Reflection: What Clan Are You?
Our real selves in the story
I decided to break this reaction into three different parts. Firstly, the aspect of how myself and Nicole use our real names at this point in the story. As explained before, these chapters were written as part of a writing experiment. Originally, I assumed Nicole would treat it like she normally does, like Inktober or another one of the events where her prompts lead to artwork. She was the one that suggested us both doing writing, which was a lot more fun than anticipated. Seeing not only how someone else interprets the prompt, but also how they view the same exact scene was amazingly enjoyable.
Coordinating the scene was just as fun, because we’d picked certain points in the story where we wanted ours to intertwine, not just the concepts, but also the characters. We’d each chosen our clan not based on what we liked, but what flaw we saw in ourselves. I’ll leave Nicole to explain her side of things if and when she chooses, but for me, that cold, perfectionist nature built off of logic and reasoning was enough to create Grey. However, despite the coordination, we both wrote the scene independently of one another, waiting to finish our own before reading the other’s. Funny enough, Nicole and some other friends came down to visit me recently and got to see Optimist Hall in person for the first time, so I’m curious to know if that inspired any rewrites or new ideas…
The importance of clans in the game.
Clans inspire a lot in VtM, acting in some ways like your character’s class. It denotes strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and even personality to a point. Tremere tend to be closed off emotionally, based entirely in logic, reasoning, and science, and are disliked by many of the other clans for how they came into existence. (Side Note: I do not have the time nor inclination to recant the creation of Clan Tremere here, so I recommend looking it up online or going through the VtM Core or Lore books).
Clan can also affect your alliances in the game itself. Artemis, also known as “Kitty” by Cassandra, who has cute nicknames for all her coterie members, is a Gangrel, who are very much not fans of Tremere thanks to their hand in creating Gargoyles… another really twisted story that I’m not going to go into great detail on, but suffice to say, Tremere did experiments on Gangrels and others that led to horrible monsters and oceans of bad blood.
Beyond alliances, Clan can also put prejudices on your character. The obvious was the Malkavian one where everyone felt bad for Cassandra due to her clan’s curse, a madness we all knew about, pitied, and tried to deal with out of respect and kindness…
And suddenly I’m beginning to wonder if Malkavians are Autistic coded and I need to reflect on that a bit…
Not so obviously, Clan became a point of contention between the two groups, and either gave us a chance to commiserate or even assign blame. There were several instances of negative feelings but begrudging acceptance of Diego, for instance, because Lasombra have their own curse that isn’t pitied as much because it's an invisible burden on Diego and a massive inconvenience for everyone else. Similarly, Amir was prejudged as a stuck up, annoying, socialite type who only worried about his appearance or influence. While many of the observations of him are true, they’re not his whole story. He’s a much more complex character than given credit for, and much of that is something you can look forward to exploring further in the future.
My point here is that while the Clans as a game mechanic allow us to develop more aligned characters for gameplay, they also created a path to stereotyping each other that mirrors how we inevitably pre-judge others on a regular basis regardless. It didn’t matter, alive or dead, we found a way to do it, just as we as humans will always find ways to ‘other’ someone else. The question is, will we be able to do it in a jovial way as Cassandra’s coterie is able to, or will distrust and assumptions allow us to stay divided as Grey’s seems to be?
Optimist Hall as an important place in my life.
My life in Charlotte began about three years ago and has been a bumpy existence since the beginning. One of my biggest issues in life has been feeling as though I don’t really have a home and never really will. I don’t just mean a house that I own or my own mortgage, which in fairness is something that I aspire to be able to afford to complain about one day while fighting off the sense of dread that I never will be able to, but rather to have a place that feels like home. A place I feel secure in, where I feel loved and appreciated, where I feel welcome and whole, rather than just being this year’s apartment until the rent gets hiked or some other reason I need to move to another place again. I mean, I moved 9 times in 10 years, so I’m getting pretty good at accepting that places are temporary.
Optimist Hall was one of the first places I was brought to in Charlotte that made me feel like there was a place of community and welcoming in the city. While I’m not particularly close with all the people I’ve been there with before, I do look back on that place as a wonderful environment where one can feel welcome regardless of connection to the community around them. If you’re ever in the Charlotte area, give it a visit. I promise you won’t regret it.
