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Negative emotions and their role in RP
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@KarmaBum Not really! Bittersweet or melancholy, as long as the ending is happy. Otherwise nope.
as previously stated, good day.
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@farfalla Meanwhile I will put on heart-wrenching movies and scream at the screen “MAKE ME CRY”
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@farfalla Innnnnteresting. Like @Roz, I love me a tear-jerker.
@GF said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
I often have to access those emotions in some way to be able to portray them.
I have the most fun playing things way outside my RL wheel-house, which translates to my best characters. I am not a 30-year-old male drug addict with commitment issues and a car full of shotguns. But it’s my favorite thing to play.
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I don’t mind feeling negative feelings as a result of good RP prompting said feelings as with any other kind of art.
I do mind when those feelings become oppressive or without payoff. I prefer levity, but constant jollity without its opposite is just boring, the same with constant angst without any light.
What I hate most of all is feeling helpless. Any RP that consistently removes my agency can fuck right the hell off.
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@KarmaBum That’s really more of a circumstance than an emotion, though.
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Ooh, I just thought of another sort of analogy.
I like deeply negative emotional RP the same way I like political RP.
It can’t be the only thing going on, I only like it when I get to participate in deciding the outcome (good or bad), and most people I know are terrible at it.
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@Roz I don’t know how to explain in a way that doesn’t make me sound like one of those “well I’m an empath” people, but I really internalize any emotions I feel from media. At the end of a sad movie/book/whatever, I’ll still be sad after it’s over. So it isn’t cathartic, it just makes me feel bad. Also I cry at literally everything, so I can watch something that’s joyful or lovey and still bawl if I need to get some crying out. I cried for the last 20 minutes straight of Everything Everywhere All At Once.
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@farfalla said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
@Roz I don’t know how to explain in a way that doesn’t make me sound like one of those “well I’m an empath” people, but I really internalize any emotions I feel from media.
Call yourself a method actor? It still sounds kind of pretentious, but possibly less pretentious.
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@GF said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
@farfalla said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
@Roz I don’t know how to explain in a way that doesn’t make me sound like one of those “well I’m an empath” people, but I really internalize any emotions I feel from media.
Call yourself a method actor? It still sounds kind of pretentious, but possibly less pretentious.
Oh my god, I’d rather hear someone call themselves an empath than a method actor
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@Roz Eh, to each her own.
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I explain it that I internalize the fictional emotions as if they were real.
the entity previously known as Sunny
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@IoleRae Especially embarrassment. Who decided I needed to feel that from fictional characters in made-up situations?
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
It’s so uncomfortable. So, so, so, so uncomfortable. I can handle it up to a certain point, but this is actually why I can’t watch many ha ha ha sitcoms; they rely so often on a level of terrible embarrassment for the characters that it is an unpleasant experience.
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@Tat said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
I’m trying to untangle why SADNESS over fictional things is cathartic in a way other negative emotions aren’t.
I think sadness (and fear) are the sorts of things we can find catharsis through roleplaying because they are base - and thus kind of simple.
Anger, to me, is so often more of a…not precisely a cover, not precisely a reaction, but something like that. A lot of the time, we get angry because we are made sad. Or afraid. Or embarrassed. I think in a way this makes anger harder to identify WITH because we can’t so easily identify what it truly is.
I think it’s messier for much of the same reason. Anger and frustration are usually outwardly focused. They have a target.
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@hellfrog said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
@Tat said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
I’m trying to untangle why SADNESS over fictional things is cathartic in a way other negative emotions aren’t.
I think sadness (and fear) are the sorts of things we can find catharsis through roleplaying because they are base - and thus kind of simple.
Anger, to me, is so often more of a…not precisely a cover, not precisely a reaction, but something like that. A lot of the time, we get angry because we are made sad. Or afraid. Or embarrassed. I think in a way this makes anger harder to identify WITH because we can’t so easily identify what it truly is.
I think it’s messier for much of the same reason. Anger and frustration are usually outwardly focused. They have a target.
My musical theatre teacher in high school once said that the root of all anger is fear. Fear of harm, fear of loss, fear of judgment, etc. Which I think goes to your point that it’s often an outward expression of another emotion we’re not comfortable externalizing.
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@hellfrog most of my frustration is with myself, tbh
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I’ve been thinking about this because I DO love sadness and anger and angst sometimes. And I have definitely found catharsis in ways that led to me sobbing at my keyboard. Or on one occasion very carefully keeping myself from crying because I was rping on the couch five feet from my rp partner and if she knew I had emotions our 20+ year friendship would probably end because reasons (???).
Basically I think I have internalized a lot of shame and anxiety about rp stuff that I shouldn’t have but when I can step away from that I can get a lot out of sad rp. Also @farfalla dealt with my character when he was super depressed and she was FINE. FYI. Her rp is great if anyone is looking for rper yelp.
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I am a sucker for tragedies. Stories that are about pain, loss, suffering, strife, wrath – the negative part of the spectrum, dealing with those, wallowing in the dirt of it, and coming back out of it on the other end and breathing deeply. That, to me, is when a character’s arc is usually complete, when they have nothing to struggle against.
I … have often found that not all my RP partners are as into this as I am, and have, I think, shocked the hell out of a few people, especially since my RP tends to be very organic and spur of the moment rather than planned. Oops.
But bad things happening is the driver of conflict, and unless it’s real for the character, there’s no real motivation or story. You can only have happy times for so long before it gets stale. A problem needs to come up and be fixed.
Television rules are usually good. Something breaks, that’s good for a scene or two. Longer arcs come out of nastier situations, and full character stories often have a dark drive to them. This is part of why so many edgelords have edgelord backstories in D&D.
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This is so interesting to me.
Because I’m not particularly drawn to sadness as catharsis. I don’t necessarily want to play a person who is sad, and my tolerance for angst and deep sadness is…limited.
Where my catharsis is, is ANGER. I control my anger and I have all my life. I’m the kind of person where in RL, if I express mild irritation, people recoil and go, “I didn’t think you could even get angry!” Even when I let myself get angry, ninety-five percent of the time, I cool down fast and am soon saying, “Well, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I’m sure they didn’t mean it quite like I took it. I don’t see the point in hanging on to this.”
So, god, I want to play angry people. I want to play angry people WITH angry people. I want to have characters who are filled with wrath and vengeance, who have screaming fits, who fight and swagger and get their asses kicked or kick ass, either is good. And not just the righteous sorts; I want people who get angry over petty things, who lash out when they didn’t mean to, who cause damage they never intended. People who…lose control, for good and bad.
It’s not because I want to hurt PCs - in fact, I usually restrict a lot of that to NPCs unless I’m sure the player is on board. But I admit it’s an adrenaline rush to just play someone who can stop worrying and just UNLEASH, and let the consequences be a Future Them problem.
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@Pyrephox I like playing angry people, too. What I find interesting is that when my CHARACTERS are angry, I’m often, IDK, excited? Jazzed up?
When my characters are sad - like REALLY sad - I’m often sad, too. Not like- to the same degree. But I feel it as sadness in a way I don’t feel rage as rage.
It’s weird. I’m so fascinated by why this is.
