The masks of inscrutability, or are you really you?

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Great thread idea, HI!

The difference between my real life identity (H****) and my online personality is complicated by the fact that Estelyn has two different aspects to her: she is the person who posts and moderates on the forum today, but she is also a character who lives in Fourth Age Middle-earth and takes part in (RPG) adventures there.

Similarities: Both H* and Estelyn are female, both no longer in their youth. (Though the online person is quite reticent about giving her exact age, since numbers can be divisive, and it's nice to cross age boundaries on the internet.) I think that the way Estelyn reacts is fairly similar to H*'s reactions. The moderator Estelyn does weigh her words more carefully than the poster Esty does, though. (Hmmm, even the change in nick, cutting it short to Esty, seems to change things - I don't use the abbreviation in my official function.) Both Estelyn and H* are reticent about showing too much of their private side to others unless they feel safe.

It's easier to define the differences than the similarities, I think. I would agree with Saucepan that the online person has the advantage of proofreading conversations, so that mistakes made by spontaneous utterances are few and far between, hopefully. There's also a major difference in language - Estelyn writes in English, H* speaks German almost all of the time - that certainly influences the choice of words and sentence structure.

Estelyn writes a lot - H* very little. The latter tends to forget to answer e-mails and writes so few letters that she is surprised to find out that the price of postage has changed again. Her journal is written very erratically, and she never writes fiction. Estelyn is involved in RPGs and spends hours crafting posts for her characters; furthermore, she has even begun online journaling, with the result that there are more recent entries there than in her private, hand-written one.

The RPG Estelyn lives a much more adventurous life; though she has her home base in Minas Tirith as the Head Loremistress of the Library there, she travels a lot to gather stories. Actually, now that I think about it, that's a similarity - her real life creator likes to travel to gather impressions and ideas as well!

And then there's the chat Esty - she's a combination of H* and Estelyn - a bit more daring and less inhibited than in real life though, with a tendency to enjoy mild flirtation occasionally...

So, to answer the question HI poses - is Estelyn a mask that H* wears? I would say not - she's just part of a personality that is much more complicated than can be shown online. (The older I get, the less inclined I am to put on a show for the benefit of the public.) But maybe there's a bit of a mask, for who can show a naked face to all of the world?!

[HerenIstarion]

That was a read, my lady, thank you

for who can show a naked face to all of the world?

Who can, indeed. Or, even, who can dig up said naked face to have something to show? All underlying layers seem masks as well sometimes...

[Child of the 7th Age]

Heren,

An interesting idea for a thread. I will reply later, but wanted to share one small thought with you concerning masks.

It seems to me that this isn't the only place in life where we wear masks. There are masks I wear on this site that may shield or modify certain aspects of my "real" personality, generally by choice. Yet out there in the "real" world, there are other masks I wear, which can be equally concealing. The latter can be by choice, by necessity, or sometimes merely by default, dictated by the particular situation I am in. So, in a strange way, there are pieces of "me" on this site involving writing and imagination that sometimes get hidden in real life except with family or very close friends. (And of course the opposite is also true.)

So where does the 'real' me lie? Perhaps in some combination that I have yet to achieve?

I sometimes wonder which Tolkien was more 'real' -- the dedicated scholar and family man of Carpenter's biography, whose life was 'hemmed in' by practical cares and necessities, or the Elf-friend who wandered freely in the land of Faerie?

A strange thought, but something to consider in responding to this thread. (And now Heren runs off to place a call to those doctors! )

[HerenIstarion]

Nay, Child, I'm not running away to doctors It is much as I feel. And it reminded me of situation given by C.S.Lewis', when he considers loss of friends (Probably in the Problem of Pain, but maybe in Four Loves rather, can't recall for sure now), using as an example late Charles Willians. It went something along the following lines "When Charles is gone, with him I loose that part of Ronald which was showing out only in reaction to Charles, so I loose not only Charles, but part of Ronald too, which will never be called upon if there are only two of us, instead of three before"

[mark12_30]

After reading Esty's post, there is at least one big difference for me: Helen doesn't get to talk about Tolkien anywhere near as often as mark does.

But they both "speak" first and "proofread" afterwards. Bad habit.

H-I, that quote about losing bits of a friend is pretty intense. It presupposes a three-way intimacy in platonic friendship, though, and I wonder how many of us have that? In band, yes, and in bible study, yes. Few other places. I'm not so aware of it here; perhaps I should be.

[HerenIstarion]

I was referring to 'real life', as in Child's post, Helen

But if one takes pains to dig it up, it may be seen here too. More so in RPGs, probably (though I do not play those, regrettable lack of time and imagination), but maybe it is explicit there in more literal way - without A's post the B's post would have been different, etc. But principle seems similar. And remember notorious Canonicity thread - without everybody posting, everybody would cease posting. But both examples fail short of the mark, it is more subtle, and I can not grasp the suiting analogy (BTW, another feat H-I is marked for more than GL - giving analogies for everything he says (writes))

So better remind myself of another great quote by J.R.R.T. - 'things might have been different, but they could bot have been better'

[Mithadan]

I am not Mithadan...or am I?