: When I was in college and had too much free time, I used
: to be involved in an online freeform RPG. The focus
: was more on the writing itself, though; the way it
: worked was one person would write a chapter of a
: story, and then someone else would write the next
: chapter, then someone else, and then someone else.
: Coupled with the whole stigma of RPG players being
: losers with no lives (though most of us involved
: tended to fit that description anyway) we tended to
: call it "Collaborative Fiction" instead.
: But it largely really was just role-playing. Most people
: had one character that was their representation in the
: story; usually it was a character which shared the
: same name as their online handle, and in some cases
: their own personal identity.
: The stories themselves were comic-book influenced, so the
: characters the people wrote were superheroes. We'd
: fight supervillains and stuff. My character was,
: creatively enough, a cyborg guy with a gun who ran
: around shooting stuff.
: Okay, it borrowed very liberally from the Marathon
: Marine. At first, anyway... over time it sort of
: evolved into a 25th Century Western Hero or something
: -- basically, by the time I'd finally gotten bored
: with this, all that was left was the cyborg part and
: the shooting stuff part. Something about nobody else
: finding Marathon as profound as I did. Usually my
: character would just show up, shoot stuff, and then
: disappear for the rest of the story.
: So anyway. One of the things that bothered me about this
: whole thing was the way some authors couldn't tell the
: difference between a collaborative fiction story and
: self-indulgent power fantasy. What happened often was
: that some authors would hijack entire stories to make
: it all about them... like, "Captain Marmalade
: Saves Everyone, Part III." Or maybe they'd
: dedicate an entire chapter to wallow in angst and
: self-pity about their parents hating them. Or
: something stupid like that.
: We called stuff like that "Kewl". The defintion
: was supposed to be ironic -- cool to people who write
: the stuff, thinking they're Tolstoy or Hemingway, and
: very much not so to people who just don't give a shit.
: Someone who is kewl is someone who thinks he's All
: That and just... isn't. Not necessarily because he's a
: bad person, but because no one cares. Writing
: "cool" with a "k" is kewl. A
: incorrect definition for a incorrectly spelled word.
: Writing stuff like that ISN'T stupid, really. You have
: issues, writing about them is one way to deal with
: them. Fine. But dammit, that wasn't the reason why I
: liked doing the stuff. Reading about people's issues
: isn't FUN. I wanted to write cool stories about
: superheroes beating up supervillans and stuff. And
: explosions.
: As time progressed, it got worse and worse... and it
: bugged me more and more. Until one day I decided I'd
: had enough and resolved to make a contribution to the
: story that was a parody of the worst of what I'd seen.
: Something so stupid and more obnoxiously
: self-indulgent than had ever been seen before. I would
: outkewl the kewlest.
: And thus Captain Kewl was born.
: Fast foreward maybe two years or so. I get Unreal
: Tournament. I open up the Player Preferences window
: and see that it has the option to put in a player
: name. I can't think of anything clever, so I put in
: "Captain Kewl".
: I still haven't thought of anything more clever, so I've
: pretty much stuck with it.
Your not lame you are just bored.Dont say that about yourself because you make other people think you are crazy and desprate.