[Bêthberry]

Ask not what favourite character, but why the character.

Unlike Estelyn, I did pick my nick and nick identity with care, although that identity has developed in interesting ways throughout the various games I've participated in.

I do not particularly identify with any character or race in Middle Earth and I wanted a nick that would be unique, original. I choose finally to be Goldberry's daughter, and this ghosted verse accompanied Bethberry's first appearance on another forum:

By that pool long ago
I bid a sad farewell,
To wander wide and far ahome.
I seek my mother's gladsome songs
throughout this Middle Earth.
Her voice untimely silenced be,
Yet still can mortal heart set free:
'O wind on the waterfall and the leaves' laughter,'
May the pure clear River spirit
Mellow time's disaster.

It ticks me off that Goldberry just disappears from the evening discussions and the book; even when Gandalf longs to return to the House of Bombadil, it is Tom he mentions, not Goldberry. Thus Bethberry goes forth searching outside that limited place. I tend to look for what is absent in LOTR.

I am uncomfortable with the fact that every sanctuary in Middle Earth--the Old Forest, Rivendell, Lothlorien, the Girdle of Melian, even The Shire itself, is a gated community. It implies to me segregation, as if good can only be good if isolated or protected from the world. It also sets The Other up as beyond the pale.

I chose the Old Forest because it seems to me to be the only sanctuary that is truly fairy, as Tolkien explored that idea in "On Fairy-Stories", that is, both good and perilous. Having grown up on the edge of the temporal rain forests of British Columbia, Canada might have something to do with it too. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

My first Tolkien RPG character was a hobbit, Esmerelda Hamwich of Buckleberry Fern, who presided over a summer Hobbiton garden party where dancing, mirth, poetry and feasting held forth on a flagstone patio outside the smial--pretty much standard fare, but it allowed for lyricism. This was long ago on a forum not even Tolkien. Esmerelda's made an appearance or two here at the Downs, in "On Patrol."

I have also played "Big-hearted Bertha", a kind of Coronation Street barmaid, in a spoof of LOTR on another site, called "In Search of Spandalf." Utterly wacky that one, its wackiness in part limiting a clear plotline, but fun. "Malice", a brat, made her appearance there, too, and it was delicious to be a brat, so unlike Bethberry.

"Saladriel" on Estelyn's "Revenge of the Entish Bow" marked a real change in writing style for me. Interesting, where parody takes one. And I like the challenge of writing as a crow for My Crow Management. I wanted Pip'kha to be a secondary character, a youngster who grows up suddenly, but he, too, seems to have assumed at least partially the role of a healer, lol.

I have done cameos on the Rohan RPG, as an Ent, where I wrote some Entish, played a male, and wrote a fatherly/daughterly scene, something no other game had given me the opportunity to do. It also allowed me to introduce some lyricism or fairy elements in a game that is predominantly cleared-eyed realism. Two other characters for Rohan, Æelfritha and Cadfæl, have much intellectual and emotional thought invested in them and I would like to see Rohan survive well and strongly so I can introduce them, but I won't if the game will not revive. I'll stay Ulfwine there.

I would concur with Rimbaud, that the success of a character depends as much on the care in the initial thought and creation as in the actual writing of the game.

Bethberry

Edit: Pio's post reminded me that I forgot one game, Birdie's "The Gathering-In", where I played the Stoor Hob Heathertoes and would have played an ancestor of Gollem had the game continued. In light of our new games, perhaps it is interesting that I gave Birdie this character description:

What have we got in our mindses?
Birdie wants to know.
Askses uss. Askses uss.
Sss Sss Sss.
...
Ancestors we be
of those nastiesss.
...
and me takeses Deagol.

[ February 15, 2003: Message edited by: Bethberry ]