I'm facing a dilemma here, and I've already gotten some advice on it, but I'm looking for a bit more.

As a lot of you know, I recently returned after a long hiatus, however the past week or so I've been inactive while I try to figure out some way to salvage the character.

When I originally created him, I wanted to try to play an extremely flawed character, so I included a healthy dose of screws loose, the social acuity of a brick and a large dash of absentmindedness. However returning after a few years and trying to play the character again... he irritates me senseless, possibly even more than he irritates those of you he's interacted with.

I just don't find the characterization enjoyable anymore, and it's difficult to get anything accomplished while holding true to his character concept. It's become more of a grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it thing and I'm remembering a lot of my original dissatisfaction with the character.

However.

Akraasiel is my longest running character in Lusternia, and the one closest to my heart, no matter how painful he is to play. I don't want to give up on him and just start over just because my ability to endure playing him has run out. He's got a lot of things I like about him as well.

I just want to get rid of the 'screws loose' part. Like the 'dwarf-speak' the habitual forgetting things, the sudden shifts from lucidity to 'what the hell?', and to get rid of the social retardation of the character so I can actually enjoy playing him again.

Currently I'm contemplating using the study of Paradigmatics as a method, and waiting to take the specialty and gain Initiation (which explicitly talks about being better able to handle insanity) until I've reached a point with the character where it isn't a jarring transition. Sort of go with a 'learning to think around the crazy' concept, allowing me to get rid of those parts of the character that have completely fatigued me.


So my question to you all is, how do you go about salvaging a character when you've gotten completely sick of their personality but don't want to give it up? I'm looking for general advice here, and maybe personal anecdotes from those who have had to perform a personality overhaul on a character before. Hopefully they'll help me figure out how to better handle my own planned overhaul.

Thank you all very much for your help.

Have people slap you OOC when you get to "into old habits"

Kalin was supposed to be my "NOT GREGORI" and in fact was very much not gregori until Gaudiguch opened and politics started and now often find myself falling into Gregori-esque habits because it's just easy to go with what you have done for so long. I tell people though (people I actually trust) that if I slip to far off the "Kalin is not Gregori" wagon to poke me and say "hey.. you are sounding a bit to much like Gregori".

Hmm...


The dwarf speak- I can deal with dwarf speak. Most people can. But your interpretation of it has more apostrophes than a Tahetso deathsight spam. You can do dwarf speak if it makes you happy, but if you're trying to make people rub their temples a little less, you might want to 'll 'ack on th' const'n' 'nd 'ervasive 'se o' 'hat 'ey tha' 's locat'd two 'eft o' th' "L" 'ey.

The other favor you could do yourself is, realize that, while you know your character is old, and invested in, most other people do not. So to come charging out of your corner hurling punches and aggrivating people IC probably isn't your best foot to start off on if you don't want people to treat you like you're some weirdo who came out of the blue to aggrivate them. While you know what your intent really is, remember that other people don't.

Making Arix less annoying was easy, as I only had a few specific things I did that I just stopped doing one day. Just ask Nejii, I was MUCH worse.

I dunno... If you hadn't already been playing a while since you got back, I'd say, just change him and say he had some personal growth while he was 'away' or something.

Maybe find someone else and 'hire' them to be like your personal assistant/coach who can traipse around with you and remind your of things, let you know when you're being rude, etc. Maybe practice some mnemonic devices by your nexus with them and have them lecture you on etiquette and enunciation and so on. Do stuff like this for a while, and while you're doing it, slowly drop the annoying habits and so on until your character is at the level you want it to be. Then, give the storyline a romantic twist by marrying your assistant!

As a player I know that. The problem is more of an issue of the character here. He's not a dwarf, he didn't start out using dwarf speak. It's part of the 'not quite there' thing, he talks like he perceives them to, or at least that was my intent. Some people have noticed that when he's 'lucid' that disappears. That's more what I'm concerned about. As a player I know these things quite well, but the character itself needs some modification if I want to enjoy playing it (actually using those basic things I know).

I'm also with you on the recognizing that other people don't know where he's coming from yet, due to the long hiatus. My problem lies in that I built him as a character that wasn't rational, and fundamentally couldn't really understand those sorts of things, and now that lack of rationality is really biting me in the rear and isn't fun to play anymore.

I appreciate your advice though, Gregori's as well. That will definitely help when I start transitioning to the new mode. I still have some questions concerning pacing the shift back to sanity because I don't want it to look like a Marvel Comics style ret-con.

@Rainydays: Once his head is screwed back on, expect him to be less 'out of the corners swinging' and more rational and methodical. I'm just hoping that the issues so far haven't driven the character around the bend into the 'disgraced' category. *shrugs* but that's an IC issue to work out as it goes.

@Noola: That could definitely be amusing. I might blend that with the regaining sanity concept, as a method of teaching him how to approach the world now that he's lucid all the time.

