August 11, 1999
Evolution of a Goat
Strange, tired sort of day.
This might be one of those entries that rambles, because no topic really jumped out and grabbed me today. My mood's a little down, and I'm restless again. I hate posting stuff like that, because some of the people who read this (you know who you are) are going to get all worried about me. I think it's purely a hormonal thing, because last night driving home from work I was listening to the sappiest, mushiest love songs ever and getting weepy. "Make It Real" (anyone else remember The Jets?) made me cry. "On The Wings of Love" made me get nostalgic. That was amusing, actually. In eleventh grade I had a horrible crush on a boy who was a senior... Greg... oh damn. What was Greg's last name? I can't remember, but he was SO cute, and he had the sweetest voice. He auditioned it for some school talent show thingy, and all the girls just melted. Oh, and he played the piano for it too. That was the same year I auditioned "Send In The Clowns", and he was my accompanist. Neither of us made the talent show. Heh. I think I asked him out and he politely 'was busy'.
Last night I learned that I know far more about psychology than I realized. Especially abnormal psych. I guess that's part of my strong suit in developing and role-playing characters. When I give a character an odd trait or quirk or flaw, sooner or later I realize as a player just why they have that trait. I should explain. I consider my role-playing characters, the really good ones at least, on par with characters in an ongoing story that I'm writing. Given that most of my role-playing is in a text-based, written environment, that's easy to do. I've heard some writers (most of the good ones I know) talk about how sometimes their characters sort of take over, doing their own thing and revealing things about themselves that the author didn't originally know. It's like... you create this person, and breathe life into them, but somewhere along the way you can stop breathing for them and let them breathe by themselves. Then you have to just hope they still let you in their head and hang on for the ride.
Sometimes the ride is bumpier than you expected. Sometimes I feel a little like Dr. Frankenstein, when a throwaway mish-mash of ideas and traits and words suddenly lurches to life and becomes a entity of her own, demanding time and space in your head, offering problems that you never knew she had, never created her to have... only now those problems demand a resolution. The most unexpected characters do this. Characters that I spend ages working on, coming up with their backgrounds and histories and personalities, often go nowhere. The characters that live and take over are almost always the ones that I toss together without a ton of thought. The selkie I created to go to someone's in-character party. The satyr I created to be able to play on a MUSH with another friend. When the act of creation is the most careless, that's when I'm most likely to create something worthwhile.
Caitlin (the aforementioned satyr) took her first steps away from me last night. It was scary as hell for me, because she's so foreign to what I am, and yet I understand her. Scary because for a long time it almost felt as if she were ghostwriting through me and I wasn't inside her head at all. She kept doing things and I didn't understand why she was doing them. Then scary because I got inside her head, and understood far more about her than she understands about herself. She a troubled, angry, bitter nineteen year old who has never understood what loving someone means, or what being loved means. That's not what I originally created. I originally created a free-spirited, wild force of nature. And she is... but there's so much more there... It's almost as if she's been hurt so many times that she doesn't know what hurt is anymore, doesn't recognize it, doesn't feel it. If you asked her if she'd ever been hurt or traumatized, she'd laugh at you, probably asking "Who hasn't?" The go-to-hell grin that she wears so often is a mask, a defense against letting people get too close, against letting someone have the opportunity to hurt her.
I only learned that because someone got in. Another character got behind her mask, and pointed out to her that she was wearing a mask. Like any period of self-realization, it's not easy for her. But for someone watching her, both from the outside and the inside, it's a fascinating chance to watch someone grow and evolve.
Or maybe I'm just secretly sadistic. *grin*
