Canons in Literary Role Play

Canons in Literary Role Play

No matter what the material, the delivery depends entirely upon the abilities of the writer. This most certainly applies to role players who like to portray canons in the literary role play world. But playing canons does (or should) come with a price and should most definitely be handled with care.

Canons, as explained in my other article Literary Role Play, are pre-established characters from movies, books, tv shows, comics, etc. In other words, these characters belong to someone else. But, that’s fine so long as you role play purely for fun and not profit. Some people play main character canons, such as Edward Cullen from Twilight, or the lesser known, more vague canons, such as Baldrick from Blackadder. (Yeah, who?)

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There are numerous vital points when it comes to playing a canon, and if you want people to like you, you had best heed them. Speaking from experience, no one will want to be your role playing friend if you completely butcher a beloved character. Inversely, if you play a popular character well, and even develop them farther in a conceivable way, your writing companions will respect and quite possibly love you for bringing that character to life. You must do the character justice, or don’t play them at all. Period.

I have seen many of my favorite characters played, from Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde, to Doctor Who. While some muns (the author) play the character decently, others give them about as much character as a piece of plankton. More often than not, the individual behind the keyboard has a thing for the character and probably a handful of fantasies that they would like to play out. Being a fanatic of good storytelling, I will personally gut you if you don’t play a character for the sake of the character and their story. Seriously.

There are those (myself included) who have taken up a canon and played them for so long that the character had developed into something else completely. This is rather tragic, I think. I once played the eternally young Dorian Gray because I was fascinated with the evil, corruption, and vanity of the character. In the beginning, I played him as true to Oscar Wilde’s original book as I could, and I’ll venture to say I did a decent job. However, I played him for roughly two years and in that seemingly short amount of time, he experienced new things, met new people, and made new enemies. Inevitably, this shaped him to be different and ultimately began to lead him down a road that I knew would ruin the essence of Mr. Gray. That was when I decided to be merciful not only to him, but myself. I planned his end and death. It was played out beautifully and because the ending was built up to, there was closure and a damn good story.

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Yes, I occasionally miss my misadventures under the guise of Dorian, but I have no regret in letting him rest. There are plenty of fish in the sea, that is canons, and I have played plenty of others.

It may seem redundant to some people to play pre-established characters, write thousands or millions of words for them, and never get it published. I don’t think so. Writing is never in vain and is always beneficial to the author. When playing another person’s character, you challenge yourself into stepping into unfamiliar shoes and trying to see through the eyes of someone completely different, or perhaps frighteningly similar to yourself. And by wearing their shoes, you find surprising depth in a character who had been, up until now, a name. And hopefully, in it’s own obscure way, the portrayal of classic and contemporary characters online will keep them alive or raise their popularity.