Are We Changed by Our Characters?

[Alex]

This is spurred by a previous discussion about a girl who tried to brainwash herself into believing she was a neko. (Odd as that sounds)

But it brings up an interesting topic: Are we changed by our characters?

The answer, for me at least, is yes. We are either positively or negatively influanced by the characters we create, because sometimes we can learn by watching them interact with others (odd as it sounds).

For instance, I put a lot of myself into my characters, but its a different aspect of myself almost every time. For those of you wondering, 'This time' would happen to be Koji (my only character on this board) and his aspect is 'Ambition'. By using his persona (believe it or not) I gained moderatorship over a forum - hard work, and single-minded determination. By focusing more on this 'aspect' I have bettered myself, and learned to be more of a leader and a do-er, which I don't normally even think of trying.

Further back in my career, I created a character off of what I suppose can be called 'All for Love'. He was a great warrior in a fantasy realm, a werewolf as well, and betrayed both his country and himself for the one he loved. His love was never properly returned, and finally someone came between him and his lover. This man induced his lady love to hate him, poisoning her mind against the actions of her former lover. My character was murdered in cold blood, and lay in an unmarked grave - mourned only by the curses of his closest friends.

I was down for so long, and I had to re-evaluate my views on love, because it was my wakeup call - love really doesn't conqure all. As they say, 'The best lain plans of mice and men sometimes go wrong.' We're all human, and that means that life isn't a fairy tale - it doesn't always end well.

So yea. You can always learn something from your characters, be it benificial or otherwise. I can honestly say that I have learned something from most of the characters I have played, and I think I'm a better person for it.

 

[Tyler]

I've become an overall better person and lover from all my character's experiences. ^.^

 

[Rob]

Not... really. I don't feel changed by any characters I have ever made, mostly because I take 5 minutes making them and then they die in a stupid/heroic/comic way... or just phase out =p (Not just SA either... everything I ever play )

I guess the constant losing of characters desensitises me to them... but thats probably just a personal thing. Depends on how involved with your character you become...

 

[Cora]

I, personaly, find that the characters I make, the whole dump truck full of them, to be certian off shots of my own Psyche, I have one who's dedicated to being a Hero, one who's a snarky villian, an apathetic jerk, a brazen showoff, a sex kitten, a homicidal maniac, a ditz, a matron, the list goes on.

To me, roleplaying an aspect of yourself through your Player character, is in a sense making you realize and accept a part of yourself you might not even know you have. I know I'm a whole lot more stable now adays then I was before I started to role play.

 

[Rob]

Well... as I always note to Thomas, I think better in discussions than on my own. Something to do with thinking up explainations for why x work is late/missing/written in blood...

Anyways, after that... I have been a lot more "stable" myself since I did that oriental D&D campaign *nod-tom,varley*. Also kinda lets you see parts of yourself that you didn't know existed or were hidden... or that you didn't want to show others. Once you start playing them, characters evolve around your decisions; they start off as "generic hero ####" and become a unique character... I guess that's one reason why I haven't really come to know my characters - they die or disappear before they can break the mould.

 

[Yangfan]

I've definitely learned a lot about my own values from my roleplaying experiences here. For me, roleplaying is like running a finger through calm water. Stay with me here. At first, you see your own reflection in the water, only there's a thin film of mud/debris floating on top, making things unclear. You then brush away the debris, momentarily disturbing your own image in the process. For a second there, the image is almost not your reflection anymore. After the water calms again, however, you see your own image so much clearer than before.

I hope that made sense...

Besides that, role-playing here has made me more confident in myself and more sociable. And whenever the real world starts to look bleak, I think to myself, "at least the sun still shines on Yamatai." This place has become my "happy place".

|Y|A|M|A|T|A|I| My anti-drug.

 

[Rob]

I get what you mean... nice metaphor =)

In fact, I think having nutjob characters has made me more outgoing... and more aggressive too

 

[Azalea]

Some of my characters I love to despise because they're made up of parts of my personality that I don't particularly care for, or care to share. I think that they make my best characters though . Some characters take on a personality trait I wish I had and through role playing them, I learn that trait because I have to think and act like that character. Before I began role-playing I was a shy introverted person who didn't think much of myself. It's through different characters of mine (and some outside stuff) that I developed traits I wanted. Confidence, outspokenness, stubborness. Yet along with them comes more traits of myself like defensiveness, rambling, procrastinator.

