Ripheus23

Write it while you remember it.

--It hit me, or just "occurred to me"?--that it wasn't that Dean was LDS itself that connected him (even before I knew his name, but knew he was from some part of Utah) to the mystical image in my mind. It was that the LDS were connected to Sanderson, so if someone was LDS they were connected to Sanderson, in that sort of way. I'm not saying everyone who is LDS reads or even approves of Sanderson's work. I'm just saying, as far as the image of an "ideal guy" went, from before I met Dean, a lot of it rode on this obscure link of sentiment.

Moreover, then, it wasn't just that they were connected to Sanderson, but that he was connected to The Way of Kings. Like, he wrote it, of course, but I had no idea at the time, and would not until inordinately far later, that the exact place of inspiration for this book was the same place Dean was from.

"But anyway," and moreover again, I made the mistake that I think Rock makes in pronouncing Kaladin's name, all throughout my first time through The Way of Kings. Of thinking it's pronounced like "Kala-deen" instead of "Kala-din." Weird mistake, I know, but it looks like "Saladin" so I guess I thought it was Sanderson having one of his special intercultural moments and making his supergood guy for his ultimate epic have a name that subconsciously invoked this peculiar example of a person from our real history.

As it goes, Kaladin was already connected in my mind, to this "ideal guy" idea, like, he resembled a concept for a character I'd been working on before. In fact, a concept for several characters with obscure isomorphic roles in a higher-order system of the story, namely in the set of books that added to the argument, this "guy" looked like, and I really mean that, one person, but not a person I'd ever met, indeed was not supposed to have yet met. I was supposed to meet him later, because he "would have the power" to do something exact, that would be good, that would help me if I did what was good too. So to speak. But so like I said, this wasn't just a blur of a person in my mind's eye. Sometimes it was like that, but you have to know, I spent I think 2005-2015, prior to meeting Dean, in the background imagining this one "perfect" man.

There's a deep connection that I won't go into (it involves my username, which is technically not accurate for me to have, I mean the "23" maybe makes it okay to say, "I'm Ripheus23," but it would not be right for me to say, "I'm Ripheus," just like that, I would say) but so this ideal guy of mine, he also had to basically come from Troy. I got this as an actual fricking personal prophecy from reading Dante's Paradiso. Like, I went and took the diagram of the Mystical Rose from the Ciardi translation, and tried my hand at "filling in" the empty slots:

[That's the one in the book; I'd written in Socrates, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Dante himself (I think he got the center of all places, but I don't remember totally), Confucius probably, and so on and on. But...:::]

{:::} ... where did I place the "One Just Man of Troy"? {the only one of the Lamedh-Vov who lived in that place...}

He was made the counterpoint, across the Rose, to the person I indexed at the center between Mary and John the Baptist, future-wise. Forgive me, there's a real chance I made Drew Wilson that counterpoint, but suffice it to say the purpose of using this diagram was to "triangulate" where the most true man of Troy would be, given my theory of his position in the celestial music, so to say, which then was at the interposed point past-wise.

The prophecy was, therefore: this guy, if I ever met him, well, he'd basically be that guy, from Troy, come back, somehow, or what...

Now Dean, name unknown to me, did tell me that as of then, the last book he'd read had been a Percy Jackson book, which goes to Greek mythology. However, it personally went to a catalogue of romantic concepts I'd put in a sequence over time, which was how the first Percy Jackson movie was indexed to an idea about romantic transition. I probably could explain that better but I'll let it be a little mystery since it's overshadowed by the end anyway.

So Dean also said that one time he had tried out some "past life recall" thing. And the place he felt like he might have remembered either just was, or at least was like, Rome. I don't believe in general reincarnation of that kind so I actually was wondering why Dean would believe that, but later I thought about how some interpretations of figures like "returned Elijah" would sort of be that the returnees would be reincarnated forms of the named people. And anyway, if I was a Christian, didn't I believe in the resurrection of the dead in principle? {Yes, for a particular set of reasons, both of which were strong in their own right, and combined provided cause for me to doubt the regular integrity of the world.}

I mean, what else did I wish for, anyway? Isn't that what I asked for? Everyone knew I was sort of "obsessed" with the character of Dean from that one show. They knew that this image was already the one in my mind. They knew I had dreamt of that image, met that person in the infinite city in my most extreme dreams. But, they still don't get it, it seems.

Still, because it's not actually ultimately that. I think I could have overcome that coincidence. That's a possible disassociation. Names lining up? Not as unlikely as I might think, you might say. He looks like the guy? Not the ideal guy, though, but the actor who plays the character of the show. Difficult to overlook, but possible, I suspect. However vaguely or remotely.

I also suspect that if that's what it came down to, I'd have the force of will to defy the empty solution more readily. So, it's not about that. That's not what was at stake.

Like I said, I thought about the characters for those stories of mine, over and over, for ten years, up until meeting Dean. Those equivalent guys, who all looked alike. Different incarnations in different versions of reality, or whatever. Sometimes even their names were basically the same with a view changes: "Jason, Jasen." "Dean" was the same, haha. The name of the man from Troy...?

No, but I had imagined a scene with that character, a lot. An apex moment in a major entry in a major sequence of books. Part of a complex of apex-moments for a myriad of characters across myriads of levels of reality, and worlds therein. A foreshadowing of the role this character would play later in the series. Because I wanted there to be a series just about him, you see. One where he did the greatest thing in his world...

And so [this man] thought of the image of the other, over and over, again and again, for years and years on end. Then one day, in the darkness, he walked into the forest somewhere, so...

I didn't get it, at first. I couldn't, maybe, you know, like, how do you get something like this, right then and there? Isn't it defined so that you WOULDN'T get it at first? That's part of the legend. The story of these stupid things. These moments that they make up for the sake of the movies they make.

They're the same guy. The guy I made up in my mind. Who I spent ten years making up. Is sitting across from me. Talking to me. {His name is Dean and he's from the place in Utah that inspired your favorite book, and he is the image of the man whose spirit is like unto that of your favorite character, in that book. Your favorite character in any book. He said that a mystical force that affects the destiny of the entire universe, for the sake of good and light, is why he met you on this day, Kristian. He says he came back to life from a place like Rome: the place Rome thought they themselves came from. Troy. Again, didn't know all that right then and there, but still...} He loves talking to me. He's so happy. He's listening to what I'm saying and he understands what I'm saying. "How is this happening?" "What is happening?" "Why is this happening?"

How many answers do I have to those questions? Not enough.