Please
Regulate the other person through charm, humour or agreement.
This booklet explores a human gesture that protects, connects and supports — and may then become the only way left to answer the world.
The human gesture
To please is to sense the atmosphere, offer joy, defuse violence and find the form of presence the other person can receive. It may grow from genuine empathy.
Its latent closure
The gesture closes when every disagreement becomes a threat. The character changes face according to who is looking, smiles at what hurts them and no longer knows what they want outside other people's reactions.
Colour of the five depths
| Depth | Direction |
|---|---|
| Mask | I make people laugh, reassure, charm, agree or always find the sentence that relaxes the room. |
| Protection | I read faces, mirror expectations and divert conflict before someone can reject me. |
| Attachment | There is still a laugh, a look or an approval I do not merely want to obtain but truly want back. |
| Wound | Affection was conditional; a loved face suddenly became hostile or unreadable; I was humiliated before those I wanted to win over. |
| Inner World | The whole room changes with people's faces. Silence condemns; smiling keeps things in place. |
Ambivalences to preserve
- empathy / manipulation;
- authentic joy / survival performance;
- telling the truth / preserving the bond.
No thread should resolve these tensions in advance.
Fragment bank
Choosing a fragment does not fix a complete history. Its relationship with other depths will be created secretly by the player, then discovered in play.
Mask
- I know how to make people laugh even at the wrong moment.
- I change my tone before the other person's face changes.
- I always find a true compliment.
- People often forgive me before they know what I did.
Protection
- I say yes while I work out which no would be dangerous.
- I tell a story before anyone can ask the real question.
- I become the person the other hoped to meet.
- If everyone is smiling, nothing serious has officially happened.
Attachment
- There is a laugh I would recognise at the end of the corridor.
- Someone saw me without needing me to entertain them.
- I keep a letter that asks nothing of me.
- I still want to please the person who told me to stop trying.
Wound
- The whole room laughed and I had not understood it was at me.
- A loved face turned cold without warning.
- They only kept me when I was easy to live with.
- I said what they wanted to hear and someone else paid the price.
Inner World
- Smiles keep the walls from moving closer.
- Silence is the polite way they pronounce my guilt.
- Every face holds a different version of me.
- If someone laughs at the right moment, this day can still be cancelled.