All Eyes on Me

My first game of the weekend was Saturday morning, Midsummer Mischief run by captainecchi and electric_monk.

I had a lot of fun in this game. I played Constance Keeble, the horrible sister of Lord Emsworth, and it was a perfect cast. I am by nature a mean, nasty person, and I was carrying a lot of rage and frustration from the previous week, so the opportunity to be the bad guy who was awful to everyone was very welcome. I wore a slightly outdated costume that was more of a look for the teens rather than the twenties, with a big hat and a horrible mink stole I found in a thrift store.

I had goals and things—mostly about controlling my unruly, embarrassing family so that they wouldn’t marry poor people — but I was much more interested in simply being this character. So I stomped around ranting at people, criticizing their behavior, and loudly bemoaning the distinct vein of idiocy that ran inexorably through the Threepwoods. I’ve been reading the Blandings books quite a bit lately, so I knew the tone, and was particularly pleased to see people nailing the portrayals of their characters. Favorite people to interact with included were oakenguy as my dear brother Clarence Threewood, ninth earl of Emsworth, who got his Lordship’s pleasant vagueness exactly; witticaster’s hilarious nailing of the Honorable Freddie’s unique speaking cadence; Hyde’s perfect and slightly creepy Efficient Baxter; zapf’s mix of loyal devotion and acid bitterness in Beach; lightgamer’s getting Galahad Threepwood’s accent and biting wit dead-on. Favorite moments: detailing the fate that awaited Beefy Bingham if he married my niece; to wit, that he would forever commingle his bloodline with the Threepwood font of idiocy. Telling Gally that his monocle gave his face the nastiest expression, to hear in return that he preferred it to my hat with the aspect of a runaway fruit stand. Backhanded sniping with my sisters played by in_water_writ and ninja_report. Forgetting the names of the nobodies my blasted nieces and nephews were marrying, and so referring to them as Shiftless Peasant and Backalley Slattern. I also enjoyed instructing Huxley, the horrible little boy hilariously played by Nick, to find the air gun and shoot one of my irritating relatives, I didn’t care which.

I had a lovely, light, silly, frothy time, and it helped raise my mood from the exhaustion and frustration brought on by all the work to get Brockhurst ready to go for its first run. Thanks to Lise and Matt for being so good as to run it for us!

Talked to my brother a little bit about my role as Fleance in Macbeth. He told me cross-casting doesn't happen as often in actual theater as often as one might think-- while college theaters often make use of whatever actors they have available, it usually only happens in real theaters when they specifically intend to do it. He thinks my size and delicacy made me seem like a good choice for playing a young boy; when I mentioned that they made a point of comparing my height to those of the other auditioners, that confirmed it for him. I've always been comfortable being cross-cast. Sometimes it allows me to play a particularly interesting part-- Dromio, Puck, the Fool --and sometimes it's an acting challenge in itself to try and be believably male. And I while I may be capable of looking boyish fairly easily, acting it is pretty tough for me because of my high voice and fairly feminine carriage. I sometimes wonder if that affects my larp casting, at least by people who know me. I've mused on getting cross-cast in larps in this space before, but I'm thinking about how infrequently it happens to me. Even though I always say I am cool being cross-cast on my casting questionnaires, I almost never actually get a male character. No matter, it's fine either way. But I wonder if it ends up this way because people who know me can't see me as a grown man. I suppose I get that, given that I'm kind of small and have such a girly voice. That's not the case at all in my theater experience, but again in that instance there tends to be a necessity because there just aren't enough guys for all the male roles. But the final word for me on it is that while I don't necessarily prefer it I'm completely fine doing it, and sometimes I particularly welcome it. So, my GM friends, don't be afraid to give me a guy role if you think I would be suited to it.

People's feelings on it tend to be mixed. Most guys would really rather not be while more girls tend to be okay with it even if it's not their preference. It's kind of funny when you think that in previous times in the theater men played all the roles. Still, I don't know why it is, but for some reason a woman playing a man is easier for me to accept as "male" than a man playing a woman is as "female." Not that I've never seen a guy play a woman convincingly, but I think it takes more for it to be believable. I've even known a few girls, like witticaster in larps and Frances and Brenda in theater, who actively prefer to be cross-cast. Never really met a guy that way, except for perhaps morethings5 whom I gather sometimes on a whim decides he would like to play a woman.

A lot of games are written with characters that are gender-flexible in order to conform to preferences of the player. In general I am not a fan of this; the gender is usually, at least to me, so intrinsic a part of each character I write that I would rather cross-cast the player. Even if a lot of the genders in Alice don't necessarily factor much into their characterizations, I chose them based on the character they are inspired by in the book, and I am pretty attached to them being played as I wrote them. Unfortunately, that means for a very low number of female parts. Alice has fortunately never had much of a problem finding a way to honor the requests of the players to which this is something important, but a lot of girls still end up playing guys.

Despite my preference for fixed genders, in Oz I decided I needed to have if not all then most of them be flexible. Oz is a smaller game than Alice, with only fifteen players, and also based on a fairly famous source material. I didn't want people to look around at the genders of the other players and be able to say things like, "Okay, four of these females have to be the witches, and since I know a little about the source material, I know two of them are good guys and two of them are bad guys." So in order to combat that, I decided that most characters would be gender-flexible so that no one could metagame using the genders of the characters. In the first run of Oz, there was one character who's intended gender was flipped, the one played by contradictacat in honor of her preference, and it worked fine. The game is probably better for this flexibility, though it's not my preference in these things. For the next run, I expect the genders to be at least somewhat different than they were. I just need to make sure I thoroughly edit the sheets for pronouns.

Happy Easter, everyone. Not a bad weekend at all this time around.

Friday after a leisurely lunch with Jared, I ran over to the Natick mall to wander around for a few hours. I'm not a big shopper or anything, but I enjoy walking around looking at things and letting my mind wander. I also like it when I can get in long walks without really thinking about it; it's good exercise as well as a nice way to spend a day. I did buy a little bar of solid lotion at the Lush store that smells like white chocolate and feels delightful on my skin. I am something of a sucker for things that make me soft and smell nice. If BPAL made lotion, I'd be their best customer.

In the evening I played in Bernie's Paranoia game, which was a ton of fun. I also met Bernie's brother Joe, who is a really good guy despite the disproportionate amount of time he and Bernie spend being the Bobsey Twins. I actually got to be Team Leader this time, but it amused me to gun after Sheena. Only 'cause I love him, of course. Kindness's character kept getting me to test his various kinds of B3 cola, which had me variably high as a kite, hyper-crazy, or totally addicted-- and, being the ham that I am, I had to act out the effects. The best part was when I realized Mac's character had drunk the only other incredibly addictive vanilla variety, so I shot her open and started eating her to try and get some more of it. :-)

Saturday was Spycraft. The mod went very well, I was in a mod with Lise and Joe, and it only lasted a reasonable four hours, instead of the maddening typical six or seven. Jared got to debut his new character and things went went for him too. Joe also gave him some advice about the mod I want to write, which helped me fix one of the many stumbling blocks that have been keeping me from finishing the thing. The evening went to helping Sheena babysit his very cute nephew Alex.

Today on Easter Sunday I went to church, which was extremely crowded but very pleasant. Jared and I then went to a nice pizza lunch, and I hung around my room doing various things. Tonight I will be having dinner at Alex's place, and I will be breaking Lent with Jared and the red velvet cake he's making me for dessert.

All in all, very pleasant so far, and promises to end pleasantly as well.