It is said there are two sides to every coin. In visual art, even a single-point perspective is guided by at least two lines coming together from different vantages to meet on the horizon. This is how our own eyes perceive physical and spatial depth. If you close one eye, and then the other, the objects in front of you seem to shift slightly, perhaps even turn, and yet… they haven’t moved.
As I’ve said, there are no boxes here. As much as we adore our logic and our methods of categorization, as much as we might crave order and certainty in our lives, the human mind is a wild and variegated thing. Abstract, flexible, and fascinating. So let’s explore.
Today’s topic of interest… is Fire.
Recently, I have been playing in a D&D campaign with my husband (who manages the setting and story beats) and two other players. Our three adventuring characters are embroiled in the Curse of Strahd module, for those who might be familiar with the game. For those less familiar, you may think of it as an adaptation of the horror classic, Dracula, placed in a world of swords and sorcery.
As much as I would love to regale you with all of my session notes and revelations about this campaign, because the genre is utterly and entirely my syrupy bittersweet cup of gothic romance tea, there are some shifty goings-on in the Wizards of the Coast franchise at the moment, and I’d rather not accidentally infringe on any sort of copyright by sharing with you what is essentially an in-depth work of fan-fiction, despite the addition of personal characters.
But, as I am still freshly ecstatic about our recent encounters in the game and some discoveries about the character I inhabit during these sessions, I think I can safely share with you the vagaries of his personality and background, which are largely of my own design.
I have so much to share in terms of the impact role-playing games in general have had on my life and perspectives. Bear with me, because today’s episode won’t even scratch the surface.
Imagine, if you will, a well-worn journal. Scuffed leather binding, smudged with soot and mud. Packed with charcoal studies of people and places. The empty spaces filled in with long scratches of calligraphy and strange symbols. Some pages have been torn out at intervals, leaving long thin strips of paper with soft edges hidden in the loosening stitches of the spine.
My name is Ezra, the journal begins, and I am fire.
I don’t mean this metaphorically. When I haven’t doused it in a fine powder of phosphate, the strands of my hair veritably float, unruly and luminescent. My irises, though I try to hide them behind colored glass, are a gleaming yellow. I can see somewhat in the dark from their own proximity to my pupils. My skin is ashen gray under the sandy-pink cream I rub on my face and neck each morning to look passingly human.
Fire, though it runs through my veins and boils my blood, is not something I have found great love for. Utility, yes, and fear. Fire is ravenous in its destruction when left unchecked, but may provide light and warmth when properly caged and dutifully suffocated at the end of its tenure of usefulness. Fire is a beast of burden to humans; a particularly flighty one that they would rather not see ambling about on limbs of its own.
A very young fire does not know its own volatility. Be it borne of joy or frustration, the increase of oxygen to flinty lungs and simmering blood is a hazard. A gasp spells disaster. A touch could blister human flesh, set blazes to curtains and entire livelihoods. I was taken in by more than one curious patron seeking to prove something in those early years. But fear was my only constant companion.
Before anyone would dare to sell me into an apprenticeship, I ran. Sometimes, I wondered if I could have been a blacksmith, in a shop where the fires roared plentiful and often. But I was a weak, skinny child who did not enjoy food and would not have wanted to spend his life enslaved in the production of more destructive tools. If I ever had the fighting spirit in me, it was strangled early on. I longed only for quiet understanding.
This is not your stereotypical, reckless, all-powerful, fireball-flinging sorcerer, obsessed with blowing things up at every turn. (If you’re into the crunchy side of gaming and are curious about Ezra’s current stat block, don’t be; I promise you won’t like it.) This is an isolated person, with the capacity for wisdom and emotion, with trauma and insecurities surrounding the unusual traits he was born with and doesn’t fully understand. Does that sound familiar to anyone?
Ezra, although a complex being with flesh and blood, looks on average flame as a mysterious kinsman, reflecting his own hurts and frustrations. He sees in it a feral creature, caged and abused in the homes and businesses of humans, and it’s been ingrained in his subconscious that this is its correct state; this is the status quo, the acceptable, the expected: To use fire as a disrespected tool, and to fear any loss of power over it.
