Cellerikun's Obnoxious Guide To Character Profiles

Cellerikun's Obnoxious Guide To Character Profiles

When I see a forum I might want to join, the first thing I do is head straight for the Accepted Characters board. Looking at some of the characters who are already in the game gives me an idea of what's expected of me as a player, as well as a rough familiarity with some of the names around board. It also lets me know whether or not I really want to write with any of these people.

And that's what character profiles are for! To let other people know who your character is, and who you are by extension. A good profile not only makes other people want to write with your character, it also makes your board look good to visitors who see it.

Welcome to my Obnoxious Guide to Characters and Character Profiles.

Let's start with the profile itself. Most profiles are broken down into a few basic sections: Member Information, Character Basic Info, Appearance, Personality, and History. Most people focus more heavily on one section than on others; some people don't focus on one area in particular, and some people fill every section with multiple paragraphs. So, let's take a look at these individual sections, and some do's and don'ts.

Member Information:

This is fairly simple; this is where you tell people things like your name, your age, your time zone or how often you'll be available. There's really only one place someone can drastically screw up here, and that's with their own name. It sounds stupid-- who screws up their own name, right?-- but it's true.

If the Member Name field of your profile looks like this:

"I'm (Name), but you can call me (nickname), (nickname), or (nickname)"

You have failed. Introducing yourself by multiple nicknames comes off as a desperate, immature cry for attention-- 'look at all these names I have, don't you want to use one?'-- and for those of us who can recognize patterns, a red flag for Sueism.

If you have an unusually long screen name and would rather be called by the short form, just put down the short form; if you absolutely must have both, then use the whole name with one short form in parantheses next to it.

Character Information

This is the meat of the profile, and it will be your primary venue for conveying information about him or her to the rest of your board or group. It's important for this section to be clear, concise, and well-developed. Let's take a look at the individual sections.

Name: Just read this if you really want my advice on names.

The only thing I can see in addition to that particular document is a little expansion on the appropriate of region specific names: the consideration for the native language.

Some languages don't have the same sounds as others; this is most commonly seen in disparities between English and Japanese, and the most notorious of these (and the one that inspires that insipid Japanese Golfer joke) is the fact that the English sounds for L and R are interchangeable in Japanese. What we know as Dragonball Z in English, written with Japanese characters, is Doragon Booru. The English dr- sound and al-sound simply don't exist.

This is why it's important to consider the native language of your game's setting. Most games I've seen tend to take place in English-speaking areas because it's easiest on the players; apart from consideration for differences in dialect and spelling (American vs. British vs. Australian English) there's not much to worry about, namewise. If your players can pronounce it, you're fine. But if you're writing in a setting that assumes a native language that your board does not actually speak (again, the most common of these is Japanese, though I have seen games that assumed the native language was French, Welsh, Gaelic, and Russian), then it will go a long way toward other people taking you seriously if you choose a name that uses sounds that the language actually has.

For instance, if your game takes place in modern Japan, don't give them a Greek myth name. Honjou Perseus not only sounds painfully stupid, it would also sound something like "Paasiyusu" in Japanese. Yeah, some stupid parents do give their kids stupid names, but all that means is that you've made a stupid parent of yourself if you give your character a name like this. Don't do it.

I found a gold medal offender of this particular trope; I still can't decide whether the character was supposed to be a joke or not, but this was a name for a high-school-aged Japanese boarding student, and winner of the first-ever Celleri-kun's Obnoxious Award For Worst Name Ever Conceived:

Iovuxÿoku Artaÿctes 'Slutboy' Siuruikraa

Totally unpronounceable? Check.
Obviously made up? Check.
Utterly inappropriate for the setting? Check-- the character is actually supposed to be Japanese.
Overabundance of punctuation marks? Check.
Unreasonable nickname? Check.
Really stupid name? Check, check, check and check.

(As a bonus, the character and the player share this name, including the moniker "slutboy" and two other nicknames, with an invitation to call them whatever you want.)

Enough said. Let's move on.


Age: Most games will have an age range specified for what's available as player characters; some games will require that all characters be over a common benchmark age (usually 13, 16, 18, or 21), though most don't apply an upper limit to that range. Some don't, and a character may be of any age at all.

Most players aren't interested in playing someone outside the 15-25 bracket. Those ten years are the only decade of anyone's life that is interesting enough to make a character from. Under 15 is too young to do anything fun and anything over 25 is too old to be interesting, so never, ever play anyone outside that bracket.

...

If your first thought was "What? That's crap, old folks and kids make awesome characters!" then congratulations, you have a brain. If you thought it was harsh but kind of agreed, then pay attention.

