#there is this idea that every baian is lazy (bahia is on north east)

[cepheusgalaxy]

Oh you're Brazilian, correct? *saw ur bio*

I was wondering if there's anything I should or shouldnt do when making a Brazilian OC.

Oh hi!

First of all, thank you for the ask :) I'm very happy you decided to make a brazilian oc, whatever is the reason (if any at all lol) 👍 Keep up the good work.

Now, generally, what you should avoid are the most common stereotypes assossiated with latin people in general (like the Latino Lover stereotype), and some specifically assossiated with us a lot:

The Soccer Player ("every brazilian [black] guy obv plays soccer"), the Samba Dancer ("every brazilian black girl dances samba"), the Sexy Brazilian (everybody has their preferences ig but try to step away from fetishization--also falls into the latino lover a little) and the Carnival Party Person ("brazil is a very big carnival party all of the time") are some examples of stuff you should avoid.

Some things I would advise you to consider aside from this are A. Their race, B. The area they're from and C. Cultural differences (I'm gonna list them in a bit).

I mention race here because a very common thing in Brazil, actually (at least if you don't consider the South/South East) is the miscigenation phenomena. Long story short, some centuries ago, the colonizers had an... "idea" of toning down the population of black people in the country, so interracial relationships were very incentivated to "breed" lighter skinned black people. Results: On this day, most brazilian people in the Northern areas are not 100% black, but very very mixed (like me). A lot of people have dark skin, though.

Now, the area where they are from would also play a big factor in the things you want to consider, because Brazil is big, so we generally divide it into five areas (this division was made in 1969 i think, by the IBGE--the brazilian institute of geography and statistics): The North, North East, Central West, South East and South. If you search for a map with this categorization you'll be able to see it.

Culturally, these areas are very different, but I'll go through them briefly here.

North - most of the indigenous folk are concentrated here (for many historical reasons) and here is also the Amazonic forest (a bit of it is in other countries' territorries but I don't remember exactly which). The demographic density (which is the amount of people per say, mile) is very sparse, and despiste it being the largest area out of the five it isn't the most populated. Indigenous cultural heritage is the strongest here.

Nort East - warmest area in the country. The majority of people here are black or brown (for a lot of other historical reasons i unfortunately can't go on about here but they are very interesting if you wanna search up) and African cultural heritage is the strongest here.

Central West - has a very little amount of states here, and also the Federal District--aka the capital, Brazilia (fun fact: Brazilia isn't localized in any state, like the capital used to be, it is separated, so that's why we say Brazil has 26 states + one federal district). I don't know a lot about this one, so I'm gonna rely on Google a little, but basically:

That's the only area that is not bathed by the Atlantic, so no sea here at all, and back in Colonization Days, it was a very explored area for mineration (one of the states here, Minas Gerais, was named because of that, fun fact). Most of the population here is white (50,5%) and brown [mixed race] (43%) source (wikipedia page for the Central West in portuguese).

South East - as we go down here, the areas start getting cooler and whiter. The biggest cities of the country are here: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. White population, as I said before, is strongly concentrated here, because Back In Colonization Days, a lot of europeans (mainly italians and germans i think, although i might be wrong on this one) migrated to there and the South because the climate is more like in Europe than in the northern areas. This is probably what most people think when they say 'Brazil' (that or the amazonic forest, ofc), because media wise, it covers mostly carioca Carnival (Carnival from Rio de Janeiro) or the super urban city of São Paulo. Fun fact: One of the Seven World Wonders, the Christ The Redeemer statue is located there, in the RJ.

South - smallest area in the country. There are literally just three states here. It's also the coolest area out of the five, and there is even snow here! The European heritage is very strong here, also because of the migration from a few centuries ago.

If you want more insight on a certain specific area for your character, I'd be very happy to help! :) I myself am from the North East, so I have the most information about that, tho.

Now about the cultural differences in general.

A few important things that really differ are:

The culinary (depends of the area, though: up north it will have more african and indigenous dishes, down south there will be more european dishes and stuff)

The climate (if your character is from the northern areas, they will have a hard time adapting to any cool areas they might be in now--in the North East we're used to an average 25º C, or 70º F, for example, so if things go cooler they're gonna want to be very warm)

The measurements (celsius degreees vs farhenheit, miles vs kilometers, centimenters vs feet and inches, etc.)

The calendar: In the South Hemisphere, unlike in the North Hemisphere, summer is on the last and first months of the year and winter is in the middle. Basically, the seasons are inverted up there in relation to here

The school year also works a bit differenly, for that matter: Janurary and the first week of February are summer vacations, and then the year starts. A few weeks later, we have a few more weeks off for Carnival, so no school then too, and *then* you could say the year actually starts. In June (winter), we have a 10-day break for São João festivities (at least in the North East because São João is a cultural "festival"--if that's the right word), and then summer break starts around the end of November or the end or December, depending on the exact school.

Oh yeah, and one more big difference your character might find strange assuming they're in the US or a similar country now: In Brazil we have a thing called SUS - the Unique Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde), which is a free health service for everybody, funded by taxes. I heard that in the US all medical care is private, so I wanted to highlight that in Brazil we have free public healthcare and then also the private hospitals, so that could cause some cultural chock, lol

Same thing for college: There are a lot of public universities. There are actually many differences between usamerican and brazilian education system, but the main ones are that.

If you have any further asks, feel free to send them, I'd love to go deeper into one single thing if you want it. Good luck with your oc <2