I was actually pretty afraid of the possibility of fire when I was a kid. We didn’t burn candles, our stove was always electric, my parents never smoked. And yet, I was queasy with the idea that it could happen. Somehow. I had seen a presentation from a fire marshal at some point in elementary school. They have this trailer they’d done up to look like… a crime scene, effectively. Melted phone on a burnt side table, thick black smoke stains on the wall. And what I remember most was a little brown teddy bear that had been touched by the blaze. Part of an ear was missing, its little curly fuzz was melted away or charred in patches, and its little eyes looked so sad. Despite my age creeping closer to thirty every day, I still have favorite stuffed animals (you can pry them from my cold, dead arms, okay? I will not abandon them). Dolls and plush things might as well be real living creatures to me. So to see one so injured, when I was so little: it really was devastating. Job well done; point driven straight home: Fire. Bad.
On… the other hand.
What would a camping trip be without a campfire? Warm and toasty under the darkest of chill evening skies. A catalyst to gather for storytelling and the mesmerizing strum of guitar strings, or the rhythmic dancing of feet. A chance to roast marshmallows to sweet, gooey, golden-brown perfection. A cozy murmuring of crackling wood tickling moments of still quiet.
Huge, rampant wildfires can be devastating to humans and some animal habitats. But there are also some trees and shrubs which depend on fire to naturally propagate. There are species of pine whose cones are sealed tight with resin, and can’t release their seeds until a blaze melts away that binding. Shrubs, with seeds encased in tough armor that’s easier to burn away than crack. Have you ever tried to grow a hardy plant in a crowded place with no sunlight? Small doses of fire in the wilderness sweep up dead underbrush and leave open ground for new growth to find essential nutrients.
The sun itself is fire. Distant, yes, but without it exactly where it is, at the magnitude that it exists, life as we know it wouldn’t be possible. There’s a reason ancient civilizations worshiped the sun. Worshiped the warm vitality of summer, and the dawning of each morning, which brought with it sight and safety to dark landscapes. The sun’s rays on our skin activates the production of Vitamin D in our bodies, which is crucial to both the state of our mental health and the strength of our bones.
Fire is life.
It is used as a metaphor for anger, frustration, rage. Things that can feel destructive and out of control. Things that make us physically feel hot in the face or in our gut. But we also use fire to speak about feelings of love and passion, still untamed, but thriving. When someone is said to have fire in them, they have spirit, they have convictions, they have strength of will and depth of character. Burning curiosity is often where my own internal flame resides. When the fire in our hearts is allowed to burn, when we can respect that and embrace it, then we are free.
I’m excited to see how Ezra learns this.
At first, I had built Ezra as a creative exercise based on sensory sensitivities and stims while I was learning more about autism. (And I just love his fire-based characterization.) He hates wet foods, for example, like stews and water-ripe fruits and vegetables. If you were to throw those kinds of things directly into a fire, they might just sit there and steam uncomfortably for a while, at best, and at worst they could put the fire out altogether—and now imagine that’s going on in someone’s stomach! Yuck! Luckily, the wandering vagabond life suits Ezra well in this case. Travel rations should be cured or dried for long-term preservation. If you’re wondering how or if this boy gets any moisture into his system, look no further than fermented brews with burnable alcohol content. (You can’t see it, but I just tapped my forehead to indicate that I was being clever…)
Ezra also smokes–which I had some mixed feelings about because smoking can be really bad for humans–but Ezra is not human. He continually suppresses himself with a disguise that effectively smothers any outward sign of what he is (a literal elemental-fire infused being), so for him a burning cigarette is a lifeline. It actually helps him breathe, in a way that’s passable to the casual observer. Have you ever seen a fire burn down to just one smoggy little ember on the end of a stick? If you gave that fire just a little more of the right kindling, it could reignite into flame, and that flame could grow again into a blaze. So, this is one way Ezra copes with masking, with hiding his true self. It’s how he grounds, how he regulates himself under stress.
I was not entirely expecting to pour as many of my autistic social insecurities into this character as I ultimately did: The jilted self-confidence. The longing to belong somewhere, to be understood and accepted and reassured by people who might see him at his worst and still believe in his best. The fear of coming undone and meeting with even worse consequences or reactions than those he’s already had to endure.
