The Scrivener's Jest

I think I am going to add more game content here, as this site seems to be a better place for it. I love storytelling and storytelling games. They are a major part of my creative work which makes them a solid fit for this site. Plus, it is my site and my rules, so there we are.

I am honestly a bit excited. I have been the game master for most of the games I have played in the past decade. For the first time in a long time, I am actually just playing a character which is deeply refreshing. I love designing worlds and thinking about how things move on a large-scale, but there is something fun about just focusing in on a single character.

The system we're using is Outgunned by Two Little Mice. We specifically using the Neon Noir adaptation in their Action Flicks, expansion. Outgunned is a fast and easy-to-learn system focused on narrative play with rule-set that is reminiscent of Powered by the Apocalypse but different enough to be unique. It is really well adapted to story-based play with a very cinematic feel.

We're adapting Cyberpunk for this, the game master is modifying an adventure from the Edgerunner's Mission Kit, and so far the game has been fun. I am playing a netrunner. He's a child born into corporate wealth, but he watched it destroy his family. He now lives in the Sprawl, gathering and selling information to the highest bidder. He can be cynical, but there is a heart-of-gold in there somewhere.

So no, I am not pressing the boundaries of the genre. He is very much a typical character written for this style of game. Sometimes, that isn't a bad thing. The more time spent obsessing over derivative backstory, the less time is spent on actually evolving the character in-game. That is the point after-all.

I am always leery when someone gives me a book with their character's backstory, because it makes me think they have an arc in mind. The story may not go that way, though. The best stories for me, in games and in life, come when we push away from the anticipated arc into something entirely new and different. At the very least, it leads to some interesting new experiences.

I have never been a wholesome writer. I used to see that as a challenge in my writing. I just wrote a fairly wholesome piece about a old man, and honestly it feels dead flat and false to me. I don't expect it to do well. I can write about quotidian things. There is something deeply fascinating and somewhat surreal about a narrow focus on the odd rituals that we do daily. I am always better when I am writing in darker veins or focusing on the pleasures and pains of a life lived. I can write a thousand words in a moment on love and loss and all the chaos that comes with it. Ask me to write a pleasant story or some slice-of-life, and I am pretty much out unless I can really twist it in some way.

I used to think this was just a part of my writing, but I think it is just a part of me. This isn't special. I think a lot of us are far less wholesome than we sometimes appear. I feel it in my writing, though. There is a difference between fiction and falsity. Fiction is the story, Falsity is the voice. I can craft a work, make it poem or prose, and bend it to fit into genre, form, or constraint. It may not be good, but it is fun. Crafting works that are not from my voice often feels like forgery. My creations, in some respect, but made to fit someone else.

This isn't to say that there isn't value in the exercise. The piece I wrote today was good practice. We need to push our comfort zones and press our voice. These aren't publications. They are friendly pieces shared as experiments. Some will hit, others won't. That is the point. For me, it was an interesting realization, and a gentle reminder that I need to be true to that voice even when it makes others uncomfortable.

That perhaps, is the more direct lesson for me, here. One of the reasons I shy away from submissions is vulnerability. My voice exposed for judgment and dismissal. I have fielded enough rejections that you think it would be old hat by now. It never is.

I drove you home. You asked me inside, A question with a promise. When I said no, You smiled Kissed my check, And went inside. I drove away, A fork in the road Not taken. But even now, I feel you Your lips on my skin. Your kiss a burn.

Note: I often do the Very Short Story prompt (vss365) which started on Twitter and moved to Bluesky. There is smaller following on Mastodon. Skin was the prompt for today, and I wrote two. I thought I would post one here

“Are you leaving?” she was looking out the window at the car in the driveway, engine running.

“You know I can't stay.”

She slumped forward and leaned her head against the cold glass. I wanted to go to her, pull her in my arms and tell her I would never leave. I walked out the door, instead.

The air was bitter, but I didn't care. I just kept moving not daring to look back. The car was old but the interior was clean. The driver, an older man, smiled at me through his mirror. I nodded, and we were on our way.

She was my first love, the one I still remember. The one I always left.

I didn't have to

The thought was irresistible. I could stop, go back. I could make this right even if for a moment. Why not? What was left to lose? I told the driver to stop, rushed from the car as he called to me, raced to the house, pushed the open the door.

“I'll stay. I won't go. Please! Just be here!”

My answer came in silence and dust. The house was empty. No one was there. I fell to my knees, trying to find her memory in the cold and bitter night. I looked to the window, the last place I saw her, head pressed against the glass, a ghost of the past.

Nothing remained.

One of the reasons I took the moniker of scrivener is as a sort of homage to Bartleby.

I love the power that comes from not doing what is demanded. It is these quiet revolutions that work to deny those who claim power any agency or impact.

There are many who claim such power and authority. Some are explicit in their demands for obeisance. You see them at the office, in the schools, in the halls of government. They are contemptuous children, little would-be rulers who make fools of themselves and those who follow them. Others are more circuitous in their demands. They couch their orders as a service to you. “If you want to succeed, do this,” they call. “Don't get left behind!” They are charlatans pretending to sell you a life of happiness and privilege if you bend your knee (usually on someone else's neck). In the end, they serve no one but themselves.

