Don’t forget we moved!
https://brandmu.day/
Investing Yourself into your MU* Chars
-
Not that long ago I had a character in a plot where character death was a real possibility. On my commutes home I would sometimes think about how I would pose him getting killed.
Because it was a supernatural game, there were supernatural factors involved and I could bring in a ‘third party’ who would be deeply affected by the character’s death.
Basically, if you know Mage the Ascension, his avatar (weak, one dot) was going to panic about his premature death not giving it a chance to grow and prosper. So it was to try to revive him by showing him probable futures of his children and grandchildren as motivation to Get Up and Fight. However, the effect was going to be that it soothed the fear and panic he felt while dying.
One pose, the character’s story completed.
It was intense in my head (still is really, months later, though it never happened) and I would get choked up about it. But I also completely break down at the end of Link’s Awakening.
I want stories to move me, and I’m not ashamed of it when it happens.
-
@Polk said in Investing Yourself into your MU* Chars:
I want stories to move me, and I’m not ashamed of it when it happens.
This. This right here. I want to give a crap about my characters, and other characters, and the stories we write together. I want the stories to be meaningful in ways that pull heart-strings - both good and bad. If I can’t find enough investment to care about what’s being written… Why even write them in the first place?
-
Pre-2020ish, I had a rather profound emotional management problem - like anger management but more promiscuous. I could find myself easily reacting to things happening to my character as if they were happening to me: Someone insults my character, they insulted me. Someone lusts after my character, they’re lusting after me. Etc. This was all part of a larger issue that has required, and continues to require, intensive trauma-informed care. I’m fine, I promise.
While this isn’t the norm, or anything, it’s a big part of my more recent reticence to engage with MUs. I’m afraid of feeling the wrong way again.
-
@dvoraen Yes.
-
I enjoy my characters and enjoy making compelling scenarios for them and other characters. However my guy is not me and whatever happens is just part of the story.
-
Tis funny. I was coming here to actually post a question along these lines for something I am working on, and saw this topic and wanted to weigh in.
I can tell you that I have definitely been impacted enough to shed tears when reading a pose. Or when writing a pose. Characters can just really get to you.
Or their pets, too.
I think as long as you maintain a healthy hold on bleed and alibi (how much of your character comes into your real life and how much of your real life comes into your character) and can avoid letting it really effect you, it can be a sign of good storytelling and a good bit of catharsis.
But I am also the sort of person who started crying watching Home Alone yesterday, so I may not be the best example. (I’m a bit of a softie.)
-
@imstillhere said in Investing Yourself into your MU* Chars:
I enjoy my characters and enjoy making compelling scenarios for them and other characters. However my guy is not me and whatever happens is just part of the story.
Yeah. I can get very attached to my characters and their stories, but I try to keep a healthy separation.
-
I invest a lot into my characters in the sense of – I definitely know what they’re doing when they’re not ‘on screen’, I will play out scenarios that no one else would have interest in RPing just so that I know how this event in their life went, I have a firm idea of their backstory and how their relationships with NPCs are.
But I try very hard to keep a big gap between ‘my character’ and ‘me’. My characters like things I don’t, and they hate things I believe in. It doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated, but my frustration tends to feel like the same sort I get from a board game or a video game when the RNG or dice are being dicks. It’s less about my character and more about “is this interaction fun”.
And my fear of people who are over-invested in their characters and how exhausting it can be to manage other players’ insecurities are definitely…a couple of the smaller reasons why I’m not playing anywhere right now.
-
@Pyrephox said in Investing Yourself into your MU* Chars:
I invest a lot into my characters in the sense of – I definitely know what they’re doing when they’re not ‘on screen’, I will play out scenarios that no one else would have interest in RPing just so that I know how this event in their life went, I have a firm idea of their backstory and how their relationships with NPCs are.
But I try very hard to keep a big gap between ‘my character’ and ‘me’. My characters like things I don’t, and they hate things I believe in. It doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated, but my frustration tends to feel like the same sort I get from a board game or a video game when the RNG or dice are being dicks. It’s less about my character and more about “is this interaction fun”.
And my fear of people who are over-invested in their characters and how exhausting it can be to manage other players’ insecurities are definitely…a couple of the smaller reasons why I’m not playing anywhere right now.
Part of why I started this thread has to do with some of the points you made. A number of things in my characters’ lives happen off screen, or become “well what happens in X year which likely will never be seen on screen/during the game’s life?” and other timeline events that I don’t really have any intention of playing out with other PCs. A vignette/flashback, maybe, but not really meant for other PCs. (Relationships with NPCs in their life like NPC parents, etc.)
