As I’m a writer, I’ve lurked on and off in the “Virtual Writers Inc” inworld group on and off for a while. They run a twice-daily challenge at 6am and 6pm called “Writers Dash” which involves writing for 15 minutes (and no longer) on the word-prompt provided. This week’s prompts can be found here. I am rarely (never, it seems) online at the right time but no-one said I can’t do the challenge at some other time. And it might be a fun thing to post the results here, now and again, especially if they’re SL-related.
So here’s this morning’s prompt; Bumfuzzled featuring yours truly, and Casteylan who is an alt (and an account that actually pre-dates my main one).
“Bumfuzzled? What the hell kind of a word is that?” I asked, looking at Casteylan incredulously.
He gave me a sheepish kind of lopsided grin and shrugged. “Actually I don’t know, I just heard someone use it while I was hanging round at some Zindra infohub and I liked it. Like gobsmacked. I like that one too. You know me and words.”
I lay back on the cushions in his hollow tree-house somewhere in the middle of Elderglen, drained the wine from my cup; Cas reached over and filled it again. He certainly did have a love of words and languages; he was fluent in half a dozen, knew a few phrases in twenty more and he collected unusual words like other people collect stamps.
“But you’re an elf,” I pointed out. “You’re supposed to be all regal and refined. You’re not supposed to use words like gobsmacked and bumfuzzled. Besides, your bum doesn’t have any fuzz on it.”
“Yours does.”
“Thank you for pointing that out.” I stretched a leg across the cushoins and gave him a kick. “Remind me why I’m your friend again, I forgot.”
“Because you love me, Ginger. You know that.”
I opened my mouth to utter another witty put-down but I stopped. He was right. We’ve been best friends for seventeen years and I love him like I’d love a twin. I know him almost as well as I know myself.
But sometimes, you know, he just completely bumfuzzles me.
There’s a story behind Casteylan. He started off as a role-playing character and a character in some of my early stories, as far back as 1986. I have his entire life-story (all 800-odd years of it) mapped out in my head, though I’ve never successfully managed to turn it into a full-length novel despite several attempts. Over the years, Cas developed into a separate personality sharing my head. This has happened since with other characters I’ve written but never so strongly or so persistently.
When I joined SL with my original first account in 2006 the avatar was based very heavily on Casteylan but I lost interest with that one and didn’t come back until a year later when the perfect last name “Hawker” appeared on the list, so Cas got an account of his own. (his name Casteylan means Red Hawk in his native language). I don’t log him in in very often these days but I notice when I do that he is distinctly separate from me. We have similarities and we are essentially the same person but he is also separate from me and has his own “voice”. Logging in with him is most definitely not the same as logging in with my main avatar. I have made other alts since then, but none of them really have such a strong internal presence as Cas does.
Virtual Transmission 