#saying “this is the archetype this character embodies”

[fuckyeahkarlach]

Karlach Tarot Card: Strength ♡ featuring our favorite good boy Scratch ♡ by Alperrrrr_ on Twitter. (Please check OP out, they're doing a whole tarot series!)

[ardentpoop]

I’m only interested in chuck as kripke self-insert (his original function) if you use him to meaningfully critique kripke’s (and by extension the rest of the universe’s) hero worship of dean and comparative disinterest in sam. which became less of an aesthetic/superficial concern and more of an overwhelming issue with how sam and dean were treated both as individual characters and within their relationship as the series progressed and the writers who were passionate abt sam as a character independent of dean were phased out.

[musical-chick-13]

I love being nit-picky about canon until it's a character I hate. Then I love intentionally interpreting every single thing about them through the absolute worst lens possible. Because I hate them. And I love hating. Hope this helps.

[abyssalpriest]

This fucking description for the character Zervaika (the one i keep fucking saying is messing me up name-wise because its literally Leviathan with Z for L and K for TH before I think id ever heard the term leviathan) like....... oh my god younger me you dont even fucking know what youre saying youre an atheist at this point in your life or at the very least dont believe in spirits holy shit

"Long term watchers-Youve seen him before. Only once or twice, but youve seen him. Youve also seen aspects of him, different… Not him but types of him. You know , how you might have a persona and a animalsona and a fursona, theyre different things, but theyre all… Based off you.

Well say hello to KaZervaiKa, or as you may know him, Finality. Finality/TCK (...)

BEFORE U SAY I AM RIDICULOUS LET ME no lets not go there

Hes been with me for a while. Too long, i love him to bits, but hes a [affectionate slur removed because 2013 teen me was like that]. He doesnt even have a personality unless you personify him. You know, like poets do. This is just one of his many guises. And i think this is closest to what he really is.

(...)

Translated into metaphorical story, (story of him and my sona). Funny how its not even basedoff a fuckin love story and taken out of context it is one.

(...)

Hes so sexy, demonic shit that looks like an anthro dragon gone wrong (this is the funniest and most disrespectful description of Lev i have ever heard thanks younger me)

(...)

But out of story, hes not a god. Hes just a character. You can call him Z or Zervai or whatever the fuck you want. He doesnt have a… Normal name yet bar finality but thats story-orientated too.

Prolly be something stupid like Entwine"

----

Fucking saying " And i think this is closest to what he really is." oh my g o d younger me you dont even KNOW

Like this was him, a huge centipede-esque being pitch black with a catlike humanlike dragonlike face, the embodiment not just of death but finality like god fucking damn

[sysig]

I have made

the rough

of an improv card game

[theophagie]

anon in ur askbox really playing the game of "don't you know that by appreciating and analyzing stella you're hurting the Real Life Stolas's feelings and betraying him when you say you like him" like is Real Life Stolas in the room with us right now

-marrow

Rl Stolas in the room with us 🥴 who said that It's crazy T-T and really even besides the whole dumb "you're betraying him" thing (there are no rules!!!)... Idk methinks that even if you really hate your fave's antagonist it's still necessary to put them under the mental microscope too (and expect more depth than that of a puddle out of them >_>) at least a little, if only for the selfish reason of needing said antagonist to be a full-fledged, multidimensional character in order not to trivialise your fave's conflict with them..... but no apparently.........

[chitra111goddess]

VEDIC ASTROLOGY NOTES ♡

(Can apply to any planet placement)

⚡️Ashwini women always stand out to me with their creativity especially in acting , they rly know to embody the character they're playing to the fullest even irl it may be easier for them to shift thro different identities or alter-egos just for funsies

⚡️There's smtg about purva phalguni women , they're gorgeous but for some reason I noticed they get hate esp from other women like they're called fake or pick-mes or they make up stories hmm

⚡️Purva ashadha women are so inspiring like they're always the ones to be teaching or preaching or saying smtg inspiring/motivational. They're beauties with soul and a mind of their own ! If u know a purva ashadha better take notes 📝

⚡️Magha women love wearing black and something about their looks or style is unconventional/gothy, it suits them

⚡️Uttara-phalguni women are so headstrong bruh and they have this leadership aura about them, they're gonna do what THEY think is right. Like other sun-ruled nakshatras they easily get attention

⚡️Mrigashira women love the push & pull , cat &mouse game, they either attract this dynamic or they create it themselves. There's also smth about Mrigashira and obsession 👀

⚡️Jyestha women embody the wild feminine archetype imo, when evolved theyre truly empowered and have this idgaf energy. people may be threatened by their power or skills. Their voice or the way the speak is commanding and naturally charismatic

⚡️Swati/ardra and their eyes 👁👁 most captivating eyes imo I'm in luv

⚡️Purva bhadrapada women seem to attract or be drawn to men with dark nature or men who carry trauma ? Or they know how to bring that out in a man

⚡️Dhanishta women love dancing and they appear to be friendly or have many acquaintances but very little people they relate to. Popular girlies

