by Mia Archer
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“I’m absolutely sure,” Megan said. “Look, I’ll try pulling it up in the Elassa Item Database.”
She alt tabbed out of the game and pulled up the item database. There was a plug-in that worked in game, but she never used it because she claimed it affected performance. That was all stuff that was beyond me though.
I stood and moved over to her computer. Watched as she clearly typed in Elassa. Plenty of things came up. There were a lot of items in the Tales of Elassa database that had Elassa in the name.
Megan narrowed it down. Elassa Shards. Zero results. She modified the search so she was just looking for shard. There weren’t nearly as many results as what had come up when she typed in the name of the game, but there were also no combinations of the name of the game and the word shard.
I blinked. Was I really going crazy? Had I hallucinated that item?
“Nothing like that in the game,” Megan said. “Like I said, anyone who had something like that would be a major game breaker. They’re either a developer having some fun or a hacker doing one hell of a cheat that’s going to get them caught eventually.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“Why do you ask?”
I shook my head and blushed. The last thing I wanted right now was to explain my encounter with Kaira. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I might potentially be going insane thinking I saw items that didn’t exist. The last thing I wanted was to think my strange role-playing partner was actually some sort of cheater or hacker. Partly because something told me she wasn’t the type, and also because I didn’t want her to get banned from the game. I wanted to see her again.
Now there was an odd emotion. I wanted to see her again? She was just an avatar and some text on screen!
“Oh nothing,” I said. “Just some low-level role-player bragging about something I figured wasn’t true.”
Megan shrugged. “That’s what you get from people who think it’s more fun to spend time making up stories about the game than it is to actually play the game.”
I fixed her with a sour smile. That dig wasn’t lost on me, but I was too adult and too confused at the moment to give as good as I got. I went back to my computer and logged out of my own game.
“You’re logging out already?” Megan asked.
I jumped. I hadn’t realized she’d come up behind me.
“I have class early in the morning,” I said. “I figured I’d better turn in.”
Megan looked at me long and hard. “Are you sure you’re okay? You've had class every other day this entire semester and you’ve never gone to bed before 2 o’clock. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Well I need some sleep now,” I said as I got up and made my way towards my room.
To be perfectly honest I needed some time away from the game. I needed some time to think. I needed some time to process what had just happened and why I’d thrown every rule I had about meeting people in game out the window. I certainly needed time to think about this strange new attraction I was feeling towards other women. More than anything I needed time to think through why I couldn’t stop thinking about somebody that I only knew as a few words and a game avatar on screen.
I felt like I was going crazy, and it had absolutely nothing to do with an item that seemed to not exist.
4: Creative Writing
“Magic? Really?”
I blinked. I wanted to reach across the table and smack that smarmy look off of that bitch's face. I don’t know why I expected anything different from a critique from the great literary master Carrie Arnold, at least she was a great literary master in her own mind, but there it was.
“Do you have a problem with magic?” I asked.
“I have a problem with genre fiction,” Carrie said. “You’re getting an MFA in creative writing. Why are you wasting your time with this garbage?”
I balled up a piece of notebook paper in my hand and concentrated on crushing that rather than reaching out and trying to crush Carrie. Not for the first time I cursed the day she’d ever sat at the same table as me.
“I don’t know, I thought it was okay and that stuff seems to be really popular right now,” Devon said, though the way he hesitated, glanced down at the short story I’d presented for a critique, told me he was thinking the same things but he was too polite to say them out loud. It wasn’t exactly the best defense in the world.
“Just because something sells well doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile,” Carrie said. “And besides, we’re here to expand our writing ability. We’re here to learn new things about the craft. We’re not here to write about witches and wizards fighting goblins or whatever the hell this is about. It's not like you're going to be the next Kaitlyn Morgan or anything.”
I rolled my eyes. I was surprised this crazy bitch even knew who Kaitlyn Morgan was. I suppose it just went to show how deeply the Elassa series had insinuated itself in pop culture that someone who "hated" genre fiction knew about the series.
I couldn't believe Carrie was talking like this! Wizards fighting goblins? There wasn't a single mention of wizards or goblins in the piece I presented for critique! She hadn’t even bothered to read the damn thing! And to think I’d wasted valuable time I could’ve spent playing Tales of Elassa a couple of nights ago reading the crap she’d vomited out about some girl who dumped her a couple of years ago. I’m sure she thought it was all very literary and mysterious, but the only thing I could think the entire time I read those twenty pages of crap was boo-hoo, baby’s still upset that one of her girlfriends threw her to the curb and she hadn't gotten over it yet.
But I wasn’t going to be violent. I wasn’t going to rise to what she was trying to start here. I was going to be the better person.
“Do you actually have any constructive criticism?”
