(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

[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.