⚡️Rohini women feminine energy is undeniable , something about them feels innocent yet erotic. They just give off this juicy fertile vibee lmao💦 unlike jyestha which is more dry (not in a bad way its just different 💀)

⚡️Anuradha women are secretive as hell even if they tell u shit don't think u have them all figured out. there's so much to unpack with them , they're generally intriguing complex characters

⚡️Most bratty nakshatras are mrigashira and chitra lmao

⚡️Revati women are pretty privilege girlies also they're master manipulators 👀 they know how to use their femininity to get what they want

⚡️Pushya women have big MOMMY energy. they seem/look mature. They're either the ones taking care of others or others take care of them

⚡️Uttara bhadrapada women have dualistic nature they're either the sweetest ppl u know or ur worst nightmare depending on who theyre dealing with 💀they're like a mirror projecting and reflecting back ur inner self back at ya (Pisces energy) also don't forget the karmic saturn influence.. u don't wanna mess w them or any other saturn ruled woman

⚡️Viahaka women go through intense ups and downs , starting from their good girl phase then they snap and go wild then they mature/become spiritual

⚡️Chitra women secretly (or not so secretly) enjoy drama , they're either the ones caught up in it or they play the role of the "judge" where they can solve conflicts between others. Somehow they're surrounded by it.

⚡️Don't underestimate krittika women especially when it comes to survival 💀 these women can be dangerous and will stab a bitch if they rly had to (whether its for defending loved ones or them surviving) their symbol is 🔪 after all and taurus/aries gives them that survival instinct

⚡️Ardra women can make great poets/song writers , their creativity and inspiration stems from their own 'tragic' experiences

⚡️Punarvasu women remind me of that quote "home is where the heart is" they always end up coming back to their origins and what they feel in their heart

Lemme know ur thoughts & what I should make next

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Mix Sahaphap gets to perform (and has the performance chops to perform) in a style that I’ve never seen any other male actor get to embody. Mix gets to unironically play the #strongfemalecharacter. The Beatrice, the Elizabeth Bennett, the Jo March. Strong-willed, emotional, kind-hearted.

Not only do the plot points line up, but Mix, more than any BL actor I’ve seen, fully leans into the embodiment of this archetype. In his roles, he rolls his eyes, pouts, banters flirtatiously, softens his posture and expression at small details. He doesn’t over-exaggerate and imposition other characters but his face also doesn’t hold back his character’s thoughts and judgments. And when the moments arrive, he lets all the hurt and anguish pour out in shatters of tears and visible heartbreak—the star-counting scene, anyone????—in a way that harkens to the operatic emotionality of well-done melodramas, soap-operas, and their contemporary Thai equivalent of Lakorn. It’s only that these have never been men’s roles in those.

It’s no surprise that one of Mix’s roles—Cupid’s Last Wish—is explicitly a gender body-swap, and Tian in A Tale of Thousand Stars is (albeit explicitly denied within the show) heavily connected to gender body-swapping. What Mix specializes in as an actor, and does exceptionally well, has been defined as feminine. To depict a kind of queer expression in this style is novel because it’s not camp, it’s not okama, it’s not a soft or femboy, it’s not a BL twink (Mix has been mostly excluded from the schoolyards and quads of the BL universe except for a role as a senior crush in Fish Upon the Sky). It’s too sincere and too adult for any of that.

In Moonlight Chicken we get to see, without the pretense of gendered mysticism, this performance style’s seduction, warmth, wit, and explosiveness within the framework of a general gay form of expression. It says that this kind of femininity might just be a gay thing. Not all gay men exhibit it, obviously—queer men aren’t a monolith. Still, it gives us something to consider about how we observe performance of queerness on screen, especially in front of an audience that puts so much more emphasis on ships, heat, and pairing chemistry to assess how well they perform a BL role. Could we look for other features to judge performance of queerness instead of how well they kiss?

Seme and uke roles would be the major performance style categories loyal BL fans assess actors with, yet even within the archetype his character’s fill within BL narratives, Mix’s performances differ from the typical uke depiction in BL because he really doesn’t perform them as passive. Rather, Mix’s characters and his portrayal of them are dynamic and demanding. It certainly fits certain stereotypes of ukes (Gilbert!) and their gay stereotype equivalent of bottoms as pillow princesses and brats. Mix’s characters, though, have more drive, agency, and compassion than that, and he plays them with all of those currents running underneath.

We certainly have openly gay writer/director Aof Noppharnach to thank for writing this kind of queer character for Mix to play in Tian and Wen. But for Mix’s specific commitment to the performance starting off with his (debut!?) role in ATOTS, we first have Earth to thank for believing in Mix’s ability and recommending him to portray the role of Tian, and then Aof’s acceptance despite his differing initial expectations for the character. Mix, Earth, and Aof have all been open about how Mix in his personal life and nature holds a lot of similarities to both his role as Tian in ATOTS and Wen in Moonlight Chicken. Some people might knock points off his performances because he’s like them. But his relationship to the characters, rather than dampening my enthusiasm for Mix’s performances, helps me appreciate his willingness to give an authentic performance in a style that hasn’t been encouraged on screens previously. It’s made more impactful that he chose to risk vulnerability to bring something personal that had previously been excluded from screens because of its gender deviance (and in broader society explicitly condemned). This doesn’t make a claim on Mix’s actual identity, but simply shows his willingness to understand and perform the expressions of his queer characters with an effort at empathy that many other actors would feel challenged to bring.

