Shipping in the Alternity-Verse.... Same-player vs Multi-player

[gwendolyngrace]

Aliethen asked:

With the cast list coming out, it was revealed that a lot of characters who played opposite each other in storylines were in fact played by the same person. How did you balance that? Was it ever hard?




I felt that deserved its own thread. Discuss!

Comments

[gwendolyngrace]

For my part, I will note that I don't think we wound up with any relationships that formed during Alternity who were played by the same player. The same-player relationships were the married couples: Alice and Frank (Linny), Arthur and Molly (Peg), Lucius and Narcissa (me), Rodolphus and Bellatrix (Rene).

Except for Rod and Bella, none of them started as same-player (you'll see when we show you the wiki, boy, I feel like we're totally cock-teasing about the wiki but we're just not quite ready to open it up yet), but when we lost players for various reasons, it just made sense to reassign the orphaned character to the player who already controlled the other half of the couple.

By contrast, I think almost all of the other played relationships - except for Terry and Luna, which only came to being in the codas - were among two different players. I think this was deliberate in everyone's case? But I couldn't say for sure.

The thing is that when you're playing a couple who can finish each other's sentences, it's a little easier to play both sides. Though IMO that's less easy to do when they're squabbling because there's a temptation to craft the conversation so that you hand one character or the other a perfect setup for a line, and honestly, I don't think that even old-marrieds are that considerate of one another all the time.

The advantage with another player being the other half of your relationship is that you can't predict or dictate what that person is going to say in response to your statements. That can be stressful, especially if you're not coming across the way you intend, and conversations go sideways, but it can also be really really fun, because you're in a position where you really have to work to get to the place you want to be.

[naomikritzer]

Personally, I did not like having to talk to myself in threads. (Peg and I were kind of polar opposites in that respect.) I found it cumbersome and like work instead of play. I did it when I had to -- for instance, the conversation between Seamus and Sally-Anne during the May 16th Battle where he tried to get her to come heal Stephen Rosier -- but for the most part, I tried to avoid playing characters who talked to each other much. Trying to do a marriage between two people I was playing both of would have driven me nuts!

On those occasions that I did talk to myself, I tried to do it as organically as possible. One character would say something; I would log out and in as the other person and try to respond in-character in the moment. But I did this a lot less than the people RP'ing married couples, for instance.

[reenie]

Playing the Lestrange clan was interesting, and also challenging at times (I played Raz for quite a while before shedding off a few characters due to real-life constraints).

Bellatrix became much more active by the end of the game, but you'll notice her contributions were pretty sporadic otherwise. Same with Rodolphus. I held back with them in part due to the aforementioned real-life constraints - I just didn't have as much time to devote to them, and in a way I thought they were more threatening if both the characters and readers were never quite sure what they were up to. (You might recall that everytime Bellatrix posted a PM in her journal, the ISS or Order would sometimes freak out that she was Up To Something).

That said, some of the domestic conflicts I wrote between Bella and Rod, and Rod and Raz, and Bella, Rod, and Hydra, were really satisfying. I particularly liked those two moments where Bellatrix had to reach out and ask Rodolphus for help - something she absolutely hated, by the way! The first is when she was trying to save a dying Voldemort; the second was when Rigel was being a pain at Buckingham, just as the DEs were trying to escape through the wards.

Playing the same family of characters really allows you to tell their story coherently, and shape all the pieces just so. One of the challenges, though, is making sure that their conversations don't sound entirely scripted. You lack the spontaneity of not knowing how another character is going to respond, so it can sometimes feel like the conversation goes from point A to point B a little too neatly.

[longstrider]

I found trying to manage Cedric/Cho while only being able to show one side of the conversation very hard. Which is a large part of why it ended so quickly.

I much preferred Siz/Raz where we could collaborate and bounce ideas off of each other.

[synecdochic]

I was SO GLAD I didn't have characters who needed to talk to themselves very often. (There were a few Charlie and Snape moments, but they all happened offscreen and were referenced in-journal, rather than played out.)

I don't know how those of you who did it, did it, man.

[stormyhearted]

This is fantastically fascinating stuff. :D

[pegkerr]

I had an interesting opportunity to compare and contrast, because I played it both ways. I had Molly and Arthur by myself, and I also had the opportunity to play Bill against Naomi's Rachel.

Playing Arthur and Molly together I found very easy, actually. It probably helped that it was an extremely well-established canon relationship, and really, their characters had not drifted terribly far from their canonical selves. But I never found it boring. Other players have remarked that they would find it boring to only be talking with themselves, but I never did.

I loved playing the Weasleys as a group, actually. I think on the whole I was pleased with how I managed to keep their voices/characters distinctive and let them play off against each other. Somehow, when I was writing Weasleys en masse I felt more confident/witty than I feel in my own RL. Here are a few favorite examples:

Molly, Arthur and Bill react to Dolohov's Intra Profundus disaster.

Bill grits his teeth and agrees to meet with Percy for lunch.

The Weasleys react to the twins ambushing Molly on their birthday to force her to reveal the Order to them.

Bill faces down the twins.

I never had a single time that I can think of that I regretted that I played more than one Weasley, like that this was just boring. Sometimes I regretted more that the other players who were playing Weasleys were not available. I quickly grew to love Bill Charlie interactions so much, but there were times I would have been happy to do another scene between the two of them, but Denise wasn't available.

Now, with Naomi, between Bill and Rachel, things flowed very well, too. Part of it was that I was working with a partner I work well with, whom I trust. I have often asked Naomi to vett posts I've drafted, and I knew she would have great suggestions. Sometimes I would ask her for ideas about what MY character would say.

Trust is very important if you're going to be working with another player regularly. There were times I had to be absent, and I would give Naomi my passwords and ask her to make any comment that needed to be made by one of my characters.

Sometimes you can get frustrated because another player just doesn't see your character as you do. It's like you're playing with someone who is expecting (or playing assuming) totally different reactions, or who acts like your character is someone totally different than you're trying to convey. Sometimes this was fixed by swapping/trading characters between players, so that a character dyad could be played by players who worked together a little more smoothly. Sometimes the result is that you just don't play with another character as much as you hoped you would, because the frustration gets in the way.

Sometimes this resulted in players leaving the game.

Flexiblity helped. Being willing to find ways to work with different players helped. Being willing to explore directions where other characters/players are pushing you helped, too. And sometimes, despite your initial, inner resistance, it could lead to dazzling play that ended up being better than anything you could have imagined.