Level Ups, Break Ups, and +2 to Music Comprehension Rolls

Part 1: SING GURL 

 

Character: Cupcake

Race: Radical Faerie*

Gender: Fluid

Class: Level 5 Faggot

Sub-Class: Level 2 Reclaiming Witch

 

*Radical Faeries get a natural +3 on READING rolls, +2 to Processing. -5 on being on time to anything rolls, 

 

Charcter Portrait 

Age: 27

Height: 6 foot 2 inches

Weight: 166 Pounds

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Blue

Charisma: Questionable
Strength: Negligible

Wisdom: Fleeting
Health: good (holiday modifier over eating on the Cheese Board is in effect, -2 to all things physical) 

+2 to thinking you can sing
+2 to slurring
Every time you do anything roll 1d10. If it lands on a 1-2 (20% chance) the character immediately begins to cry for no reason. Crying last for an entirely random time up to the discretion of the DM and during this time the character gets an additional +2 to processing and a -14 to seduction rolls.

A young single faggot, Cupcake has wild andunkempt hair that trails into a ferociously oversized beard, which has run to a rustic red with age. He’s prone to flights of fancy, accidental dance parties, and eschewing narrative structures that no longer have use for personal fantasies that offer a level of comfort. Long a traveling wander, he has recently settled it the urban forest of Bushwick.

 

 

CURRENT INVENTORY: 1 bottle of Stags Leap, (Half Drunk) 1 MacBook Pro, (fully charged) 1 pack of camel blues, (mostly smoked)

LOCATION: Lounging on a used rug, back resting on a sofa, in an 8 by 8 box of room, somewhere in the wild lands of Bushwick, in the warehouse he calls home.

 

 

Somewhere through the intoxicating fog of a particularly cheap Cabernet Sauvignon, comes the inescapable dawning of comprehension. It comes on fully articulated, as if I have known this truth for ever, and am only now able to understand its complexity, its subtly, its mind numbingly accurate capturing of my emotional state. I’m listening to Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you.” and for the first time in forever, I totally get it. Or perhaps, for the first time, I feel like a song totally gets me.

 

(Forgive me, as both DM and PC, I am prone to just falling right into the narrative, let me tell you of where I am. The previous Quest: Relationship, has just ended, and our hero finds himself at the brink of his new adventure: ReturntoSingledom. Thus, he is bingeing on the back catalogues of a thousand divas, seeking understanding in their vibrato.)

 

I’m singing, so far off key, it’s possible I’m coming back around and approaching a pitch-perfect performance. I have just approached the crescendo. I’m belting, the walls are reverberating in praises, and it happens for the briefest of moments – maybe, just maybe – I have harmonized with the Ghost of Whitney past.

 

”AND IIIIIIIIIIII-EEEEEE-IIIIII WILL always loveeeeeeeee youuuuuuuu-IIIIIII”

 

BOOOM. There it is. That comprehension I had spoken of - that understanding. A knowledge of our lady Whintey’s words that is more than just a surface appreciation. This is no song, this is a magical incantation and from beyond the pale of my digital screen, the High Witch of the warble has cast her spell upon me. I know these words now in my heart, I know these words in my GUT. Harmonizing, even just for a moment was the last bit of XP I needed. BOOOOM. I can feel it, I’ve just leveled up; and this level comes with the bonus skill modifier of + 2 to music comprehension rolls. I mean it could just be the immense amount of wine I’ve drunk and cake I’ve consumed, but I’m totally sure, for the first time in a long time, that I ‘get it’, the‘it’ being music, and the ‘getting’ being a permanent change to how I appreciate song.

 

(This photo = everything) 

 

I keep singing, I can’t stop, I’m pretty sure I’m singing words Whitney herself never uttered, and I’m slurring all over the place, but it feels so good. It feels like catharsis. This song is a spell that’s allowing me to admit something I am afraid to in my grief: I will always love him. Forever and forever. Even though our relationship is over, how it shaped me, changed me, brought me on different quests - that will forever remain. That truth, that I would not be who I am had it not been for him, that’s really hard for me to admit right now. I’m angry, and I’m sad, I’m confused, I feel righteous, but the one thing I have not been feeling at all is level headed, capable of acceptance, of grieving and setting grief aside and moving on, knowing that much of the fault was his, and much of it was mine, and knowing that fault and blame are things we have to let go of to heal.

 

I’ve been trying so hard to deny it, to see myself as irrevocably different from the man who was once in love with him, as if over an evening all that love I had so long nurtured could be snuffed out. To not admit I’m so sad, or hurt, to not have to admit I have so much to learn, but I do. I’m still tragically flawed. I’m still that Faerie who was Chaotic Good (Or maybe Neutral) all relationship long. I’m still a person who has made a million mistakes and will make a million more. But something about this song – in singing with some one,* in letting my voice not be solitary, in letting my experience not be singular, but part of a large narrative, a quest thousands upon thousands have walked before me – allows me this freedom.  I start to cry and I begin to process with my +4 modifier. (+2 from being a faerie, +2 from wine)

 

Imagine him.

Somewhere.

Happy and complete, and in love.

 

The vision holds, just barely. It’s feeble. I sing some more. I restart the song, I sing. I restart it again, I cry.  I process. I cast level 1 spell: ‘Gurl Get Some Perspective’. I’m a level 5 Faggot, I’m a level 2 Witch, after all I can do this.

 

The song ends, ‘Let It Go’ comes on, (I mean it does not come on, I slosh over to the computer and spill wine down my chest and then lick it from my hand, and it tastes like sweat, and I type shake it off with out having even selected the search bar, and then type it again, uttering the most half hearted of curses, before I start singing ‘Shake it Off By Mariah, by mistake. I mean I’ll be honest, I’m a hot mess who could use a shave and a towel, and maybe some of NYC’s finest tap water)  and with my temporary +4 modifier to music, I sing out these lyrics too, understanding them.

 

 

 

*   It is always good to have a questing party even if that party is comprised of just you and a tragically dead diva.