Die Shize

Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Medieval fantasy, animals acting like humans. Adventure, humor, easy to read. Swords, shields and whiskers galore! Certainly bigger than a trilogy, but they are not the kind of novels where each sequel directly continues the tale. From my understanding, the novels are generally "standalone". So if you only read three books, you're not necessarily losing out by stopping there.

I watched it all. Pretty good. Thought it started out better than it continued, but it was worth the watch and I look forward to season 2.

Man, there are a few. A ship based on looks? Function? Design? Nostalgia? Since I don't feel like dealing with images right now, I will second the Normandy from Mass Effect. Beyond the particulars of the ship itself, there are so many memories that come from it. It's not just a vessel; it's a vessel of stories. It's a home.

On sociopathic tendencies and showing no emotion, it's one thing to take an artistic license when writing a sociopathic character. See Dexter. I do it. People can overboard though with how much personality development the sociopath gets, defying the antisocial personality disorder to begin with. It's also one thing to have a sociopath and accordingly have a much more limited range of emotions, including fear. So witnessing an alley murder or twenty people being butchered might easily produce no emotional response, assuming a spark of self-preservation doesn't kick in because the sociopath doesn't feel like he's the next target. But, sociopath or not, you do have those roleplayers who write their characters in these scenarios for no other reason than to show them off. It's otherwise a pointless scene, and they may as well be smirking. Having such a character isn't necessarily a problem; forcing them into a scene that specifically highlights their emotionless prowess might come off as a bit cheap. Just like not every uber-warrior character needs to be in a fight scene all the time, because when they are, it's usually against twenty NPCs in a street who are typically easier to beat than one other PC, even if those twenty NPCs are twenty good men in armor and the other PC isn't wearing any.

I can think of a number of reasons why character sheets are useful, and a number of reasons why I have a few. Still, when it comes to character sheets...ew.

Character sheets. Ew.

Technically, anyone is capable of character development. It's a broad process. Even in real life, not every one always acts the same way. Circumstances change. A person who is usually calm can get angry on occasion, or flip into a blind rage of the situation pushes it. On sociopaths, though, their character development isn't as drastic as is sometimes portrayed in media. Sociopaths tend to follow the same overarching agenda. They don't learn from their mistakes like 'normal' people do. They don't self-improve. High-functioning sociopaths are a different story, sure, to an extent.

I agree with the last point...to an extent. Honestly, if your character isn't emotionally affected by a murder that just occurred beside him, it's worse to make that lack of care known. To write "Jack saw the murder, but he didn't care. It meant nothing to him. Jack was too cold to care or really acknowledge the scene, and his emotions weren't really affected by even something so otherwise emotionally affecting." At that point, you've just committed a lie: Jack really does care and really is affected, otherwise the narrator wouldn't bother mentioning how much he doesn't care. I think it's much more affective to have Jack barely recognize the murder if he really isn't affected by it. Something as simple as "Jack had to sit down with the board, really get those nails hammered in, and the alley was the shortest path to take. A plastic bottle crushed beneath his shoe, some lady screamed beside him after a bat collided with her skull, and Jack checked his watch to make sure he was going to make the meeting as he strolled along." That's exaggerative, sure, but clearer to me what kind of a cold person Jack is without the narrative beating me over the head with a bat by telling me what kind of a cold person Jack is.

Well, all this honestly just reminds me of how inaccurate writing about a sociopath is to begin with. Most people who attempt to write about a sociopathic character are not themselves sociopaths, and only a sociopath really knows what it's like to be a sociopath. Furthermore, a sociopath, by definition (forgetting that it's not a clinical term for now), has no character development. Despite what Dexter shows us, a sociopath is a sociopath is a sociopath (or psychopath, if you prefer). So when roleplayers start having their socio turn good or "develop into a better person", well, they were never a sociopath to begin with. Still, it's fun to experiment with. I've had only a few characters who I really tried to write as sociopaths, or "borderline sociopath" in the sense that they did not meet the necessary number of sociopathic traits, but were close enough. It's challenging.