What neither understand is that authority is not claimed. It is given. Sure, they may have power enough to force you into a cage, to bind you, to break you. Bartleby faces just such an end. That, however, is not authority. It is violence, a fleeting control, at best, that always comes back to haunt those who would use it.

Sometimes, resistance must depend on such brutality. There is a nobility in pushing back and honor in standing to fight. But not every fight requires violence, and not everyone can raise their fist to strike. There are moments where the best you can do is look up, hear the demands, and quietly say, “I would prefer not to.”

And then do nothing they say.

I earn my sins by the day. Choices and consequences, The results of actions Freely taken Sometimes in error, Sometimes with regret, But actions taken, Nonetheless. I do not mourn the cost, Adding daily to the count, Sometimes in tears, Sometimes with loss. We are all sinners here, The fallen and damned, The unsurrendered, Still trying, often failing Sometimes in defiance, Sometimes with love.

I started writing when I was young. I had a little notebook that I would write my stories in, and I carried that around like it was my most valuable possession (because it was). Sadly, I don't have that notebook, anymore. It was lost in some move, somewhere. For a long time, my stories were just mine. I didn't share them. I wrote just for me and no one else. Even now, so much of what I write—even these tidbits—are just outgrowths of my own reflections. I became a better writer, though, when I started writing with others. In other words, I became a better writer the minute I started role playing.

Truth be told, cooperative storytelling in any form is great. Role play is just the most obvious example. I started when I was still in high school (a very long time ago). I grew up in the Satanic Panic of the 80s (we need to specify now, since Satanic Panics are far too common), but I managed—with a lot of effort—to find ways to play. By the 90s, I was hooked. There was no going back for me. I still play and write regularly and really don't plan on stopping.

While role play is amazing, it is not the only form of cooperative storytelling. I also love paired or group writing, writer table discussions, even those random improv games where you build a story on a theme. Put a few people around a campfire and let them spin a tale, and I am there. Creating a world or a moment with someone else is magical.

It is a dance, you give and take, build and complement, add color and conflict, and they do the same. Sometimes, it all falls apart. A misstep happens, and the logic crumbles. You laugh, reset, and start again. Sometimes, though, your creations become something special. Memories and stories that linger in my mind even now. Moments, ephemeral, with impacts of forever.

That is what I look for in my shared tales, when the story and characters move almost on their own accord. Where you and your partners are no longer the craftspeople of a world but observers documenting a living space. I have seen rooms filled with that sort of magic. Heard the gasps as people lost themselves in a shared story.

It is a high I will chase until I am dead.

It is the work of art that makes the outcome useful. We forget that to our detriment.

So much of this digital space is beautiful and meaningless. Give me the grime. Give me your rough drafts and typos. Let me read your misused words and inconsistent lines. Let me see your art, imperfect and imprecise. Let it be broken and mistaken, but let it be you.

The world is buried in replication and with each copy we further degrade. A thousand images and stories that all look the same. Parody fails because what we ridicule is already a parody of itself. Significance is buried and lost. We feel alone. Each one of us, a single human in a universe of mannequins. The digital was never meant to be clean. We are, after all, messy machines.

So, give me your mess. Give me your chaos and your truth. Be ugly and dirty. Be hungry and aroused. There is no shame in humanity, only in the lazy and vain attempts to quash it.

I understand that it is hard. The words are not always there. My hand is rarely steady, and I color outside the lines. My voice cracks when I sing, but still I sing. Still, I write. Still, I add the color to my creations. They are never perfect, but they are mine. When I share them, I share a piece of myself.

Your copied works do not impress me. They degrade your value and demean you. You are silent with them. They speak for you and tell me all I need to know.

I can write you a poem In any flavor. Shall I make it dark A hungry desolation, A gnawing emptiness, Growing with desire, Dripping with lust? I can be your incubus. Or would prefer innocence Youth, a lonely child On the cusp of discovery, Filled with hope and possibility, Running in the sunlight, Dancing with fairies in the dusk. A memory of a time, When you still felt alive. I can be your salve. The words are easy. I spin them like yarn. Building a tapestry That I offer freely, Then fade away, Revealing nothing.

I write a lot about loss and absence which is funny because so much of that loss is self-imposed.

I can be a cold bastard, sometimes. I grew up being shown that love was a chain wrapped tight around my throat. If I broke the rules, it tightened and I choked. My love was to be unconditional. Their love only came at the end of the leash they kept me on. For awhile, it worked. I was a kid. I bought a lie on the pretense of love, and I did my best to play my part. Well, I did until I didn't.

When I left not much of love remained. Over the years, I rebuilt slowly and not always well. Even now, I love hard, but I drop people easily. The older I get, the less I forgive. There are very few sins in my world. I have no time for moralists or busybodies, but the boundaries I draw are absolute.

I don't even regret most of it. When I write about loss and absence, I am not writing about a person. I am writing about a possibility. I am mourning what might have been. I am mourning what I wanted to be.

And so I write, and the world moves on, and I think of what could have been in different place and time. Loves lost and friendships undone in the blink of an eye. We are all just trying to find our way. What we thought would last forever often crumbles and fades, or worse it remains the same as we grow beyond it. In either case, what was can never be what will be.

Nothing remains forever, but in every loss and in every absence there is an opportunity for something new. I find real hope in that. I always have.