My pooka can be your personal trainer. order akraasial say "Sorry, the pooka is telling me that I'm being rude, my apologies."

That would take the romantic twist I suggested in a whole other direction, wouldn't it?

*shudders*

Okay, quick edit here:
What about pacing? How long should I stretch the change out over?

The biggest glare from me (Mieari in the game if you're wondering how I know), has to be the accent. I for one, do not like accents in text because.. they don't come off as accents, they're just so much harder to read and so much easier to dismiss.

It doesn't have to be perfect, by all means don't be perfect because nobody is perfect when it comes to speaking, even the most cultured and well educated person will still screw up occasionally. Just.. lesson it, work it in gradually if you want to show it as personal growth, I know for a fact and I have done this to you, if I can't read it, I just will not have anything to do with it.

To me, personally, it's up to you. Remember, each RL hour = 1 game Day. So, think, how many days of steady practice do you think it would take someone to shave the extreme off their accent in enunciation and elocution classes (for example)? 50 days? 100? 300? Then, convert that into hours and then back into RL days and that's how long.

Hmm, well, most of his issues are head-space related. The 'accent' is more on par with someone who goes around talking like Elvis all the time. Those who catch him when he's fully lucid know he can speak just fine normally.

During one of his 'episodes', a long, long. long time ago, he ran around the basin naked while shouting doom-sayings and whatnot. Not the, 'aww, he's crazy' type of crazy, but legitimately insane to a greater or lesser extent at any given moment. Right now he's fairly even-keel, which means only minor confusion, dementia and paranoia.

Given the fact that the constant low-level (and sometimes high-end) insanity is the issue, I'm thinking about finding an alchemist to prep him some sort of psychotropic or something. I'm thinking of having him make use of pennyroyal (given its anti-psychotic properties) regularly, maybe tie it in with therapy in the form of Paradigmatics, which necessitates learning to handle insanity as a part of learning the art.

Now I just need someone to confront him and make him get help... meh.

@Noola: How long do you think it would take for something like that to be effective?




By the way, a note to anyone considering role-playing a character with a major mental disorder.... DON'T.

It'll just bug the crap out of you in the long run. And annoy everyone else in the process.

Keep in mind that the more you spend around people with an accent (and everyone has an accent) the faster you pick it up yourself and begin to talk like them. So if you assume the Common Language is the baseline and everyone around you is speaking common then it wouldn't take long for you at all to drop the majority of your language nuances and "conform".

Thank you diamondais for helping me to kick-start the process. It'll probably be a while before it's finished, but now I have something to work with. Heh.

Hope you had fun

Hehe, a bit. Ikkan helped a lot by being very unhelpful. He essentially kept screwing with Akraasiel's head until he totally snapped. I'm just glad that now I can start the process of changing over. Again, thanks.

I like the idea of seeing a developing character. It is interesting to me, the RP reasons the person picks, and how it is implemented.

I was thinking that maybe, if you were to pick a caster type class, your character could develop a "spell" of some sort to correct his flaws. This spell could be roleplayed as constantly maintained by your character even, which allows your character to "revert" back to his old self for whatever reasons you decide disrupted the spell.

Many sorts of ways to do it. Pick whichever is the most interesting to yourself and have at it!

Hey there Akraa!

Had the pleasure of meeting you today for the first time! It was fun.

But what you're doing right now, saying something in dwarvish and then saying "I mean," correcting it, doesn't really roleplay the situation very well. I don't know, it doesn't seem like something someone would naturally do. Maybe if you slipped into the weird accent for a word or two once in a while would work better. Or, emote that you're having difficulty pronouncing something? Something like that.

Just trying to help!

Thanks. The whole situation is a bit strange to me, so I'm pretty much winging it and hoping it works out.

I don't see any issue with accents personally. I think it adds to the character. Ongaku's poor Furrikin tongue has a hard time grasping actual words (as opposed to squeaks and chitters), so speaking Common gives him an accent. I don't really want him to sound like everyone else in the game and talk "normally," because if he did, it would take away from who he was. The only time, for that matter, when he did speak "normally" was while he was a Viscanti, mostly due to the fact that his vocal chords and the shape of his tongue changed, allowing Common to flow better.

Granted, Ongaku's accent can be a slight pain. There are a lot of apostrophes, but that's because "'e don't say 'is H's well an' 'e leaves off letters at the end a some words." I've had IC complaints about hearing his grating accent, but no one's come to me OOC and said "amg stop talking like that my brain hurts!"

That's just my experience with an accent though. I've had interaction in game with Akraasiel, and I personally didn't have a difficult time figuring out what he was saying. However, that may just be because I have experience typing out accents (in WoW, all my Trolls have that Zandali (Jamaican) accent, and my former guild leader had a kind of Cockney accent that he typed out). I don't think you have to take the accent away just to make the character less annoying. Toning it down slightly might work, but I think it also depends on who's reading it. Some will be annoyed and some won't.