Tara Rynieyn is, no doubt, a creature of contradictions. She’s 4’11”, with a personality bigger than any room she walks into. She’s absolutely loyal and she’ll cheat in a heartbeat. She’s a harridan who’s not afraid to chop Santa’s hands off to get what she wants, but just try to find someone who doesn’t adore her. She’s been a part of the fabric of Rhy'Din society for fifteen years, and Reader, you get the special treat of a peek into the player’s head.
Tara’s writer had had no previous role-playing experience when she joined AOL in 1994. She was looking through the chat rooms a year later and saw the listing for the Red Dragon Inn. Wondering “if it was a room where people discussed medieval times,” she entered, saw the way everyone was typing, and was immediately confused. Warlock666 (who later became Tara’s first husband, of about fifty to date) took her under his wing, spent an hour going over the basics with her, and encouraged her to make a character with a unique name. “I insisted I would never remember what her name was because I honestly didn’t think I would be playing this 'game' very long,” the player says. She created the screen name "LdyTara311." “When I wrote the 'Legends of Zod' stories last year for Tara's journal, the part where Jared says to Tara she should create a SN for herself that was not her real name is a quiet nod to what Warlock's player said to me all those years ago,” she says.
The character has changed a lot over the years. She was originally human, 5’6”, with brown hair and blue eyes. Tara’s third husband was a vampire who bit her, which began the transformation into the insane, red-headed, violet-eyed (and occasionally pigtailed) sprite we all know and love today: “an unemployed social climber with no regard for a blessed thing except her own advancement in life.”
Tara's first guild was the Emerald Knights, where she met the player of LdyCymoril, who she describes as “my very first female friend.” During the early years she liked the idea of having Tara as part of a large family, “so playing with Soulights and as Lord Grimm's daughter-in-law, FOES and everyone in that group was a lot of fun. Playing with the Helstons was always amusing! The ongoing feud between Lars and Tara that continues to this day—and the fact that Tara considers Kitty Onyxfire her Aunt and Fio her cousin—slays me given how bad the blood was between the Helstons and the LeVeys at one time.” D.E.T.H. was another group that she enjoyed writing with because “sponsoring” was required to join, “and the fact that Mourne's player himself sponsored me was a huge honor for me.” He was one of the first friends she made online, and they were and continue to be close.
During the mid-90s, Tara’s player was involved with the guilds and spent most of her time participating in dice-based duels and Rhydin War Council battles, with the occasional evening in the RDI and Medieval Tavern. Later she moved to the Slavers’ Association stories, “which was a labor of love for me,” the player says. “Obviously what I did at the S.A. was important to me because I still make reference to it; and will likely never stop, as that was the turning point in Tara’s life, and was what made her crazy. It was really difficult for me to play the only character in a slaving organization that despised slavery, not to mention help run it all. That was a real challenge.”
As the player has an interest in Egyptian mythology, she loved the Egyptian SL with Anubis and Talum Sa. The character met her fourth husband, Arrithon, while playing with that group, “and though the character was an absolute nutjob, I have to say that Arrithon's player could write a story like it was nobody's business. I lost out on a lot of sleep being his partner.”
In later years, the Forsaken Blades storyline created by Tara, Jewel, and Amthy's players enabled her to play inclusively, with all sorts of players coming to visit the clubhouse. “The Bloods SL will forever have a special place in my heart,” she continues, and adds, “The SL I did with Prince Vasaris's player was hilarious and is one of my favorites. I would partner up with him again in a heartbeat, he is that damn good.” Finally, she mentions the stories she has with the players of Anubis, Morningstar and Veighn as being enjoyable, entertaining, and endlessly surprising.
Tara’s player is one of the most inclusive members of our role-playing community. “I consider RDI Fayalki/Hunter as being my second mentor,” the player says when asked about it. “Since he always greeted everyone that walked in and I admired him so much, I started to have Tara doing that too, not realizing, of course, that Hosts were required to do that!” What started out as a mistake grew into a conscious choice. The player spent a lot of time watching Fayalki and his partner Dechirant, to observe the ebb and flow of role-play in a public setting. Fayalki explained to her “that if someone threw something at Tara I should have her react to it and not ignore it. That the object was thrown whether I acknowledged it or not, and in order to make it seem more 'real,' I should have her catch it, dodge it, etc. He also cautioned me that I wasn't just playing to highlight what she was doing, but that she was part of a larger story and in order for that story to 'work,' everyone had to pitch in. This idea of being part of a living story that never ended and was always changing appealed to me, and I began to pay close attention to what other players were doing with their characters.”
