true understanding of what the kid is going through and thinking, it basically stops at “I guess my head hurts”.

And that’s basically all there is to that character. But just those few bewildered lines have made me take Evariste to heart, believing to have briefly glimpsed in a book someone who is just about as bewildered by humanity as I am.

PS. I will at some point stop making these cheap Twilight shots. I promise. DS.

PPS. And yes, there had to be at least one picture of a cat, why? DS.

Thrilling insights in diarrhoea, or: One girl and a plastic fork

Okay, so today I am feeling like somebody rubbed my soul in Satan’s asshole, threw my heart into the microwave oven and fried it until it exploded, and filled my head with tar. Tar with nails and shards of broken glass in it. Oh, and piranhas too. In short, rock bottom just hit me with the same terminality as a concrete wall built straight over a highway would hit the first unsuspecting cruiser who happens to be far too busy checking her make-up in the mirror to notice the impending obstacle. I know I just drove that metaphor way too far, but my mind is not the most reliable thing right now, so bear with me.

When I am feeling like this, being on the downswing of that series of mental curves that I seem to be following, the best way of dealing is usually to try to make fun of myself mercilessly until I actually start believing that there is anything funny about the situation. So that is what I am going to do now. So, sorry, no rules post – those are going to be very finely spaced among the rest of the crap I am going to be spewing; you have been warned – but merely an insight into a somewhat unbalanced mind. Doesn’t that make you exited?

Of course it does.

I have something of a social anxiety problem. That is to say, some social situations are perfectly fine with me, while others send me into a fit of utter, helpless, frothing-at-the-mouth sort of panic. One of the situations which my feeble mind is apparently not able to cope with very well is ordering food at fast food joints. This is a bit of a problem, considering that my chronic laziness often lands me in such places in defiance of acting like a normal grownup and making my own food. McDonalds I have sort of, after many years of training, learnt to handle. I simply walk up to the cashier and say “OneMcFeastmenuwithcoketogo,” all in one breath. Then they of course have to ask me to repeat myself, but as soon as I’ve managed to say it once, it becomes easier to remember the second time.

But in other places, such as the Swedish version of McDonalds, Max, I have no such luck. There I will mumble what kind of menu I want, and then, without fail, I will get completely stuck on the first question the smiling girl with a silvery name-tag – that almost half the time spells either “Linda” or “Elin” – asks me. One would think that I would have managed to grasp that there WILL be questions, what with this being standard practice, and that I might even try to prepare for them. But I don’t, and I am uncertain if I ever will. Instead my brain goes into complete lockdown; I stare around in panic, fumbling for words and quenching the impulse to scream “HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW IF I WANT ONION RINGS INSTEAD OF FRENCH FRIES, OR ONION RINGS AND FRENCH FRIES? WHY DON’T YOU DECIDE? THIS IS WAY TOO COMPLICATED FOR ME!”

And then, like clockwork, only a lot more erratic, my tics start up. My hand starts twitching or doing complicated grasping movements in the air, or, if life really feels like fucking me over, my head starts thrashing rhythmically sideways, making me look like I just broke out of a very small room with very soft walls to grab myself a burger.

It’s like my body feels the panic rising and starts acting up in some strange attempt to signal to the world around you that, “Hey, guess what, I’m a bit special, okay? So that I’m not answering your perfectly normal question has nothing to do with me hating you and wanting your family to die in a fire. I’m just a perfectly ordinary nutter.”

Or that’s how it feels like, because the tics usually start up at the point when I start worrying about that Linda/Elin might think I was offended by the question, as if a French fry killed my mother or something. And that point I will usually blurt out the very first thing that comes to my mind, regardless if this is what I actually want or not, just to be able to get out of the horribly awkward situation I’ve landed myself in with some last little shred of my dignity intact. I will answer any other questions that Linda/Elin might have in a kind of stupor of relief of having managed that first question, not caring at all if I make any sense at this point as long as I am allowed to find myself a table where my spasmodic twitching won’t attract as much attention.

The last time this happened, I actually wasn’t spared of further humiliation even when I’d managed to collect my food and had found myself a table. Because while listening calmly to my friend talking about something, almost like a normal person would, I was suddenly overcome by a wave of utter panic and horror over how much of a pathologic fuckup I seem to be. This came completely out of left field, and gave a great big boost to my earlier anxiety, which hadn’t quite faded yet and was only happy to rear its ugly head for round two.

I started chewing on my straw. And then I continued doing that. And continued. And continued, up until the point where I was madly jamming the straw centimeter by centimeter into my mouth and chewing in a panic-stricken daze at the disgusting tangle of plastic which I had by then created. I kept on doing this for a whole agonizing minute until the taste of plastic and the sharp edges of the straw poking me in the throat almost made me hurl all over my the leftovers of my meal. By then I was in such a state of undirected terror that I had to leave the restaurant before my mind popped another gear and I started skewering innocent bystanders with my plastic salad fork. Things like that tend to look bad to people like polices and judges, even if it is really only a natural reaction, I feel. Natural to a complete headcase, true, but nevertheless.

This is probably going to be the first installment in a little feuilleton that I would like to call “Life with my brain”, and I am not sure it is going to be amusing as much as... well, madly depressing, to tell the truth, but you’ll just have to think about them as my attempts to stay somewhat sane until I am capable to write something with some actual substance once again.

Oh, the mental diarrhoea  of blogging