Damn girl! You so ________!

[caronbot]

I found myself wondering about characterization in regard to two quotations by Abbott:

"No character can match the complexity and changeableness of people as they really are -- then all characterization, however 'round,' involves some degree of flattening"

And

"Are human beings capable of characterizing without the use of types?"

I'd like to apply

Comments

RPG Characters

[scifi129]

Matt, you bring up an interesting question, "Does that mean that suddenly it is possible for characters to possess the lifelike quality recently not afforded to them by literature and other forms of narrative?"

In creating an RPG character, we do indeed flatten ourselves into a digitally compact version, like a zip file of our true selves. We can try to compact as much as possible into that character, but it can never truly be the real form. I think RPG characters can be lifelike, but again, it is just that, a likeness of life and not that life standing independently.

I used to do simming back before the SIMS was popular, and it was actually rpg in a chatroom- I was Livia De Amo, Lt. Commander of the USS Lionheart, half Betazoid and half human (so, yeah, Deanna Troi rip off). Even though I carefully constructed my character, or followed traits from well established Star Trek characters, she was still pretty realistic to the other players, one of which proposed marriage in the chat room to my character (at least I hope it was my character... I shortly stopped simming after this odd experience). Ok, I can't remember where I was going with this, other than RPG characters do possess lifelike qualities, but because they are a blank slate from which many participants use, the sense of uniqueness of that character diminished greatly.

PS- There was also a Mary Sue character in this simming world, which also promptly made me leave- there cannot be an android/human/Ferangi/Klingon superwoman!! Ahh! At least my character was realistic within the Star Trek storyworld! There, I vented.