On the effervescence of our characters

Delphas

I am not advocating permadeath but I do wonder something at times.  Given the undying vitality of our characters, do we ourselves become our own portraits a la Dorian Grey?

Daraius

Can you rephrase the question?

Delphas

I mean, if our characters never age (in a debilitating way), do we as players become much like Dorian's portrait? Are we destined to be ravaged by age and succumb to decrepitude until just after the very last moment, when someone builds a memorial on Mt. Avechna? I'd like to think all our players have grown and learned something from our characters, but is that necessarily the case? Without similar pressures against our characters as our own mortal frames withstand, do they continue to be as spritely and animate as our most productive youth, while we ourselves ossify and decay? Without the notion of true and irrevocable consequence, are we merely dabbling in escapism rather than forging ahead and plunging the depths of our own psyche and growing as players?

Riluna

I believe we certainly could do as you suggest, but it is not necessarily the case, nor required, for any individual that they grow, learn from, or escape from anything whatsoever when they are here. Everybody is looking for something to suit their own interests.

I've certainly learned from my characters, and I know many others who have done likewise. I would also say that my characters certainly are not immune to age, as they have matured and grown right along with me over the past decade.

Even if everything we have ever worked for in-game completely disappears someday (a true death, no?), this ephemeral productivity is still meaningful to me. You can't spend so long giving your time to something without it giving something back, and changing you in some way. Is that growth?

Vivet

So long as characters are tied to specific real monetary investments, I don't really see much to change that.

I will note somewhere that it was noted that the average player doesn't really last much past a RL year, so those of us who keep coming back or continually are the same character are more anomalous than we might otherwise consider.

Lusternia is definitely a source of escapism for me, regardless of what else I do with my time. I think the characters I have invested the most effort/time/money into will always be forced to be more an instrument to that end, though I also have some low investment characters I probably will never play again because I consider their course to have been completed.

It's flexible, based on what you make of it.

Alaksanteri

Well, given that we will still die IRL and that our characters (as portraits) won't get ugly... I don't know. 

Do you mean that we make an embellished fantasy portrait on Lusternia and that we change for the worst in real life?

By the way, I love that book. 

Delphas

Alaksanteri said:

Well, given that we will still die IRL and that our characters (as portraits) won't get ugly... I don't know. 

Do you mean that we make an embellished fantasy portrait on Lusternia and that we change for the worst in real life?

By the way, I love that book. 

Are our characters Dorian and players their portraits? Any slight is shrugged off by the character, yet the player may brood.  Any wound to the character is instantly healed, yet we the players tire.  Our characters may even die (well, not really.. wuss-slapped) but are speedily resurrected (how fitting for Easter!) while we players anguish.  Our characters remain ever animate and vigorous, while we players must attend to jobs and school and church and social clubs and who-knows-what-all. 

Without consequence, is Dorian but a dream and we the very real Portraits, base reflections of nothing but sorrow and age, yet lacking the moral fibre and wisdom which may come from such trials?

Alaksanteri

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