Let me tell you, there was a long time there when I would do my utmost to play an RPG character with no weaknesses. Or, if they had weaknesses, would be sneaky enough to circumvent them for the most part. But, slowly, I learned that it was more fun to build weakness into a character from the beginning. Really flesh them out and make them into a three-dimensional person, with hopes and dreams and faults, because that makes for a way better and more cathartic story than a character whose primary goal is ultimately just survival, or stasis. To never be knocked off their feet.
It’s so much more heartfelt when a character does get knocked on their ass and manages to stand back up. When they lose all dignity, and still end up a hero. When they have the opportunity to learn something, earn something, to grow.
While it may not be quite as obvious to my fellow players in our characters’ interactions with each other, this kind of internal dialogue is what, for me, makes a game really memorable. They may never be aware of the whole story as it exists from my or my character’s perspective, but they don’t necessarily have to, for me to be able work with that insight and for it to be meaningful, in and outside the game.
Recently, I’ve started working with a therapist, and one of the advices she was able to reiterate to me was an exercise in re-framing, or replacing harmful thoughts. She described it to me in perfect adventuring terms, too: Your brain is like a forest, she said. And there’s this big highway that cuts right through it–that highway is your current thought pattern. It might be a really unpleasant one. But you’ve traveled it so many times–it’s easy to do; it’s the neurological path of least resistance.
And what you can try to do, if you’re catastrophizing or berating yourself or whatever that dark highway has in store, you can stop. You can pull over to the side of the road, hop off the back of that wagon. Say, “I’m done with this thought now.” And you can try to walk a different path.
It’s not easy. Make no mistake. A route between the trees is going to have twists and turns and obstacles in it. It’s going to be hard to find and difficult to navigate. But if you keep trying to travel that path instead? If you stop to breathe and take that scenic route in your mind, it will get easier to do. The new path you’ve made will become well-worn and familiar. Free of debris and stable with packed earth. And that big, bad super-highway? If you stop using it, eventually, nature will reclaim that old avenue. It will be overgrown, it’ll crumble, and maybe even… disappear.
The new path, whatever that may look like, is a new perspective. A new pattern of thinking. It’s the affirmations you create and repeat to yourself to replace the doubts and insecurities.
It is worth noting, the number one rule set down by the Myths and Legends podcast: “Don’t enter the dark forest alone.” We are communal creatures. When navigating uncharted landscapes, the misty unknown, it’s best to bring someone with you. Someone to guide you, to listen, to reflect. To notice things that you may not have noticed on your own. That’s why adventurers travel in parties. That’s why we in the real world build friendships, families, communities, and networks. It’s why we employ therapists, sometimes. Or Sherpas, if you happen to be climbing Mount Everest.
The elements that we don’t understand, ourselves–whether those traits are internal or external, literal or metaphorical–someone else might.
We spoke haltingly to each other in the dim evening, Ezra writes of someone we met early on in our campaign. It was a rare thing: to be just two people, with perhaps something in common, talking softly in a parlor by firelight.
I’ve just hit upon the wagon lurch in Ezra’s journey. He’s barely departed from the road. But as I travel to new and interesting places in the forests of my own mind, I’ll get to experience his parallel journey through the misty pinewoods of a hidden land. While I discover what fuels me, what lights me up inside, and what good I can bring because of it, Ezra will be seeking to understand and embrace his own flames. And maybe… Barovia* will see a new dawn rise at last.
Did you know you can write to me? If you have any questions, ideas, feedback (or maybe you just want to say hi!) you can send an email to write@mariahlamour.com.
Thank you, again and again, for taking part in this adventure.
I wish you all the best.
Much love, from
Mariah Lamour
. . .
*For more information on the game/setting:
Curse of Strahd (D&D 5e) by Wizards of the Coast
I, Strahd by P. N. Elrod (ISBN: 978-1560766704)
Music
"What does Love mean?" by Solar Flight (@solar.flight on TikTok & Instagram)
"Chasing Daylight" by Scott Buckley
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