It didn't yield any kind of result; we lit candles, got a board and a cursor and started to play. I thought of it as a game; an innovative and interactive ploy to create a character, but after half an hour of everyone not taking it seriously I decided to leave it, so we said 'goodbye' to 'hedgehog' who wanted 'Emily's boobs' and I never touched it again. In retrospect, it just wasn't going to work and I would just go with my original plan.
After a while I finally concocted an idea that was born out of cruelty; a character rich in decadence, pleasure, sensations and rage and although then it felt I was pulling the strings, it was merely the other way around. Character's are born out of us; we give them a face, characteristics, hobbies... But what we constantly forget, or ignore, is that they can manifest themselves in dangerous ways and not only on the page. I noticed this when I started to write the character of 'Salome' for a possible novel idea and found that she was trying to break out of the confines I had placed her in.
As Wolverine says in the (not-so-great) film X-Men 3: "When you cage the beast, the beast gets angry". They find a conduit in which to hate, they begin to obsess over ways to find their own way out of their situation but once they break free, they don't know what to do. I found when my emotions were unstable or life was difficult, I would mirror some of the traits of my character or ask myself, what would she do in this situation? And that is where I began to become my character more then I expected.
I based her on the anger and hatred that human beings feel when it is left to fester. I think everyone, even if they do not actively hate, have had this feeling at some point in their lives and I know I definitely have. Its dangerous to feel that way because its so powerful and absorbing and once it starts, it needs to stop as soon as possible; hate is a nihilistic emotion that ends with nothing but malice and misery. When we find motive and reason and pleasure within this negativity it begins to form, almost, a personality of its own. Like Voldemort splitting his soul to render himself immortal, we feel the need to do the same just to survive. But it needs energy and fuel to keep on thriving and so we nitpick, or target. We use every inch of our body, exhaust ourselves to try and satiate an almost unlimited force.
We've all done this before and once we stop and look back, we realise how obsequious we have been. Our actions, though deplorable, need to be justified one way or another by ourselves just to try and reason with the side of us that is no longer static, but transient and faded. We kill ourselves a tiny bit and end up monsters.
What do we have to left to go back to though, when we discover this? How can we return to how we feel when we've been pushed to breaking point with our emotions? Do we deserve it? Can we ever redeem ourselves? - I'm not so sure. I wish I could answer this myself because its a question that I've been asking myself for so long.
I remember reading The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey and his experience with christians: "On Saturday night... I would see men lusting after half-naked girl dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning... I would see those same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them..." - Once we are in the cycle is it possible to break free? Can we relent the forces control of us and stop the cycle? If not, what levels of degenerance will we slip to and how long will we fall before we hit the ground?
How far do we fall before we can't even forgive ourselves?
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