Some actors are chameleons, but some actors have a gift of a type within which they can explore depths and range that no one else can best. For me, that’s what Mix does in his work when directors and casting understands his talent. There’s a BTS video of Mix actually fainting during a scene while in Earth/Phupa’s embrace on the mountain that immediately brought to mind the wildly famous final scene in the film Camille where Greta Garbo as Marguerite dies in her lover’s arms.

For Mix, it was a serious incident due to regrettably extreme conditions and requiring the on-set paramedics, but these levels of theatrics, for me, are emblematic of what Mix is capable of as a performer, as well. After all, he had to faint in Phupa’s arms multiple times on purpose. It’s the kinds of Old Hollywood and heightened sentimental romance realms Mix takes his performances to! Then he can turn around and make it look easy to take that same character into grounded quips or dedicated everyday tasks. It only takes writers, directors, and audiences willing to see that men can feel this way and act this way. Mix has paved the way.

[b4kuch1n]

thank u for the well wishes! I got better but it did Something to my brain so I've been Experiencing Happenstances. but I'm gettin there!

haha! bit ill

[zan0tix]

Hi tumblr user Zan0tix, I have to say that I love that you draw Jake as big and hairy AND fem. It's such a rare combination outside of mean-spirited caricatures, every time I see your Jake I get a big smile on my face. :)

Hi tumblr user HermitCyclop ^u^ here is a jake drawing for you 🫶

The transmisogynistic demonisation of these features is so maddening!!! I agree! Im glad that the intent (appreciating these features) of my jake design reaches you c:

GOING TO PUT IT UNDER THE CUT BECAUSE I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY. But jake english gender meta because i think about it Too Much and am taking this as an excuse to infodump abt it. 😁

The alpha kids and their specific defiance of both homestucks gendered narrative AND real life societal expectations are so fun to think about to me!! but since we are talking about jake, his specific defiance of both homestucks models of masculinity and femininity in the context of his queerness is like the reason he is my fav character.

He props himself up that he wants to be the adventure "hero" in the homestuck sense (the hardheaded blue femme fatale) and the western media sense (the hardheaded action man) yet whenever pressed to actually act on what he says he always refuses or obfuscates. Because really what he wants is to just be himself! I really love the alpha kids because they all just want to be Themselves, not be restricted and defined by what is expected of them, (all the characters have this but the alphas particularly really hammer this home for me)

The heavy emphasis on their beta selves, the heteronormative archetypes they embodied and what went wrong in their lives that manifest as fears in their alpha selves... im always thinking about it. How differently society affects queer ppls choices in life and then the fact that they all get a second chance and getting to watch them live out that second chance and realize their queerness and them all caring so much abt eachother and wanting to aspire to be better FOR the ones they love!!!!!! it always tugs at my heart strings to ponder😢😢

IM SO GOOD AT GOING ON TANGENTS MY BAD but basically. The alpha kids explicit queerness and how despite the comic itself protesting, they are all shown to be deserving of love (of all kinds) And as a person who super heavily relates to jake, his experience with his own identity (and dirks unending adoration and love for him and likewise jakes belief and admiration of dirk) serves to me as a reminder that yknow! We are all worthy of love!! Even if we dont think ourselves to be (this is just the message of shrek.) and there is always hope to be found in things improving!!!!

But in a text thats explicitly queer and not shy about letting its queer characters do wrong in realistic ways i think this message is incredibly powerful and certainly one of the best things about the comic in my eyes. And i love embracing that in my art of the characters! Drawing queer (but here specifically trans) characters all getting to be proud of themselves and their appearances makes me feel proud of myself alongside them and I think its wonderful to be able appreciate other trans peoples experiences and looks through it too!!

I specifically in homestuck fandom dont really see anybody but twinks (usually dirk or eridan LMFAO) portrayed to be fem in any manner 😢 when jake is the most explicitly feminine man in the comic. (I think the transmisogyny thats kind of rampant in this fandom means people dont want to consider those outside conventional attractiveness being feminine or transfem identities outside binary transwomen if even that😭😭) I am being the change i wana see in the world 🙏 The amount of transfem fat gay bear jake in the world increases by one every time i post

[writers-potion]

What should you do if you feel that two of the characters are too similar and want to distinguish their personalities?

Characterization: Unforgettable Characters

I would say that's the whole point of characterization! Often we write about characters with similar ages, ethnicities, place of residence, etc.

It's all about: "How memorable is this particular character?"

Unusual Physical Features

Give your characters one distinguishable physical feature that can be referenced throughout.

Maybe one of them come from a family of redheads. It can be as simple as making one of them wear glasses.

The way we look, and the reactions we get from other people about our looks, form a large part of our own self-perception. This is especially true if your characters are teens, or have a job where they need to be particular about how they appear.

