2000+1d4
I'd better skip ahead a bit, brother: yesterday was eaten up by moving stuff, and my desktop gets packed up tomorrow, and everything else gets packed up Thursday, and then we're in limbo for two weeks and I don't know how much I'll be online.
My 2001 entry was going to be about moving to JP, and the night my car was stolen and we were inexplicably traumatized by a little girl jive-dancing on the subway, coming back from a fancy dinner we couldn't afford. By extension, it was going to be about class and race in America and coming to terms with all that. Though I could have also talked about giving up finger-quotes for Lisa, or getting traction on the dissertation, or the time these dudes flew a couple of planes into some buildings. And then 2002 was all about weddings, ours and the seven others we went to that year. But some of you have been waiting patiently for me to get to gaming, and since it's half of what we talk about around here, I've got to cover it. I just don't know how to do it justice.
Is there any way to talk about RPGs, or worse yet, memories of RPGs, that isn't impenetrable to the uninitiated? Mike said something nice this weekend about "the dreams we'd shared over the years," which is not inaccurate. But we all know what my Mom told me about my dreams. Gaming, when it's good, is like when you meet your friends in a dream, and you think you really are meeting them, and that when they wake up, they'll all remember the same dream too. The memories you form are slippery and unreal and any chance to pull them out and admire them is a gift. But they're the ultimate "you had to be there" stories. There's almost no way to share them beyond the fold. (Though Bryant and Jeff have come closer than many with their Dear Brothers and Dungeon Majesties.) So if you weren't there, all I can do is ask for your indulgence, or spare you with an LJ cut.
There was the time that Reese and Ben and Mickey and old Blind Joe first paddled out into the Ochopee swamp to find Barron Collier. And even though everyone had barely just met, they fell into an easy camaraderie, a way of bickering and bantering in the midst of sick unease, and you just knew this story was going to work. And the time the gang went looking for a dying soul in New Orleans, and found a sick woman and her baby, and suddenly they didn't like what they had come to do, and the story felt like it was going to be for keeps when you least expected it. And of course there was the time they all had dinner at the Beulay house up in East Tennessee, and Reese and Waylon spun out their road magic and Mama Beulay turned out to be the Witch of the East. And then Blind Joe went bad, and sold his friends out to the Pinkertons, and the Man from the Crossroads said "I made you all Americans!" but sweet-voiced Angie and that no-account Joey Dell helped save Joe's soul, or was it the other way around? And Danny Greer put his kids to bed in Winona, Arizona, and they said "There's no place like home, daddy." And maybe Danny, not Angie, was the moral bedrock of the group, because after Danny set down his burdens at that Mexican radio transmitter, the closest thing he was ever gonna find to the home he'd lost, that's when everything really got bloody. Mickey covered himself with dynamite and busted out of Vegas with Annabelle on his tail, and Ben gave up his name to the Scarecrow, and Sue became the Wicked Witch, and Chicago burned, and Waylon died. And Angie slaughtered her family—oh, wait, that never happened—and the LS-6 roared down Route 66 and it all went down in Nevada in the end. And all of them are like dear friends to me, even the ones that scare me, but yeah, you probably had to be there.
You also had to be there, in the mountains of Tibet in 1941, when young Charlie Mars dove into a freezing Himalayan lake to escape the German soldiers and the howling Yeti and save the demonic prayer-wheels he'd stolen from the Nazi code machines. And in 2001, when waves of mind-controlled Zombie Monkey Men laid siege to a cave fortress high in the Congo, and the diamond veins of the mountain were ancient alien circuitry, and we foiled the terrorists, but the very next day was September 11th. And Fletch said, "I wish you'd let me buy that TV station." And then there was the time Fletch drank absinthe in Berlin and the Reptoids said, "contact has been established," and we autopsied Krucevik's organless tulpa, but of course it was a trap. And we had to inoculate ourselves against the hyperpox with spider venom and ride out the hallucinations and dimensional incursions. And Alice put the moves on Cordes, and Simon drew spider tattoos, and Amanda slaughtered Thai forestry assassins and vampire snake women alike, and Thompson got a conscience and paid the price, and Doctor Bessner composed symphonies of madness.
And you had to be there, on the red dunes of Mars, before the great stone face of Douglas MacArthur with the Lost Ark of Cydonia up its nose, when lounge singer / secret agent Lulu L'Amour and Teutonic opera singer Eva Hauptmanvogel shattered the glass daggers of their slavering Martian captors with a C above high C. And Queen Andromeda told Nina Goering she had a bad case of "Venus envy," and Mr. Smith recanted his mercenary ways to join the Martian resistance like a T.E. Lawrence of Mars.
Everyone says you had to be there, at the Underground, the meanest bunkerclub in Mother's dominion, that legendary summer of 2074, when Darling and Mary Pagan tore into the music and each other and nothing was ever the same again. Or that wild night at Club 45 where Jack Voltaire reformed the Revival and Viv Vortex (he gets in 18 and over) was reborn.
