Have you ever been really fed up by the way people see you?
Yeah? Me also.
Did I mention how I hate how other people always cast me?
I might have done.
Figure of fun is an easy thing to be cast as, and is something I can do, but if it means that I’m not allowed to be who I think I am, then there is something wrong with the casting.
I created Aquarion four years ago as an RPG charecter. He has a speciality of water spells, He neither cares about any one nor anything, but is inteligant enough not to kill his team-mates.
He was a True Neutral.
He still, actually, is. I can do Aquarion, although I try not to. Everytime I’ve written as Aquarion, I’ve panicked people who are sure I’m on the edge of suicide.
I could never do Aquarion in Real Life. Because anything I did as Aquarion would reflect back on Nick, even if I had a sign around my neck saying “This is Nick Acting, He doesn’t mean what he says, but the charector he is playing might” people will still hear the words from my mouth, with my voice. And whilst Aquarion couldn’t give a flying foobar if people liked him, Nick could.
There was a newsgroup I joined shortly after it’s first major influx of people, ie, when the style of the group was just beginning to be formed. And the concept of the group as a village, with differant people in differant roles was beginning.
Being Aquarion, and that being associated with the other form of “Fishtank” (Oh, and who came up with that as a derrivation from my name? I did. I started it, although I don’t like it much, but I know that the first thing someone does with a name is to screw it into an “amusing” form, and I so desperatly wanted to keep control of this name – as I had failed to do with my real one so drastically – that I deleberatly made up a derrvation so I was in control of who I was. See how screwed up I can get over a name? Remember this) got immediatly cast as “Village Duck Pond”.
See above microrant on control of names.
Not only did I not *like* losing control of what I was refered to as, I hated with a vengance the charector I have spent four years developing being turned into something that was immediatly trivial. As a non-moving feature, nothing I could do could interact with any other “people”. I have to wait for people to interact with *me*.
Which is a major contributing reason to my lack of real presence in the group.
*YES* I’m taking this too seriously, but it’s a symptom of every time I’ve ever been cast for anything. I don’t ever get the part I could actually enjoy doing, because people seem to delight in putting me where I don’t want to be. I have *twice* ever got the part that I wanted in a production, and both times it was because I wrote the blasted script. “Oh, but you are the glue that holds the thing together” say the casters. Yay. Rapture.
Spiralling shapes of joy and amusement
I. Don’t. Care.
For once in my life I would like to be in the position I’d cast myself in. I would like a role that I.. well.. *like*. And I would like for the moon on a stick while I am at it.
I may have to write Aquarion into a story, but the temptation to turn him into a MarySue may prove too much. In the meantime, I am reinventing myself on the newsgroup. Dramatically.