Quirky Body Language/Habits

Come up with some memorable, uncommon gestures that comes naturally to your characters. It can be something they do unconsciously.

What makes them make those gestures consistently?

A Distinct Character Voice

Dialogue is the window to the minds of your characters.

Give them a stock phrase that they use often, or a speech pattern

Give one of them a stutter, a lisp, a particular way of pronouncing some words, etc.

Nicknames (or teling names)

Nicknames are easy if your characters are part of the same group of friends or one of them has a reputation (whether god or bad)

You can also choose to give them telling names that hint at an immediately distinguishable characteristic, although this may feel shallow depending on the overall tone of your story.

What Do They Represent?

Characters often reflect types of people we have met in real life. Or, they personify certain values/perceptions we hold about the world in general.

If a character is the embodiment of "the silent genius", the way he carries himself would be totally different from "the forever insecure", although the two of them may simply appear quiet to someone who doesn't know them.

Think about what made you write those characters in the first place. Which archetype/person type did you want them to represent?

Combine The Characters

Sometimes, one of the two indistinguishable characters may not be serving a role that is big enough.

If there's not much story material to be divided between two characters, combine them into one, see what changes, and move on.

[demilypyro]

You may say content creators are a dime a dozen, but you still stand out among them. I already enjoyed your stuff, but after today you are actually my hero.

The way you chose to entertain people in order to help them, despite everything going on, is something I've only seen in fiction before today. I love that archetype of character, I've tried to embody that behavior in communities I was involved in, and now I've seen someone exhibit that belief in real life, with real success in doing so.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Even if you don't see why you're special, other people do.

I'm grateful that you see me that way. Honestly, it all comes from a place of having struggled with depression for most of my life, and wanting to lighten that load for others.

When things were hard, it was often watching let's plays that got me through the day. Simple escapism, but as a shared experience. Enjoying media together with an audience, appreciating it together, laughing at its ups and downs.... I came to really admire that. So being able to do that myself, sharing that with others, and being able to make it my job... I've really been feeling like I'm where I belong, and tonight has made that feeling stronger than ever.

I'm not very smart. I can't cure diseases or invent new solutions to the world's problems. I don't really understand politics or people. I'll never change the world in any major way. But if what I do can make one person's day a little better, then I'm happy to do it. I want to provide simple joy when things are hard. I want to be a light in the darkness. For anyone and everyone.

[ponett]

Do you have any advice for people making OCs/sonas? Yours are really well rounded and unique and I'd greatly appreciate the insight of someone who got a passion project off the ground!

So this is a very broad topic, and it varies a lot based on your own creative goals, what kind of characters you're creating, and where you want to use them. Creating an OC to be used in furry pinups is a little different than creating one for a dramatic story. But I'll try to give some general advice on how I do things for the types of characters and stories I tend to work with

Heads up: this will be kinda long lol

The germ of an idea

For me, I'll generally be inspired to create a character starting with a small number of core traits. These could be anything. A color scheme, a body type, a job, a hobby, a personality archetype, an outfit, a visual motif, a functional role in a story I'm working on, a noteworthy facial feature, a weapon, a relationship of some sort to an existing character, a single scene or joke I want to use them for. For furries and fantasy characters, species is usually one of the first things I'll have an idea for, which tends to get the ball rolling fairly easily since we have all sorts of cultural associations with different animals and fantasy creatures.

Any standout character trait like this that you find compelling can serve as that initial spark. The inspiration can come from anywhere, but it's often just a matter of knowing yourself and your own tastes. What do you like? What are the people in your life like? What really speaks to you in a character? What's an existing fictional character that you'd like to rewrite and take in a different direction? What's an aspect of yourself that you would like to see represented more often in fiction? It doesn't have to be something super deep or fleshed out right from the start, though. You can start with something as simple as "I want a black cat character" or "I want a character who dresses like an arcade carpet" or "I want a character who looks scary but is actually nice." Whatever it is, it's something that differentiates the new character from the ones I already have, because otherwise I'd just be using them.

Contrast

From there, you can start brainstorming other traits that might go with those core traits. Some of those may be traits that naturally complement each other. Continuing with the black cat example, maybe you wanna play into the common cultural perception of black cats and say that this character brings bad luck, or is associated with witchcraft. However, I often like to give characters contrasting or even seemingly contradictory traits, which can help elevate a character beyond a stock archetype. Real people tend to be a walking ball of contradictions, after all.

I've talked a lot about how I did this with the main cast of SLARPG. Melody is a fox, traditionally a crafty and untrustworthy predator, but she's extremely introverted and gentle. Allison is a bunny, but instead of being a meek and cuddly little prey animal she's an outgoing fighter who loves a challenge, and she has a muscular build. I think this kind of thing gives characters some fun flavor, and can be really effective for both comedy and drama. For an example from something I didn't write, take Senshi from Dungeon Meshi. He's a dwarf, and he embodies certain stereotypical aspects of dwarves - he's a short, buff man with a big bushy beard, he lives underground, he's stubborn and doesn't like elven magic - but he also goes against some of them. Instead of being an expert on mining and blacksmithing, Senshi is a culinary expert who has a deep appreciation for the natural ecosystem of the dungeon. He's a weirdo among dwarves for not caring about the wellbeing of his axe and for using his super awesome shield primarily as a giant wok. And that's what makes Senshi fun and interesting.

