#tl;dr: focus more on the visual aspects of the character and their hobbies and preferences

[artsyaprilmr]

Hi there! If you're comfortable talking about it, I'd love to hear more about your process creating Armenian OCs 😊 I've been wanting to incorporate more cultural aspects into my characters (particularly in a fantasy context, like dungeons & dragons) but I'm a bit lost about where to start. Ty! 🙏🏻

Hi! When making an OC, I work on 1. Name, 2. Appearance, 3. Personality and 4. Background. The process is the same for all of my OCs, though armenian OCs are influenced by my own experience and life more than the others :^) I go into more details under the cut!

If my main goal is the representation of cultural elements (ESPECIALLY in a fantasy setting), I focus mostly on naming and appearances. On the other hand, for characters that exist in a world similar to ours background would be much more important. I could explain the logic behind this too, but this would turn into a HUGE text and I'm trying to get to the point as efficiently as possible lol

I tried to keep this as short as possible, so if you'd like any clarifications or have any more questions, feel free to send me another ask or a dm! <333

But let's get back to fantasy! So, if I'm making an armenian coded character in a fantasy setting, I always go for an ethnic name. I feel like non-common (by western standards) names fit really well in fantasy worlds. You can also get away with using old/very traditional names because of this imo.

Appearance, like facial features, clothes and hairstyles also help to bring some parts of the real culture into a fantasy world. With facial features you have to be very mindful to not make a caricature on accident. Despite being armenian I am not safe from this also - I have to think not only about the way I perceive the character, but also about how others perceive them too. For example, Minas (my PC for da:tv and bg3) originally had a big, hooked nose and a unibrow, but I've decided to get rid of a unibrow because both of these features combined reminded me too much of some nasty caricatures about Caucasians I've seen in Russia. Despite there being real armenians, both men and women, who have both of these features, I didn't want to play into a widely spread stereotype and strengthen it with my presentation of the character.

With clothes I am also very mindful about NOT using 1 to 1 copies of actual traditional clothing - I personally find it to be in a poor taste. Clothes are a real part of someone's very real culture, treating them as a fancy thing for some fantasy wizard to wear is wrong, imo. Though elements of ensemble, its embroidery and a silhouette, jewelry and hairstyles are good things to use in a character design! I personally like mixing and matching different elements until I find something I like :^)

Other than names and appearances, if I want to hint at a character being armenian, I add traditional instruments, dances, weapons, foods, maybe even some armenian collocations or words for them to use. In a fantasy world their personality can be whatever I want it to be, just like their background. Because there's no Armenia in a fantasy world, it's important to remember that all the "armenian" characters are actually just armenian coded or armenian inspired. I basically let only the cultural aspects build and affect the character, and not the historic and social aspects (though when you're making an OC that exists in the real world, these aspects are EXTREMELY important).