 

[Zakalwe]

I will have to comment that my characters tend to either be anoyingly formal and 2D or nutters.

Apesael: 2D
Kip and Ephesus: Nutters

If I began to act like them I'd be worried. Although RPing does increase my ability to write well, I don't think it's made any changes to my personality, or my characters are really like me.

I don't particularly understand myself, so creating a character based on me would be impossible. A little to much madness to shift out the way.

 

[Rob]

Kip was mine until you warped and twisted the poor sod... and I made Ephesus from some half-mumbled ideas that you came up with about a "mad scientist with wings"... you named him =p

and apesael... is strange. no more can be said =o

 

[Rine]

Ill have to agree with Cora on this one, most of my characters tend to be part of my personality (makes it a lot easier to roleplay them that way, since all i have to do is ask what i would do, or that facet anyway). Though generally, my characters are one pure facet, so i don't end up playing myself, but rather one super-extended point. Am I changed by my characters or roleplay though? Hmm...no, not really, often the only changes that come about because of it are the friends i meet because of it...i do develop quite an attachment to my characters, so i suppose you could argue i become rather attached and like that part of myself more, but i play all my facets so evenly it probably equals out.

The only time i can really say a character affects me is if i go out on a limb and try to play something that really just isnt me. Any evil characters (evil defined as selfish, callous, uncaring) tend to make me somewhat apathic in general when i play them, because i find it hard to stretch my personality that far to be evil, even if its only a character. Hence, those characters usually dont last long.

 

[Kendokio]

Personally I haven't been making chaacters like myself at all as of late, and they don't really affect me any. Don't get me wrong, I just think that to evolve yourself with rp you must first understand what you are evolving from. I used to rp with some wierd characters that were relatively nothing like me and i started to change and I have noticed how I went from bieng mr.everyone hates me to a relatively somewhat liked person (probly just a lie but hey its good to dream) and i am sorta nice ow i think.... im more outgoing thats for sure

sorry was ranting huh? *stops ranting*

 

[Harlequin]

My characters are stand alone constructs. Apart from one-way input, I don't react with them and vice versa.

 

[Luke]

Thats a good idea, mixing aspects of your character, but i'm really not in the mood to have a computer terminal blow up in my face so i think i'll skip that

 

[Edto Xar'Sivaree]

Whether or not you become directly influenced by your character ((I feel)) is directly related to how much Empathy you have. Removing yourself from your comfort zone would be the most likely cause of self-reflection and moral refinement. The post box is an open canvas, and by all accounts, you should be totally fine making mistakes, doing stupid things, and offending other people's characters so long as no one gets uptight on you. Take my VDTF. There are many things about them that remove me from my comfort zone. Hell I was going to have a scene where one of my characters executed females for getting pregnant, simply because they did it without proper registration and being a race accustomed to living on a station under an impossibly strict population control system, unregistered pregnancy is a serious crime. On a personal level, I believe it to be an individual choice, but in creating a race in an environment that requires such a harsh set of laws and control over the population and other such aspects, I had to ask myself if I was alright with posting like that.

that is where my personal reflections come from when RPing. Not the actions I /like/ to fulfill, but the ones that I don't want to but would make sense for the character/situation at hand. Like attacking my flagship characters "Favorite"

 

[Navian]

I probably would have just made the race lay eggs instead of have pregnancies, since they're cold-blooded, anyway, and that would have avoided those issues... but that's neither here nor there. The essence of role-playing is to practice pretending to be other people, learning skills and behaviors and how to react in weird situations. When you practice doing anything a lot, there's apt to be some bleed-through.

People who play videogames learn to think the way the game rewards them for, like playing Tetris makes people want to line things up, and playing racing games makes people want to pass others on the road. It's easy for most people to resist these impulses when they're obviously stupid, since most people have obviously stupid impulses every day for whatever other reasons.

I sometimes shift into the speech patterns of characters I've been playing a lot. This isn't as weird as it sounds, since I learned those speech patterns somewhere in the first place, and it's not like they're unnatural for me to use. It feels weirder when I start talking like someone else I know after spending too much time around them... I guess I'll say in the end, since a player's characters are nothing without the player, if the 'character' influences the player, that's just the player influencing themself, anyway!