Negative emotions and their role in RP
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@Tat said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
I’m trying to untangle why SADNESS over fictional things is cathartic in a way other negative emotions aren’t.
I think sadness (and fear) are the sorts of things we can find catharsis through roleplaying because they are base - and thus kind of simple.
Anger, to me, is so often more of a…not precisely a cover, not precisely a reaction, but something like that. A lot of the time, we get angry because we are made sad. Or afraid. Or embarrassed. I think in a way this makes anger harder to identify WITH because we can’t so easily identify what it truly is.
I think it’s messier for much of the same reason. Anger and frustration are usually outwardly focused. They have a target.
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@hellfrog said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
@Tat said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
I’m trying to untangle why SADNESS over fictional things is cathartic in a way other negative emotions aren’t.
I think sadness (and fear) are the sorts of things we can find catharsis through roleplaying because they are base - and thus kind of simple.
Anger, to me, is so often more of a…not precisely a cover, not precisely a reaction, but something like that. A lot of the time, we get angry because we are made sad. Or afraid. Or embarrassed. I think in a way this makes anger harder to identify WITH because we can’t so easily identify what it truly is.
I think it’s messier for much of the same reason. Anger and frustration are usually outwardly focused. They have a target.
My musical theatre teacher in high school once said that the root of all anger is fear. Fear of harm, fear of loss, fear of judgment, etc. Which I think goes to your point that it’s often an outward expression of another emotion we’re not comfortable externalizing.
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@hellfrog most of my frustration is with myself, tbh
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I’ve been thinking about this because I DO love sadness and anger and angst sometimes. And I have definitely found catharsis in ways that led to me sobbing at my keyboard. Or on one occasion very carefully keeping myself from crying because I was rping on the couch five feet from my rp partner and if she knew I had emotions our 20+ year friendship would probably end because reasons (???).
Basically I think I have internalized a lot of shame and anxiety about rp stuff that I shouldn’t have but when I can step away from that I can get a lot out of sad rp. Also @farfalla dealt with my character when he was super depressed and she was FINE. FYI. Her rp is great if anyone is looking for rper yelp.
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I am a sucker for tragedies. Stories that are about pain, loss, suffering, strife, wrath – the negative part of the spectrum, dealing with those, wallowing in the dirt of it, and coming back out of it on the other end and breathing deeply. That, to me, is when a character’s arc is usually complete, when they have nothing to struggle against.
I … have often found that not all my RP partners are as into this as I am, and have, I think, shocked the hell out of a few people, especially since my RP tends to be very organic and spur of the moment rather than planned. Oops.
But bad things happening is the driver of conflict, and unless it’s real for the character, there’s no real motivation or story. You can only have happy times for so long before it gets stale. A problem needs to come up and be fixed.
Television rules are usually good. Something breaks, that’s good for a scene or two. Longer arcs come out of nastier situations, and full character stories often have a dark drive to them. This is part of why so many edgelords have edgelord backstories in D&D.
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This is so interesting to me.
Because I’m not particularly drawn to sadness as catharsis. I don’t necessarily want to play a person who is sad, and my tolerance for angst and deep sadness is…limited.
Where my catharsis is, is ANGER. I control my anger and I have all my life. I’m the kind of person where in RL, if I express mild irritation, people recoil and go, “I didn’t think you could even get angry!” Even when I let myself get angry, ninety-five percent of the time, I cool down fast and am soon saying, “Well, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I’m sure they didn’t mean it quite like I took it. I don’t see the point in hanging on to this.”
So, god, I want to play angry people. I want to play angry people WITH angry people. I want to have characters who are filled with wrath and vengeance, who have screaming fits, who fight and swagger and get their asses kicked or kick ass, either is good. And not just the righteous sorts; I want people who get angry over petty things, who lash out when they didn’t mean to, who cause damage they never intended. People who…lose control, for good and bad.
It’s not because I want to hurt PCs - in fact, I usually restrict a lot of that to NPCs unless I’m sure the player is on board. But I admit it’s an adrenaline rush to just play someone who can stop worrying and just UNLEASH, and let the consequences be a Future Them problem.
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@Pyrephox I like playing angry people, too. What I find interesting is that when my CHARACTERS are angry, I’m often, IDK, excited? Jazzed up?
When my characters are sad - like REALLY sad - I’m often sad, too. Not like- to the same degree. But I feel it as sadness in a way I don’t feel rage as rage.
It’s weird. I’m so fascinated by why this is.
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@Selira I think this is just personal preference, not a universal truth. I have plenty of story without having terrible things happen. My characters have conflict over ambitions, or specific goals to accomplish, or even things that are “bad” but don’t have to be deeply emotional - I can RP about a failed mission or the character hating their boss without making the RP itself sad or deeply focused on the emotional lows. There’s only a handful of specific plot points I avoid (like death of loved ones, for instance - I just acknowledge it and let it be happening in the background). Otherwise I can engage with things in a variety of ways that don’t require my character to be sad af. Lots of happy stories still have conflict (in the narrative sense) of some sort!
