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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Cedric Puts Down The Smack

This is my totally fucking determined face.
Hello dearest Writing About Writing readers. Cedric here.

Don't worry.  If you detect an edge in my tone, it's not about you.

You are safe, dear reader.  I can't speak for the rest of the gang around here.

I told Chris I wanted to do the blog post today.  At first he was reticent even after I told him that I wasn't just some token cephalopod here to do my eight armed jazz hands when when he is off with some groupie floozies, and that it sure as hell wasn't my job to offer up public apologies when Guy Goodman St.White crawls so far into a bottle of scotch that he can't do his segment. However, once I mentioned (hinted at, really) the events we went through together on Octoria he seemed eager to postpone his bit on grammar every writer should know.

We don't talk about Octoria.  We don't talk about what happened there.  We will say simply that Chris owes me, and leave it at that.  But all this is neither here nor there.

You see, something has changed within me.

No, not some weird alien physiology thing.  Other than that horrendous "projectile ink event" after I was misinformed as to what exactly was in Brie cheese (which we will never speak of again), I have a very calm and stable physiology, and I can subsist indefinitely on Long John Silver's Discount Meals.  What has changed within me is an emotional thing--a mental state, if you will.

I've never felt like this before.  I'm not sure any Octorian has ever felt like this--at least not for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

Where I come from, we shun pretentiousness.  In fact, we shun it so much that when we first heard Writing About Writing's broadcasts through the dimensional shifts, my people decided to exterminate all of humanity, such was our revulsion.  We cannot suffer the pretentious to live.

And we sort of thought you all were as bad as Chris.  We didn't realize that he was so.....exemplary.  Our bad.

This means we do not have art or artists on Octoria.  In order for an artist to become great, they first have to be at least a little pretentious, and this is something my people do not--will not--permit.  Before an artist is ever thought to be good, they must have a simple faith in their own ability that keeps them going--a belief that they have something worth sharing.  The idea of someone being pretentious enough to want to actually make money from art is abhorrent   The idea that they could do it enough to eventually get good is...anathema to all they hold dear.  So we have no artists.  Or if we do, we use our rustiest gardening tools to tear them to shreds in the town square the moment we find them and leave their rotting carcasses on display for a full Octorian year as a warning to others that pretentiousness will not be tolerated.

Which tends to amount to the same thing: no artists.  None.

Oh we have great art from eras gone by.  But these works would be somewhat analogous to your ancient ruins.  They are falling apart.  Relics of some bygone era from a time before we scourged pretentiousness wherever we found it with a ruthless vigilance.  We have an occasional gem, perhaps once in a generation, who is discovered posthumously in a manner similar to your Emily Dickinson.  They did their art quietly--privately--away from any and all eyes.  For this is what is required in order to create art without the slightest pretentiousness.  It is the only way we know.

And this means that no Octorian--no Octorian living, and no Octorian for generations--has ever, EVER had what I have.  They have never felt like I feel.  They have never experienced what I am now experiencing.

They have never had.......a fan.

We simply do not have the slightest grasp what that means or what it feels like.  To ever reach the point of having a fan one must have at least some pretention.  To have someone like what we're doing and appreciate it and want more--it is (forgive the pun) completely alien to us.

But what I found out from Chris's post yesterday about the events at his gaming convention is that I have a fan.  The smallest member of Alisha's family, young Dorian, was wearing a shirt that said he "loved" Cedric the Cephalopod.

Me.  That's me.  He loves ME!!

This miniature proto-human with the leaking nose issues has become my fan.  MINE.  I can barely type the words for my disbelief.  I am awash in this feeling that no Octorian has felt in an era.  I have a fan.

I have a fan.

Suddenly the whole world seems cast as if through a colored film or a strange filter.  I am a changed cephalopod.  At once I am uplifted above myself but I become keenly aware of what I do.  In a moment that is equally transcendental and self-scrutinizing.  Like being stared at, my fan makes me at once even more aware of what I am doing and it's quality and conscious of...pride I have in my work.  If feel as if I owe it to my fan to be the best I can be.  In a way I am now beholden to this "Dor" creature with his tiny fingers and his strange affliction that prevents him from keeping the water in his mouth from running down his chin.  I must do right by his admiration!

I MUST DO RIGHT BY MY FAN!!!  I MUST DO RIGHT BY DOR!!!

So I'm going to be the best motherfucking, eight-armed, interdimensional administrative assistant this world has ever seen.  And the first thing on the chopping block is these guest bloggers who have been sliding for the past few months, drawing a paycheck of W.A.W.'s payroll but not putting up any damned posts.  The gravy train just pulled out of the station my friends.  I'm going to whip some asses into shape here.  And let me tell you when an eight armed cephalopod with the strength of a gorilla promises such a thing, you do not want to take it lightly.

I am putting you all on notice, guest bloggers.  Cedric is putting down the smack.  I better see some guest blog posts going up in the next few weeks or I'm going to start watching hentai tentacle porn for inspiration in the "horrible things to do to you" department.  I have just become the administrative version of The Terminator, so "write a post if you want to live."  You fuckers don't even want to mess with me.

I have a fan.

So get ready readers.  We're turning this blog up to eleven (which I am assured by Chris means something positive).  There's a new admin in town.

This one's for you, Dor!

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