So going back to our example, instead of going with the stereotype, we could make a black cat character who has comically good luck, or who's superstitious and afraid of witchcraft, or who's an extremely rational person who always believes in science over superstition. Or maybe you roll with the bad luck angle, but instead make the black cat be the victim of their own bad luck in some interesting way. Maybe this black cat has terrible luck with love and can't hold down a relationship. Maybe this black cat is an aspiring speedrunner who consistently gets the absolute worst RNG possible in every video game due to their own bad luck. Maybe this black cat has accrued a horrendous gambling debt after a long losing streak and has loan sharks coming after them.

These are all just hypothetical examples, of course. I don't exclusively make characters with ironic contradictions like this. The idea is just to build on those core traits you started with in interesting ways, and that's one of my favorite ways to do so. But honestly, a lot of the time execution is more important than the sheer originality of an idea, and sometimes really putting your all into playing a trope you love straight is the right move.

Specificity

Regardless of what direction I take a character in past that initial seed of an idea, the key ingredient tends to be specificity. To give them specific details beyond the most stock possible version of that core idea you started with.

This is something I internalized from Tim Schafer, via a blog post in the behind-the-scenes backer material for Broken Age. Sadly I'm not sure if that stuff is still available, but I did save this particular post about creating characters since it really helped me, so I'll directly quote a chunk of that post here:

No two characters would approach a problem or react to events in the same way. At least, not if you’ve designed the characters well. If you’ve left them too vague or superficial, if they are merely functional elements in your story instead of individuals, then they might react in the same way. And that’s a problem. So to avoid that, I’m going to talk about one the most important parts of character development: specificity. Making sure your character is a specific individual, not a stereotype. A unique character, different from anyone else in the world. It doesn’t mean that they have to have wacky gimmicks, eyepatches and crazy accents. It just means they have to be specific. For example, let's create a new character. Let's say your story has a scene where your main character gets in trouble in school. So you’re probably going to need a school teacher. Imagine a school teacher for a bit. Do you see her in a little red schoolhouse? Maybe a bun in her hair? An apple on her desk? Thick black glasses? Let’s put a ruler in her hand for good measure. Done! We have our teacher character. She’s ready to be in the scene where our hero goes to school and the teacher sends her to the principal’s office for passing notes. Right? I mean, this character doesn’t have too many lines, so why develop her character any more? The problem is that this teacher is a very shallow stereotype of a teacher. She has no specific attributes that make her memorable. She’s the teacher you would get in a set of free clip art. She might not have many lines, but if all your supporting characters are this way, your story will be more bland than it should be. Even if this teacher is only onscreen for a minute, she should be unique and different from any other teacher in the world. Luckily, it's not actually that hard to make her so. You just have to ask some very basic, specific questions.

Tim goes on to explain how simple exercises like filling out character sheets with basic questions about your character (there are a million of these online) can help push a character beyond a stock archetype, even if it's a minor supporting character. Questions about where they're from, their likes and dislikes, their beliefs, their goals in life, that sort of thing. For minor characters especially, a lot of these details may never actually come up in a story, but just asking even a few of these questions and giving them specific answers helps you see them less like an archetype and more like a real person in your head. Maybe you never bring up your character's backstory or their favorite sport or what kind of music they listen to, but just having a specific answer for questions like that might help color the way you depict that character in subtle ways. It makes it feel like they aren't defined by just that one core trait you started with, and helps make the characters and world feel more alive, like there's stuff going on with them beyond the bounds of the story or the drawing.

It's a careful balancing act, though. It's easy for a character to feel like they're a collection of too many unrelated gimmicks and quirks. Again, like Tim said, these specifics don't have to make for the craziest, most original character ever, there just has to be something there.

Let's go back to SLARPG as an example, where I combined broad character archetypes I liked with more specific personal elements that I felt like I wasn't seeing enough in the fiction I liked. Melody is riffing on the common idea of the reserved healer character in the RPG or MMO party and the shy girl archetype, but she's the main hero instead of a supporting player in another person's story, and she's also a fat bisexual trans woman who draws a lot of little details from my own life. Her interests, her relationships, her opinions on things, her personal hangups and dreams, these all set Melody apart from other fantasy healer characters and define her as Melody Amaranth. Specificity!

