Characters you actually connect to?

[jfrizz51423]

Like, for example, are you on cantr enough that you personally develop feelings of hatred or love or friendship with another character? And you have to remind yourself that they are not real?
I would like to hear people's experiences with this

My experience is the first time I had a romance in cantr with one of my characters. My girl character fell for a guy, and they had to leave each other for maybe even years!! When they parted I was like more upset then my character... And it lasted for a few days lol XD. Then I had to tell myself the guy wasn't real haha

[Black Canyon]

I can tell you that I definitely have an emotional response to the characters that my own characters have relationships with. When my characters lose a friend or lover.... I experience the loss. I don't have to remind myself that they aren't real, because I know they aren't real. But the feeling of sadness or anger or whatever it might be is very real.

[Rugila]

Emotional yes.
When i am concentrated on Cantr II and if someone comes to talk to me. I might accidentally call them with false names. The names of the characters my character connects to.
And yes, pretty much feel them. That nice feeling of victory after a successful robbery or pirate raid. Time to party. Even though it wasn't real.

[Hedgedhogst]

I get way too connected to some of my characters. Within the last month or so, I realised I've got it real bad, too. Thanks to the help of a player indirectly playing head games with me, I've recognised a lot of worrying traits I've picked up while playing Cantr. Sleepless nights, paranoia, gut wrenching and heart racing moments... Shaking and crying, ranting and freaking out... Anger and frustration... And to top it all, the occasional panic attack.

Only recently, thanks to the player's indirect head games, I've realised that I seriously need to detach myself before it's too late. I think that transition is starting to happen, but it's real tough right now. Of the 25 years I've been playing games... Never have I got even close to getting so emotionally involved that it quite literally changes every aspect of my real life.

Seriously... Cantr needs to come with a free coupon for therapy or something.

[Doug R.]

Yes. I've wept over the deaths of many characters, my own or other players.

[EchoMan]

I've had one character in a life-or-death situation which lasted for something like 3 days. I could hardly sleep for the entire time, and it left me physically and emotionally exhausted afterwards.

Since then I have realized that RP'ing too much will make you emotionally connected to your character(s), so I don't do it much any more.

[SekoETC]

Once one of my characters was chased by people who probably would've killed him, so I woke up at almost every sailing tick to alter the course. I only slept through one of them.

I also remember once years back when one of my characters was locked up, I was so frustrated by it that I had to go for a walk.

I often seem to develop feelings for characters or maybe even the players behind them.

[Snickie]

When I first started playing the game, one of my characters was in a committed relationship with someone else, whose player I was also keeping in contact with on the forum (the player was, in fact, the reason that I joined the forum in the first place). They were on a resource run/exploration trip that lasted far longer than it meant to, partly because they got attacked but they survived that. Then something happened in the other player's life, and his character played it as he was going to stay and die, and I broke down and sobbed in my room while the scene of his goodbye unfolded on my phone.

They ended up leaving together, and then, on the way to the wrong location was when Cantr got hacked and went down for 3 months. The player didn't come back right away when the game came back up, and my character couldn't stand to see the animals maulin g him, hurting him, while she could only sit by and do nothing to keep him alive. So she killed him. And she hated every arrow she shot at him. I hated it too.

I poured myself into that character more than I have any other character. I was young (15) and stupid. And I'm still young (18) and still pretty darnn stupid. But I know better now.

I don't let myself get attached anymore.

I don't play often enough anymore to let it even come close.

[Black Canyon]

Thanks for sharing that, Snickie. But I hate that you feel you have to detach yourself to stay safe. It's true that this game can be an emotional roller coaster, but I don't see that as a bad thing. It is indeed something unique about cantr. When I played previously, I found that it was the combination of relationships with the players in conjunction with my character's relationships with their characters that was too emotionally exhausting for me.... so I am doing my best to avoid a repeat of that.

Well... and being on staff too. (Definitely avoiding that )

[Snickie]

Don't get me wrong, I still get affected by the game.

Later when that one character finally arrived at her hometown from her resource run seven-and-a-half years after she'd left, starving and with hardly anything, I somehow woke up right before she arrived in town, without meaning to (it was a school night, I unintentionally woke up without any kind of alarm, and I Cantred until I was too tired to Cantr anymore), and it was cool because I was awake to roleplay her not-glorious homecoming.
"*waltzes into town and poses after a flourish* I'm hoooooooooooly crap! *her decidedly excited demeanor immediately changes to unfamiliarity, and she hides behind XXX (a townsmember she had known before she left)*"
Or something like that.

