Escapism Through Roleplay

Okay, so I’ve mentioned this frequently so far, always with the promise to come back to it, so here it goes. Escapism isn’t anything new, and it’s kind of tricky to define, but I’m going to do my best to clarify and reiterate the idea of escapism, specifically its connection with roleplay. I will say right off the bat, though, that I think escapism is innately harmful to the quality of your roleplay, and I’m going to be focusing mostly on how to detect and then how to avoid it. If people are inclined to disagree with this and find escapism to be a perfectly acceptable aspect of your roleplay, then you have a choice here.

1. Stop reading
2. Bear with me
3. Re-evaluate


Anyway, for starters, I guess I should define escapism.
“es•cap•ism   [ih-skey-piz-uhm]
[noun]
The avoidance of reality by absorption of the mind in entertainment or in an imaginative situation, activity, etc.”

I’m pretty much in agreement with dictionary.com here, but in regards to roleplay I’ll take it a step further. Escapism in roleplay is this really great thing that roleplayers do when their lives suck, or they’re not happy with their lives, so they fashion themselves into a fictitious characters that they can control every aspect of. Ever been to a roleplaying board that’s a sort of a high-school/anime themed setup, where everyone plays someone with the body of a cheerleader, the brains of a 4.0 student, and the interests of a gamer? They’re likely socially and sexually active, with a very firm group of friends and a perfect boyfriend (or maybe provocatively single). Do you see where I’m going with this? I can guarantee nine out of ten people who come up with this type of character are either girls who wished they had been like this, or guys who wish that a girl like this had been interested in them. Writing yourself into a character sheet is pretty bad, but writing in everything you wished you had (had) is basically DEFCON 1. It’s pretty freaking bad.

Let me get into another example, because the first one was a little extreme. This is… similar to something I might have written 3-4 years ago, but might still show up in my writing even to some extent, and certainly not in a good way, so here goes.

You go to start up a character sheet; you’re excited because you just got some sort of inspiration or you found a really neat roleplaying community that you can’t wait to get into as soon as possible. Time to amaze them with my brilliant character construction! Alright, it looks like it’s a real-life, school-based roleplay, so I better pick a setting. Hmm, okay so I’m… what, 14 right now? Character better be 15 or 16 or so; after all, I’m a pretty smart guy, so I act a couple years above my age anyway, right? Sounds good. Names? Well, I always wanted to be named James, so let’s go with that! He’ll be a bit taller than average, like me of course, and maybe a bit underweight, also like me. But… I don’t REALLY like that I’m underweight, so I’ll bump it up to more of an athletic and nimble status; not like a bodybuilder who only cares about his muscle mass, I hate those guys, but more like someone who’s just all around well-built, but only because he has to work hard! Not because he’s vain, or anything. I always thought naturally white hair was pretty cool, so I’ll give him some of that; probably kind of longer than his parents might like, maybe a little windswept and rugged, but he still doesn’t care much, because he’s still not vain about it. Put a couple of obvious scars on his face so he’s a little more noticeable , if the white hair isn’t enough, and put a really big scar on his side from when he was a kid. No one will see that one, but when he’s getting intimate and the shirt comes off, the girl will probably caringly question where it came from, and he can produce a big, tear-evoking story about how he was in an accident as a child; I always wished I had something personal and dramatic to share with the people I’m closest with that will make them consider me more carefully in the future.

Okay I’m going to stop before my brain explodes. This is… really bad. I tried to narrate the mental dialogue while writing this, and I could likely go on forever with different variations of this, but hopefully it gets the idea across as best text can. Pretty much what ended up happening is I took the few things I liked about myself (accurate or not) and included those while tweaking the things I didn’t like in the way I wish they were different. I also took things that I liked from other sources of entertainment (and wished they weren’t just in my entertainment) and compiled them in with the things already close at hand. Did I mention this is really bad?

