(no subject)

[egypturnash]

On our way to the toy store, we passed the massive pile of ostentatious stone and spikes that is the Boston Public Library. Now, when I visited last July, I learned that this building was the inspiration for Puzzlebox's library in Strangewarp. We joked about kissing in front of it again, little realizing what was about to happen: the Library lured us in with an innocent sign for a book sale.

Rik wanted to check it out, so we went in. The library is large and ostentatious - it's full of dark murals and marble columns. Kin decided to give me a bit of a tour. After looking around the reading room, we got a little lost, and that's when things got strange: I had a better grasp of where we were, after a little wandering around, and took the lead in trying to find where the book sale was. We started making a few jokey references to the metaphorical dimension of this... and I started slipping a little into character. As Inhatti, the noisily self-destructive salamander, one of the more coherent aspects of my horrible bloodplay character on Puzzlebox.

It was playful at first, but it started to feel somehow serious, and rather like a Bad Idea: it was hard to get out of character, while we were still in the library. Even when Kincaid started trying to hurt her by deliberately misfiling books.

Ultimately we went out, and I was reminded that I am now a much happier person, who gets to be bouncy and beloved, and I'm glad for this. Still, it might be a while before I go into the Boston library again.

PS: Mirrormask, 4:50 tomorrow.

Comments

[milkpanzer.livejournal.com]

What toys did you buuuuy?

You are always beloved no matter what! *snugglehug* *squee*

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Oh, just the usual - nipple clamps, a bloopy dildo that so far has seen no use more strenuous than being held to foreheads in unicorn jokes, and a crop with a cute red heart on the business end. I had fun carrying that last one around on the way back home!

I'm getting used to being loved, but it still feels weird now and then. And a role runs away with me sometimes. Ultimately, I went back to being a bouncy raccoon again, in the layer of silly roleplay that's fairly constant in this relationship. It felt good.

[jillarts.livejournal.com]

what time should folks meet up at the theater?
420? lolz but seriously, that sound good ...?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

That sounds about right; it'll give us time to get tickets, assemble, and hopefully get decent seats. Looks like Chris won't be coming, by the way.

[jillarts.livejournal.com]

poo to him
he's on his way over, ill give him a knuckle sandwich

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

The weird thing is ... even with characters I've roleplayed for years, I never find myself slipping into them unexpectedly.

But then, I've never had a situation match up like that -- I usually deliberately draw inspiration from foreign places when creating, because I used to have a jerk player who loved to catch me "stealing" and ridicule me for it. There's never been a case when I've been playing at being someone else in their proper environment like that.

[sebkha.livejournal.com]

When I visit a place outside my home city, there's a definite sense of liberation. If nobody is going to recognize me, then for once I don't have any persona to maintain, not even the day-to-day human one. It's cool to be just a tourist, not part of the place.

Where it gets weird is when I visit someone in one of these places who knows me from someworld else but hasn't realized it yet. I'll introduce myself by rattling off a half dozen character names and they'll latch on to the one they recognize. Click! For the rest of the visit to that place, I'll be that character. I've had at least one person spooked by meeting me on two different occasions, once as Lustre and once as Sebkha, and wondering whether I was really the same person.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

Huh ... I've always wanted to travel, even if it's just to see what the next town over is like, but I've never been able to achieve that kind of freedom. I think I'm just never away from people who know me for long enough, since I can only go somewhere if there are people there I can stay with.

[zeeth_kyrah]

To punish his insuldes, I would probably start to deliberately take influence from common and familiar sources, such as mythology.

"Listen, you idiot. You just had two impossibly beautiful naked women appear in front of you and a golden apple has been thrown at your feet. I don't care if you know what happens next! What do you grab first?"

Every answer is wrong: he is turned into a gold statue and cloven in two by a lightning bolt for angering a goddess. Write up a new character. By the way, the new character happens to be cursed: It is prophesied that he will kill his father and wed his mother (this one works best if the player is a lecherous type - any female NPC of sufficient age could be his mother, especially in a high-magic game).

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

That's not far from what I ended up doing ... I shipwrecked the PCs on an island with a beautiful caretaker who tried to convince them to abandon their mission. They left, and ran into a sorceress with transforming spells, an impassable rocky strait, a one-eyed giant, a dangerous passage between two monsters, and so forth.

I interpreted any humor that he found in the situation to qualify as hubris. (This is similar to the rule in Orkworld that Trouble does not like to be made fun of.)

It was an interesting few weeks.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

That's the first time it happened to me, and of course it happened with one who's not exactly pleasant to be. I didn't even know that the Strangevirus Library was inspired by a real place when I started playing this character! If I had, I might not have gone with the readings of the description of the place, and of the Virus, and the way the character developed into being intimately connected with the place. (Sosael/Atazael/Inhatti/etc claims to be a public face of the metaconsciousness of the Strangevirus - and I read the Library as being, well, an aspect of its memory, slowly trying to forget all the nasty things it's done. So being inside the Boston library is, in metaphor, being inside her. She was very low-key and polite yesterday - library politeness demands quiet, after all - but it was still unexpectedly intense.)

I never expected to find the environment compelling me to play her in the flesh. Part of the reason for playing her was to seperate out the self-hate she caricatures.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

Wow, it must have come as kind of a shock ... I know that I've done my share of double-takes when I've recognized places that I didn't know were real. (I'd better never visit Vancouver, since I think it's been about half the cities in the U.S. in one TV show or another).

I never expected to find the environment compelling me to play her in the flesh. Part of the reason for playing her was to seperate out the self-hate she caricatures.

You do that, too? Way too many of my best characters represent a potential self with one of my mental locks shut down -- Bayushi Haruka is me with my anger uncontrolled, Tilshals Minch is me with my bitterness loosed, etc. It's a way of examining my own behavior.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Something something something. Deleted.
I never should have channeled LA or I should become her on Puzzlebox.