There was once an incident with a player who is now banned, and the details surrounding that bothered me to the point that I was up to around 2 or 3 am thinking about it. I finally had to pry myself away from the game to get some sleep.

I cried when Arenti unsubbed. That was awkward, because I was at a music camp when I found out. I had to make up an excuse. His character had become extremely close to one of my characters, but as a father rather than in a romantic way (though there were some interesting discussions about that). She was never the same. I got over it after a short while.
"*something about want, in a romantic way but of course my character doesn't understand because she's dumb lol*"
"Do you want me?"
"Yes, I want you, but not in the same way as I want [my wife]."
He was so good to her. I miss him.

I was sad when JohnnyScribble timed out and my character's girlfriend, one of my favorite characters ever, died. But I didn't cry. My character did though. He grieved for IG years. It was hard for me to find reason to play him anymore. She was amazing and he always loved her, no matter what state she was in, even if at the beginning it wasn't quite for the right reasons... (he's a guy, and he had guy desires lol, though he never acted upon the flesh desires with her....or anybody else for that matter).
I was angry when one of his best friends (another woman, whom he might've been attracted to were it not for his girlfriend), whom he could talk to about just about anything (especially on how to approach his girlfriend on certain issues), ran off and supposedly died after some other people in the town died. Supposedly. I haven't heard anything about her in months.

The game has given me highs and lots of fun (a lot of it from when I would play during class...oops lol).
It has also made me ridiculously frustrated. lol

[ManyVoices]

This game is terrible for playing with emotions. Minutes ago I read something that literally turned my stomach, and put me in a bad mood, despite the fact that I know it's just a game.

This game is not healthy for you.

[Hedgedhogst]

Characters can leave us with great 'smiles and laughter' connections too, right? I've doubled my weekly supplies of cleaning cloths, and cut down on my drinking cola, because I've lost count of how many times I've been drinking and something hilarious has happened, causing me to power-spray mouthfuls of cola over just about everything within a 3 foot radius.

After a great romance scene, or reunited friends... I can find myself smiling for hours afterwards... Leaves you seeking more love and affection outside of Cantr, which is when you start calling friends and loved ones more, just because you can.

I still haven't experienced the emotions that cause me to look out the window, expecting a couple of pirates to turn up on my doorstep in a rickshaw, wielding a crossbow and wearing a loin cloth, munching on raw onions... So perhaps there's still hope for us, yet.

I have found myself coming in from shopping trips, and just dumping the frozen food into the middle of the living room floor while I quickly jump onto Cantr to see what hilarious scenes I've missed from certain characters. There are characters that have left me missing my favourite TV shows and and even made me late for important interviews, just so I can get one last giggle from them before I go.

[Kinny]

Ah Cantr, I didn't get as attached to characters when I was first playing, to be honest I was pretty flippant with the way I treated IG relationships. I suppose I had to mature as a player before my characters could act as such. And boy did I get attached. I'm fairly certain I am inadvertently stalking another player's characters. No names, buuuuuut.... yes.

When one character met up with someone who they hadn't seen in real-life YEARS I smiled for a good hour, just ecstatic! It made my day.

I have a deceased character who was in a relationship with a woman and I still have to stop myself from responding to radio messages by her even after a couple years. Hurts real bad man. All the regret.

I've been working on branching out from my goody-goody characters, so a new range of emotion seems to be evolving. Jealousy appears to be a big one right now. Who knew I could feel so jealous on behalf of my make-believe character towards another make-believe character?

[freiana]

In general I feel very much like the char I am playing at that moment, and sometimes that emotion stays when I start doing something else than Cantr. The deaths of some chars that were very loved by my chars really hit me, and on the other side of the spectrum I can be a much more happy person for days if something awesome happens. I don't think it's that attachment to chars that can get "dangerous" for us players, I think it's the consequences: We hate it so much when something bad might happen to our or others' great chars we stay up for nights to save them, and -that- can get a little disturbing for RL. But, to be honest, I think those missed nights are completely outweighted by the huge amount of good stuff I get from this game. Because, hey, which other person can honestly claim they have as many friends (okay, not "real" friends, but that's details) as we do?

[Sunni Daez]

They have made me feel a full range of emotions... But I have grown enough myself to walk away from the computer and leave the emotions there. There have been but a few times that the emotion haunted me through the day.. and that is usually the sad and heavy hearted...


(( I hate when they make me cry))