Take a Walk on the Wild Side

[Tegan]

"I always thought it would be kind of fun to introduce people to characters they maybe hadn't met before, or hadn't wanted to meet." -Lou Reed



The trend for playing/reading about Average Joe is put into a Not so Average situation is quite fun. What about Freaky Fred? It can be just as fun to create a character who deviates from what we would call 'normal'. No matter what your personal beliefs, there's no denying that these characters are fascinating and well rounded, because they force the audience to think outside of their comfort zone.

A few of my favorites:

Trans America:

Felicity Huffman does a kick ass job of portraying Bree, a middle-aged transexual on the verge of finally having her sex-change operation approved, making her a biological woman. However, when she receives a call from her biological son from a previous life time, Bree has to undertake a trans American road trip, under the guise as a friend of her 'male identity', to find her son a safe place to live, while not revealing to him that she is actually his father. From this movie came a memorable quote that is now sprinkled into gender studies discourses across academia:

"The American Psychiatric Association categorizes gender dysphoria as a very serious mental disorder. After my operation, not even a gynecologist will be able to detect anything out of the ordinary about my body. l will be a woman. Don't you find it odd that plastic surgery can cure a mental disorder?"

Trainspotting

It's a film/book about heroin addicts, drunks, rage-o-holics, bad parenting and how 'It's shite being Scottish!" Darkly funny and definitely not for the squeamish.

Freeway

OK, I'm just gonna come right out and say that this movie is just gawd awful and that you're going to think that pretty much every character in the film is an abhorrent piece of shit, except for Vanessa Lutz. You're rooting for her the whole way. Reese Witherspoon plays an illiterate teenage girl who decides to leave LA to live a better life with her estranged grandmother after her mother is arrested for prostitution and her perverted step father is arrested for child molestation. After her car breaks down, she's picked up by serial rapist Kiefer Sutherland and the two are at each other's throats for the rest of the film.

Though this could easily be called a bad movie, it's still well worth the watch because of scenes like this one. And, it draws light to Western society's tendency to place blame upon the victims of rape based on social class.

Secretary

BDSM is usually regarded as a 'taboo' act: purely for kink and a kind of sick sexual deviancy. However, that doesn't seem to be the case with this romantic comedy about a young twenty-something, Lee Holloway, freshly released from psychiatric care for being a teenage cutter and how she prefers being spanked and bound by her attorney boss to having sex with her boyfriend.

OK, so I know what you're thinking.

Unfortunately, there ain't much else I can say about this film without completely spoiling it, except that it is ultimately learning to love yourself so that you can love others. If nothing else, watch it for the Tomato Scene.


So who are your favorite Wild Side characters? It can be from anywhere: literature, film, music even characters of your own creation.

 

[Diana]

This was such a great topic, I had to sift through my characters and really see who I felt was "outside of the norm". .___.;

MOST of the time... like.... 90% I play Normal, everyday, girl next door, average people characters. o__o Unextraordinary people that go through weird things.

Weird for me is usually just "quirky". XD like Astra Teegan, the weirdo scifi zoologist that collects alien creatures...


Recently though Vay and I were toying around with our Katrinka's characters. .__.;; And we were talking about what would happen if the girl who was kidnapped and raped and went BATSHIT CRAZY and was on the edge of turning out to kill people herself would end up unwitting falling in love with the guy that DID all that to her... and later the two of them having this really fucked up, "totally fucked up people trying to fix each other and NOT be psycho" thing...



....WHICH BY THE WAY IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN WITH ALEXANDRA. *Points at Tegan!* ....I think she is also a weird character for me. 8D But I won't talk about her.

 

[Tegan]

And with roleplays, fantasy in particular, it can be a difficult gauge of 'normal.' I mean, how the hell does one write your Average Half Elf Dragon Slaying Paladin*? Or, even more challenging, playing Not So Average Half Elf Dragon Slaying Paladin. But I suppose that's where your talent as a writer would come into play, to establish said fantastical society to conform to or counter flow without completely alienating readers.

But I'm derailing my own topic with my rambling.

ACTUALLY, Soon I Will be Invincible by Austin Grossman does a fabulous job of portraying an honest day-in-the-life account of super heroes and super villains. My favorite character was the antagonist, Dr. Impossible, an evil genius bent on world domination because what does one do when they possess a superior intellect? Get a desk job?








*Unless your name is Terry Pratchett, of course.

 

[October Knight]

I try to make my characters break the mold, but 90% of the time I fail and end up playing 'that same dude' With the exception of possibly Legato from Paradsio Mortem. Only because Anglkate and I kinda shared him IC so he was very unpredictable. And Arthur 'Six' Stein from Murder city. I tried to originally play him with a slight case of multiple personality disorder to give depth to his villainous persona.

My favorite twisted and interesting characters of all time is Cathy Ames/Kate from East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I loved the book and storyline, but her character is what kept me reading. By far one of the best antagonists ever. Her story arc takes her through the lives of several different people, starting with her parents who she burns alive.