Building Character - Creating people for your stories.

[Adelene]

So... what I need to know to RP a cismale that likes to wear skirts?

What do you want to know? I might not be able to help with all the things but I am a nongirl who wears skirts sometimes.

[Bluelantern]

They like to wear skirts! ;)

Not sure if I believe this. Any sources?

So... what I need to know to RP a cismale that likes to wear skirts?

What do you want to know? I might not be able to help with all the things but I am a nongirl who wears skirts sometimes.

General information, really? I just felt it would be safer asking... Like, in his case, he finds them comfortable, pretty and there is something of a... "political statement" about it...

[DanielH]

I had an IRL male* friend who wanted to wear skirts, but only in a “wish skirts were culturally appropriate male garb” sense. I don’t talk to him very much any more, but might be able to ask him about this if this’s still relevant. I also don’t know if he ever actually does where skirts or if he still wants to.

Does anybody have advice for making characters “wake up”? It seems to be important to writing them well, but I have never had it happen. I can sometimes write about what characters might be like, but it never stays consistent for more than an hour or so. Does anybody remember when it first happened to them, or have any advice on getting it to happen for specific characters?

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*Approximately

[Kappa]

As far as I can recall, it was a fairly gradual process for me.

Way back when I first started writing stories as a wee kappa, my characters were hollow shells who acted according to what sounded cool in my head and not any kind of internal motivation. I progressed from there to thinly veiled self-inserts, and from there to writing other people's characters, and from there to inventing my own characters not principally based on me. And somewhere in there, I started having characters 'wake up' on me - not nearly to the degree that they do these days, but enough that I could tell what they wanted to do. Then as I kept going, they kept getting more awake.

For the curious, Matilda was the first fan character I RPed. I think Esthfora was the first non-fan character, in my thinly veiled self-insert phase. Esthfora isn't quite a self-insert but she definitely springs from some part of my own personal brain even if it mostly isn't the part where I keep my personality. Eights was my second original RP character and began as an extremely thinly veiled self-insert. I don't remember who my first solid non-fan non-self template was, but it might have been Chainsaw.

[Bluelantern]

I had an IRL male* friend who wanted to wear skirts, but only in a “wish skirts were culturally appropriate male garb” sense. I don’t talk to him very much any more, but might be able to ask him about this if this’s still relevant. I also don’t know if he ever actually does where skirts or if he still wants to.

Actually, while developing the character and discussing this matter, it came to a point where one of his personality traits is "Being upset about people just accepting the cultural norms and rejecting rationalism low-hanging fruits" except that made me think about how, indeed, people reject the rationalist low-hanging fruits... which made me sad, and soon the character itself made me sad by association.

My solution was to "reboot" the character and start with a new concept and even a new facecast. The skirt thing was discarded, albeit I doubt he would care that much.

Does anybody have advice for making characters “wake up”? It seems to be important to writing them well, but I have never had it happen. I can sometimes write about what characters might be like, but it never stays consistent for more than an hour or so. Does anybody remember when it first happened to them, or have any advice on getting it to happen for specific characters?

I wouldn't call my characters awake, but I am noticing a few things:
a)It is much easier to "complete" secondary characters partially because I am less worried about them
b)I disturbed by the fact that one of the most "active" characters in my head, is completely amoral. In one occasion he even "corrected" me about a personality trait.

[Timepoof]

Amy is very excitable and she LOVES music. Singing, listening, playing, dancing - she's there. She usually works as a voice actor though, because she is very good at putting on voices too and that she can do all the time, but if she's stressed she cannot sing. She likes karaoke and goes all the time. Amy also likes trying new things and also dresses and baking and cooking and she would go "OOOH MAGIC" if Milliways showed up and if she found an alt of herself (she is bi) it would start with a hypnotic harmony and end in an Amypile. That kind of Amypile. Also Amies are adorable when they're excited but I don't have pictures yet. Help.
Flora is very shy and she likes predictability and she is smart and good at all things electronical both hardware and software and can draw accurate sletches by memory and she has low self esteem (fixable with time and love) because her mom and stepdad pushed her to overachieve by having her on homeschooling and being disappointed every time she got less than 100% and also since they read her diary without her permission that led her to study cryptography and then other spy stuff like tracking, lock picking and stealth because she likes spies. A Flora would be alarmed by Milliways. If she had to have a power (ingot etc.) it would be Sunny!Ike's ability with the lines and such. Because she's a perfectionist. She would be charmed by a Sherlock or a Libby because if you can predict someone you know them and her parents did not know her at all. A Flora is likely to meet the Amy only if the world has magic. A Flora has equal chances of becoming a software engineer and a spy. A Flora's magic will fail on her at a critical moment.

Ask away, I am sure I've missed things.

[Bluelantern]

Amy is very excitable and she LOVES music. Singing, listening, playing, dancing - she's there. She usually works as a voice actor though, because she is very good at putting on voices too and that she can do all the time, but if she's stressed she cannot sing. She likes karaoke and goes all the time. Amy also likes trying new things and also dresses and baking and cooking and she would go "OOOH MAGIC" if Milliways showed up and if she found an alt of herself (she is bi) it would start with a hypnotic harmony and end in an Amypile. That kind of Amypile. Also Amies are adorable when they're excited but I don't have pictures yet. Help.
Flora is very shy and she likes predictability and she is smart and good at all things electronical both hardware and software and can draw accurate sletches by memory and she has low self esteem (fixable with time and love) because her mom and stepdad pushed her to overachieve by having her on homeschooling and being disappointed every time she got less than 100% and also since they read her diary without her permission that led her to study cryptography and then other spy stuff like tracking, lock picking and stealth because she likes spies. A Flora would be alarmed by Milliways. If she had to have a power (ingot etc.) it would be Sunny!Ike's ability with the lines and such. Because she's a perfectionist. She would be charmed by a Sherlock or a Libby because if you can predict someone you know them and her parents did not know her at all. A Flora is likely to meet the Amy only if the world has magic. A Flora has equal chances of becoming a software engineer and a spy. A Flora's magic will fail on her at a critical moment.

Ask away, I am sure I've missed things.

Amy sounds adorable. Are either Amy or Flora the type to deal with "rationalist fic shenanigans" like, discovering immortality, world saving and the like? Is Flora non-het? Any particular reason for Amy's parents being so terrible, or they are just terrible?

[Timepoof]

Amy would be the type to teleport to Africa, village by village and help people in person. She wouldn't go for the diplomacy aspect because she does not approve of the beaurocracy. She would play pranks on all of humanity, she may pretend to be a god, if she meets a Bell she is gonna go for planet colonising.
Flora would have a whole organisation and lots of advisors, and when possible she will send out voting papers to everyone in the world.
Floras are trained out of any non-hetness they may have had.
You mean Flora's parents, right? Amy's parents are ok, maybe absent minded but ok.
Flora's parents do not realise what they are doing to her. They think they are just having her study to her fullest potential because they are both specialists (stepdad - programming, mom - doctor) and they did so themselves. (The out of universe reason is that I'm basing her on a combination of my friends)

Also, Amy does not like being ordered and will rebel. And she has wilderness survival skills.

[Bluelantern]

Floras are trained out of any non-hetness they may have had.

Trained ou??

[Timepoof]

Well, since (they want to make their parents happy and) any non-het actions are frowned upon, they learn to just not listen to any attraction. But for mating purposes they are on average 60% straight and 40% bi.
Amy has decided that she needs to have a dog and Flora has decided she has allergies to some animals, she's not sure which, and that her mother likes travel and that she and her parents are from China or some other eastern country and when her mother remarried they moved to Europe.