h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The following posts in this journal will be a discussion with myself, Afgncaap5. I will be discussing a delicate issue that, in my mind anyway, could spark off a tiny emotional outburst from some. No, it's not religion as usual, nor is it anything about morals, or my position on laws, or things like that. This is a much simpler issue, which is why I feel that I have a greater chance of becoming angered by it.

Please Note: those of you out there who are my friends (if you think you're my friend, then yes, you are my friend. Everyone is my friend, as long as they don't attempt to be my enemy), I may discuss things that you were involved with, or you. This will not be intended to be gossip, you must understand. I am having a bit of a psychological difficulty, and I believe that it will aid me if I can think out loud about this issue (which is why I am on The Guide, as opposed to writing this in the journal that I keep in real life. I feel that if I am closer to what may very well be the source of this difficulty, that I can solve it sooner).

So, I will be writing things in the following conversation with myself that I don't even know yet. People who dare to read may not think that what I'm saying is important at all, others may be insulted by what I write, still others may want to lend a supporting hand, etc. What it boils down to is this: *PLEASE* don't take too much offense to anything here. I value all of your friendships too greatly. I was sincere when I said that if you think I am your friend, then I am. You have to work hard at it to make me an enemy.

And I will probably be mentioning my close friends before my enemies in this thread. So be warned: please do not read this unless you are prepared to forget about it outside of this conversation. And please, don't point this conversation out to others. It would just be too risky.

Oh, and moderators are already forgiven for reading.

ISSUE #1-Mr. Afgncaap5, why on Earth don't you just forget the rat-ants? What is it about them that makes you keep pushing this issue? Why do you go out of your way to correct people when they misspell rat-ant (while remembering that you frequently misspell in the presence of others who never correct you)? Why go out of your way to cause this with the Continuity Gun problem? In short: JUST WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM???

Affy-
I don't know. I should be forgetting about them and moving on with my life, mentally. It isn't healthy for me to keep thinking about the rat-ants the way I do. I actually think that I enjoyed the rat-ants more than KL did.

Perhaps I need attention, and the issue of the rat-ants is just an issue that I can easily use to my advantage. However, I go out of my way to cover my tracks about the rat-ant issue. I avoid it in the presence of others while seeking it privately. That's gotta be some kind of mental thing.

Perhaps it's a desire to belong more than a desire for attention, though I don't know why. I'm accepted in this community, I think, and people give me the respect that I believe I deserve, sometimes more so. I don't really have a right to complain about anything. But it's odd. Most of my other friends on The Guide had some big impact on it in some way, something that was put down into the cultural heritage of the Guide. Marv's church, Irv's Cafe, Frink's softball field, etc. Perhaps, when I brought the rat-ants to the Guide, it was a subconcious desire of mine to fit in with that pattern. Perhaps I wanted something of mine in the early Guide. Something that I could point to and say, "See that? I put that there." It didn't really work, though, considering that I didn't even have a membership thing going for the rat-ants. They were just put there.

Prosecutor-
Ah, perhaps that was the reason they were removed. You didn't even bother to set up your own little guide entry for it. You just plopped it into the Forest without asking permission from anyone, not even Irv.

Affy-
Irv didn't seem to mind-

Prosecutor-
Irelevant. You ignored the rights of others to put only what they wanted onto their spaces. It wasn't the first time either, I believe. I cite the example of the Cannon at Joanna's Donut Stall. Now, you speak of the issue of placing something early on in the Guide. Wasn't CLI enough?

Affy-
No, I suppose it wasn't. After all, the Crater wasn't for the Guide. The Crater was merely *in* the Guide.

Prosecutor-
What do you mean by that?

Affy-
CLI is a company that, while highly influenced the Guide, will not be permitted to become the Guide. It is not permanant, and will not be so. It's all mine.

Prosecutor-
So no one else should use it?

Affy-
I didn't say that.

Prosecutor-
It was implied.

*A frantic figure rushes in, obviously in distress at being late. He has a bundle of papers under his arm which make determined efforts to escape, but which he manages to maintain control of. He sits down at the defendant's table and reads the court transcript as he tries to catch his breath. He notices that there is a pause in the proceedings and stands up to ask a question.*

You say that the rat-ants are gone now, but they aren't! KL has a troop of them and there is another opposing troop with Styx. Your legacy lives on and is richer, having been adopted by several other researchers.

Affy-
Hmmm. Point taken. Then there is the army still on Planet X to think about which, at the last count, was in the low billions.

Prosecutor-
Then you have nothing to feel bad about.

Affy-
You'd think that, wouldn't you? And, I'll admit, I don't particularly feel anything wrong with the rat-ant situation at this given moment. But it's a pulsing thing. Sometimes I think of the situation and am calm. At other times, it makes me almost feel ill. That's really the reason I'm here: to discover what it is that I don't feel good about.

Prosecutor-
Well, is it the fact that there are no more rat-ants in the Forest, a place that you hardly visit anymore anyway?