There is life both before and after high school and college. People don't mysteriously go away to college and then morph into mature adults who live celibate lives with boring families and day jobs who have nothing to contribute to a story. Before Freshman year, kids aren't just miniature clones of their parents who serve as trophies for what happens when Mommy and Daddy love each other very much.

Branch out. There is such a thing as the genius 12-year-old who goes to high school because she skipped kindergarten and first grade. There is such a thing as the 42-year-old claims adjuster who goes out at night on vigilante neighborhood watch crusades and explains it by saying he's having an affair with his secretary. Get creative, move out of the "under 25 and sexy" range.

Most people stick in that age range because they don't want to have unattractive characters. If the character is too young, the attractiveness factor turns creepy, and if they're too old, they worry that other players will think their character's attractiveness has faded.

My only advice for this outlook? Get less shallow.



Appearance:

Most people love the appearance portion of a character application. It's also self-explanatory; this is where you tell everyone what your character looks like. Since your character can basically look however you want them to (within the rules, anyway), just about anything can go here, but here are some basic outlines for stuff to avoid in this section:

Never, under any circumstances, describe your character in terms of other characters' perceptions, and never describe them in the second person. No, your character's lips are not, in fact, begging to be kissed. Her big, blue eyes do not make me or my character want to do things to her. His smile does not make me or my character weak in the knees and want to be his friend. You as a player have no control over how other characters will perceive yours, and presenting your character as having these qualities is a step to the left from god-moding. If you absolutely cannot describe your character without using such devices, then do not complain to the mods that another character doesn't see yours the way you wrote in your profile.

Avoid using overly-elaborate descriptions of their coloring; jewel metaphors for eye colors are so overused and cliche, they've become boring. It's better to use simple, concise phrases to accurately describe your character and give the other board members a clear mental image of what s/he looks like, rather than trying to glamorize hir with florid description. It's okay if your character has 'frizzy, honey-blond hair' rather than 'a rich mane of touseled ringlets the color of a slightly-overcooked sugar cookie.'

Don't concentrate just on the face and use words besides "slender", "athletic", "curves in all the right places", "voluptuous" (though if you must use that word, please spell it right), or "lean". Not everybody is a supermodel or man-diva with "perfect" proportions (that is, unusually tall and unnaturally thin). Some guys are tall and lanky and awkward, some girls are thin and petite and aren't especially well-endowed; some guys are broad-shouldered and stocky, some girls are well-endowed but very short and chubby. And for f***'s sake, if you're going to descibe your character as anorexic (BMI numbers count) then you damn well better be ready to roleplay an eating disorder.

Oh, and this just in: NOT EVERYONE IS GORGEOUS AND THAT'S AWESOME.

Steve Buscemi is way more interesting than Zac Efron.



History

This is how your character got to be the way s/he is. Again, this can be virtually anything, but here are some things to avoid. These are overused elements in backstories used to inject tragedy into a character's background, usually to give them a cosmetic twist without consideration for how such an event would actually change a person who experienced it, or the ramifications for anyone else who might be involved.

Rape/Sexual Abuse This is the big one. While I could go into an elaborate rant about how a throwaway rape backstory trivializes the problems experienced by people who are raped or sexually abused, I'll just take the simple route and say that it's overused. Most characters who are built on this idea are built to a) garner sympathy as a Mary Sue or b) give the character something to cry about in relation to sex, a common angst-injection, but the rape issue doesn't affect the character's self esteem or day-to-day life except during flamboyant emotional breakdowns. While this has fallen somewhat out of fashion, it's still prevalent.

Parental Death This is something of a close issue for me, as I personally lost a parent and a step parent when I was young, but I can safely say that most players who have the loss of a parent in their character's backstory only use it for one of two things without any regard for how it actually feels to lose a parent: to move a sexual abuse plot along, or to turn the sympathy knob up a notch. The more common and believable alternative to Parental Death is simply divorce, particularly in settings based in America. Or, you can go the really original route, and have the character's parents actually be alive, together, and supportive!

Forced Deviancy The most common offenders here are incest-for-profit and crossdressing. Mom wanted a girl and got a boy so she puts him in dresses, and inevitably he has no male gender identity and is, of course, turned homosexual by wearing skirts. Dad wants incest movies for his budding kiddie porn ring so makes his twin sons put on a show, but nothing bad ever comes of it for anyone, emotionally or legally, except to make the incest-boys amoral and sexy. I find that this is almost entirely the domain of male characters.

