I Am A Prick...

[magicaddict]

...and so are my characters.

With full knowledge, intention and ability to stop myself, my characters keep coming out with the nasties. Putting people down, taking the piss and either finding ways to get out of it or shrugging and letting someone else handle the problem.

It doesn't matter who the character is, it seems to be a mirror for everything about myself I truly hate, whether it's boring, insulting, offensive, or just unwilling to consider other people's feelings. This makes them pricks. The fact that despite the fact I don't want them to do it, never designed the characters to do it, and given the choice wouldn't do it, I do it, and offend people, makes me a prick too. I don't care that's it's in character, and that others may not be offended by it on an OOC basis. I bloody well am, and every time I realise what I have done it changes my opinions of myself and what I portray.

I don't want this. I don't want any of it. I want to be so far away from what I do every time I show up and time in, and yet I am told it's great.

What. The. Fuck.

Comments

[cheekychipmunk.livejournal.com]

No offense, but "WTF mate?" I didn't notice anything of the sort

[magicaddict.livejournal.com]

Then you probably weren't looking hard enough, and you weren't at the table where I said that I was the only person who was remotely well dressed and received a truly dead response.

[pujaemuss.livejournal.com]

I don't really know any of your characters, but I think people congratulate you for prickish characters simply because it is so far away from the real life you. I've not seen you being a prick irl to anyone in our brief acquaintance and the fact that you can keep any and all prickish tendencies confined to your acting is thoroughly impressive.

PJW

[magicaddict.livejournal.com]

This wasn't a prickish character. When I deliberately play a prickish character, I'm a lot nastier, but this one wasn't meant to be nasty.

[dbexx.livejournal.com]

Everyone has things about themselves that they don't like, and I think for some people (I include you in this) their flaws and faults are both more evident to themselves than they are to others, and percieved by them as more significant to their personalities than comes across to others.
I've known you for a long time, you are the best friend I have, and I emphatically disagree that you are a prick.
Also, you are a good roleplayer. IC as you well know is not OOC, and your characters are not you. They do things you don't like? Shit, dude, that just means that you're playing well, and have a fully formed character with a personality of their own, not a half formed shadow.

If it is making you feel this bad have you thought about taking some time out from roleplaying?

If none of the above is any use (I'm not hugely coherant, its been a very long week so far) then just know that I am sorry that you are feeling this way, and that I wish there was something I could do to help.

[magicaddict.livejournal.com]

I know that my characters are not me, but when I mentally stop, think "this might well offend someone OOC" and then come out with it anyway, sort of makes it me.

All my characters are is a set of algorithms to translate my mental processes into what the character would do in a given situation. The algorithms are wrong if my hippy freedom priest is deliberately insulting people who might be saving his hoop tomorrow.

[wargamer.livejournal.com]

What pujaemuss said plus some.

I have on VERY rare occasions seen you being a prick OOC . You never realize what your doing and you only ever hurt yourself not the people around you.

As far as your characters are concerned, you don't play the only one I've met IC that was much like you was Rhinyn (Rhynin?)and he was probably the most angst free, inoffensive character I've ever seen you play (and I've seen you play all but 2 of them)

The rest of your characters are generally either down and dirty working mans heroes or bad guys (not pricks, bad guys). the fact is that you play bad guys very well, so well that you've won an award for one of them.

[magicaddict.livejournal.com]

Just because I don't realise it at the time doesn't mean I don't do it.

I've only ever truly played one bad guy, and he wasn't a PC of mine. None of my PCs were ever meant to be evil. Stupid and blind, yes, but not evil, and still the decidedly iffy insults flow freely.

[graifox.livejournal.com]

from someone who doesnt know you very well, but some times thats what's needed I have never seen you be a prick. And if you dont come across as one on first impressions or even later impressions chances are you dont in general. I know reb thinks very highly of you.

[magicaddict.livejournal.com]

The home system is more insular than the LT. Your under your own microscope a lot more, rather than being able to shrug and put yourself half a mile away. Makes it a little more difficult to deal with making mistakes.

[drabbit.livejournal.com]

Your characters are one potential of you. If you don't like something about them, be aware that that potential is in you and work out a way to block it off. Purposely create a PC that completely excludes that aspect of you and play them - if you're mentally conditionable as I am, roleplay really does help shape your personality.

Your characters are not you. Really, they're not. They are made of things in you, but then I'm a firm advocate that all the really horrible stuff of humanity is easy for all of us, if you look in the right bit of each of us. If it's really worrying you, sit down at the end of the day and think about when you might have acted like a prick, and when you could have but didn't. Put them in proportion of scale and context, then decide if you acted unreasonably. If you don't like the way you're acting, take a decision to change it.

As near as I can put it, you define who your characters are, then they find their limits. Your characters define your limits, but you make who you are.

[magicaddict.livejournal.com]

Wait for it. Sort of.

Every time I change something about the character, it's further from the original design, and therefore ever-more indicting of how bad the original idea was in order to require so much refinement. This isn't IC gaining of experience and letting it shape you - it's fundamental errors at character creation that make what you portray simply wrong.

My characters do not define their limits. I do. Unlike some people who are able to shift into a different mindset entirely and be someone else, the vast majority of my roleplay isn't spontaneous. The script writes itself half a second before I speak it. The characters do not talk to me, bounce at me, live in a portion of my head or make their own ideas. I do.

Ergo, some of the fault has to be mine when I believe my character has insulted someone - whether I actually have or not.