Affy-
Maybe. I think it's more of a principle issue. I think I might've gotten too attached to a creation.

Prosecutor-
The rat-ants?

Affy-
No. KL. He had no invasion plans for the rat-ants. Plus, he's a biology buff as anyone familiar with his history should know. The rarity presented by the rat-ants created a sympathy for them.

Prosecutor-
Perhaps this goes beyond rat-ants.

Affy-
Perhaps.

Could it be that the Rat-ants represent a defeat? In all the time you have been on h2g2, you have never suffered a defeat that you hadn't set up yourself. At least I can't remember any. But with the rat-ants, two continuity-conscious researchers managed to wrest control of the situation from you irrevocably. You couldn't stop it without breaking some of your own continuity principles.

It's a mild case of the "kill the celery" scenario. Very disconcerting.

So, perhaps it is a control issue.

Prosecutor-
He has a good point. If you pardon my saying so, you do tend to enjoy "playing the puppet-master", a possible side-effect of the air of mystery you try to build around yourself.

Affy-
Well, you may have a point there. I do tend to have structured formats of game play that come up. Though I've never really considered the rat-ants as a personal failing. It may be because I never really had the chance to defend the rat-ants. I had finished that little segment of KL's story-line, went on a short vacation, and came back a week later just to find the rat-ant nest ready for imminent destruction. And I mean just in time. I show up, post something as KL, and the nests get flooded.

Oh, and for continuity's sake, KL's feelings really were hurt at the time. Part of what makes this situation so idiotic is that so few know why KL acts the way he does, and thus always assume the motives that he has. Yes, he is a villain and will remain one for the forseeable future, but as an advocate of the "glimmer-of-decency" principle, I felt compelled to write some backstory for KL, starting from before he was born nearly to the end of his life. I feel like blaming people for not understanding KL's motives, but I am also reluctant to tell anyone what any of his motives are due to my paranoid fear of ideas being stolen from me over the internet. I'm probably more to blame for this situation than anyone, really.

*Awakes with a start.*

Oh, uh, I hadn't noticed that you replied.

*Reviews the tape.*

Ah, okay. Hmmmm. Well, I think you are being a bit hard on yourself, there. But I think I am coming to understand a bit better.

Your feelings about the rat-ants are similar to ones I have felt before, I think. It happens when I get involved in a story that I am helping to build, and I have some cool ideas and start to set them up. Then, someone comes along and does something that destroys those plans. I feel disappointed, because it could have been so cool. And because all of my setup work is wasted.

Basically, I want to control the story long enough for my plot bit to work its way through. Or, at least have nothing happen that precludes it.

Perhaps that is what you are feeling with regard to the rat-ants. You had set them up as part of KL's back history, and had plans for them. The flood interrupted those things.

It's like a creative idea that takes time to express, but gets interrupted before it is finished. The idea can then never take concrete form. Like a partially completed painting that gets accidentally left out in the rain, or a partially completed short story that gets inadvertently thrown out with the trash or...wait, those analogies aren't quite right. It's more like a painting that you imagine and begin, but someone else comes and completes it in a different way than you imagined. Or a flower garden that you design for the nice sheltered spot next to your neighbours hedge. You start planting it, but then the neighbour cuts down the hedge.

Basically mourning the death of a creative idea.

Affy-
Perhaps, although as you've already pointed out, the rat-ants are now spread across greater amounts of tme and space than I had originally hoped for. Also, the rat-ants weren't part of the backstory that I'd made for KL. As was the point of including the FACE character into this berserk stroyline, the KL that we find most familiar is an alien KL who is different from the real KL in many ways (most importantly of which, the KL that we know as FACE did not encounter James Bond in the 1960s as part of his plans for global domination and then find himself hauled into another dimension against his will by a being with technology that, at the time, was in many ways inferior to his own). However, the real KL is not the FACE character, either, that's merely the KL who is real for the dimension that h2g2 exists in. The original KL for whom the storyline was written lived a long, long, long life that starts shortly after Atlantis sinks and ends shortly after the world as a whole is made aware of alien life forms.

I'd never really thought of where I was going with the rat-ants, I just knew that I wanted them somewhere. Why that is, I might never know. While "death of a creative idea" might be a way of stating it, I think it's different than that. I probably just grew overly attached to the rat-ants and felt extremely disturbed by the fact that someone would kill off my virtual "pets", and that the people responsible would be two good friends on the guide.

As a matter of fact, over the course of the past 2 weeks of silence, I haven't once felt the weird "sickness" that I used to get when the rat-ants situation came to mind. I think I've realized just how silly the whole thing was.

Well, that's good news.

Just needed a little talking out, I guess. Which, of course, is why you started this thread in the first place.

Hope my semi-coherent ramblings helped.

Affy-
Indeed they did. Semi-Coherent ramblings are always best when trying to find reasons without enough information behind them.

Prosecutor-
This hearing is now proclaimed over.

*Walks over and shakes Affy's hand.*

Thank you, thank you. Feels great to be sane again.