But some of that speculation led to places that just really got to me, as mentioned above. And I can’t help but wonder if that means I’ve severely blurred the line between my character and me, for me to be having such an emotional feeling over a very specific, not-intended-for-RP moment.
-
@dvoraen This is just my personal take on it, but it’s not emotion that crosses a boundary. If you’re not hurting anyone then who cares if you cry at some scene in a character’s backstory? As long as you enjoyed exploring it, go for it.
To me, problems only arise if a) you put your feelings on other players or try to make them change what their PCs are doing because of how it makes you feel (outside of things like harassment, no-go RP boundaries, etc.) or b) if your emotions are so caught up in your PC that it’s actively hurting the rest of your life. As long as it stays on the level of a good catharsis, like watching a sad movie or reading a touching book, that’s fine! But I’d be concerned if, for example, instead of having a nice cry and moving on, you could not let the fictional event go and it made it difficult to either play the character or focus on other things in your real life.
Ultimately, it’s all about does this ADD to your life’s experiences, or does it have a negative impact on your life. For me, anyway.
-
@Pyrephox said in Investing Yourself into your MU* Chars:
@dvoraen This is just my personal take on it, but it’s not emotion that crosses a boundary. If you’re not hurting anyone then who cares if you cry at some scene in a character’s backstory? As long as you enjoyed exploring it, go for it.
To me, problems only arise if a) you put your feelings on other players or try to make them change what their PCs are doing because of how it makes you feel (outside of things like harassment, no-go RP boundaries, etc.) or b) if your emotions are so caught up in your PC that it’s actively hurting the rest of your life. As long as it stays on the level of a good catharsis, like watching a sad movie or reading a touching book, that’s fine! But I’d be concerned if, for example, instead of having a nice cry and moving on, you could not let the fictional event go and it made it difficult to either play the character or focus on other things in your real life.
Ultimately, it’s all about does this ADD to your life’s experiences, or does it have a negative impact on your life. For me, anyway.
Thank you for this. I think this is exactly what I was hoping to hear, in a way. I had no idea if my reactions were normal. I can’t recall a time where my writing made me literally blubber when thinking about the sad parts, like your example of reading a sad story, except the story was being narrated in my head.
My brain did kind of flagellate it a bit, because my mind would constantly veer towards the saddest part of this fiction in my head, even during work when my hands were busy but mind was free. Fortunately, it hasn’t affected me to the point of debilitation, because I’ve forced myself to change topics internally, but the frequency felt like a concern.
Anyway, what you said gives me a basis of comparison, because I am not a good judge of “what is normal”, considering I tend to have off-kilter behavior at times.
-
I create characters with a general sense of maybe what I want to do with them or a corner of the world they occupy, but plans have a tendency to change at a moments’ notice, and games don’t always last, plus a whole other host of factors which you had no way of anticipating that will expand the experience far beyond what I’d initially envisioned. Often times for the better.
So anyway, the only real sense of investment I have is time, simply because I’m one of those people with a 75% “character dies in chargen” rate (seriously it’s like Traveler or HOL over here) and the idea of taking the usual matter of days/weeks I do to app something and hopefully clear all the hurdles is about as much fun to me as dremeling my own teeth.
-
I do get really invested in my PCs. Even the ones I don’t get to play for very long! I have definitely cried over PCs (happy or sad or angry). Or scenes! I have also laughed my head off. Or felt depressed/down!
But I can’t say that I feel entitled to continuing on a game that was closing, or a certain storyline or even a story resolution. A lot of that is just age/experience. I’ve seldom had “starring” characters in the whole game sense, for whatever reason, I simply don’t inspire that kind of thing. But I almost always get to be part of a smaller group rewarding thing even if it’s 50/50 that staff are involved, and almost always have enjoyable plot scenes if a game has metaplot. Arx will be the first game I’ve played on that is coming to an organized end, most of the others have just folded “suddenly” when admin throw in the towel (various degrees of coasting beforehand). Since I don’t stay on games that I don’t like the admin of, I don’t begrudge that either, and appreciate what I got to do in the time I got to do it.
But like many hobbies, of course stories infect my daydreams, just like I sometimes daydream about cool pottery things I’d like to make, or the latest short story I’m working on, something about tabletop, ect. I think that’s pretty natural!