The player says that her goal now is the same: “entering that room I want to have a good time, to try to make those I am playing with have a good time and to include as many as I can in my character's life, as they include her in theirs.” She firmly believes in the idea of role-playing as a communal effort, and encourages others to join in the community of shared writing that unites us all. Additionally, Tara’s player sees herself as an outgoing person, someone who loves to meet new people and learn about them. She feels that personal growth is achieved by learning about other people’s experiences, and that this is just as valid an idea inside the game as it is outside. She’s been rewarded over the years in this with many, many friends. “I've gotten to know lots of interesting people in this place,” she says. “I like being a part of this and being able to look back at logs and feel like I contributed to the history of it. RP (and fixing computers) has been the only thing I've stuck with for an extended period of time. But because this place is dynamic and not static, there's always something new going on.”
She notes that her philosophy of inclusivity has occasionally backfired on her. The boundaries between what happens inside the game and the thoughts and motivations of the people writing for it are set in different places for different people, and she’s found that “there are times where certain players believe I am trying to hurt them, specifically, when I have my character say something nasty, or with the case of females, flirt with their men.” But another conscious choice on her part is not to let those boundaries shift for herself, because then “I start to blend how I feel into her behavior which threatens the character of Tara. I have to play her true to the way I wrote her.”
When asked about where she comes up with her madcap stories for Tara, the player replies, “In the shower or driving in my car.” She keeps a pen and paper available for those times when inspiration strikes—or, if those aren’t available, she has been known to call herself and leave herself a voice mail so she won’t forget. “This happened to me while I was in line in my 7-11 a few weeks ago. I was standing there, waiting to pay for my coffee, when I saw one of those giant Valentine's Day cards? And I thought of Lucien Mallorek and how he might react if Tara got him a giant V-day card. But, naturally, her V-day card had to be as wide as the whole Inn. With Tara Rynieyn it is always in excess. It's never simple with her. So I called my VM and then later that night played out a scene with him that will forever go down as one of the funniest scenes I ever did.”
The player relishes spontaneity. She will come up with a general idea, enter a chat room and run with it. However, not everyone plays this way, and she likes to be flexible to adapt to and accommodate other players who might want to decide on a scene’s conclusion, for example, or might prefer a play-by-play discussion of a particular scene as it progresses. When she’s alone, however, she prefers to play spontaneously through each moment. Tara’s humor is mostly intentional. The player works hard at making other people laugh, and part of that humor is built into the character. “Tara is so literal, she is funny because she doesn't know any better. Or, I should say, she likes to pretend Tara being literal was when Rena Cronin told Tara to "Back up and tell me what happened." I had Tara she doesn't know any better, but only in some cases. There's a lot of things she is absolutely clueless about. I say she has a medieval mind for some very good reasons but she's not stupid, if that makes any sense. A more recent example of physically back away from Rena and look down at her feet, then she explained what Rena wanted to know.”
The player has mentioned more than once, on the Mutual Endeavors forums and elsewhere, that she finds it very difficult to play Tara. When asked why, the player responds, “No one believes me when I say this because of how I play Tara but I am a very conservative person.” It’s occasionally frustrating to her to play the character when Tara’s principles and opinions conflict so much with her own. Tara openly discusses topics and pursues situations that the player could never imagine herself saying or doing, and is capable of casual cruelty and selfishness on an impressive scale. The player writes through these in order to explore what it is like to be something she feels she could never be. “That, to me, is the essence of what we do,” she says.
Tara’s player is well known for being unafraid to embrace controversy, but “when we’re role-playing, we’re telling a story,” she goes on to say. “We’re not supposed to be arguing or focusing on what is going on aside from what is happening in Rhy'Din at the present time. What I say on the OOC boards has nothing to do with what I'm playing in the room. It's two different things and it is vital that we separate that as players. I don't hold what anyone says about me OOC against their character. That's unfair and wrong. I am respectful to others and if, for whatever reason, someone thinks I'm not being respectful? I want to know about it immediately. Letting things fester causes more problems than the original one to start with, in my opinion. And that's not what RP is. It's about everyone working together to tell the story. It's as simple as that.”
