casting game
I always wanna play it, because I made it up.
what you’ll need:
at least two people
a category (example: dog breeds, coffee drinks, characters in a movie, types of bangs)
how to play:
once you’ve decided your category, you cast each other.
the end!
important: you cannot cast yourself. for example, if the category is office supplies, i can’t say “i’m definitely a stapler,” because casting yourself is a vanity cast and not allowed! why? because we have deeply subjective views of ourselves (duh), so when we cast ourselves it’s really that we would like to be perceived as the stapler, not because we are actually the stapler. make sense?
instead, you cast each other. i might think of myself, in the above example, as a stapler, but then my friends tell me i’m actually a paperclip. gasp! then this is where it gets fun. why am i a paperclip? i would ask. then my friends can explain to me exactly why i am a paperclip and not, like i would have guessed, a stapler. you cast everyone present. it’s fun.
why is it fun? okay. i will explain why i enjoy it. first of all, i enjoy patterns and categories. i enjoy seeing the ways in which my loved ones are like other things because it makes me look closer at my loved ones and therefore appreciate them more. putting things in categories is like mental stimming, too, i think, and makes me feel like there is order in the world (spoiler: there isn’t!) or at least, that my own life makes some semblance of sense.
you can also use casting game as a way to more deeply interact with fandoms you’re part of. for instance, allen and i have cast our family (us, our dogs, and the cat) as both taylor swift albums and characters in wicked, respectively. so then you’re not only getting closer to the folks you’re playing with, but you’re also more personally engaging with whatever fandom you’re casting within.
(ps Peaches is obviously Galinda, Tyr is Elphaba, and Janis is Madame Morrible, FWIW)
it is an endless game, because the categories can be pulled from whatever you’re doing or wherever you’re at. i’m looking around the desk right now, for example, and see a bottle of excedrin. great. what over the counter medication would my loved ones be? see? (ps: I know, no vanity picks allowed, but I am so obviously ibuprofen and if you guys don’t see that imgonnafuckingloseit)
apparently there’s this article in the paris review from a few years ago about a similar invented game called dichotomies, written by Sophie haigey. (credit where credit is due: I found out about this article by reading internet princess.) anyway, with dichotomies, it’s the same idea, but slightly different execution: in dichotomies, you are pitting two things opposite each other— in her titular example, it’s thunder or lightning— and sorting thusly.
why do I love these games? is it because of the glitchy sorting hat Harry Potter game from AOL kids 25 years ago? is it because of neurodivergence? is it because i’m a Sagittarius sun Leo rising Capricorn moon????
I think ultimately it is because it is a fun and imaginative way to show people how I see them, which is a way to show them I love them. and it is a way to experience how I am perceived by others, which proves I am loved by others. uh oh. maybe because i’m a poet or an artist or a girl1 I am always fascinated to understand how other people see me… that liminal zone… and maybe? that can help inform my own idea of myself?
but is that it? is it all about my ego and my own understanding of who I am?
well, I definitely have a slippery image of myself, and that fuzziness is hard to cope with sometimes, so when someone else tells me who they think I am, I find that comforting in some vague sense because it’s proof of my own existence… but, that said, I don’t think that’s entirely the reason I enjoy this game, and I can feel myself spinning off in some bizarre existential tangent, so let’s land gently back on earth and keep considering…
ultimately, I think I like this game because I am curious about the gap2 between how we see ourselves (stapler) and how others see us (paperclip). that chasm is infinitely fascinating to me. so when we play casting game, and people get cast as something and they strongly disagree with it, that’s where the juiciness lies. and that gets me really excited. because probably, that gap is where the truth lies too.
who I really am, tl;dr, is found on the road between stapler and paperclip.
This has me thinking of the John Berger quote from Ways of Seeing: “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” Yikes! (Massive W for patriarchy if true)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52197/i-dwell-in-possibility-466