What Draws You To Your Character?

[eightfoldfiend]

Hey, it's a not-meme.

One thing I always find fascinating in this hobby is what draws people to the characters they play so this is me asking you that.

What drew you to your characters? What do you find fun about them? What aspects of them do you find easy or difficult?

For OCs, talk about how you came up with the idea for them and why you wanted to give them a spin in this hobby.

Read, converse, ask questions!

You can answer in list form, prose form, whatever form you're most comfortable with and with as much or as little detail as you want.

Comments

[hitokiri]

OH SHIT I LOVE THIS OK HAHA

Jongdae was originally just a shitpost character lmao. I used to play a very serious, very buttoned up character back in a time where our MMO RP had a very large and active twitter RP community (as in all the OCs in the game and even the company-played lore characters had IC twitter accounts) and I wanted a character to shitpost in that environment and so I came up with Jongdae.

Also a friend of mine at the time wanted to RP specifically as our characters working for a faction you can't technically be a part of (Orochi) but they could be ICly and I didn't want to play like an agent type deal so I ended up coming up with the whole test subject bit and it kind of just blew up from there. I really like playing characters who are a bit of a blank slate and get to explore. He's difficult only when I can't really find the energy for his voice and occasionally when I dig into more emotional stuff with him but mostly because his backstory can get pretty heavy and that's more an OOC concern of mine that I don't want to make other people have to put up with that much haha. I have to make sure I have a clear green light before I'll unload all the traumatic deep lore on someone lmao.

Which brings me to Ledo because he's almost exactly the same way! For a long time I didn't think I could RP Ledo and Jongdae both because I thought they were too similar (because they look alike and both have that "no real world experiences" backstory thing) but I'm an idiot and they're really? ??? NOT AT ALL ALIKE ???

I have a lot of fun thinking about how he'll perceive something or react to something new and even more than Jongdae he is just... purely the product of his CR and experiences and I think that's what I have the most fun with with this kind of character and I especially love getting to have CR with unusual characters or odd situations I never could have imagined or planned for! I also really like fight-y boys with a good heart who may or may not have committed some atrocities hehe.

Which brings me to my latest which is Izō who I literally in the past week or so was just like ???? why am I so obsessed with this idiot. Because he didn't seem like my type AT ALL other than the fact that my original draw to him was that I liked his look and I love asshole types lmao. Digging into his story though I can see where the hooks are for me. It's super fun just to write how he is with his attitude and how he speaks — which with the newness of his voice is still tricky for me and I second guess myself CONSTANTLY — but also I'm looking forward to getting to explore his issues (trust issues... betrayals... etc.) and also I can't lie, I have a soft spot for self-destructive types and people who cope badly as that basically describes every character I've ever played but Izō is especially both of those things.

Give me all the trauma boys hhhhhh.

[eightfoldfiend]

Look trauma boys are the best, just saying.

And I appreciate that Jongdae started as a shitpost character. Honestly my Warrior of Light OC from FFXIV started the same way, lol.

[leicesters]

What MMO does Jongdae come from? That's wild to me that there were official twitter rp accounts.

[hitokiri]

The Secret World / Secret World Legends. At one point there were accounts for the heads of the different secret societies and also the Buzzing which is the literal hive mind that your character's a part of if they become a Bee and sometimes before an event or something would launch the Buzzing would tweet some cryptic message or picture especially back when they did some reveals via like augmented reality games and stuff. IT WAS SO COOL and a shame Funcom blew it with the IP but I guess it's a nice sandbox to play in porting it elsewhere like this lmao

[owarifool]

btw if you haven't yet, i *highly* recommend the NHK drama Ryoumaden, as Izo is a central character in it and it gives even more context on his life and his relationships (though it takes at least a *few* small liberties with historical fact).

[hitokiri]

I have not but THANKS VERY MUCH for the recommendation I'll have to check it out! And probably will very soon since I've just been consuming all the content lately. Do you know if it might've been based on the Ryotaro Shiba 'RYOMA!' novel? I know FGO and some other stuff that's had fictionalised versions of them have pulled a lot from that novel so I wouldn't be surprised!

[owarifool]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dmaden it's not based on that novel, though, but it was hugely popular (and masaharu fukuyama's performance as ryouma had informed a ton of interpretations since then, including Fate's)

you'll need some VPN magic to get it working on the legal places you can watch it, but lacking that, there's uh. less savory places to find it, but that comes with a "browse at your own risk" warning.

[hitokiri]

Oh, awesome! I was gonna read it anyway since it's available in English and hope that one day they'll translate the one about Izō himself the same author wrote but I'll take any and all adaptations! I feel like I'm thriving considering with my last canon character we're really out here sifting for crumbs because there's very little to work with.

Good to know on the VPN angle too!

[owarifool]

also on a more just fandom-centric note, if you can find a translated playthrough of the Yakuza Ishin game, he's in that too, and *it's great*, but it's mostly because he's represented by Nishikiyama, and the parallels of Nishi's relationship with Kiryu with Izo's and Ryouma's is just

chef's kiss.

[morns]

we love all your trauma boys. and i definitely feel that "UH I don't really want to dump this trauma on people but also..." dilemma. u_u