Welcome to Russland!

The Mountain Top

In that valley so far beneath me, I see these characters, both romantic, friends, enemies, rivals, and everything else, walking side by side in their groups or even just alone, through the mists that team and billow around them.  There are many of them too, countless of them, both well defined and indistinct, but all of them standing out to me as worthy of their own stories and chronicles of their deeds.  Who cares if they're similar?  Who cares if no one else but me will read them?  I watch to see where their feet may take them as they explore the valley of mist before their eyes.  

And that is all I can do.  Watch.  I may know the beginning of their journey, potentially specific landmarks and even the end, but it is not my place to force them to get there before they are ready.  If I focus too hard on one particular story, the mist can become disturbed by gales of wind, disturbing the journey and potentially sending them off on the wrong path or causing them to become lost in the fog.  I can also not be too inattentive, for then they risk the same outcome.  Out of sight, and most horrible of fates: forgotten.  When those happen, I feel their loss as real as when I lost my best friend years ago.  

So why do they walk away from me on this journey, rather than towards me?  Because I am not their savior.  I am not some goal to reach for, nor some god they must all worship.  I am not even a self insert, someone to walk amongst their unique worlds and observe as a passerby.  No.  I sit atop this mountain to see, to hear, and to feel as if I belong, but knowing that I possibly never will.  They walk towards the ending of their stories because that is what they are: endings.  Their time of rest.  Their truly well-earned, hard-fought, and joyously waiting happy endings.

This may seem depressing to some, why I feel that even amongst my most beloved characters such as Seres and Simon, Hera and Kelin, Kenny and Nova, or any of them, that I do not truly belong.  You might ask, "You made them, brought them to life, so why wouldn't you deserve to belong?" and there is truth to that.  But they made who they are, not me.  I gave them shape, but they breathed form, color, and meaning all on their own.  I gave them a world to explore and stories to experience, the ultimate freedom to be who they could be.  And how they have taken to those words.  I told them to walk, and they have run free.  I told them to open their hearts and they fell in love.  They trusted me to give them the path, and I trust them to reach the end of their stories.  I will guide them where I can, but I cannot force them to get there before the right time comes.

And you, all of you, are the eyes that surround that valley.  Your attentions have bolstered so many of these adventures and couples to achieve more than they ever could with just me watching from my lonely vigil.  You believed in them, you believed in me, and I owe all of my success and happiness in my craft to this place, to the eyes and ears of those faceless entities who comprise the MASSIVE crowds that flock to this place in my mind every time I open those gates, to this, my most special and treasured paradise.  Some I have even come to call amongst my dearest friends, scholars, soldiers, and yes, even fellow Simps who idolize the characters I write just as much as I do.  My mountain always has open seats for those who join me on this adventure.

Perhaps, yes, at times some have overly fixated on projects that exist and been left to cool or rest, demanding, imploring, requesting, or inquiring when I might return.  I know it's hard to be patient, hard for myself to not feel like a failure in not taking a more active role in their stewardship, and also hard not to resent these people who usually just are overly eager to see more, scared that I might become too distracted with other stories and projects to focus on their favorites.  And it is true, some stories might have stagnated or become lost in the fog.  Maybe some day I will find them again.  But what none of us can see is that they are never gone forever.  I put in fail safes to my world so that, at least for my own sake, they can find places to live, distant echoes and songs drifting from cabins just out of sight that remind me they are there.  All they want, all they deserve is peace, and while perhaps neither you nor I may get to see what becomes of them, I know they are happy where they are.  My mind is not the monster I once feared it was.

I am but the Watcher, he whose story has already been told. I found my happy ending, and it is here, atop this highest mountain, to look out, to behold, to treasure and cherish the characters who stand apart, in my mind, from so many others I've seen before.  Are they entirely unique?  No.  Nothing is original anymore.  And I adore clichés, tropes, and stereotypes when it comes to writing.  They are comforting, to know the limits and strengths of a thing before it even becomes its own identity.  Because from that comfortable mold I can help it become something more, something real, and perhaps even something entirely new.  Even more lofty a dream is that they will touch the hearts and minds of others and perhaps one day inspire them to embrace the freedom, the passion, and the love I have when it comes to writing.

I welcome you, all of you, to Russland.  My home within my mind.  My valley of mist.  Sit with me a while, and watch.  I am Alreigch, King of the Simps, and this is my kingdom where I rule, without a crown, without a throne, and nothing but the love of the peace I have found amidst a world that for so long rejected and denied me a place in it.  This is my home.

Look down below us, at the foot of the mountain, at the Town of Beginnings.  Do you see the shadows of newcomers?  Teaming in their pairs, their dozens, their hundreds?  I can't wait to meet them all, to set them out on those endlessly winding paths.  Maybe they will come upon the lost, the beleaguered, the resting, and join with them, helping to make them become something entirely new, or helping shape the wanderers more.  Or they will stride forth on previously unseen paths and reach heights and endings all on their own.  The doors of the tavern open wide, for where else is a better place for adventures to begin, for lovers to find one another, for those most glorious of stories to start?

Sit awhile, grab some Dew of the Mountain of a flavor you most prefer (mine is the red one!) and take a place on the peak.  The view is excellent, I guarantee it.

Welcome to the Mountain Top, to the Valley of Mists.  Welcome, my friends, to Russland.  Skol.