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thistlechaserI've spent many of the last couple evenings and all of this weekend reading RP logs. They took place almost a year ago to the day, but thanks to my faulty memory, I don't remember hardly any of it. It's a wonderful thing to be able to read your own writing with totally fresh eyes and not know where the story is going.
However, though it didn't start out that way, this is a darned dark and depressing story. This was a SA (Story Arc, longer than a TP) I ran, about a gang of bikers. A PC met up with them and came to join them. The NPC cast, in order of their rank:
Jesse - Hurt badly (physically) in the past (by someone like the PC), and every time it's wet (rain, fog, storm threatening) in much physical pain. Apparently it rained a whole lot that summer. (Coded weather, out of anyone's hands to control.) Willing to use people, even though he loved them.
Nicky - Dark, quiet, restless man. A type of... "madness" (for lack of a better term or a few pages of explanation) inside him.
Doc - Believer in the past, in This Is How Things Are Done.
Mouse - Sadly too stereotypically named. Someone should have shot me when I named him that. Biggest man of the group, and though most muscular, most caring as well. Mother hen. (Perhaps cursed by his name, he was the weakest character in my mind.)
Cody - Masochistic. (Started as a rather throw-away NPC, but developed into a real character. Added in proofreading: And yet he gets only a one word summery. Nice.)
Slash - Lowest man on the totem pole in a society where rank meant everything. After being used and abused, he pulled himself a little higher -- but not without great cost. Manic, mercurial, and unable to communicate without cursing with at least every other word. Insane, but in a (usually) functional way.
Tommy - I wrote about him and his end a long time back. Like Slash, but was young and hadn't pulled himself up yet. Broken (in spirit, emotionally, and physically) by the PC in question. Rebuilt -- but how can one human rebuild another, turning him around and building that new person on falsehoods, and expect it to hold (let alone succeed and thrive)?
The plot: Far from set in stone, it revolved around the PC joining the group and having to deal with so many different (and similar) personalities.
The SA worked, at least until the end drew near and lots of threads of the storyline were completed, leaving us with not much else to do besides... end it.
One death by accident, two deaths because of that accident, one death (Tommy's) at the hand of the PC. Two NPCs left standing at the end of months of RP during nearly every waking hour. From work, from home, when the PC and I were supposed to be sleeping. All this time to get these six men into my head, then kill them off.
Perhaps forgetting isn't such a bad thing. I'm still reading through all the logs, Tommy has already been broken and remade (yet is in some ways worse off now), and death is near. I am... depressed. The RP was good, especially when the end wasn't in sight and I didn't know most all of the NPCs would end up dead, but now I know.
They're just characters. They're not even... they're /only/ characters from my head. NPCs, not even real PCs, but it hurts. This laughing, loving, /alive/ group of men will soon be dead... though in truth they're already dead (the RP happened a year ago, after all), but in truth they never lived, so how can it be depressing me that they're going to die?
I actually played Animal Crossing for an hour yesterday and again today. I needed it. Bright colors, happy music, and the only stress in it is that I can't find a damned spider to catch.
I'm so tired of being sad and depressed. I basically haven't RPed since the SA ended. I feel like I should, I want to want to RP, but... I fell off the horse so long ago, it's hard to get back on. Happy-Happy-Joy-Joy RP tends to be boring -- you need conflict, angst, all that stuff in it... but... I don't want to make more characters, get attached to them, then watch them die. I can't. However, you also cannot say 'I'll RP, but no death!', as that's hardly fair to other people, plot, or yourself.
I feel like this post should have some conclusion, some great truth I've learned from this. I don't have one. I'll keep reading the logs, and I'll probably cry at the end, but just stopping reading them doesn't seem an option.
Part of me is annoyed I'm being affected by this -- I know the ending, I wrote half of this damned novel-length story, so why the hell is it bothering me? Maybe that's a sign that it's good... but should a writer be affected by their own work? Doesn't seem like they should...
However, though it didn't start out that way, this is a darned dark and depressing story. This was a SA (Story Arc, longer than a TP) I ran, about a gang of bikers. A PC met up with them and came to join them. The NPC cast, in order of their rank:
Jesse - Hurt badly (physically) in the past (by someone like the PC), and every time it's wet (rain, fog, storm threatening) in much physical pain. Apparently it rained a whole lot that summer. (Coded weather, out of anyone's hands to control.) Willing to use people, even though he loved them.
Nicky - Dark, quiet, restless man. A type of... "madness" (for lack of a better term or a few pages of explanation) inside him.
Doc - Believer in the past, in This Is How Things Are Done.
Mouse - Sadly too stereotypically named. Someone should have shot me when I named him that. Biggest man of the group, and though most muscular, most caring as well. Mother hen. (Perhaps cursed by his name, he was the weakest character in my mind.)
Cody - Masochistic. (Started as a rather throw-away NPC, but developed into a real character. Added in proofreading: And yet he gets only a one word summery. Nice.)
Slash - Lowest man on the totem pole in a society where rank meant everything. After being used and abused, he pulled himself a little higher -- but not without great cost. Manic, mercurial, and unable to communicate without cursing with at least every other word. Insane, but in a (usually) functional way.
Tommy - I wrote about him and his end a long time back. Like Slash, but was young and hadn't pulled himself up yet. Broken (in spirit, emotionally, and physically) by the PC in question. Rebuilt -- but how can one human rebuild another, turning him around and building that new person on falsehoods, and expect it to hold (let alone succeed and thrive)?
The plot: Far from set in stone, it revolved around the PC joining the group and having to deal with so many different (and similar) personalities.
The SA worked, at least until the end drew near and lots of threads of the storyline were completed, leaving us with not much else to do besides... end it.
One death by accident, two deaths because of that accident, one death (Tommy's) at the hand of the PC. Two NPCs left standing at the end of months of RP during nearly every waking hour. From work, from home, when the PC and I were supposed to be sleeping. All this time to get these six men into my head, then kill them off.
Perhaps forgetting isn't such a bad thing. I'm still reading through all the logs, Tommy has already been broken and remade (yet is in some ways worse off now), and death is near. I am... depressed. The RP was good, especially when the end wasn't in sight and I didn't know most all of the NPCs would end up dead, but now I know.
They're just characters. They're not even... they're /only/ characters from my head. NPCs, not even real PCs, but it hurts. This laughing, loving, /alive/ group of men will soon be dead... though in truth they're already dead (the RP happened a year ago, after all), but in truth they never lived, so how can it be depressing me that they're going to die?
I actually played Animal Crossing for an hour yesterday and again today. I needed it. Bright colors, happy music, and the only stress in it is that I can't find a damned spider to catch.
I'm so tired of being sad and depressed. I basically haven't RPed since the SA ended. I feel like I should, I want to want to RP, but... I fell off the horse so long ago, it's hard to get back on. Happy-Happy-Joy-Joy RP tends to be boring -- you need conflict, angst, all that stuff in it... but... I don't want to make more characters, get attached to them, then watch them die. I can't. However, you also cannot say 'I'll RP, but no death!', as that's hardly fair to other people, plot, or yourself.
I feel like this post should have some conclusion, some great truth I've learned from this. I don't have one. I'll keep reading the logs, and I'll probably cry at the end, but just stopping reading them doesn't seem an option.
Part of me is annoyed I'm being affected by this -- I know the ending, I wrote half of this damned novel-length story, so why the hell is it bothering me? Maybe that's a sign that it's good... but should a writer be affected by their own work? Doesn't seem like they should...
