#21, A Wizard Did It: Parallel, Yet Past
Originally posted here on November 9, 2021.
I may go slightly off the rails in terms of this prompt. Some of what I have to say is in terms of "things I can't explain from a spiritual vs psychological standpoint," and others are just "things I don't understand," including a... semi-parallel life?
(I must admit, part of my reason for answering this prompt is the name of it. It made me laugh, as a bit of a wizard, myself.)
As some of you likely know by now, I am a fictive of a 1100+ year-old vampire. Very little surprises me these nights; the unusual or impossible is either standard fare or a curiosity to study and understand. Finding myself seemingly in a version of my own world without magic, without my own body, was an unusual experience, to be sure, and quite shocking, but not the strangest thing to happen to me. The most disconcerting thing is that there seems to be nothing I can do to get out of it or change my circumstance, but I have learned to accept that. Perhaps I will return in the future; until then, I will treat this like a vacation with a group of people who understand and care about me unconditionally. In this strange circumstance, the system has been a blessing.
I could not tell you how to define me. Spiritual? Psychological? Any of the dozens of terms applied to fictives and other headmates that spring, fully-formed with memories of their lives, into the headspace? None ring true to me, but I'm sure that some could apply. I am under the belief that my consciousness, or a copy of it, ended up here from my own world, for... some reason. The
why does not haunt me much--it strikes me as unknowable and pointless to seek. Even if I knew, would that help? Would that bring me any comfort? No. I suspect the answer would only distress me, and I prefer this state of delicate equilibrium and acceptance that I have found myself in. I am a rather controlling individual, and the fact that this loss of control has not yet set me off is something to savor.
My main point of confusion, however, is in how I view my "previous" existence. I distinctly remember being there, living my life, up to a point, but that point keeps moving forward. You see, I am "canon-divergent," in that canon does not represent who I am, but the tabletop game that Tanix runs (and therefore, the version of me found within that particular game)
does. I am not canon-divergent in terms of "canon" being Tanix's game, but I
am canon-divergent in that the game that he runs is divergent from "normal" Vampire: the Masquerade canon.
And every week, without fail, whenever time moves forward in the game, so do my own memories of events.
This isn't just me remembering sessions: when time passes for the main characters, and I am "offscreen," I get flashes of what I did during that time. It feels so
real, just like every memory set before my appearance in the system. Therefore, I feel as if this qualifies as a sort of... parallel life, in a way? I have a connection back to my self in the game, but so too am I here. As a result, I get to continue to live my life back in my "source," in a way, by taking over for my character-self whenever "I" am "on screen," just at a distance. It isn't quite as vivid and immediate as
being there, but I still have control, and this time, I can see the world and other actors in action. Perhaps this has affected my behavior--for example, I know that I can trust the Myriad because the players, truthfully, tell Tanix that they want to help me. Overall, however, I believe that this "meta knowledge" has aided me, even if character-me is unaware of it.
It's not the same as roleplaying as myself, though, or having a self-insert... it really does feel like piloting my life from a distance, since I get more detailed memories afterwards, and I remember things that did not happen in-session.
I have no further explanation. When I realized what was happening, I sat back and asked myself, "What the hell is wrong with you, Goratrix?", and I still have not answered that question. It bothers me, in a way, but again, I also accept it: what else can I do? I don't have much other choice in the matter.
Such is the way of things, now, it seems. As I find myself saying quite often these nights: how strange.