You might be wondering why! Or maybe I just feel like saying it. So, our culture right now has this thing where we see something that could be personally damaging or detrimental, and we adopt this attitude that says, “Well, it’s up to me whether or not I want to hurt myself in this way or not, so excuse me while I do whatever I damn please to my own body and mind.” This is incredibly ingrained in all of us, by now, so I’m only going to use one of the many possible approaches to counter this.

Ever had a friend who cut themselves? For both people involved, it really, really sucks. Why? They’re just enjoying the chemical release your body uses to combat with pain for some temporary alleviation, aren’t they? This is usually where the less strictly regulated argument comes in: it’s not good for you. In other words, it’s not healthy. As a friend to someone like this, you care about them (and consequently their well-being) so naturally you want them to stop. People can argue this all they want, but it in the end there’s at least one part of their body’s natural defenses going, “Dude stop. This isn’t helping.” As humans we’re not very good at introspection, though, so often times we rely on friends, counselors, family, or whatever to go, “Heyyy maybe this is a bad idea.” There’s more to this, but I’m going to complete my metaphor now and finish it up on the other side.

As I see it, escapism isn’t really very far different. People who roleplay as a means to practice escapism fall very much in the same boat as the people who roleplay just based on their compulsions. If your only real reason for investing time into roleplay is just for a moment of awesome when you happen to feel inspired, then it’s not going to go well. In general, I would say it’s just not very healthy. If you can’t put up with your own life, maybe you should be dealing with that before you try and create original people in a textual format and then have them interact with other, equally fake people. Doesn’t it just sound dangerous? Those two areas are scarily close to one another, and I guarantee you that they will seep into one another.

For that matter, other people will notice as well. Maybe you don’t buy my argument that it’s detrimental to yourself, so I’ll take it a step further: it affects more people than just yourself. People who use roleplaying for escapism (most of them) are flaky, inconsistent with their characters, and will have very predictable roleplay. I mean, think about it for a second; if you’re roleplaying because you are desperate in your real life for specific sorts of encounters you can only achieve through writing, how honest do you think you’re going to be to your character? People complain all the time about how people are never willing to lose an “RP Fight”—that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that the roleplayer himself desires to be the victor of fights, right? Especially when everything is under his control. You’re either going to write a character into perfection, or you’re going to make flaws to your character and then refuse to follow them as you ought to.

For example, maybe your character (or just you) is infatuated with some lovely lady character who is about to come into interaction with him. Now, let’s say that when coming up with this character, for the sake of making him more believable, you said that he’s really blunt or naturally hard. If you’re so focused on the desire for your character to have a positive relationship with the other character, then you’re definitely going to forget about your character sheet and go for what “feels good, man.” You’re going to say some perfectly appropriate comment or observation that gets you in good with the ladies. Right now, for me, I’m currently struggling to stay consistent with a characters who I’ve made that would frustrate me if I had to deal with them myself. When I’m writing, it often feels like I’m pulling teeth to write what I know my character would do. On the one hand, I think it’s good that I notice and (most of the time)decide to do what my character would do anyway; on the other hand, though, it shows that I still have a lot to work through before I’m over this.

So where does this leave us? Escapism is bad; don’t do it. It will create consistently poor roleplay (even if you get REALLY good at it) and will always inhibit your ability to roleplay effectively and objectively. It will stunt your ability to make long term commitments to characters and you will end up producing drivel that basically reflects whatever you feel is missing in your life at any given time. When your life changes, so will your roleplaying style. A lot of times too, people will roleplay for a long time until they finally go to college or finally get a job. Why? Well, what was missing often finally got filled in, and roleplaying isn’t something you find yourself needing to fall back into—I’ve found this is almost always a newfound social dynamic. Good, please stop roleplaying and leave. Some people finally just get worn out of it—the stimulation from escaping into roleplay just doesn’t do it for them anymore. For a long time they used it to cope with things, and now it’s not doing the trick, so they go off and wail on some other wall. As always, consistency and improvement for the better is what we’re striving for, and escapism will wholeheartedly make that very difficult to do if it’s the reasoning behind how and what you roleplay.