I speak for myself: there is a big difference between having no emotions and showing no emotions. I deal with a bit of both. I don't connect on the same emotional plane as most other people. Some levels of emotions, I just don't experience. Excitement is one of them. Not on a sociopathic level, mind you, but where the general population experience highs and lows with various emotions, I usually sail in the middle. Furthermore, I may be completely capable of feeling something, but I may barely show it or not show it at all, which can trip people up. One line I typically hear all the time is "Smile more!" It can be frustrating. I'm not unhappy just because I'm not smiling. I'm usually in a pretty good mood. My lips just don't need to prove it. Where this connects in roleplay is that I'm more comfortable writing characters who share this same emotional plane as me. There's nothing wrong with projecting pieces of yourself into your character. Writers do it all the time. "The human heart in conflict with itself" is best written out by writing what you yourself have experienced. Personally, I have no preference with emotion archetypes for my characters. I have one character who is as giddy as can be and another who is equatable to a Roose Bolton complex (debatably sociopathic; that guy may have an entirely different disorder given his apparent total lack of emotions). Variation in personalities is one reason I have so many friggin' characters to begin with. Also helps me plug a character into a setting that would not really be ideal for another character. So one other problem I see with other roleplayers, then, is that they are far too limited with their characters, and character development. I'm not saying everyone should have 100 characters, or that it's wrong to have just one, but it's awkward seeing just that one character in every kind of setting, flying from one continent to the next in a single day, simply because of the threads on offer. To me, that's when the character becomes more of an 'avatar', an otherwise lifeless vessel for the roleplayer to enter the IC world, instead of an actual character to let loose and nudge along, controlled as much as observed by the writer.

I have scars on my fingers from playing five finger fillet.

I think it's more that Praetorian bombarded Radioactive with a million fighters to choose from. I used to juggle fights. The trick is to have a posting timeframe and maintained momentum. Also helps to be juggling 'spars' and not 'deathmatches'. Whatever happens in a spar, stays in a spar. Deathmatch inherently means that if your character dies, he's dead. Having multiple fights at once might seem overwhelming, but I've found that it actually helps. It allows me to change up tactics from one thread to the next, keeps me on my toes and doesn't scar me too bad if I lose a fight, because there's still at least one more left!

Heartburn: Return of the Reflux

"We're gonna need a bigger boat."

When it comes to That Person, what I find so interesting about That Person is that "That Person" usually refers to more than just That Person, the playable character, but also to That Person, the roleplayer. It's one thing to have a PC who is just arrogant. Maybe he's purposely designed to feel like he's the star of the show (but hopefully he has other dynamics going for him). Naturally, the narrative should paint this picture (without using too many pictures) for the reader. I mean, it's one thing to say "Jack is full of himself", it's another to show it. This is another instance where there can be a POV clash. If Jack is narrating (not so much the roleplayer), from his perspective/point of view, then the roleplayer's text might seem like the roleplayer himself is that arrogant. People (writer and reader) need to remember, though, that, and especially in third person limited, the person who is full of himself is, in this case, the character. But then there are those roleplayers who treat their character as their own personal avatar, forgetting that they, as the roleplayer, control the character OOC. A roleplayer cannot enter IC (unless you're Miles Davis). So sometimes the roleplayer is himself just that arrogant, and when his character feels like the star of the show and is written that way, it's pretty clear that the roleplayer feels the same way about himself. You see this when 'arrogant actions' go beyond IC; when the roleplayer is clearly trying to write through the thread so that the story always goes back to his character or, rather, to himself. This reminds me of that one time that The Hummingbird and I went to Paris, found a burnt bunny, named it Ted and gave it to the local cookie collection community. I believe I met her long lost cousin, Detreon Fonshou, there.