“Yeah, stop writing this fantasy crap,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. There wasn’t a chance I was going to stop writing this “fantasy crap” as she called it. For one it was my favorite kind of book. For two I was spending so much time playing Tales of Elassa these days that I’d started taking some of the role-playing scenarios I’d worked up and changed some of the names, reworked some of the settings, and presented them to my class as original works rather than stuff that was based on a videogame I happened to be spending way more time than was strictly healthy playing.
Genre fiction was already a four letter word in this class. Carrie wasn't alone in that opinion. They’d have kittens if they realized the stuff they were reading was fan fiction as well as genre fiction. Of course I still thought it was damn good even if it did start its life as role-playing scenarios for a video game.
“What’s your problem with this anyways? It seems like this goes a lot deeper than not liking what I wrote,” I said.
“You’re right,” Carrie said. “It does! I have to see this crap on TV, I have to see this stuff taking up space on bookstore shelves while real writing by real writers…”
She punctuated that sentence by smacking her own short story on the table in front of her. As though that emotionally stunted drivel was somehow real writing or something. Who wanted to read about leftover angst from a girl who was a couple of years out from the scarring life event that still seemed to dominate her writing? Not me, thank you very much. Give me the swords and the wizards and the goblins any day of the week.
“Real writing like this barely even gets a shelf at the bookstore. The public doesn’t even know what’s best for it! It’s ridiculous that crap like this sells so well and literary stuff barely gets a mention!”
“Well if they had a Nobel Prize in whining about literature then you’d certainly win it…” I muttered.
“What the hell was that?”
“What seems to be the problem here?”
Like a guardian angel professor Timms stepped in. She was an older woman with auburn hair that definitely looked like it came off of the shelf at Target or Walmart. Probably Walma
rt considering what the average college professor, even one with tenure, pulled these days. Not that I was judging or anything. I actually really liked her most of the time. She had a way of cutting through bullshit that only an older battle scarred prof who’d been through more than a few dances with undergrads could. Like right now as she stared down at us over her glasses.
She didn’t look happy.
“Carrie here seems to have a problem with genre fiction,” I said. “Such a big problem she can’t even follow the critique guidelines.”
Professor Timms looked down at Carrie and she actually looked down. One thing that could get her to shut up was a glance from professor Timms. Then again I had a feeling that a rampaging bull would probably stop and apologize if the good professor fixed it with that glare. She was just that kind of professor. Fair, but severe if she thought you were stepping out of line.
“Is this true Carrie?”
“She keeps writing genre crap,” she muttered.
Professor Timms arched an eyebrow. That was never a good sign. “Genre crap? Did you really just say that?”
Carrie looked up and some of the anger she’d directed towards me was directed towards professor Timms. Only that anger seemed to crash over her like a wave slamming into a mountain for all the effect it had on her. She stared down at Carrie, tapping an irritated finger against her arm, the only sign other than an arched eyebrow that showed she was irritated and a sure sign that whatever student she was talking to needed to shut the hell up if they knew what was good for them. She had the unflappable calm demeanor of a woman who’d been teaching creative writing to artistic types for decades, and she’d seen everything at this point.
Professor Timms turned to me. “And what do you think of this Amber?”
I was so angry. I was seeing red. I was starting to not care about consequences. I got that way when I got really angry. Like so angry that I saw stars dancing in front of my vision. Like how angry I was right now when I looked at Carrie's smarmy face.
I wasn’t going to launch myself across the table and smack her a couple of times like I wanted to, but I was going to lay into her.
“I think if Carrie has a problem with something then she should probably follow the guidelines we were given for critiques at the beginning of the semester instead of resorting to personal attacks,” I said.
A hint of a smile played across professor Timms’ face. “Such as?”
I picked up Carrie's story and flipped through it. I thought about looking at the notes I’d made. The red marks I’d jotted down while I was doing a proper critique. I noticed she had none of that on the stuff she printed out for my work.
“Well she could come after me on technical grounds if she had a problem with the way I wrote. For example if I were to say something to her about craft then I might tell her that commas and dashes aren’t an appropriate replacement for proper punctuation. Or I might tell her that tossing an adverb after every dialogue tag is something that she probably should’ve gotten out of her system back when she was in middle school. I’m surprised that grumpy old Mrs. Ericson, the teacher with gray hair who was divorced and not exactly happy about teaching English at her age, didn’t beat that out of poor Carrie back in the day.”
Carrie's mouth opened and moved, but she didn’t say anything. I glanced up to professor Timms and her smile was growing wider. The tapping on her arm stopped. I figured that was all the permission I was going to get, so I kept going. I held up Carrie's story and waved it in the air.
“Or if she was going to attack a story she could go after the substance. For example if I was to say something about her story then I might go on about how a story dripping with thinly concealed angst isn’t exactly deep nor is the prose particularly literary. Unless playing fast and loose with punctuation like we mentioned earlier is your idea of being literary.”
“Very good,” professor Timms said. “All valid critiques. All getting at the substance of the story without actually attacking the person who wrote the story or the genre the story’s written in.”
