Unlocking Sansovede at the Invisible College
If someone offered you a place to hole up and write for a week, what would you create?
That’s the question I found myself trying to answer when I opened my laptop for the first time at the Invisible College residency. For months, I’d been trying to write a short story about a young woman who went through adolescence while playing a VR game. I’d write a few hundred words in the morning before work, then become disgusted with what I’d written, or confused about why I’d started this or that scene. My time in the Invisible College was meant to build a sturdy foundation for “Sansovede,” my short story.
“Sansovede” is the tale of Cora Neeley, a fourteen-year-old who spends most of her time outside of eighth grade classes playing the titular Sansovede, a fantasy VR game. Her character, Isylt, is a sorceress-in-training who is prettier, more powerful, and more graceful than Cora can ever imagine her awkward body to be.
On one quest, Cora gets banned from Sansovede for reasons she can’t figure out. As she investigates the makers of Sansovede, Cora realizes that Brilliantine Games knows much more about her than she knows about them.
Here’s the first scene:
* * *
“What do you think?” says Sasha. “Do we try to talk our way out, or just blast this dude?” Cora’s headset makes her voice tinny, like she’s talking at the other end of a long, tiled bathroom, but she still sounds high-pitched with adrenaline.
“We have to talk,” Cora says. “Don’t we? You spent all your power turning those wolves into stone.”
“So you do it.”
“You know I haven’t put enough skills into my sorcery tree for that.” The guard who’s caught their characters sneaking around the duke’s gardens is still shifting from foot to foot, virtual sword gleaming in the moonlight. Below him, a dialogue box lists Cora’s options:
1. Turn around and walk away, or I’ll cut your ear off.
2. Woah, put that away. I’m sure we can work something out.
3. We’re just lost.
4. (Attack him.)
Cora sighs and taps the second option. I’m sure we can work something out, says Isylt, her avatar. Isylt’s voice is warm and cajoling. Evaine, Sasha’s avatar, stays silent. Isylt is a king’s daughter with the diplomatic skills to match, but Evaine comes from the isle of sorceresses, where small talk and sweet smiles are a waste of time.
Oh, no you don’t. I know who sent you. And I’m going to bring you right to the duke. The guard’s sword flashes toward Isylt, who tries to dodge but takes a few points of damage.
Cora grunts. “Shit. I guess my charisma wasn’t high enough for that.”
“Now you’ll have to light this guy up.” Cora hears the click-click-click of buttons mashed in quick succession as Evaine draws a pair of enchanted daggers. Her dark braid cracks like a whip as she whirls towards the guard.
“I’ll try.” Cora holds down a button and Isylt’s hands start to glow, as if someone were holding a flashlight under them. She waits until the fireball between Isylt’s fingers is the color of a summer sunset. Then she lets it go.
The fireball hits the guard square in the chest. A witch, he howls, a witch! as he scrabbles at his breastplate.
Sasha yips in delight. “Nailed him!”
“Yeah, I know, great, but can you get that other one?” Another guard is rounding the bend in the hedge.
“Sure.” Evaine reaches toward the second man — and then reels back, an arrow buried in her shoulder. “Ah, crap,” says Sasha as her character hisses. Blood turns Evaine’s gray cloak a foreboding black: a detail which Cora appreciates even as Isylt ducks behind a rosebush. No game on the market has better graphics than Sansovede. The designers thought of everything, even realistic bloodstains.
“Shit.” Cora directs Isylt to yank out her shortsword, but before Isylt can wrest it out of its scabbard, the second guard is on her. Cora’s headset vibrates as the edges of her vision turn red, then black. Isylt’s perfect green eyes widen. “I’m not gonna make it.”
“Neither am I,” says Sasha. “Damn it. Damn it.” Evaine collapses with a strained scream, and Cora hears the dull thud of Sasha throwing something at the wall. “I really thought we had it this time. Maybe we don’t have a high enough level for this questline.”
A loading screen appears, along with a swell of dramatic music, and then they are back in the front hall of Elkmire Keep. Isylt’s gown ripples in the breeze that meanders through the hall’s front door. Evaine tugs at her cloak, which is now crisp and spotless.
As Cora stares at the CONTINUE? button blinking in front of her, she hears a voice from far off. “Cora?” it says, muffled, as if underwater. “Cora? It’s time for dinner.”
“I have to go,” she tells Sasha. “Dinner’s ready.”
“Shit. Okay.” Sasha sighs. “But you’ll be back later?”
“In thirty minutes.” Cora reaches for the power button on her headset. “A Dieu vous comant.”
“A Dieu vous comant,” says Sasha, and then the world of Sansovede — the crackling braziers in the front hall, the knights standing watch by the throne room, the ever-present smirk on Evaine’s face — disappears.
“Cora. Can you hear me? Dinner. I said dinner.”
“I’m coming,” she shouts. She slides her thumbs under the seal her headset has made against her skin. The seal pops like diver’s goggles. Coming out of Sansovede always makes her think of that, of diving deep and then cleaving through the water to the surface, her hands clawing for the barrier between sea and sky. The transition makes her gasp for breath every time.
* * *
While in Brooklyn, I also read. I’d bought a Kindle right before I left, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to fit all the books I wanted to take into my bag. Chapters of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn unfolded near the neighborhoods the book depicted, and sometimes, as I read, I wondered if Francie Nolan had walked these very streets a hundred years ago.
Lines from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn attached themselves to my mind and stamped themselves on my writing — as did other media. I’m a podcast fiend, so I’d heard in an episode of Invisibilia that using the pronoun “I” when writing or talking about your experiences means you’re less likely to understand and move past them. Instead, you stay stuck in your construction of a single moment, a single conversation, a single text. Each day of my stay at the Invisible College, I wrote about myself and what I saw, but from the third person. That way, I reasoned, “I” wouldn’t have a chance of making it in there.
Here’s an excerpt of some journaling that turned into a rather sweet flash piece about a snow day:
* * *
It’s snowing in Brooklyn, great fat flakes of snow that coat the ground in a snowfall thicker than anything she’s seen in D.C. this year. The D.C. snows have been nothing more than feints, like winter’s little jabs against the heat of the metro and the concrete. The day after the snow, everything’s always gone, turned to water and drained into the ground.
It isn’t like that here. From the loft she can see the white roofs of the townhouses. Crows roost in the leafless trees behind Starr Street. In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith describes Brooklyn as an ugly thing, scabbed over by the pain and burst dreams of all its immigrant residents. She doesn’t see it that way, though, not on a day like today. The soft piano music. The Darjeeling tea. The bees buzzing softly in their tiny hive by the window. The quilt on the sofa, with its muted pink floral print. And the snow outside.
* * *
Funnily enough, the snow melted later that day. But I didn’t care! I’d gotten to sit inside and write about it.
And that’s what matters at a residency: the chance to sit down and write about it, or draw it, or code it. It’s unscheduled time squeezed out of scheduled time. For that, I’m grateful to the Invisible College, especially Paul, who explained Ethereum smart contracts to me, and Cortland, who makes the most beautiful music on his violin (check out his new album, “Fabrications”).
Amazing, isn’t it, all the worlds we have at our fingertips?
- Elizabeth
