Martha Stewart's Guide to Interdimensional Demon Summoning and Basting a Turkey

[mllelaurel]

I played Valefar and had an awesome time at this game. We had a fantastic cast of actors playing some wonderful characters. I had a bit of an unusual experience in that I played a character who was both genuinely WYSIWYG and didn't get carpetbombed, but was still entirely immersive and a great joy to play. Part of this - and I think this is true of this game's characters in general - is that they were written with genuine *heart*. Sweet characters felt real and not at all vapid; conflicts felt internally based rather than manufactured. This is a major, major kudos to the author.


Also, I so got to game the system a bit. One of my major character dilemmas was whether to stay with the human bonded to me, Evangeline, even though she didn't need my help anymore, or to let her go and move on to someone else. (Also known as the Giles Dilemma.) About 3/4ths into the game, I found that someone else - Marjorie Moss - a character who needed someone like me rather badly.

(The short way to describe my character is 'demon therapist,' but really the line that says it best comes from my character sheet: "Humans break so many things. But who fixes the broken humans?" That was the line that made me love Val.)

Anyway, I'd approached Evangeline surreptitiously early on, and she pretty much said she didn't want to lose me. Hell, I didn't want to lose her either. But my heart just *broke* for Marjorie. ...Then, I had an epiphany. It's not as though I'm going to be leaving the human realm anytime soon. If I break the bond with Eva, I stop being her mentor. It doesn't have to mean that I stop being her *friend*. Honestly, considering the way Val bonded with humans, it was less about her gains and more about the actual emotional bond.

So you could say I went for the polyamorous decision. :) I'd also be helping out with Celia's child raising. Cause why not? I'd only be Bonded (magical/capitalized term) to one human, cause those are the rules, but I could still bond with others in an emotional sense. This also took care of the 'am I smothering Eva?' concern, cause more people in my life means I'm much less likely to try and micromanage hers.

Comments

[nevacaruso.livejournal.com]

*extra skritches*

I <3 the extended/chosen family that we built up by the end of the game.

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

Purrrrrrr~

Me too! So much <3

[nevacaruso.livejournal.com]

Actually, I just had a Thought. We've already compared pookit's character to Lacey; now I realize that this whole game reminded me of nothing so much as The Middleman in spirit and tone: fairly light-hearted with supernatural forces running amok and forays into surreal crack, but also full of characters and relationships that developed genuinely and organically without being saccharine or melodramatic.

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent point! No wonder it appealed to me so much.