Reflection: Howl at the Moon

Very little about this prompt was utilized in the actual story, as you have seen. The “howl” was meant for the reveal of this… creature… that some fans of VtM may recognize here, though, if I were to stretch a bit, I may be able to claim that the howl is that call to our natural self, the walk in the woods being a call to the natural self, and the self reflection trying to create a connection to the true us beneath the surface would be a call to the natural self. 

If I did all this, you would be right to call bullshit on me, because that was not at all my intention when I was writing it. I just wanted to throw in the big monster and decided that a conversation with Isadora was a great lead in for it. Especially with what they had to talk about. 

There were three moments that really stood out to me on a reread, especially with what is going on in the world these days. Currently, everything is a mess. The No Kings Rally Part Three just happened this past weekend, though I was working all weekend and could not attend, so anyone reading this in the future knows what a dire time it is to be alive. During times like these, we start to simplify a lot of what goes on around us because of how complicated the world is getting and how easily we think we can solve the world’s problems if we were given the power to do so. 

Could you imagine such arrogance?

Anyway, I’d like to take some time to reflect on these three (sometimes paraphrased) moments in the conversation: 

How does that affect you? And what perspective am I missing?

This was a lesson that I had a great deal of trouble learning. In fact, it did a lot of damage to my previous relationship. Oftentimes, I feel I understand a situation well enough and that I can make a pretty decent judgement call when looking at it in detail. That could be a relationship that someone has with another, or a complex geopolitical or social problem. There’s always an easy solution. 

Homelessness is a problem. House people. 

Greed is a problem. Tax the wealthy. 

Voting rights are under attack. Destroy the electoral college and gerrymandering to allow people’s voices to be heard. 

Not a single one of these issues is more complicated than that in my mind, and I firmly believe that these are the solutions to the problems, but often I fail to understand the complexity of either the logistics of getting these solutions going or how viciously the parasite class (aka: billionaires) will fight to keep their hoarded treasures. The solutions are far more complicated to come to than they seem. 

And this is an issue I’ve found in my personal life too. It seems so simple to tell someone to stand up to their narcissistic mother or to walk away from an abusive partner, but actually having that act followed through with tends to be a lot more complicated than I surmise. If I had taken the time to ask how the situation was affecting others more often, and tried to see the issue from their perspective rather than the one I held and believed to be right, I’d have stronger relationships with people that I care about. 

Perfection is the enemy of progress. 

The classic Tremere problem, and a sentence I’m often at war with. While I do believe that perfection is indeed the enemy of progress, I have yet to find the balance between giving high quality results and ‘good enough is good enough.’ 

There are some things in this world that I will mess with over and over again just to get it absolutely perfect because it needs to be, but then there are other times when I have pushed both myself and others to accept ‘good enough’ either because I was tired, I didn’t see the value in the task being performed, or because I well and truly didn’t care. This was often fairly damaging to my relationships, especially before being medicated, because not seeing the value of something and not seeming to care about something are two heads of the same coin. Especially when your partner sees you putting in the effort and care to do something you do care about to a level of perfection, to see you valuing something they care about as ‘good enough’ territory, it can make their wants and needs seem devalued as well. 

My boss often says that “no one cares about results as much as the boss,” and I see exactly what he means. While the boss is usually the one getting the bigger piece of the pie, in what I do, he’s also the one shelling out the most cash for materials, tools, and reputation. Working on that more intimate level of being a two man operation, I do care about the end result, but I too am guilty of this mindset. When I worked for a big box store, I didn’t care about their profits. Hell, someone could have set the store on fire and I wouldn’t have cared watching it burn down to ashes because I wasn’t invested in it. 

Honestly, it’s the investment that matters, and while perfection is the enemy of progress, and good enough is good enough for certain things, there needs to be a good middle ground between the two that shows your investment without burning you out in an attempt at perfection. 

How do you know who deserves the suffering?

This is a question that often plagues me. While there are some easy layups for this question (NOTE: the aforementioned bottle of champagne that is waiting for that sunny day and front page obituary), there are ones that are harder to reconcile. I’m a firm believer in my political and personal views. When I was younger and a bad atheist, I didn’t want to be friends with religious people. Now, as an adult, I just know I don’t want to be friends with overzealous religious fanatics. If you believe in Jesus we can be friends, but if you believe Jesus is visiting you in your dreams and is guiding you to buy more guns so you can cleanse your neighborhood of a certain group of people you personally don’t like… Well, ‘we cannot be friends’ is probably the understatement of the year. 

Though I don’t want to associate with people who voted for the current fascist regime, sometimes I don’t have much of a choice, especially if I want to afford to eat, so it kind of reflects Isadora’s point about choosing who deserves what in this world. Though, Gandalf really did say it best: “Some who live deserve to die, but many who died deserved life. Can you give it to them?” I cannot possibly give people what I think they deserve, but I can give people respect, honesty, and, when appropriate, a piece of my mind. And that will have to do for now. 

But that does leave the 800lbs. gorilla in the room to deal with. Isadora bleeding out on the greenway under a tree. Dying the final death that many a man on the internet has been hyping up for weeks at this point, finding herself the perfect little bleed-out spot. Will she survive? Will she perish and exist as a driving force for Grey’s plans? Tune in Monday to find out!