But it doesn't always have to be super deep, especially if you just want some characters to draw for fun and aren't planning on writing a story with them. Take my fursona. I've always loved dogs, so I made my fursona a dog. I chose a Samoyed in particular because I think Samoyeds are the cutest, and I hadn't seen hardly any anthro Samoyed OCs at the time. I leaned into the breed's signature fluffiness to help my fursona stand out from other canine OCs. She has simple identifying traits like being fat like me, wearing glasses like mine, and having a hairstyle kinda like mine (when I tied my hair up in a bun, at least). And there you go. Fursona achieved. She's not a wildly high concept character, but she doesn't need to be

Anyway I realize that this is mostly about the writing aspect, so here's a few quick bullet points about designing a character's appearance:

Face and body type variety are good, but personally I would say lack of body type variety is worse than same face syndrome

Knowing some stuff about shape language is good, but you don't have to be completely beholden to the "circles are friendly, squares are sturdy, triangles are scary" shit. I'm generally more interested in using repeated shaping in different parts of a character's design as sort of a shape motif. Melody's body, hair, and tail are all made of round, swooping shapes, for example. (This is more applicable if you're designing cartoonier characters as opposed to realistic humans, obviously.)

Knowing some basics of color theory is also good. I like using complementary and contiguous color schemes on characters and generally try not to use too many distinct colors on one design. Black and white and grey and various browns are good as neutral colors to balance out the colors of the rainbow, and gold can be a nice accent color

A small handful of identifying accessories can be fun, but don't rely on those to make a design stand out. Ideally your character should still be identifiable even when not wearing their default outfit, or even in silhouette

Aaaaaand I'm gonna call it a wrap there! This is a huge topic, so hopefully this helps with at least some of the basics! At the end of the day, though, don't beat yourself up if you can't sit down and force yourself to come up with the most crazy awesome OC ever. Just have fun and be yourself!

[alltheselights]

i still think about this blog post all the time

We don’t really know anything about One Direction. You can look at a hundred thousand pictures of someone and still not understand what it is like to be in the same room as them. You can be in the same room with them, watch them cavort onstage or even interact with them personally, and still know nothing about who they are. You can research meticulously, write a hundred thousand words about the heat rising off their skin and the quickenings of their heart, and still never touch the truth of what they are feeling, what they have felt. We cannot reach their truths if they choose not to tell them to us.

They’ve learned to be guarded, and thank goodness for that, since this world is so hungry for access to them. The demands of celebrity, the difficulty of navigating a public life as well as a private one — it’s enough to warrant another essay altogether. Suffice it to say that when myths are at play, insisting upon truth is dangerous. Believe in them, if you want; believe they’re yours, but don’t believe they’re yours alone, and don’t believe you hold their secrets.

See, at this point, the truth — the capital-T Truth of One Direction — is mostly meaningless. We actually do know One Direction — it’s just that we know them as characters, as archetypes, as the stuff of stories. Lazy journalists like to talk about how rock stars are worshipped like gods but it is true that One Direction form a kind of five-point pantheon, a collection of figures with their own known attributes and traits that come together to be all-powerful. We’d recognize their symbols anywhere, well enough to ace a pop quiz: To whom is the banana sacred? Who is known alternately as the possum and the lion? Which member would you call upon for the lifting of a heavy object? We know that Zayn is as both as beautiful as Aphrodite and as merry as Pan; we understand that Niall is the heart of the band the same way we know Yggdrasil lives at the center of the world. They become stories so easily, cast and recast again into new shapes, fitted against existing stories to gain new perspectives. Their smallest moves become metaphors. Their grandest gestures can be enough to anchor us to a new day.

We’ve already heard this week about how One Direction has a unique capacity to awaken anew a sense of wonder and joy in the universe, to ease pain and to diminish wrongs. When I say One Direction is a myth, what I mean is: One Direction, like any good myth, help us tell stories about ourselves to ourselves. One Direction help us unravel the great mystery and terror of being alive in the universe. One Direction help us make sense of the shapes of things, help us see what a person can be or could be or could embody: luck, strength, charm, joy, grace. We adorn our bodies in honor of them, we paste icons of them on our walls. We whisper and shout and sing their words, in the good times and in the bad ones. They are for us, and we can always rely on their magic. They’ll be gone someday, of course, but that doesn’t mean they will be really gone; Troy fell thousands of years ago and my high school mascot was still the Trojans. One Direction will part ways and pass from this earth, as everything eventually must, but who knows the last time a mother will turn to her daughter and whisper once more the ancient proverb: “They were just normal guys, but terrible, terrible dancers.”

[mareastrorum]

I love villains, and I especially enjoy Brennan Lee Mulligan’s take on them. His version of Asmodeus in EXU Calamity and Downfall really highlights the reasons why.

A villain is the embodiment of the wrong conclusion. They aren’t always an antagonist; they aren’t necessarily meant to obstruct the protagonist of a story. Hell, they might even be helpful. Villains don’t even have to be evil, per se, they just have to be on the wrong path in the context of the story.

Asmodeus is a brilliant villain and as evil as it gets. He’s the Father of Lies, and he indulges in it deliciously. The lies are always half truths so that the protagonist fills in the blanks with assumptions and gets it wrong. He matches their energy to give them what they want to hear. He plays along with naivety and hope. He doesn’t take anything from people other than lives; they give the rest willingly because they want to believe him. Asmodeus finally reveals his deception when he has someone cornered because he wants them to know they did it to themselves. Asmodeus wants everyone he hurt to come to the realization that “I knew better and let this happen anyway.” He did it to Vespin Chloras, Zerxus Ilerez, and Sarenrae.