-
I cry at scenes the way I cry at folger’s commercials: I’m moved, I’m not actually upset.
If I AM actually upset it’s time to take a break, because that doesn’t feel healthy.
-
I usually find discussions of this edge into weird territory.
It is not bad to be invested in a story or a character. It’s good. It’s necessary. It is axiomatically necessary. The Eight Deadly Words of fiction are, “I don’t care what happens to these people.” If your audience says them (and in the case of MUing, the core of your audience may be you) then the story is not worth reading/watching, much less writing.
'Course, there’s a huge difference between, “I don’t care what happens to these people,” and “I will be devastated to such a degree that coping will be a RL challenge if anything bad happens to one of these people.”
People who fall on the ‘a little too much’ side of the how-invested question will require emotional support, which is usually not too hard for them to gather up if they don’t get smacked around for wanting it.
People who are underinvested will simply fuck up the game.
-
I would argue that MUSHing doesn’t really fit well into truisms of writing. This is why several people who famously were not great mush players have fantastic and celebrated careers as writers of fiction works. They didn’t suck at writing while on mushes–they sucked at never being able to really integrate with others writing at the same time. Or, well, being unable to see anyone else in the space as equally human.
On a mush, unless it is very small, chances are that really very few people on it care about what happens to your PC. And they really don’t need to, especially if you’re not part of their story! It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with your PC. Or them/theirs!
I also think that it is also more natural unfortuantely for people to swing on the opposite side of the spectrum because of the social nature of mushing. I mean, I have many friends in the hobby now I’ve known for years or several decades now. I didn’t just enjoy their PCs obviously I enjoy them as people too. I don’t think I’m a clingy person, I regularly decline or don’t jive on places where they are, or even like the same playstyles anymore! But I do think sometimes that investment in people (even if you wouldn’t call them friends) can be way different than reading a published novel that was written a year ago and your writing hasn’t influenced at all. (THough even then, there are some real sick puppies out there in regards to how they behave towards/their entitlment about authors they are ‘fans’ of!)
-
@mietze I’d argue that the truisms of writing fit MUing pretty well. The truisms of RPGing fit better, but the truisms of RPGing are a kind of aggregate of the truisms of writing and the truisms of socialising.
Jet pilots need good eyesight and good hand-eye coordination. Great MUers need to be good writers and good company. Good writers who are real bulls in the social china-shop are bad gamers, but this doesn’t remove the importance of writing and story-constructing skills.
'You ride the mechanical bull, you do not fight it.'
-
@Gashlycrumb Nah, I agree with Mietze here, and would add that improvisation skills – being able to react in an interesting way, being able to build on top of what someone gives you, and maintain an overall “yes, and” sort of philosophy where you can – are actually much more important skills for a RPer than raw writing skills.
MUs use the written word as a medium, but it’s not actually a writing hobby (like writing books, fanfic, articles, or anything else); it’s acting via writing. The most important fundamentals of good MUers are different from the fundamentals of good writers.
she/her | playlist
-
@Roz You are right about that.
Sort of. I am pretty lousy at improv, in that I have poor dramatic/comedic timing and am a shitty actor.
But I’m pretty decent at improv in the sense that you mean.
But I would consider that to be an improvisational writing game. Or, rather, story-building game. It’s the same as the classic campfire/parlour game Can You? (I say something along the lines of “Once upon a time there was a cat with three legs and a torn left year. Its name was Margo,” and then point at you, say, “Can you?” and you carry on with the story, unless you can’t.). It’s not literally writing and you don’t really have to be good at the writing-it-down part of making up stories to be a star at Can You?
-
@Roz said in Investing Yourself into your MU* Chars:
@Gashlycrumb Nah, I agree with Mietze here, and would add that improvisation skills – being able to react in an interesting way, being able to build on top of what someone gives you, and maintain an overall “yes, and” sort of philosophy where you can – are actually much more important skills for a RPer than raw writing skills.
100% this.
You can be the most brilliant writer of purple prose in the world, but if you write a 600 word pose that gives me nothing to react or respond to in my next pose, what am I supposed to do?
A good RPer, in my mind, isn’t necessarily the best writer, but someone who is “picking up what I’m putting down” and throws in their own subtlety for me to pick up on, and gives me something to have my character do in my pose.
And sometimes that can be very basic, almost linear screenplay-style language with a lot of dialogue on a little stage direction.
But that moves the scene along more than the 500-word pose where the other character gazes out the window and waxes philosophical about their garden back home.
