Multiple Souls, One Location:
Me, My Muses, and Perceived Reality
This is probably the longest document you'll ever see me write about myself, because to be honest, it's the only aspect of me that I really feel is worth writing about. Well, there's the occasional skating post in my LJ, but since I've been sidelined for most of the season with injuries and/or illness, I'm afraid I haven't had much to report in that area. Beyond that, my life has been rather boring and extremely unremarkable.
But enough with the intro. On to the muses!
A Brief History of Musing
I haven't always had muses. Yes, I've always been a writer - I've been doing writing of all kinds, for school and recreationally, since I was in first grade - but for years, my characters left me alone when I wasn’t writing them. Oh, sure, I'd think about them a lot, but only in terms of what to write next. I didn't think of them as anything more than characters, because they never presented themselves that way. They weren't imaginary friends or voices in my head or anything like that. I wrote them, and that's all. They certainly never chatted with me.
Which, come to think of it, was probably a good thing. I was already socially inept as a child. If I'd had muses, I never would have met anybody. Ever. Not that I do anyway, but that's a story for another day.
Anyway, my first muse came along when I was in college, although I didn't think of her as such. I read a book, that's all…and in came Jilani Corak, my very first resident Cardassian, a former security officer who for reasons unknown somehow ended up seeking refuge on a Federation ship. That was eight years ago, and I still haven't managed to get her story out of her. I'd try to write it, but it never seemed right. She'd sit there and watch me write - yes, that's right. I could feel her presence in my head, watching me, occasionally giving me a nudge, but for the most part not saying much. That, by the way, is typical of Jilani. She doesn't talk a lot. It's not her style. She does, however, see everything.
And she didn't leave. Whenever I wasn't working on her story, she stuck around, her presence very noticeable in my head. I chalked it up to channeling. You know, like in a play: you get into the character's head and become them, so to speak, in order to make the character believable to the audience, and sometimes you continue to act like them. Well, Jilani's very channel-able. When I try to write her story, her presence is very dominant. She's just a very strong personality.
But then she started talking to me. Oh, yes. She told me she had a husband and a daughter, and then she started telling me bits and pieces of her story. Yes, she was telling me. I could actually hear her voice - not audibly, but there in my head - and yes, it was very weird. But have I managed to get her backstory out of her yet? No. She's a tight-lipped Cardassian soldier. She reveals stuff when she wants to reveal it, on her own terms, and I have very little to do with it. Even now I don't have her whole story, and I'm not going to force it. I know she'll tell me when she's good and ready. Until then, she's there to keep me informed of all the stuff the others do that they try to keep secret, with the exception of The Agency, and occasionally freak them out by turning on the parental controls.
Then, a couple of years ago, when I first started rping, I acquired a pair of twins. I'm not really sure how they came to be there. They were little whispers in my mind, presences at the edge of my awareness that I sensed were new people in the making. I started twiddling with their history, but I couldn't get much out of it because I didn't even know their names. I got Saisei's from a website where you could translate your name into Japanese based on meaning, using kanji. Saisei is a translation of my name, and I gave it to her because she liked it and it really fit her well. Her brother, Kaleo…well, I got his name at church. XD They showed a preview for the Kaleo series, and when that particular word was said, he looked up - really, truly looked up at me - and said, "Hey, that's my name," and got back to translating ancient texts or whatever he was doing. O_o They then proceeded to tell me that I had it all wrong, that they weren't from this reality, and that this was how things worked in their world. They were the first of my characters to interact with other people's characters, and while that experience didn't really end happily, it did introduce me to muses. That was good. I wasn't insane because I had other people residing in my head! Other people had the same thing! That was awesome.
That discovery encouraged me to play with the other little whispers in my mind, which is why I have so many muses now. Sometimes I create them on purpose. Most of the Shadowrealm group were created deliberately as I worked the plot out in my mind. Saisei, Kaleo, Donovan, and Thanos were the only ones who were really spontaneous. Being a Harry Potter fan, I also took on a couple of canons and adapted a few of the Shadowrealm characters for playing in the Harry Potter world. I still have a few canons, but mostly I have my originals. I find it easier to work with originals, because I hate the idea of butchering a canon. It makes me shudder when I read badfic where the characters are mangled beyond recognition…and I have the feeling that I'm horrible at playing canons anyway. That's part of the reason I stopped writing fanfic. Very perfectionist, I am. >_> And I'm very, very particular about getting the casts of characters for my stories Just Right. The Star Trek group, minus Garak and Taran'atar who are both canons, went through about fifty permutations before I finally found the right crew and started rping with them and really writing their story (which ties in with Jilani's, obviously, but…another story O_o).
And then came The Agency.
I'm not a spy, but I have characters who are…
They're different. For one thing, their story isn't like anything I've ever tried to write. Before they came along, I'd written fantasy (Shadowrealm, which I love, but which also taught me that fantasy is a very difficult genre for me), Harry Potter (which is great fun, but not belonging to me), and sci-fi (Star Trek, which world isn't mine and is hard to write on account of Treknobabble and complex DS9-era politics). The Agency is firmly planted in the modern world. Their story starts in late 2004 - at least, I thought it did. As I wrote, poked, and got to know The Agency, they revealed an enormous backstory, going back a good 15 years. David told me his family history; I have three generations of Archers now, and I know all of their appearances, interests, and personalities, even though they haven't all appeared in the novel yet. I know that Yuki is a natural-born US citizen, that her parents never changed her citizenship when the family (which is, by the way, Yuki, her brother, and their parents) moved back to Japan, and that the reason she came to the CIA's attention was because David listed her family as close and continuing contacts and noted that they were his in-laws. And then they were like, "Oh, martial arts expert. Sweet," and they recruited her too, but that's another side story. I have many of them. The story of David and Randy's Army days and the trio's first couple of years in the CIA could literally be a novel of its own, and will be if they ever decide to tell me the whole thing.