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@Pyrephox I feel this hard, actually.
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@farfalla I mean, I’m not talking about just wallowing in the sadness. I’m talking about using low points as a tool to push things forward. The character most people know me for did not come off, 90% of the time, as sad, but pain, tragedy, anger, and spite were absolute driving forces in her ambitions. And sometimes they’d come out in beautiful infernos.
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@Selira I definitely think that’s true for a lot of people! I’m just saying it isn’t true for me, so there’s other ways to approach narrative momentum.
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@Pyrephox said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
So, god, I want to play angry people. I want to play angry people WITH angry people.
Is one of my favorite things about playing with you. I can let my PC say the horrible thing, literally no pulling punches. You give better than you get in the best way when it comes to conflict.
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@KarmaBum said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
@Pyrephox said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
So, god, I want to play angry people. I want to play angry people WITH angry people.
Is one of my favorite things about playing with you. I can let my PC say the horrible thing, literally no pulling punches. You give better than you get in the best way when it comes to conflict.
I BLUSH. DARN YOU! (thanks!) It’s one of the things I love about playing with you, as well. We can really play a scene out and I trust that if something goes too far, you’d say something, or I could say something, and it’d be OKAY. We’re still cool at the end of it, whatever ‘it’ is.
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It’s interesting thinking about that but I started a pose that got navel-gazy quickly. What I will say instead of the long post for which no one has all the context is that years ago I rped characters who suppressed their rage and passion out of fear and I grew into rping characters who ride the rage high, and now I am playing characters who learned to channel or transmute rage into fuel for other things, and it’s kind of interesting to look at that as a kind of emotional theme in my rp and to wonder what will come next for my character brains.
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I know I’m on the same page with @Pyrephox in terms of wanting to play characters who do the wrong thing and make an ass of themselves and then try to write why they are still apart of the group. (also about the punching, always the punching)
I definitely don’t want to make other people OOCly angry, sad, jealous, whatever but I do really want those things ICly. I want messy relationships that are hard and make you examine if something is forgivable. I want to see characters make choices that aren’t clearly right but understandable. I love playing trainwrecks who sometimes get it together. However to me it’s always important to do it in a way that is pro my character (not mean spirited) and with a good sense of humor about it. I don’t ever want sad or difficult storylines to feel like an unrelenting buzzkill to read or take part in.
At the same time I know I’ve screwed up in terms of not checking in with RP partners often enough even when we’ve agreed to a certain storyline. I forget who mentioned that but it’s a really good point whenever treading into things that aren’t just good times or beating the baddie up.
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I love playing the angry trainwreck also. (RIP K’vvan, I miss being able to do the things I loved on you.)
However, I’ve gotten a lot more sensitive over the years and I worry more about how I’m hurting people playing that archatype. So I don’t think I can do it any more even if I LOVE IT.
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I often play bad guys (not that they think they’re bad, obviously), but I’m exceptionally wary about how my doing bad things is going to impact people - especially on a game grounded in a version of reality like a WoD game. The bad things I do can be a trigger for trauma or simply an experience someone doesn’t want to RP through. This is part of why I argue that WoD isn’t a horror game, even though it’s touted as one by some.
I think that’s the crux of negative emotions in roleplay, they’re negative and thus can have some pretty damn difficult attachments for people even when they’re cathartic for others. It requires a greater deal more OOC discussion and negotiation than, say, having a neutral or joyful family dinner RP might.
It’s a lot more work than people typically deal with, thus it can be fraught with difficulty when that work isn’t put in - and many of us simply don’t have the time anymore to sit down for a long conversation on limits, tastes, and needs when the alternative is so much easier.
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@Pavel said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:
It requires a greater deal more OOC discussion and negotiation than, say, having a neutral or joyful family dinner RP might.
It’s a lot more work than people typically deal with, thus it can be fraught with difficulty when that work isn’t put in - and many of us simply don’t have the time anymore to sit down for a long conversation on limits, tastes, and needs when the alternative is so much easier.
This is a really good point. Playing someone who elicits these types of emotions REGULARLY takes a lot of work to do really well - and they bring something valuable to the game, I think. Someone who can drive social conflict while still being a good communicator, thoughtful player, and OOCly great person to hang around with can really bring a lot of life to a game.
Someone who drives social conflict WITHOUT those characteristics can drag a game way way down.
I find that the characters I best remember are often those who choose a ‘messy’ emotional path, but do so in a way that is nuanced, balanced, and considerate of their RP partners.
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@Pavel This is interesting and kind of a – connected but tangential thought to the original question. I also can’t play bad guys. I can do morally gray in specific cases, but in general I’m incapable of not playing a white hat. In some cases I’m just not good at it, but in others it just makes me feel icky. Glitch looks cool af, but I simply cannot play someone with murderous impulses.
as previously stated, good day.