From EXU Calamity episode 4, after Zerxus realizes he’s been had:

Asmodeus is the embodiment of the desire to punish, and he’s the villain because he’s wrong. That mentality is rooted in hatred. He is convinced that everyone deserves eternal torment, and he wants everyone to agree with that conclusion.

The purpose of Asmodeus is that we shouldn’t inflict punishment based on some idea that the person deserved it. Yes, revenge and victory feel good. Yes, there are often valid reasons to be angry or defensive. Yes, we can come up with a reason to justify punishment. But hurting people because they deserve it is exactly what Asmodeus does. There is always a way to rationalize that someone deserves punishment—so the right answer is that this feeling cannot be a sufficient reason to do harm. That isn’t good enough.

It’s so easy to say “they deserve it” when we know the end result is that Aeor will be destroyed and the surviving legacy is ruins full of monsters. It feels good when we think people deserve to suffer and then we get to see it happen. It feels righteous.

Vespin Chloras deserved to be remembered as a traitor because he was arrogant enough to think he could replace Asmodeus—in an age where another mage already replaced the god of death and yet another mage created a machine that killed two primordials. Zerxus Ilerez deserved to be a thrall of Asmodeus because he chose to take up the mace and contributed to the problems that got him in that dilemma—because he so fervently believed that under all that hatred was a person who needed a chance to change his mind. Sarenrae deserved to lose her followers because she decided to trust the Father of Lies—because she loved her brother and offered him mercy.

It’s so easy to conclude that someone deserves pain. Asmodeus is here to remind us specifically that it’s not the right way to handle anything.

Asmodeus is also a rather effective villain because he is supposed to be irredeemable. Archetypal villains are wonderful tools for setting audience expectations. Whether Brennan plays that straight or decides to subvert it, there isn’t as much work needed to persuade us that Asmodeus is that evil or cruel. We already believe that he’s capable of doing the worst things imaginable. Toying with those expectations is a great storytelling exercise.

Asmodeus didn’t shock us in EXU Calamity because we didn’t expect him to be evil. He was shocking because he is such a skillful liar that we wanted to believe him. It would be such a satisfying story that a well-meaning paladin was the first person to show kindness to the Father of Lies and managed to atone him. Brennan’s portrayal made us want that subversion so badly even though we knew better. Asmodeus lured us into the same trap as the characters, and then we saw the outcome: punishment—because Asmodeus will use any reason to justify it and every opportunity to inflict it.

In Downfall, Brennan could have easily rationalized that the protagonists wouldn’t agree to the truce if Asmodeus was on the infiltration team. The audience would have absolutely found that plausible. He didn’t have to be here. The decision to include Asmodeus on the side of the protagonists gives us a heads up that the story will grapple with questions about punishment.

What do I need to see before I am justified in destroying a city with no survivors? Do I have to concern myself with bystanders? Do the fearful deserve to die for choosing to oppose me? Don’t they deserve it for creating such objectionable technology and magic? Don’t I deserve the chance to live without fear of those lesser than myself? Don’t they deserve to die for corrupting those I loved? Don’t they deserve it for being loved more than me?

Why isn’t hatred a good enough reason to hurt someone?

Again, villains are tools to highlight the wrong conclusions. Asmodeus is involved to highlight that the desire for punishment isn’t a sufficient reason to destroy Aeor. The other characters, villains or not, are here to show us what other justifications there might be. Their interactions are going to brush across these themes over and over again.

I fucking love villains, and no one plays a villain quite like Brennan does.

[tumblingxelian]

Near Uniquely RWBY - Main Characters

I was chatting with my sibling the other day and we were joking about the fact in 90% of the media I consume I generally don't like the main characters.

Not in the sense I necessarily hate them, but I generally don't find them to be the most interesting, engaging or enjoyable person on screen or page. Instead I tend to gravitate towards secondary or minor characters and even minor antagonists before any of the big names.

Some of this is rooted in my often rooting for what tends to feel more like a real underdog or characters that feel like they got dealt a bad hand by the author unfairly. But its also that in a lot of media the main characters tend to immediately, slowly or quickly go into personality lockdown.

Becoming less a personality and more the embodiment of expected tropes and themes, or they lose their unique edge or circumstances because the plot demands one benefits or personality changes be heaped on them to keep the tone and story going.

Some examples of this would include say:

Ichigo from Bleach, with him and his supporting cast being very unique and super interesting during the initial arc. But as Soul Society came in, he became a much more standard Shounen determinator a the expense of his personality and his supporting casts were largely watered down & left behind.

Or how in Naruto or Dragon Ball the whole underdog/hard worker aspect of the characters felt undercut by legacy power ups and an endless wellspring of natural talent, alien biology, ETC.

I know these are just two examples, but they cover the general gist of what I mean.

So, what makes RWBY different?

Well, off the cuff, is simply that the four main characters are women.

I've often felt simply putting anyone other than a cis-het guy into the main character slot of say, a battle Shounen, or Isekai stands a good chance of making it more interesting by default. Even if the author does nothing with it the audience reaction would be different because the MC would be an exception to the norms.

