So, as some of you may or may not know, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about roleplaying, and writing in general. And I am sure that many of you are the same: but if our thoughts aren't recorded, simply because we don't have a place to put them, I would count that as a great loss. Thus, the creation of this thread. Here is the only rule: Everything posted in here is merely opinion. Because of that, I ask that everyone be treated with equal respect, even if you don't agree with their thoughts. The purpose of this thread is to serve as a "forum" for roleplaying thoughts and ideas, and whatever those may be are going to be unique to each poster. What I ask of those of you reading this thread, if you are interested, is that you please record your thoughts here. They can be anything, ranging from the nature of roleplay, or why you started roleplaying in the first place, and why you continue to do so. Everything anyone posts in this thread is open to discussion, so there's no limit or guideline as to what exactly you can and cannot post, outside of the first, and only, rule. And, as always, have fun!
I'll go ahead and start this off with a small essay I wrote the other day. I have been in a roleplaying slump for a long time now, and have only recently refound my passion for roleplaying. This essay isn't so much as something to be read by other people, as it is a reminder for myself, as a way to keep my mind on the right things, and to keep that fire kindled. The Pitfall of Perfection Roleplaying, by nature, is an exercise in fantasizing, a practice of using one's own creativity to imagine up characters and scenarios that exist in a world separate from our own. This is the draw of roleplaying, and why, even after so many generations, many people still roleplay. In one regard, roleplaying is a more personal and specific way of reading a book, watching a movie, or playing a video game; we find these fictional people and events to be fascinating. I cannot think of a single person that did not, as a child, dream of being a super hero, or a princess, or perhaps a knight. And so, for many, roleplaying ends up being about fulfilling unfulfilled dreams. And therein lies the problem; because roleplaying so easily becomes personal, it can also be very easily idealized, as we want everything to go the way we've planned. Now, I'm not saying that fantasizing is a bad thing; everyone needs to take a step back from their own problems, once every so often, and roleplaying can be a good way of doing so. But if you are creating characters that are your vision of perfection, you have completely defeated the purpose of roleplaying, and you will not find enjoyment in it. Do not mistake “perfect” for the traditional sense of the word. By perfect, I don't mean that the character is completely flawless, physically, mentally, or personality wise. That's its own problem entirely (see: Mary Sue). What I mean by perfect is a character who is idealized, and doesn't change from that ideal image. What that looks like depends entirely on the roleplayer, of course; for example, a character whose story has already been told, and all their problems resolved, from the very beginning, really doesn't have much room for growth. But it can even be a character with a multitude of “flaws”, who acts “perfectly” according to their pre-defined personality. See, while we can include a number of flaws in a character at their creation, that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't still be “perfect”. If I create a character who is grouchy, spiteful, and mean, and then proceed to only roleplay him as such, how boring is that? There is something to be said for spontaneity and spur-of-the-moment ideas. Static characters are flat, and ultimately failures; do not be so caught up in keeping a character in-line with a preconceived notion of them. Truly dynamic characters are just like people, and should take on a life of their own—we are paradoxical by nature, and our characters should be, too. And this extends to plans and scenarios we may have created for our characters, too. If one person is creating plans for their character's future, then you can be assured that ten others are doing the exact same thing. What happens if you jam all these “primrose paths” together? It would not look unlike the Noodle Bowl. If our plans are so rigid, and our characters so two dimensional that they must stick to that straight path no matter what, then I fear we have gone terribly wrong somewhere along the way. Having everything be “perfect” is an easy way to make a roleplay unenjoyable, or downright awful for everyone involved—if you want everything to be perfect and the way you want it, you may as well write yourself a story. But roleplaying is a community activity. People often forget that we are not here to tell one person's story. We are here to write one collectively. And that is the greatest joy that can be derived from roleplaying; the creation of a dynamic and spontaneous story, that not a single person could have written on their own. So don't get caught up in perfection: go out there and roleplay!
