Tochigi ni imasu

When I was younger, I used to really love travel. Every bit of it. Car trips were awesome fun. I have wonderful memories of riding Amtrak to see my relatives in Austin. Flight? My first plane ride was at age seven, when my parents sent me to see my grandmother all by myself. I’ve loved it ever since, my favorite seat spot being a window right over the wing so I can watch the ailerons move.

Some things never do change. Working on a mere two and a half hours of sleep, I was still glad to be on my Japan Airlines flight. Couldn’t repress my grin during takeoff. The plane had cameras mounted in the nose, one pointed forward, one down, and they streamed that inside the plane as an option for the whole flight. The food was excellent, and I finally got to confirm that yes, I do like mild curry.

It turns out, however, that I do not have the physical endurance I had as a child or even a teenager, and that twelve hours on a plane now makes me fairly achy. Not that this was the only thing to make me irritable.

 

Going on a bender

Much to my surprise, I’m actually writing another post.

A wave, before I begin, to Anna, who taught me in not quite the most public way possible about pingbacks and that they are not quite the same as trackbacks. HI ANNA <3

Insert appropriate embarrassed-face emoticon here.

And now for a post that might fit relatively well on Anna’s blog (and indeed might be entirely similar to something she posted and I forgot about). Today’s random post of randomness is entitled:

Bending Your Character And Loving It

The best thing about roleplay–in World of Warcraft or any other medium–is that it involves other people. It’s better than sitting down and writing a story because other brains come into play, and can help you take stories in awesome directions you never even imagined considering. Multiple minds make a living, breathing world, free for you to play in.

The worst thing about roleplay, however, is that it involves other people. This means that not only is your character not always the main character, but you don’t have control over how other characters react to him. Your witty charmer may not enrapture the hearts and minds of his peers. Your spunky go-getter may merely irritate the hell out of people. And your iron-willed bastard may not only repel potential allies, but get himself into real and pressing danger through his misplaced bravado.

So the question becomes, what do you do when you find that your character’s actions have gotten them into some form of unpleasantness that you hadn’t anticipated? Naturally, talking with other players out of character can often help–finding out what the problem is, and how possible plot devices could intervene to make things better. For instance, the jaded character on whose nerves your spunky go-getter grates might benefit from her indomitable spirit in pursuit of a business deal, thereby changing his opinion of her. Maybe she’ll still annoy him sometimes, but he’ll learn to take the positives with the irritants.

But what if that’s not possible? What if your character has pushed the other too far? If your jester has played one too many practical jokes on the serious businessman, or your antagonistic do-gooder has made one too many threats to the slick crime boss, you might find yourself in a bit of a bind; you might drive not only the other character, but the player to the point where they just can’t tolerate that behavior anymore.

What then?

There are always options, of course. You always have the option of removing yourself from the situation entirely. It can be difficult and mildly depressing to try and take your character to a whole other group of people, but it usually opens up new avenues you’d never thought to explore. And it’s never bad to expand your circle of roleplayers.

But no, suppose you like playing this character with your friends, the ones you chat with OOC and are comfortable with. You don’t want to leave them, but you also don’t want your character to get shanked in a dark alley. If that’s the case, then there’s probably only one thing you can do: bend your character.

“What? But I like my character and I want to stay true to how I wrote them! And they can’t do anything to me without my consent anyway, that’s godmodding!” All right, yes, you have a lovely character, and staying true to them is quite admirable. But while playing them that way may be fun for you, but it can get tiresome for other players who have to constantly compromise and find reasons not to eliminate you from their character’s lives. And when roleplay becomes tiresome, it’s not fun, and then what the heck’s the point?

A few important things to remember about bending your character:

• Bending does not mean giving up. You don’t have to throw in the towel on your character concept, just tone it down a bit. Take some of the venom out of that antagonist’s bite, or have the jester stop playing pranks in battle zones.
• Bending should not be unnatural. It’s ridiculous to think a person can change overnight without an extreme catalyst. Look toward gradual transitions; give your character something to struggle with.
• Bending a character is a chance for you to be creative. It’s not easy to find a reason for why your character might start to change. It takes careful examination of what makes him or her tick. But in that examination, you may discover things about your character that you never knew before. If you’re discovering new things, that opens up even more roleplay with others as they discover them too.

Ultimately, whether or not to bend your character is your own decision. No one can make you do it, and no one should; it’s up to you to decide whether you’re all right with your character accepting the consequences of his actions, and if not, whether you’re willing to accept losing out on roleplay. In my experience, though, it’s way more fun–for both you and other people–to find what would trigger the change than it is to say “No, s/he’d never ever change, that’s how s/he is.”

Living people change. Let your character do the same.

 

iNsPiRation: The injustice of animal slaughter.

National Public Radio: because irony is as delicious as buffalo steak.

The whole story: Texas Buffalo Shooting Triggers Culture Clash

The gist: A rich guy who owns 200 buffalo on his gigantic hunting ranch is upset at an employee of the gigantic ranch next door, who shot 51 of the buffalo when they strayed onto his boss’s land one too many times. Still more upsetting to him? The shooter might not even be prosecuted because, despite being owned, buffalo in general are classified as wild animals and therefore lack livestock protections under Texas state law.

The point here: This was a hunting ranch. The buffalo raised there were raised specifically for people to purchase the privilege of shooting them for $3,500 a head.

Quoth Wayne Kirk, potential plaintiff and owner of the hunting ranch: “Slaughtering animals, to me . . . is a terrible injustice.”

He needs the money to pay for tissue to catch his 3,500 tears over the loss of each member of his herd, you see.

 

FIRST !!!111!1one

How to begin?

Writing a first blog post is a little bit like planning a train wreck.  It’s going to be horrible no matter what, but you want to make sure it’s the right degree of horrible such that people will be unable to look away.  And all throughout, the question runs through your mind: why in the world would someone do a terrible thing like this; what kind of person am I?  But I digress.

Presumably, I should begin with some form of introduction.  So, hi.  Welcome to Shaelblog.  While I could explain that that’s Shael, with the diphthong being vaguely as written (namely a long A sound closing with a nice open E so there’s kind of an invisible Y in there like Shay-ul), it’s easier to simply inform you that it rhymes with Failblog. No relation.

The purpose of this blog is fairly simple. I’ve been informed that in order to write, one writes. This seems bluntly obvious when taken at face value, and yet so many of us have trouble with it, myself very much included. I just need a reason, a place, to write. I’m hoping that this blog will provide me with the medium I need to get out all the larval concepts that form cocoons out of bits of my daily life inside my head. A place to demonstrate what’s important to me. And just maybe, a place to regain control over my vocabulary–as I round the curve on my last sprint toward thirty, I find myself slipping rapidly into the linguistic struggles displayed by my mother, who will frequently use phrases like “the place with the thing” without a hint of a joke.

So to that end, this blog will ideally contain words. These words may convey ideas, and the ideas will relate to the variety of topics that burble about in my brain on any given day. There will be frequent links to National Public Radio. There will be posts about World of Warcraft and related roleplay. I’ll probably talk about my job because medical collections is a thrilling field to work in. If anyone ever reads any of this, I’ll probably have a spasm about that and pass it off as a post. Who knows? This oyster is my world.

Three word summary: Hi. Personal Blog.