In that vein, while one can call RWBY some sort of Shounen or adventure fantasy or magical girl show the main four are unique in how they manifest on screen at the very start. From how they participate in action, to how said action is structured and framed and the kind of adventures and topics they tackle.

But being unique alone is not enough, that would simply make it more interesting than the bog standard but what elevates RWBY is the execution and exploration of such elements and its characters.

Going into every aspect would be difficult, but in light of what I said above would be how each of the main four are initially presented as familiar archetypes, only to subvert or deconstruct them.

Ruby is a peppy goth who just wants to be normal but has inborn powers from her mysteriously vanished mother and serves as a beacon of optimism to others.

Except Ruby's version of normal still involved fighting death monsters with a sniper rifle scythe and she is actually one of the more ruthless characters. Her peppy persona obscures that she can have a pretty vicious temper when pushed and has displayed strong bloodknight tendencies.

Her unrelenting optimism and desire to fix the world is a complex mix of true beliefs, coping mechanism for trauma and her grappling with positions forced on her against her will. Her inborn power is potentially useful but also not that much of a game breaker outside specific contexts & said power sure as hell didn't save her mom.

Weiss Schnee is the Tsundere heiress of a powerful family, with a haughty attitude that hides her loneliness.

Except the "Tsundere" is more of a defense mechanism born of coming from an abusive home where every member of her family manifested a different trauma response. Freeze (Mother), flight (Sister), Fight (Weiss) Fawn (Brother).

Despite her upbringing & some projected trauma, she's far from ignorant as to the worst excesses of her nation early on, and her journey was more about overcoming the impacts her abuser had on her and finding a family in her team that let her be safe enough to let down her walls. Also despite being "The ice queen" she's actually one of the characters least inclined towards more ruthless actions and is extremely empathic.

Blake Belladonna is a mysterious and silent rougish woman, something of a shrinking violet even, but she carries with her a wounded heart thanks to her old flame, the edgy Adam Taurus.

Or more accurately, Blake is the daughter of activists and politicians who represent the worlds main discriminated against minority. She spent her youth on the road as a protestor and where even her father could be nearly killed by a lynch mob. She was targeted & groomed by a man who claimed to want to fight the same injustice she did but who was only interested in using the movement to grow his own power.

Her initial aloof-ness was a trauma response to having spent years under his thumb and overcoming him and the idea she had to 'save' him was one of the main corner stone so her character. Also, despite the "Revolutionary fighter" backstory she like Weiss is much less inclined towards ruthlessness than her team in large part because her past experience with it.

Yang Xiao Long, introduced as the fun loving big sister of Ruby & boisterous bruiser of the team who loves to party & flirt.

Except no, Yang was parentified as a child and forced to raise her own sister as their family unit fell apart. Her "Party girl" persona was outright framed as judging a book by its cover in her own trailer and something she put on or took off as she needed.

She became disabled over the course of the series run as well as entered a Sapphic romance with her partner Blake. Unlike the stereotype of characters with her design, Yang is actually an excellent student, fighter and engineer/mechanic. Plus much like her sister she tends to be of the more ruthless and pragmatic persuasion despite being from the "Normal" background.

Character Conclusion

So, all the characters break out of their initial archetypes, which already makes them more interesting. What's more, these sorts of characters just being oput together and made the main characters rather than circling a dude is in of itself unique.

But there are other aspects of the writing which endear me to how it handles the main characters and what keeps them interesting.

Anger & Violence

See, while in various media women do express anger at times it is still often far less so than men. What's more, often women's anger tends to be presented in... Less flattering lights.

With the anger obscuring fragility while in a man it conveys strength. Or implying a sort of hysteria rather than an appropriate or controlled response. Or worst of all being demonized in general unless its rooted in or coming from traditionally feminine places.

The same tends to be true when it comes to violence with a lot of media either trying to find some way to make women in battle less... Brutal than their male counterparts. (More more like fanservice) Along with rarely letting women fight men, unless they are a special exception to the norm.

RWBY does not do this.

The main characters, hell, all the women in the series express a multitude of different forms of anger and violence. They battle men, they battle each other, they battle monsters all with no distinction nor fanservice shot in sight.

What's more though is that said anger and violence are not presented as, for lack of better words, wrong. The writers don't draw overt attention to this fact, they don't hang a big sign up saying "Girls can fight & shout too" or the like.

They just present these women with a range of emotions, motives and actions that are treated according to what fits the theme of the show rather than hewing closer to gendered lines.

This isn't to say anger & violence are lionized, but more that the experience and usage of them is not demonized or undermined because of the characters gender.

I suppose what I am saying is that CRWBY by and large lack double standards when it comes to exploring these things that I see so often in other media. The women in the main cast, among the villains, both sides respective allies and beyond can be flawed, or angry or do both good and terrible things.

But the writers are always treating everyone's pain as equally valid regardless of gender or situation. Which means that the situations that cause anger exist within a tone of respect that forms the depiction and framing of anger itself.

Which is just something I really enjoy.

Thanks for reading!