I was really on a roll now. And the support from professor Timms was egging me on. “Exactly! If I was going to be so low as to attack something just because of the genre it was in then I might say something about how a story about a girl being upset because she got dumped a few years back isn’t exactly original, nor would anybody care to read it even if it was well-written.”
That tapping started again and I knew I’d gone too far. Only it was so worth it. It was worth it to see the utterly pissed off look on Carrie's face. It was worth it to give as good as I’d gotten. Let the bitch stew for awhile. She'd been my nemesis since day one with that peculiar ax she had to grind against fantasy. The way she went on about it you'd think Kaitlyn Morgan herself had personally wronged her somehow just by existing.
Like I said. Crazy.
“An astute observation,” professor Timms said. “That last remark probably isn’t quite in keeping with our critique guidelines in this class, though it might be deserved considering what prompted this conversation. Carry on, and I trust we won’t have any more problems at this table.”
That last bit was said with a pointed glance at Carrie, but she also looked over to me and I blushed. Okay, so when I got angry maybe I got a little too angry. Maybe I got carried away. But she’d really pissed me off. She deserved it! Always flitting around the room like she was the bad girl of the creative writing program. Always flipping her shiny blonde hair and giggling to get guys' attention in class even though the sad breakup story she kept repackaging for each assignment made it pretty damn clear no guy was getting close to her. No, with that blonde hair and the girly-girl looks she definitely couldn't pull off the dark and mysterious vibe she tried to convey in her writing because she was still upset two years after the fact that she got dumped. If I had to read one more boring story…
“Bitch,” she muttered.
“Hack,” I whispered right back.
“Fine,” she said, low enough that she couldn’t be heard by anybody else. Not even by anyone else sitting at our table. “You want a critique? I’ll give you a critique. This stuff reads like trash. It reads like something somebody who’s trying to write a trashy pulp novel from the ‘50s might come up with. It reads like you’re doing some sort of cheap fan fiction or something. It reads like you're trying to pull off a Kaitlyn Morgan novel and not doing a very good job of it. It’s no good, your writing is no good, and you’ll never amount to anything!”
I knew I shouldn’t let her get to me. I knew she was trying to get a rise out of me. And yet what she was saying hit so close to home that I couldn’t help it. The way she seemed able to pinpoint exactly where I got most of my ideas while also tapping into my fear that everything I wrote was derivative instead of new and creative stung. Was I really any better than her if I was repackaging fan fiction instead of repackaging a story about a particularly nasty breakup?
Every time she finished a sentence it felt as though she was stabbing straight into my heart. I felt moisture gather in my eyes, and I hated that I was letting her get to me like this.
“Oh yeah bitch?” I said as I stood.
I picked up my bag and threw it over my shoulder. I was reacting badly to this, I was really angry and about to do something very stupid, but I couldn’t help myself. It was as though I was in the middle of a wreck that I could stop before it really started, but I was going to see it through to its messy end. “Sorry I can’t be more “literary” like you. Maybe I’ll go down to the local gay bar so I can ask some girl to wine and dine me and dump my ass so I can be as great a writer as you are!”
I was yelling at the last part. I looked up and every eye in the room was on me. Professor Timms was looking at me and her finger was tapping furiously enough that it could've powered the city for a week if the Engineering School could find a way to hook her up to a power plant. I blushed and turned to run from the room. My only consolation was the look of shell shocked surprise on Carrie
's face. Good. At least I’d finally got through to that bitch!
The waterworks finally came when I got out into the hall. I wiped the tears from my eyes, but I couldn’t help it. I was proud of my writing. I thought I did good stuff. I also wasn’t very good at dealing with harsh critiques like that. I knew she was just trying to get a rise out of me, I knew she was just pissed off about getting called out by our teacher in the middle of class like that, but there was a gnawing dark doubtful part of my soul that was whispering to me that she was right. That I was no good. That I would never amount to anything seeing as how I had trouble actually coming up with an original idea of my own and I was wasting my time in a creative writing program.
It was a dark part of me that I tried to ignore. It was a dark part of me that I chased away by playing Tales of Elassa and enjoying my time in there where I could get positive feedback. And yet that dark part of me always whispered that I was just running away from reality. That I was just seeking approval from people who were going to be nice to me no matter what because they were my friends.
Luckily I managed to get out of the English building before the waterworks really started. Then there was no stopping it. I’m sure I got a few weird glances from people watching the crazy girl walking down the sidewalk crying. I couldn't tell since it was hard to see through the tears. Not that it was entirely odd to see that sort of thing on campus, but I hated that I was the source of the spectacle.
I needed to get home. I needed some comfort.
5: Comfort
Comfort meant one thing. I felt that familiar rush of endorphins as I sat down at my computer and double clicked on the icon to log into Tales of Elassa. The familiar violin music washed over me and it felt as though I was immersing myself in a cold pool of water. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Typed in my username and password and then I was in.