Unwitting Murder This one is Gary Stu's bread and butter. Gary Stu is commonly the victim of circumstances that make him lose control and buckle under the weight of his incredible powers. While overwhelmed by his own greatness, he frequently kills someone-- most often a parent and usually his mother-- or multiple someones, sometimes the entire population of his hometown. Ejected from his home, whether because he's the only survivor or because the survivors of his adolescent power-discharge have driven him away, he is wracked with guilt. The bulk of the issue with this one is that the character isn't actually at fault for the deaths he caused, and the goal of any character interaction afterward will be to get the character to realize that he doesn't need to torment himself with the guilt. Remember, the key here is that it's not his fault, and even though he may whine forever about his blood-stained hands, everyone knows they're actually clean. No flaws for Gary Stu!

Last Survivor This one might as well be the gold star on a Mary Sue's profile-- tragically, she's the only survivor of some cataclysmic event. Maybe her planet blew up. Maybe the rest of her super-unique species died off. Maybe it's a simple as a car crash that she, and only she, walked away from. Whatever it is, expect a lot of angsting about being left behind. It gets two gold stars if she has some kind of mysterious amulet from her bygone people.

Insta-Master The concept of the child prodigy who becomes incredibly proficient in something (usually the use of a particular weapon or a martial art) very quickly, usually without sufficient training. This is the kind of character who "was discovered at an early age to be talented" at something and then, like magic, they grow up and are world-class masters in the skill. No one is ever just okay at something; if the character was ever a talented pianist, they're capable of playing hours-long concerts at Carnegie Hall. If the character was ever a talented tumbler, they've got a spot on the player's favorite country's Olympic team. (Hint: most people aren't that good.) Some players like to cover that base with a throwaway line about tutors, but never mention anything about things that the character had to give up to concentrate on training.


A character's history is what makes them who they are, just like in real life. Their past is the sequence of events that brings them from the moment they were born to where they are at the start of the game, not a sequential shopping list of things that will make other people feel sorry for them and want to make it all better by being their friend.


Personality

An interesting character should be able to function as a whole person on their own. While it's important to give your character faults and flaws, it's equally important to give them flaws that are for them and not for the benefit of getting attention from other characters. Most people don't mope around whining about their problems to anyone who'll listen, and people who don't want to talk about something avoid talking about it, they don't drop cryptic hints about their past or deliver terse, melodramatic speeches about how much they don't want to talk about the shadows of what they've done.

More to the point, though, the first step to building a believable personality is consistency. A person can have conflicting layers to themselves (and most do)-- a hard, tough exterior with a sensitive inner self, or a cruel, sociopathic core underneath a glib, charming facade, just as examples-- but the main issue here is describing that personality in clear terms and then sticking with it.

For instance, how many times do we see "sweet and gentle and outgoing, but at times she can be cold and mean." That's completely contradictory. Everyone is capable of being sweet or mean if they want to be, but when you're describing a character's personality, you're not describing the full gamut of your character's emotional range. You're describing their general demeanor, how they usually act.

The problem with statements like these is that they're blowing hot and cold in the same breath, and the vague phrasing of "at times" means that they don't have to pin down when those times are. Whenever the player wants to write the character as being more forceful, they can, leading to an inconsistent character. Out Of Character stops meaning anything at that point, because their character is nebulous and fluctuates whenever the player feels like it. This can be a distinct symptom of Mary Sueism because it means Mary Sue's personality can change to be compatible with whoever she's talking to at the time, and thus no one will ever have a reason to not like her-- that way the player's ego is always intact and Mary Sue remains popular.

That's not to say that a conflicting description can't be helpful, so long as it's clear about what triggers the change in demeanor. In one case I saw a profile where the personality section read along the lines of "(He) is quiet and unassuming until you get to know him, and then he's assertive to the point of being annoying." Apparently this guy is fairly genial to everybody except his friends-- he's a dick to his friends. Whoever this guy is, he's Norm MacNormal in the daytime and Doosh Baggerson when he comes to your house to noisily eat greasy potato chips on your couch and and tell you that your drapes are ugly. And that's f***ing hilarious. I would love to read threads from that guy.

The important thing is clarity and consistency. Don't arbitrarily describe your character as having radically different personality traits if you can't explain them, or at least outline the conditions under which they change, and don't be afraid of slanting toward one end of the spectrum or the other. It's okay to have a character who isn't nice, and it's okay to have a character who isn't mean; don't try to compensate for one or the other by adding a conflicting aspect to their personality.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, "smiley" isn't a personality trait.


Bottom Line:

Don't be an attention whore.
Be clear and consistent.
Don't use your character as an avatar of yourself.


For public use on the internet, interwebz, innanetz and intertubes, just keep my name on it.