primeideal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
primeideal) wrote2023-01-15 11:19 pm
primeideal) wrote2023-01-15 11:19 pm
surprised Pikachu face
If you are intrigued by themes of “loyalty, ideology, memory, obligation, and the difficulty of interpersonal knowledge" and enjoy being emotionally compromised by characters who do...emotionally compromising things...you should go play Debrief, which is available here. It's a one-hour RPG in the form of a conversation between two players on a video call. There are rather lengthy character sheets (just backstory, nothing statistical and very little in the way of mechanics to read beforehand). skygiants and cahn have longer posts/enticements here and here respectively, but you shouldn't read the ROT13 spoilers until after you've played the game. My experience is in ROT13 here.
Under the cut is only spoilery in the loosest thematic sense, but is cut for nonsense rambles about being me.
I think the ending we reached was comparatively hopeful, as these things go (it's a game about ghosts, the best-case scenarios still involve grief!) And as someone who is known to have Too Many Feelings about fictional characters, often, the way I work through that is by writing fic as catharsis to get it out of my system, or even if I don't write it down, daydreaming and headcanoning the future. So...maybe I'll do that in this case, too. Except, I feel uneasy. Why do I feel uneasy? Hmm. I have no compulsions writing fic about books or movies or video games or whatever, but this was a playthrough of an RPG with another person. The characterization he brought to his character (for example, there are aspects in the backstory that didn't come up in our game but could easily have in a different game) is his--can I add onto it, can I tell it my way? Maybe I should just ask him if he's cool with it, I'm sure 95% of people would be cool with it. Yeah, but he had to leave in a hurry last night because he was going on the road. he's probably busy, and like, what if he thinks I'm weird for having Too Many Feelings about fictional characters? I mean we are both self-avowed geeks, there is no risk of him being like "wow you're a nerd??? I did not see that coming???" but it's somehow different when it's...~feelings about ~closure and lack thereof? Especially in the contexts of a (fictional) difficult friendship?
In the real world, money is useful because it's fungible. If I go to a restaurant and someone cooks a meal for me, I don't need to return the favor by cooking them a meal tomorrow--I can just pay them money, and earn back money by doing something I'm good at. But, like, how does friendship happen? If I dump my feelings on someone because we're friends, am I then obligated to listen when they dump their feelings on me? I'm not good at it, I never have been, it makes me upset, and I try to be fair by, in return, not dumping my feelings on other people. Under those circumstances, could I ever really have a true friendship at all? Is there a way to balance things that's fair without being symmetric? How would you measure? How would you know?
And does this tie into my feelings about imbalance and asymmetry in the context of respect? There are lots of people who I enjoy spending time with and doing things with, without needing to agree with them on any or even most underlying worldview issues. I'm glad they're in my life and I'm better off because of the time we spend together. But most of them, the fun ones, I envision as "up on the chain" in the sense of being hip, over-it, more-righteous-than-thou and looking down on all us shallow plebs. I can't open up to them, not fully, not really, without being terrified that they don't really respect me and are just patronizing (The people who are "low on the chain" aren't judgmental--sometimes I can be quietly, snarkily, judgmentally toward them, but most of the time I don't like hanging out with them because they're not fun.) Am I afraid to talk to this person because there are emotions, or because wanting closure--even in the context of a fictional story about ghosts--is shallow?
Anyone who has known me for longer than ten minutes should have zero surprises that 1. I have Too Many Feelings about fictional characters, 2. I have a hard time processing friendship from this context of give-and-take, 3. I have a hard time coping when the respect chain is involved, or 4. (1) might trigger (2) and/or (3), leading me to be very anxious and upset without necessarily being able to articulate why, in the moment. And yet here I am again, acting shocked, shocked, to discover my emotions in this bar. Why can I never learn.
Under the cut is only spoilery in the loosest thematic sense, but is cut for nonsense rambles about being me.
I think the ending we reached was comparatively hopeful, as these things go (it's a game about ghosts, the best-case scenarios still involve grief!) And as someone who is known to have Too Many Feelings about fictional characters, often, the way I work through that is by writing fic as catharsis to get it out of my system, or even if I don't write it down, daydreaming and headcanoning the future. So...maybe I'll do that in this case, too. Except, I feel uneasy. Why do I feel uneasy? Hmm. I have no compulsions writing fic about books or movies or video games or whatever, but this was a playthrough of an RPG with another person. The characterization he brought to his character (for example, there are aspects in the backstory that didn't come up in our game but could easily have in a different game) is his--can I add onto it, can I tell it my way? Maybe I should just ask him if he's cool with it, I'm sure 95% of people would be cool with it. Yeah, but he had to leave in a hurry last night because he was going on the road. he's probably busy, and like, what if he thinks I'm weird for having Too Many Feelings about fictional characters? I mean we are both self-avowed geeks, there is no risk of him being like "wow you're a nerd??? I did not see that coming???" but it's somehow different when it's...~feelings about ~closure and lack thereof? Especially in the contexts of a (fictional) difficult friendship?
In the real world, money is useful because it's fungible. If I go to a restaurant and someone cooks a meal for me, I don't need to return the favor by cooking them a meal tomorrow--I can just pay them money, and earn back money by doing something I'm good at. But, like, how does friendship happen? If I dump my feelings on someone because we're friends, am I then obligated to listen when they dump their feelings on me? I'm not good at it, I never have been, it makes me upset, and I try to be fair by, in return, not dumping my feelings on other people. Under those circumstances, could I ever really have a true friendship at all? Is there a way to balance things that's fair without being symmetric? How would you measure? How would you know?
And does this tie into my feelings about imbalance and asymmetry in the context of respect? There are lots of people who I enjoy spending time with and doing things with, without needing to agree with them on any or even most underlying worldview issues. I'm glad they're in my life and I'm better off because of the time we spend together. But most of them, the fun ones, I envision as "up on the chain" in the sense of being hip, over-it, more-righteous-than-thou and looking down on all us shallow plebs. I can't open up to them, not fully, not really, without being terrified that they don't really respect me and are just patronizing (The people who are "low on the chain" aren't judgmental--sometimes I can be quietly, snarkily, judgmentally toward them, but most of the time I don't like hanging out with them because they're not fun.) Am I afraid to talk to this person because there are emotions, or because wanting closure--even in the context of a fictional story about ghosts--is shallow?
Anyone who has known me for longer than ten minutes should have zero surprises that 1. I have Too Many Feelings about fictional characters, 2. I have a hard time processing friendship from this context of give-and-take, 3. I have a hard time coping when the respect chain is involved, or 4. (1) might trigger (2) and/or (3), leading me to be very anxious and upset without necessarily being able to articulate why, in the moment. And yet here I am again, acting shocked, shocked, to discover my emotions in this bar. Why can I never learn.
no subject
I don't know that one's feelings about fictional characters necessarily need to go that deeply into it? Just "hey, I'm still interested in these characters and would like to write up and perhaps go deeper into the experience of our game, would that be okay" would be good enough, I think.
Which maybe goes more into what feelings are worth sharing and worth equivalent exchange and so on but that is beyond the scope of this comment :)
and then let me and![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants know so we can read itno subject