Roleplay

[kink_bingo_mods]

picture: Huge (Becca)

Although any kink on the list can involve roleplay, and many - like ageplay or animal play - are made up of more than 50% roleplay, we thought that a parent kink for plain, unadorned roleplay would still be useful and fun. So this is the category for any and all roleplay - including roleplay found elsewhere in the kink list. Roleplaying family roles, occupations, relationships, situations, specific people, celebrities, tv and movie characters, fantasy characters, historical people - it's all up for grabs here. You can also consider this category as a place to do kink related to usually-not-thought-of-as-kinky types of roleplay like tabletop RPGs, MMORPGs, and LARPs.

Note: We're still working on finding a way to re-establish embedded videos for our kink_wiki entries since Megaupload went down. For now, we're using downloads instead: here's the Mediafire folder where you can download all the videos referenced in this post.

Since I have a bunch of great fannish examples here, let's skip straight to the instructional video! We can start with Alec Hardison from Leverage; like many characters on con shows, he's dressing up as someone he's not every other week, and he seems to have a great time messing people around while he does it:

[play video KB roleplay - L108.avi]

I like the little allusion to World of Warcraft, too - sandwiched between his over-the-top corporate roleplay scenes, it implies that Hardison has nothing but fun doing roleplay, whether it's an MMORPG or social hacking for a con job. It's easy to see how this could veer into kink territory - whether it's pretending to be doctors or soldiers or prostitutes, this kind of job-related roleplay can be as much about immersing oneself in another world as any RPG.

Abed Nadir from Community is another character who's often found roleplaying, and his roleplaying is often quite sexy, too; I'll let this collection of clips speak for themselves.

[play video KB roleplay - comm.avi]

Gotta love Abed the Elf-Maiden, rolling a D20 for double fisting! And that's not even including the time he was Batman, the time he and Troy dressed up as Ripley and the Alien, or the time he and Troy reenacted the Kickpuncher films (I could go on). Like Hardison, Abed's roleplay shifts naturally from undercover action to cosplay to RPGs, demonstrating the range this kink can have.

One of the great things, too, is that the roleplay between Abed the Elf-Maiden and Annie/Hector-the-Well-Endowed is that they get to do an entire (notably, gender-swapped) sex scene without ever touching each other; when roleplay is done through dirty talk, it can be a really great kink for characters who are touch-averse or shy.

Abed often uses roleplay as a way of interacting with other people; when his friends try to get him to introduce himself to a girl who might like him, his first instinct is to do it by being someone from TV who's successful with the ladies (Don Draper) and then to be someone from his life who's successful with the ladies (his friend Jeff). For Abed, roleplay seems to be simultaneously about fun - a way to play with his friends - and about finding a way to connect with other people. It's not just about dressup for him (although he does love the dressup); it's about the way that roleplay allows him a safe space and a script with which to interact with his friends sexually and emotionally.

And of course Abed as the AD&D Dungeon Master brings up another great aspect of this kink, which is the opportunity it affords to kink out about various RPGs and LARPing. Becca from Huge is the front image for this kink because she, like Abed, uses roleplay (in her case, a LARP she's designed herself) to get through social situations that she would otherwise not know how to handle (well, and because she's pretty in that dress). For a lot of people, RPGs and LARPing offer the opportunity to be someone else within a safe setting, to explore their chaotic evil side or imagine life as a magical creature, to inhabit a different gender or a different world altogether. Once people feel safe and protected by the roles they're playing - I say this as someone who has played a few tabletop RPGs in her time - they tend to be willing to go a little wild, to do or say things that they would never do or say when in costume as themselves.

Another common roleplay kink involves dressing up as a specific individual - think Dick Grayson pretending to be Clark Kent, rather than wearing his own Robin costume. This kind of scene can be a way of drawing on emotional connections with someone else, of roleplaying at cheating or cuckoldry, or of roleplaying sex with individuals who are not interested or not available. My favorite example of this kind of play is Lilah from Angel dressing up as sweet, innocent Fred - and even doing the accent - partly because she thinks it'll turn Wesley on, and partly because she thinks it'll make him mad:

[play video KB costumes - a407.avi]

When Wesley gets into the roleplay, it's not quite what Lilah was expecting, and it throws her off a little. That's a great example of how roleplay can draw out existing power struggles or power dynamics in a relationship.

But when it comes to roleplay, identity, and power dynamics, nobody corners that market more than superheroes - a lot of classic superheroes are the ultimate roleplayers, and this category wouldn't be complete without mentioning them. We've covered superhero costume and identity kink a bit over in dressup, but it's well worth talking about again.

And don't forget the often-fun celebrity roleplay aspects - as Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt from Parks and Recreation demonstrate, doing roleplay or cosplay as famous people can be a great kinky fannish activity:

[play video KB roleplay - PR316.avi]

It's also a great reminder that props and costumes are not necessary - Leslie and Ben wear suits to work every day and both work in politics, so doing political figures roleplay can in fact be a way of kinking on what they wear and do every day.

In short, if someone is playing a role - whether that role is generic ("an old man") or specific ("my friend Bob") - it goes here. You can play with characters who are simply doing roleplay, or you can get a little more meta with it, and look at what it means to have a kink for the act of roleplay itself.

Further Reading:
The reading under any of the other roleplay-related kinks might be useful; there are a bunch of interesting scenarios in all of them. Here are a few general overviews, though:
Queer Kink: Menage Au Trois: Some Roleplay Ideas for Three (Queer Kink talks about a variety of roleplay scenarios for three people; note that other Queer Kink blog posts are prescriptivist about safe/unsafe kink)
Franklin Veaux: Role-Playing Scenarios (another page with a variety of roleplay scenarios)
Cory Silverberg: How To Explore Fantasy Sexual Role Play (an overview of some useful methods and techniques for roleplay generally)
Wikipedia: Sexual Roleplay (a wikipedia overview of several kinds of sexual roleplay)
The Kink Bingo tag (check out all the fanworks that have been made for this prompt in previous years)

If you have more information on this kink, links to interesting resources, ideas for fandoms in which the kink might work well, or ideas for characters who you think could be into this kink, please leave a comment here! You can also feel free to post recs for stories, vids, artwork, or picspams that focus on this kink.

And if you have any questions, just comment and ask.

Comments

[zeraparker]

Would two people using a chatroom to take on different roles fit into this too?

[thingswithwings]

Taking on different roles sounds like roleplay to me!

[thatyourefuse]

Rather obviously, Spooks [MI-5] LIVES this trope. Possibly the absolute most jaw-dropping example comes at about the 12:50 mark here (seriously, I could babble about that scene for EVER, but shall refrain from doing so unprovoked).

[thingswithwings]

. . . holy CRAP, that scene is both hot and intense. Awesome! I've never watched Spooks, but wow.

[thatyourefuse]

It's not entirely unproblematic, but it can be -- Very. (And for added layers of psychosexual oddity, the actors in question got married not too long afterwards. So you have a RL couple pretending to be codependent colleagues pretending to be vaguely incestuous siblings...)

Mediafire link

[caseybensullivan]

I tried clicking on the link for the Mediafire page so I could look at the related videos, but it redirected to this post. Could you correct this please? Thank you!