And in the frontier town of Risky Gulch, Brother Cabe had a staredown with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
aliwings about just who could put a bullet into one stinking sinner. And Cabe lost, but he won, but he lost, because she decided to let him kill the bastard anyway, but somehow the heat of the moment was gone, and Cabe did what he reckoned the King of Life required, but without conviction, and that kind of cold-blooded killing is a hell of a thing.
And beside a mighty Niagara that was not our own, the singing Mountie Sgt. Floyd gawped in amazement as fair-haired elves astride silver pegasi filled the sky. And somebody (was it vampyrusgirl's vacuum salesman?) deadpanned, "They must be the Dutch." That was hilarious, but you definitely had to be there.
You had to be there, in the grey alleys of London in 1971, as spies and counterspies ran in circles whacking Soviet moles, and a CIA cowboy named Mitch Hort couldn't get a good cup of coffee and that turned out to be the origin of many things, and a van came careening out of nowhere at the worst possible moment, and incompetence ran rampant, and the brilliant Mark Desroges clapped his hand to his forehead in aggravation more times than you could count.
And out at that creepy Death Car Museum in the Nevada desert, old man Sloka's pretty young wife took his money and ran off with that floozy Jezebel Kincaid. And you could hear the old bastard hollering from the basement where they left him—"WHORES!"—until something worse got hold of him, and then there was a kind of scraping, screaming sound, and then you didn't hear anything at all.
On some overblown Jack Kirby battle planet, while the Negatroids laid waste to Earth-Blue, Red October went toe to toe with Princess Ten, but his mighty socialist fists couldn't put a freaking dent in her. And Lord Andromeda was tragic and noble (or was that the Omegan?), and everybody hated Nightbringer, and Freddy the telepath gleefully made the whole world his bitch.
And how about that show, Dungeon Majesty? Did you see the one where they went to FenCon, and it wasn't about fun? Or the one where Cassie's dad came back? Or the one where Ferdinand's girlfriend was the vampire princess and then she broke up with him? Or the very last episode when Cassie kissed Chip and everything blew up and Alvin said "Senators, you'll have to learn to play my game." Maybe you did have to be there, or at least watch it from the beginning.
And I expect you had to be there, in the dusty ruins of Hermopolis Magna, on the sacred Nile in the year 1263, as a covenant of Hermetic magi worked strange magicks under the Mohammedan sun. Because the magus Shadi lost his shadow, and found it stolen by a lowly baboon. ("A baboon! The stupidest, ugliest, smelliest ape of them all!")
In a dusty theme park in the Australian outback, eighty miles from Little Petumaset, Goofy betrayed the last Americans, and the Expanded Men came, and there was only Orson, but Paulie Walrus died an American and that dude Jim died a totally rockin' hero, mourned by Princess Yum Yum and Lottie the Log Lady and all the rest of us road-tripping freaks. But you totally had to be there, because I know I could never explain that one right.
And in the Palace of the Empire of Ten Thousand Years, Frost Morning Moon put her hungry sword to the pale throat of the Empress and said, "Kneel before me, witch!" And the Empress did. (And it was totally hot.) And on the palace steps, the doomed Lord Executioner and the luckless Wu Lin monk met in mortal combat, while Mountain Of Iron marched an army out of Hell, and the filthy old Necromancer set his miserable spirits upon the flesh of the Empress Dowager—and then, wonder of wonders, saved the unworthy skin of the world.
But that's not all: The Queen's own Supers put down the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, barely breaking a sweat. Jack Voltaire was born, not in Mother's city, but in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco. The Ogrebabes fought the Ogre to a draw, and the false Master Crane was killed, but the false Master Fox found love with the servant girl Yukiko, and Kirby's Ogrebabe found love, or something like it, with the henpecked merchant Honsaka. And there were two very special episodes of Miskatonic High, and each one had a different sensitive thug—one from Dunwich, one from Innsmouth—and in both, that dreamy English teacher Mr. Payne seemed to be in league with the Mythos, but he really wasn't, just misunderstood. The Red and Yellow and Green and Purple Samurai made their way across frozen wastes to the castle of the Witch King Yama-Ubu. And turtles do too drown in oxygen, and Teddy and Alphonse and Jaw Bone and Juniper are totally out of the Kenny Fontana Experience! And head58 and I died inside, and did some touchy-feely shit, and bought cotton candy from a guy with duck feet, and chased a monkey for his loaf of bread. And I got eaten by trees in Kult's gnostic jungle, though I don't remember why. And My Life With Master deserved another shot, no matter what Jere said, and so did the Mountain Witch, and man, I can't believe I only got to play Dogs in the Vineyard once. And I've probably missed a few more memories, but not too many, I don't think. And you are all Traitor Zero!
Yeah, you probably had to be there. But if you were there, thanks. Because we were there together.