They didn't come to me in the normal way either. I didn't create them, and they didn't nibble at the edges of my mind like most of the others. Hana breezed in, introduced herself by her full name, and informed me that her DeLorean kicked my Saturn's ass. Yes, those were the words used by the sixteen-year-old kid. >D She told me her dad's name and that he was a spy. Like…none of this was my idea. She told me her mom's name too, but it took me a while to get that she was a spy too. I walked in on them talking shop at home. If I hadn't seen that, I probably never would have realized it. -_-
Also, The Agency never shut up. Even when we're not writing, they're always in here, doing their own thing. Existing. They're going to school and work, hanging out with friends and family, practicing their mad skills (Hana and her art, Yuki and her martial arts, David and his shooting, etc.), and occasionally getting in trouble. Sometimes they fight. I don't like it when the Archers fight; they do it in languages I don't understand, although I pick up the meaning, and it's kind of heart-rending anyway because I feel how much they love each other. And they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Unlike most of the others, who lurk a lot but mostly come and go when I need them, The Agency never go on vacation. They've been here for a solid year now. We're pretty much bonded. Call it soulbonding, multiplicity, imaginary friends, whatever you want to call it. Whatever they are, they're here, and they are very real.
Denial: Not just a river in Egypt
So now I've got all these people taking up residence in my head, offering me plotbunnies in return for room and board, and I'm thinking, "Okay. Well. This is a little weird, but if they want to be here to give me cool stuff to write about, then who am I to stop them?" I didn't realize how real they were at first, or how real some of them would become. I knew they were creations of my own imagination, which of course meant they couldn't be real. No one else could see them, and nobody else was going to carry on conversations with them, make friends, and so forth, right? Because they were located in my head. So when I slipped up and mentioned them to my mom, something about I was watching my muses and it was funny, I didn't have to work to hard to convince her that I knew they were imaginary and I wasn't crazy. I believed they were.
But if they weren't real, would they not leave when I wasn't writing them? Would they have such rich and detailed lives? Plus, thanks to the Internet, the issue of not interacting with the real world wasn't an issue at all. They've met other people's muses, and they get on famously with pretty much everyone. They've also met other people. They've hijacked IM conversations on a number of occasions. Hana and my friend Jennifer (grissomkitty on GJ) have had conversations with me being the mediator. Hana says stuff and I, well…I tell Jennifer what she said. ^_^; Sometimes they even hijack my voice. See, I have two singers in my head: Sasha and Hana. Sasha's classically trained, a soprano. Hana's an alto and not as polished, her voice not as powerful, because while she does take lessons, she doesn't focus on it the way Sasha does. Believe me, when I start belting out tunes, I can tell extremely easily which of them is using my voice. If I'm singing alto, it's Hana. If I'm singing soprano, it's Sasha.
And they give me advice. I am not kidding. A couple of weeks ago, when I was having severe issues involving the quality of my life, David was talking to me at work. I wish to God I could remember what he said, because he had excellent advice. It was like having a shrink in my head. O_o
Are my muses real, then? Absolutely. They are a part of me, but they are not me. They have their own religious beliefs (or lack thereof), they have their own personalities and interests and dislikes, they have strengths and weaknesses that are often very different from my own. They live in my head; they don't have a physical body in the "real" world - but they are most definitely there. They exist. They have lives. They interact with this world all the time; they talk to me and they talk to my friends, and they're very aware of things that happen here because current events affect them too. Besides, reality is a very subjective thing. It varies from person to person. Think how different our reality is from that of a blind or deaf person, how a poor person's reality differs from a rich person's, how your reality differs from someone's in another country - I could go on and on, but I'll just say this: Just because everybody else doesn't see and experience it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If it was created, it exists. "I think, therefore I am." They clearly have minds of their own. If you've interacted with them online, you've seen that. To me, that means that they are, even though they don't have a physical manifestation outside my own mind.
All right, then - am I insane? I've asked myself that question a lot, but I've been told that insane people are almost always convinced that they're perfectly sane. I question my sanity all the time; therefore, I'm probably sane. Mostly. Also, if I were truly insane, would I be able to function in the everyday world? Probably not. I don't always handle life well, especially right now when I feel like my life is failing inspection, but I do function. I have friends, both online and off. I have a job and hobbies. You know, one of those "life" things. Furthermore, I'm not the least bit uncomfortable about having other people living in my head. I like it, and if it's not broken I'm not going to try to fix it - frankly, I have other things in my life that are broken, that are causing me heartache, that really do need to be fixed. The "voices in my head" are a source of relief, not agony, and it's hella fun to write their stories. I want to keep them around.
…although I must admit, I'm a little curious as to what a psychologist would make of the "multiple souls, one location" concept. >D
So. Whether you call it soulbonding, imaginary friends, muses, multiplicity, or simply figments of an overactive imagination, they are most definitely there. They're real to me, and their presence doesn't bother me at all. I'm aware that to most people they're completely imaginary, but again, reality is subjective.
And that's all I've got to say about that.
