I'm sure this is a little weird.

I took a short nap Saturday evening on the couch by the fireplace. I woke up with 1-B laying on my chest, its head tucked into the crook of my arm, and Ori the arrogant ass wants to get up and get moving and Chris the Marshmallow can't face disturbing the cat, and I lay there while the two of them argued, hoping the cat would get up and move, and stop the fight.

Ori eventually won.

Ok, I said it was a little weird. Anyone else deal with stuff like this during the event?

This is a constant thing. I literally have no control over any of my characters.

Mic never was supposed to show emotions, or consider people as more than a means to her ends.
...
Whoops.

Always. Which really gets fun when you give yourself all of three seconds between characters backstage.

This was the first event that I've ever really experienced one character bleeding into the next. Which has much to do with Players humanizing some characters, and allowing others to become less naive, which makes them both meet in the middle a bit, methinks.

Some of the things my characters do horrify me.

Like lead the Shadowlords?

"Couldn't have been Krystal, Krystal doesn't wear a mask."

Zach had a Zach/Konrad struggle this weekend that was pretty hilarious. It was almost nine, and I had his finished making a waffle. My wrists were sore and I wanted him to cut my waffle for me.

Wendy: can you cut my waffle?
Zach (in full Konrad mode): don't you have a boyfriend?
Wendy: its not nine yet
Zach: damn I'm still on the clock

---

Rymaus Liena “Ellie” Dax

Oh yeah. some days I feel that playing Lifeblind made me a worse person. I never would have guessed how difficult it would be to play a character that was that much of an acehole.

At Fall II last year I was in a very sensitive spot OOG about the possibility of losing Ali and the Red Death made that all the worse (foreshadowing a similar more IG struggle a year later, oddly enough). Faced with the unknown and quite possibly permanently fatal consequences of choosing to stay behind that Sunday morning, I had such an incredibly difficult time standing in front of the Commissary, telling everyone to go without me, and watching the last of the Colony disappear into the Complex as Tampered started coming up the hill. Becoming Marshal seconds earlier seemed more like a last hurrah than an accomplishment in the moment. (Dammit Billy, it *still* hits me right in the feels how you did that.)

Erin's character-preservation instincts were going full speed ahead whether I wanted them to or not but Ali's Colony-preservation instincts fought back and won. This past event, an eerily similar scenario played out and thanks to that first go 'round last year, I pretty much let Ali do what she wanted even though I was desperate for certainty. She turned out to be a tougher broad than I ever thought she would be.

I have these all the time. I tend to play very strong female lead characters in my other larps, so Gera was a stretch for me and my role play savvyness. And damnit it was so hard at times. To be all a flutter and the southern belle, when inside I wanted to get into the action and shoot all the things. It was a challenge, but I am happy I made that choice.

Also, at the end of all this, Gera's final actions was SO against what I would have done, it was difficult to even do. Every part of me was screaming 'nope nope nope...' because that would be it. Story done, over. But Gera took the reins and its what had to be done.

Glad I'm not the only person with these problems...

---

Michelle *Mika* Slade >n.n<
Colony Touchstone 505 Morale Officer!
" Perks you up where you need it!"

I spend a lot of time having to look past Sabrina grade fears to play Eliza. I'm petrified of the dark and generally anything that goes bump in the night, but one of my first interactions with the Vore ended with me hiding in the woods for a solid ten minutes. The entire time Sabrina was having a panic attack, while Eliza was telling her to man up or she was going to die. Considering Eliza is still alive, we know who won that argument.

I guess that's one of the major pluses of having Eliza as a character though. She's very much helped me face some of my bigger fears. I'm still a giant wuss though.



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 03/10/14 11:44PM

Most of my arguments between myself and Maxter was me tell Maxter to stop being a @#$%&.

Maxter showed his softer side when Raven died... still wondering why he cared... he claimed not to be interested in her

Madams: Is this a date... I'm pretty sure this is a date... Yup This is definitely a date.


Dax:

---

Leader of Vanguard Squad, Archipelago Liberation Forces

He didn't want to have to sleep on the couch when he got home.

I've never been that good at getting into a character's head, so I have actually found myself having the opposite problem: NOT having internal arguments.

When I first started playing my character, I had a pretty good idea of who he was. But whenever I ran into a situation where Pulse would do something, but Kevin would not, Kevin always won. Eventually, I lost track of who Pulse was. Every time I've put on the costume for the past 3 years or so, I've really just been playing myself...or, more accurately, myself from 3 years ago.

A lot of you folks seem to be good at getting into character, and remaining faithful to the character even when it conflicts with your personal inhibitions; I don't know how you do it, but I would love to learn!

---

- Pulse -
* Freeborn Brother
* Mechanologist

Turn yourself off at game on.... leave just a little in case there's a hold / caution / clarify called. Ori is very different than me in a number of ways.... but I get more into character writing the Pel, when I don't need to leave any of me awake at all...

I actually had a lot of Whitney/Levi conflict, especially initially. I almost scrapped the character after my second event because I couldn't connect with her. But, I realized part of what was getting in the way was my OOG shyness. I decided to start setting IG goals for myself. Like, "Levi will talk to 3 new people before game off on Friday." Once I got the opportunity to build off other people, I ended up really enjoying playing her.

The next hurdle was actually playing Levi as manipulative as I imagined her. It turned out that wasn't nearly as hard as repressing all of my self-preservation instincts.

Most combat sounded like this in my head:

Whitney: Okay, so, I see some people heading over the bridge and I think there's some good cover right over there and I know I can probably get close enough to get a clip into one of them and...

Levi: BULLETS! RUN! INTO THE BULLETS!

Whitney: No... you've already hit the bed 3 times this event...

Levi: BUT THERE IS SAM ARCHER, I MUST LEAP INTO THE GUN FIRE.

Whitney: Sam Archer is wearing a blinkycoat, you only have personal armor. Just wait a minute and...

Levi: BORING. *performs some embarassingly clumsy attempted act of bravery, jams her gun, and is immediately quickdeathed*

... have I mentioned that I'm looking forward to playing a character who can actually make tactical, strategic decisions?

If you and your character are arguing incessently about what approach to take... yeah, a new character is likely a better approach.

I try very hard to get out of Ori's way. I (I swear) often don't know exactly what he is up to until I do the pel and see it in front of me. He was designed to react to thing, without goals. Alas, he screwed that up on me and now has things to accomplish, on Glass and on Newtopia
\

If we really become "Newtopia," I will replace Fawkes and finish his work on "the big fire."

That said, the only time I step in my character's way is when I'm unsure if I might be griefing someone unnecessarily, finding myself in a real life unsafe situation or finding conflict in a rule. After those points, my character is in the driver's seat and I'm quietly watching (and occasionally bracing/gritting my teeth) in the passenger side.

While I and Orion may have shared some sentiments in keeping an open mind and treating people fairly, Orion definitely threw himself into a lot of situations I wouldn't have the guts to, be they military, social or political. Orion had different priorities and goals than his player, and really, balancing these goals was where I found conflict, more than player versus character.

There were times where I had to push down emotional responses as a player to pull off the character, though towards endgame, Orion had some psychological breakthroughs and began to recover from some issues that were dampening his ability to engage emotional situations.