Eliza - An Unintended Consequence

Role play can be a funny old thing. I've talked before about how much I enjoy it. The element of being someone different, even if those differences are only heightened aspects of your own character, can be really exciting. In fact sometimes the role play itself and the thrill of being in character ends up being more enjoyable than the CP element of the play. Lowewood is a perfect example of this. Nowadays, I'm not even that worried about getting whacked during the course of the school day. That's not what I go for, I go for the fun of being Jemima, of being a school girl, of being with my friends. What I really love about role play though is the way that characters that you create take on a life of their own without you even intending it. A recent example of this really took me by surprise as it wasn't even the character that I was creating for the role play that became so real. The scenario I was planning with a friend concerned a girl in an orphanage. This was a very particular orphanage in its ways – when girls reached 18, they were taken on by suitable households, who would pay the orphanage back for the cost keep of the girl during her years there, and then the girl would have to pay back those costs through working for their new “Master” or “Mistress”. In order to set the scene for the roleplay, in which Alice would meet her new master for the first time, my friend and I exchanged a couple of notes in character, him as the gentleman, a Mr Ernest Thomas, and me as the director of the orphanage, Eliza Smith. Eliza was never intended to be anything more than the name at the bottom of a note, a spokesperson for the orphanage, not a fully formed character. In fact to start with she was merely Miss Smith, no first name at all. But as the days went by, and as notes were exchanged, the character came to life more and more. She developed a style of writing, likes and dislikes, opinions, none of which I'd planned for. Just by putting pen to paper, or in this case finger to keyboard, this third character, who was never intended to make an appearance in “real life” in a role play, has emerged, and is in some ways more of a person in my head than the poor wretched orphan who is going to be beaten. For now Eliza will stay as she is, a creation of pen and paper, not to inhabit a real life situation (well, you know what I mean by real life!) But who knows? She has become so three dimensional for me, that it seems a shame to keep her locked away in 2-D forever. Maybe Eliza will have her day. Until then, she remains an unintended consequence of my role play.