Can't Fight the Future

“People they come together, people they fall apart. No one can stop us now. ‘Cause we are all made of stars.” - Moby

College has a funny way of taking you away from the things and people you love. Sometimes you're still present for them, but ultimately you're somewhere else mentally, and everyone notices. You don't realize it until much later, but by the time you're finished with your Associates, Bachelors, Masters, or Doctorate depending on personal preference, you are transfigured into a new person independent of who you were when you started.

In high school I used to love to tell stories in my writing, drawing fiction from reality in Star Wars storytelling forums online. I built fantasies around characters loosely based around who I was then. They were facets of the things I liked, aspired to be, and avoided ever becoming. I wrote about an evil mastermind that could shape-shift, but eventually realized he had a soul and shifted away from the Dark Side of the Force. I wrote about a survivalist in a post-apocalyptic environment, after God and Satan have both killed each other off, leaving Earth, Heaven, and Hell behind. I wrote short stories about romancing extra terrestrials as satire.

Now I write nonfiction. It's still wet and thick with detail when I can help it, but nonfiction only leaves so much room for fun. I've stretched out instants that take no more than three seconds in real time to a three page psychological odyssey, in which a mouse click becomes the most difficult thing in the world. I've painted vivid images of college arcades, capturing snippets of tournament gamers by their details to give an accurate account of their personalities. I've delved into the nature of things, described delusions and daydreams with more clarity than reality often brings, and earned readers' sympathies for characters that should have none for their actions.

I never used to write poetry, yet now the structure of verse seems almost comforting in a way.

None of this seems important to you now, and it really shouldn't. People change as they grow older, that's a side effect of existence. College is a catalyst, not an origin. The ways my writing has changed reflect the ways my own personality has changed. I'm not the same person I was last year, or the year before, or five years before that. I like who I am and what I've become, even if I don't like everything about it. I can look back at those years now and draw from them. The experiences, the sights, the people - they're all back story now. A proper base to build the character on for future developments and plot twists.

We're all works of fiction in our own ways, but acknowledging it at least gives ground for the plot. I don't know for certain when the back story stopped and my plot began. I don't know if I'm simply drawn from a writer's mind like my Sith Master was, or if I'm a blur of detail in an overarching piece. I don't know if I'm just trying to survive after God and Satan dueled to mutual demise. Maybe I'm a rhyming couplet at the end of a sonnet.

I do know for certain, however, that right now I like where the story is going. I like the narrative arc, and (assuming that I am the protagonist of the story) my antagonists are not without sympathetic traits. My characters are developed and complex, and I love them all. I'm proud of how my story's coming along.

We should all be proud of our stories.