Does anyone have a problem with ages in long term DDs?

[Rose]

Weird warning: this post may confuse the daylight out of some people.

Hi all,

I have had parallel imaginary lives all my life. I lived on my first planet from I can't remember when till I was about 9, my second planet til I was about 12, and my current one since I was 12, I am now 23. My imaginary worlds have always been very complex and involved. I am always another person in my DDs, and after 'being'  this alter ego for a little while, it gets a little boring so I move on to another person, sometimes a neighbor or family member, or a friend of theirs (this is where it gets complex!).

The length of time I've 'lived as' alter egos has ranged from a few days to a year and a half, so if I create one who is 18, by the time I give them up or move onto another one they are still usually the same age give or take a year. Sometimes, if my alter ego is a neighbor or friend, the old alter ego stays that age indefinitely (e.g. if they have a baby the baby never grows up).  

At the moment, seeing I've been playing as the same alter ego since I was about 13, they have aged 10 years since I started living their life. When I created them they were 40 ish, meaning that in 2003 they would've been born in the 60s. I liked this because I could research what it was like to grow up in the 60s and 70s and as I have Aspergers Syndrome, one of my 'special interests' is the 20th century and I like to know what happened in what year, what songs came out, fashions, etc. As I continue to play as them, my closest friend in my DD has grown up (she was my age in 2003) and got a boyfriend, but I find it hard to imagine alter ego 'me' as a 51 year old so every few years I have to make it that I was born later and later. This is very frustrating because I only have a few options:

-let them age normally like their 'friends' have, so they can still have grew up in the 60s-70s, but they'll be too old and keep getting older, which is annoying because my writing and art is based on them and also they'll die if I keep them for too long (I didn't think I'd have them for 10 years...so it's possible they'll be there when I'm 10 years older still. I hope not but I never know)

- keep retrograding their age so they're perpetually 41. This will be annoying though because their friends will age but they won't, and what happens if I still have them when I'm 41

-make my planet perpetually the early 2000s, but this is crazy because every year I live as them another year ads to their life but no one gets any older

-move to a new alter ego. I really don't want to do this, and have tried in the past to be my current alter ego's siblings, parents, cousin, local politician (yeah I know, a bit strange)  boss, friends and tax collector but it never sticks.

I'm aware that this post will sound confusing and extremely weird to some if not all people on here, but does anyone else have the same problem? 

 

[Rose]

Interesting. Sounds like a nice place, very peaceful! My current (past 13 years or so) world is an extremely dystopian metropolis where there are 4 political parties, every few years they fight for power (similar to Australia, really. Each of the 4 sort of represents Labour left, Labour right, Liberal and Greens). We have a football league and I live way out in the suburbs. Sort of place where most people who live there think that that city is the world and they hardly ever leave it. Parts of it are a cross between Melbourne, London and New York (never been to NYC but I have been to London), and the country towns and mining towns around where I live. The opposite of your world! We'd like to barter but it depends on who's in power.   

SwanInTheWater said:

Ah, my world. I have two. I guess the more interesting one is the one I have been building for years. It's another world with a lot of fantasy and some magic. Most of it is a nice village like place. There are no chain stores like Barnes and Noble or Starbucks. Every store is a small business, independently owned.  The deeper in the village you go, the more the stores look like quaint little houses. There is a lot of nature, and the nature is very respected.

One part of the world is more urban and it's nicknamed Dreamer' s Paradise. There is a lot of street art, and instead of advertisements on the sides of buses and billboards, there is artwork. There are theaters that only feature classics, and theaters that only feature independent films. There are some bookstores that only sell used books and a bookstore that sells books that have been banned in other worlds. (We don't ban books in this world) It is called the Speakeasy.

There is a school for creative arts and everyone works together in the school, so the students doing photography work with the students who model, and students who play instruments work with students who sing, etc. Every season they put on a show for the whole town.  There are nice places like skating rinks and such in Dreamer' s Paradise. 

In this world, we don't do money, we barter. 

That's the gist of it. 

[S K]

I just thought about this problem yesterday. In my dd I am perpetually young and the disjunction between my real and fantastical world. The other characters age/ageing dependent upon what the dream is - which world. If it is an old world the ageing doesn't happen. If it is a spontaneous sudden world then it happens at my current age. In some dreams the age seemed ambiguous  but the actions involved school so they became un-copeable/too far fetched.  In other dreams the dreams were ambiguous and do-able for a much wider age-range but are now seeming in-operable and am sub-consciously retrograding other characters and myself in these dreams.

[LydiaWylder]

I know this is old but i'm just joining and your post stood out to me. My characters also live in a world where they are immortal or ageless for hundreds of years. I originally got this idea from watching Inuyasha when I was 11-13

Did you watch that show too?

taffle said:

My characters live in a world where people don't age easily. Some people can even be immortal! In my world, there are plenty of characters who are over 100 years of age but they still look young and full of energy. In fact, the older they are, the more experienced and wiser they get. My main character is around 200 years old but looks like an 18 years old.