Reflection: When (Cass) Changed

Hello! For those of you who do not know me (and I don’t imagine anyone would outside of my characters Morgan from the books and Piper from our podcast), I am Nicole, one of Bryan’s friends and fellow creatives (or menaces). Though I suppose he's mentioned me a few times in the blogspace in reference to my notes (seriously, 3 documents in Google docs and counting).

I would consider myself to be creative. I draw, I write, paint sometimes, so when October comes around each year I look forward to Inktober which has ceased to be viable due to some -ahem- individuals (if you know you know). Which was disappointing. I would look forward to the daily prompts as an excuse to get myself to put aside the ennui of a slump and just create. So when Bryan came to me with the Month of Darkness prompts, well…it seemed like a fun thing to do. 

Only I had the small dilemma of even though I’ve run a few Vampire The Masquerade Games as a Storyteller, I really did not have a dedicated kindred to explore for the project. So he suggested something that, in hindsight, helped me learn a lot about myself but was also vindicating in some ways. He suggested we make a kindred off of ourselves. Off of our insecurities and personalities. The one vampire I had made previously was a dice goblin Toreador-and while I adored her and she had aspects of myself she wasn’t, well, me. We worked through the clans together until we landed on the one that seemed to fit the most. 

And that was how I created Nicole-now Cassandra, the Malkavian. My friends know me best for my extensive notes and ability to recall lore from our games- and I pride myself in my memory. What terrifies me is that one day that ability to recall will be diminished or if not gone forever. That is why I write so much down even if it’s nonsensical. So I can flip back and refresh myself. Or find that answer that they cannot. 

This month of writing and this project became an experience with madness and voices. And just allowing myself to be my weird, unfiltered self.

And it felt good. 

It felt freeing.
But the problem was in how on Earth would I end up in a situation and be turned by a Malkavian? What job-if any- could fit into things? I leaned on my current job for inspiration. So there are nuggets of truth and then obvious fiction. The truth? I work as a secretary for a doctor’s office, not a hospital. My boss is a lovely lady and outside of sharing a job title is not at all an inspiration for Alistair. I do indeed do transcriptions of notes for her from time to time. And I am sorry for what you will experience if you read Cassandra’s story because she is my unrestrained unreliable narrator self put into a strange world.

Not.
But welcome to her journey.