Real Life Connections Shigeru Miyamoto said that Link is supposed to be our avatar in Hyrule. He's right: he's the way we see and interact with the people in Hyrule. Not only is he the main character, but he is us. Everyone else are just people that he meets for a brief period of time, and we only meet them when Link meets them. The same is true in our own lives. Think back to when you were last in a crowded area, all those people around you. You didn't know them, and you didn't think much about them. The camera followed you, and no-one else. When we Roleplay, we take everyone around Link, the people he only sees for a brief amount of time. We take the "everyone else" and explore their worlds, see Hyrule from their eyes, and interact with the people around them. We shift the camera to them instead of Link. Instead of ourselves. I was in the mall yesterday, wandering aimlessly for a good half hour, when I really starting seeing everyone around me. I saw the tired employee eating lunch alone in Subway's corner, I saw the boy and the girl nervously holding hands in plush seats, and I saw a clerk and customer chatting over the counter of a jewelry store. When we Roleplay, we make the effort to shift the camera lens off of ourselves and onto someone else. I was now discovering that the same was possible in real life. Everyone has a backstory, dreams, and fears. From the woman at the bar to the lady giving an old man a manicure, everyone has flaws and talents. When we Roleplay people, we look deep into people, digging into their innermost nature. We Roleplay people that Link would consider random people off the street, and we find that they are full of life. From the grocery store clerk to the mother of twins, everyone we see has a backstory, a personality, and pwans. Roleplaying has changed the way I look at people in real life. They used to be just faces and bodies that I happened to meet for a few minutes, max. Now, they are individuals with complex life threads that I just haven't explored yet, stories that I won't ever know. They're mines of information and emotion that I haven't had the opportunity yet to plunder. Instead of being nameless and faceless NPCs, they're PCs that I just don't know. Roleplaying, exploring the lives of non-Quill people, helps me to see that everyone I meet is someone with a life that merits exploring. Instead of being surrounded by faces of gray, I'm surrounded by shining, multi-faceted jems that are simply unknown to me. Roleplaying makes me realize that there's no such thing as an NPC.
People get the wrong idea about roleplaying, I think, and it's caused me to hide the fact the do it-- even stop doing it, really-- over the years. Actually, I'm going to go as far as to say that I've stopped writing as a whole because of people and because of my busy life. I started writing when I was in Kindergarten, and it's really funny that I'm typing this for a Zelda based website because my first ever stories were fan fictions from games like Final Fantasy and Ocarina of Time. I've always loved fantasy and science fiction. The ideas of alternate worlds, of magic, weird creatures, even the whole medevial world concept-- it just all captivates me. And as I got older, my writing became more intricate. I didn't just write about the characters from the games, I made my own in the worlds the games were set in. When I was eleven I met one of my closest friends in the world on an online RPing engine, and we had the time of our lives one summer staying up all night and roleplaying Final Fantasy fanfiction together. Writing has been a huge part of my life, and yet...I feel like I have to hide it from people. At first it was just the roleplaying that I hid, because especially being a young teenager, you want to fit in...and really? Who thinks Dungeons and Dragons and fanfiction from pokemon and zelda are cool. Not a lot of high schoolers, that's for sure. It was like my deepest darkest secret for awhile. In college I started to be pretty open about it, but none of my friends could relate so I eventually just stopped. I got tired and too busy for roleplaying while trying to balance all the elements of my life (such as work, school, an unstable relationship, domestic abuse between my parents) and so I stopped. I didn't stop writing though, and for awhile I had this dream that I was going to be a novelist and write the next big fantasy series that would sweep the nation and be a big blockbuster hit in Hollywood. Mostly this was because I was poor and I wanted to get rich quick, but there are other reasons, like pressure from my ex to work like ten million jobs all year around while balancing a full time school schedule (seriously, she was crazy). Eventually though, people would get weirded out if they saw me with my sketch book of maps and floorplans for buildings, or my tiny notebooks where I used to keep random ideas I'd get. Or they'd be sarcastic and want to know when I was getting published. So...I just stopped. I let the world have me and change me and mold me into the typical college student, completely devoid of any creative thought or out-of-the-box thinking. I stopped writing, I stopped talking about writing, I even stopped playing the games I had loved for like...my entire life. And I'm sitting here writing this now, honestly surprised at myself, because for so long I always pictured myself as unique and different from everyone else, but it actually seems like I've let a lot of people in my life make me just like everyone else my age. It's amazing how something as simple as writing can make you think differently and act differently. It's like we're all afraid to be ourselves; we're afraid to enjoy what we want to enjoy because it's not what everyone else enjoys. We're afraid to laugh at the things no one else finds funny; we're afraid to cry at things that don't make anyone else sad. We're afraid of all these things and we all want to conform and fit in. The older I get, the more I realize that fitting in does nothing for you. Popularity does nothing for you, because it's really not how popular you are, it's standing out, and more often than not you're not very popular if you stand out of a crowd. So, in the end, I want to write again, and I want to read again, and I really just want to enjoy life like I used to in middle school and early high school when I didn't give a damn what anyone else told me. I say all the time that those years were the worst ones of my life because everyone thought I was weird and annoying because I liked different things then they did and I did different things. I'm starting to think though that these were actually some of the best years of my life; I met people online I'll never forget, I learned how to be creative and think for myself, and how to really look at something for what it is, not just what it appears to be. So, I think overall I've learned not to care what people think about RP and writing, but it's still hard with everything else in my life to accept that people are so narrow minded and closed off to creative expression.
