Tzoli's Red Leather Journal

OOC: RP Challenges with Tzoli

Alright, I know this is out of place, but I have been thinking about writing something about this for some time. Now I'm sure most people are thinking uot there: What's so hard about playing a moron? how can it be challenging at all?

Well, let me tell you...

((If you have a hard time knowing why people do the things they do and keeping it out of the game, then bugger off and read no further.))

First off, let me tell you where I got the idea for Tzoli's mentality: My little sister. This here puts me a little closer to the character than I would have liked, but I wanted to play someone who was mentaly challenged, but not from birth. What? you say. Not from birth? How can that be? Well, one, there are horrible deseases in the world that most of the time (or at least a good portion of the time) kill children when they get them. Spinal Menengitis (sp??) is one of them. This will more or less cook your brain. Another one in Encephalitis. This is an inflamation of the brain. Anyway, yes, this is why Tzoli is ... slow. She had spinal menengitis as a child and should have died, but didn't.

So, in modeling her after my sister, I had to grapple not only with not making her my sister, but also, dealing with the fact that she is slow. This is actually quite hard for me because I see things happening in the game, but I know Tzoli wouldn't. I know she wouldn't understand the things. I know she would take things the wrong way.

Challenge #1: Tzoli has no concept of time.
This may not seem like a big deal, but it is. She has no concept on time qualifiers on sentances. If someone tells her to clean up. She doesn't understand that it only means clean up right now. She will take it to the extreme and always cleans up. There are few people she actually listens to, but the Gods, her mother and the people she respects qualify. When Melchior told her to be truthful, she didn't understand that he meant only right then, to him. Once again: no concept of time.

Of course, this also means that she has no concept of time itself. An hour, a day: it all seems pretty much the same to her. To help with this, she writes in her journal. It helps her keep track of days and thus of time. In her head, she can't tell if something happened a day ago or a week. There are two times to her: short and long. She gets confused and often mis-remembers things and will take one to be short and another to be long when they aren't.

Challenge #2: Tzoli has no concept of Money
If she ever had a silver coin, she would not know the difference between it and a gold coin. One coin is the same as one coin. She has a hard time counting above 20, and everything above it is basically lots. Her mother was quite wealthy, but she doesn't know this. All she knows is that she had want for nothing.

Challenge #3: Frustration at being Stupid
My little sister is frustrated all the time. She can't remember words, concepts, ideas, but they are there, in her head. I try very hard to portray this on Tzoli, and sadly, do a rather poor job of it. It is a very hard thing to do. It's like when you know a word and it is on the tip of your tongue, but you can't quite remember it. That is how she is with ideas and thoughts. Also, she has a hard time with words. Very often she doesn't know what they mean so she just ignores them and glosses over them. You'll all notice she smiles and nods a lot. There is a reason for this.

Challenge #4: Sex and relationships
She doesn't really know what sex is. She has a vague idea (Thanks Nybrylla and Venice hehe), but as a whole she doesn't get it. She knows there is something and that she wants it, but she doesn't understand it. She wants someone to love her, to be with her and to more or less take care of her. It's what she sees as proper for a woman. (and what most women of the time would see as proper). She knows what love is (a la Forrest Gump) just as she knows what the other emotions are and it frustrates her that relationships don't come to her even though she feels these things. (And no, she doesn't know where babies come from.)

There are other challenges as well, but some things should remain a mystery. Ha! Anyway, lately, these are the main things I struggle with when playing her. It's very hard to know what things mean then twisting them into what Tzoli would think they meant.

Ah well, it's fun.

Posted by Tzoli at July 3, 2005 12:02 PM