X-COM THINK TANK (Out of Character Discussion about X-COM and the Series)
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Quazer Flame
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Wow... This went sour FAST.
Just go crazy the skies are endless.
Quazer Flame
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Am I allowed to reuse Michael Angel? I didn't get to do anything with him at all.
I would figure so
PrismaCube
Well-Known Member
Best if you start reading books, if you read a ton of books you increase you mind when it comes it imagen things, such as will be soldier be male or female what will they look like and why. Then make a chart about your character listing all the things that you know about him. Add both bad and good things, it fleshes out the character. Once you've got the basics down you can thing of the bachstory. Where are they born, what natinaloty do they have. Family and childhood life. Teenage life and adult life before XCOM. Make sure that all your desicions have reason behind them. Saying your dude blinks with the left eye and then the right eye without giving a proper reason to it seems either mysterious or a not so well planned character. Anyway thats just some basic help that I can give ;D Hope this helped, its the short and fast version of how I would plan a character with backstory.
Adrammalech
Well-Known Member
My advice for rookies making a new character is to pick a fictional character from a franchise you like, study them, and base something off that. These characters are already usually balanced between good traits and bad flaws, and are engineered to be empathetic or likable. By seeing how flaws and traits interact, you can start to color a background for them. Take Miranda from ME2, "the Loyalist": her major flaw is that she's insecure. Why is she insecure? Because she was unwillingly genetically enhanced. Why was she enhanced? Because her family wanted to use her. From this, you can determine why she puts a disproportionate amount of trust into her employers - because she doesn't trust who a normal person would (their family). Understanding rippling effects from certain, vague traits and events allows you to craft a more complex psychology that makes sense without explicitly saying "this character is this way because of this".
Example: If you want to make someone who is reckless and impulsive, they should have little immediate care for their own lives. There are multiple ways you can make this work. You can have them suffer a devastating loss of someone very close, like a sibling or spouse that makes them skeptical for a happy future without them. If they were traumatized in combat in some way, they could have survivor's guilt, or an overriding quest for revenge. They could offer suffer a string of major failures (like dishonorable discharge, shaming family, etc.), to the point where their will to be redeemed overrides their will to survive.
After the traumatic event that made them who they are, the newfound impulsiveness should be hardened by military or security experience, or continued personal trauma. i.e. an unarmed teenager who saw their mother killed in front of them might have an emotional quest to kill the person who did it, but a gunshot whizzing by their ear or hitting them will likely quickly snap them back into their survival instincts. A 10 year veteran with the same backstory who has pried shrapnel from their body is more likely to continue charging recklessly until they're sated or floored.
Also, never write a character based off of yourself (or your friends, or your dream girl, etc). You can take inspiration from real life scenarios, but when it comes to character development, basing things off of real people in your life often leads to bias. Writing needs conflict, and conflict needs major flaws.
This was also longer than I expected it to be.
Example: If you want to make someone who is reckless and impulsive, they should have little immediate care for their own lives. There are multiple ways you can make this work. You can have them suffer a devastating loss of someone very close, like a sibling or spouse that makes them skeptical for a happy future without them. If they were traumatized in combat in some way, they could have survivor's guilt, or an overriding quest for revenge. They could offer suffer a string of major failures (like dishonorable discharge, shaming family, etc.), to the point where their will to be redeemed overrides their will to survive.
After the traumatic event that made them who they are, the newfound impulsiveness should be hardened by military or security experience, or continued personal trauma. i.e. an unarmed teenager who saw their mother killed in front of them might have an emotional quest to kill the person who did it, but a gunshot whizzing by their ear or hitting them will likely quickly snap them back into their survival instincts. A 10 year veteran with the same backstory who has pried shrapnel from their body is more likely to continue charging recklessly until they're sated or floored.
Also, never write a character based off of yourself (or your friends, or your dream girl, etc). You can take inspiration from real life scenarios, but when it comes to character development, basing things off of real people in your life often leads to bias. Writing needs conflict, and conflict needs major flaws.
This was also longer than I expected it to be.
Suryce
Game Master
Why not? Personal experience is usually described as a good fuel for fiction. Of course, you have to be able to sort things out correctly, but that's kind of a necessary skill for a writer anyway. Personal experience may even be necessary for the writing of certain types of characters (people with different genders, skin colors, validity, etc, live very different lives), or else be replaced with a lot of research. There was two applications for transsexual characters for season 4, and at least one of them was clearly written by someone with neither personal experience nor who had done any extensive research on the subject. The character's bio was kind of incoherent.
On the subject of writing a bio, I would make a similar advice: to make things relevant. I remember seeing an application with a bio describing in details the life of the character as a teen, with him/her forming a band and stuff, but it didn't seem to have any relevance to the rest of the character's story, especially to why they became a soldier or a XCOM operative.
As a counter-example, if you look at Rebecca's bio, you can see that every explained part of her life plays a major role on why she became who she is. She became a mafia leader because she was a child soldier, and she becomes a XCOM operative because she needs a deal from XCOM to continue her shady activities and can easily be blackmailed because of her past as a child soldier.
In my opinion, writing a story is all about linking things together. Find ideas you like, then link them together to give them relevance and coherence.
Now, to finally give my take on the main subject, my own recommendation for quick inspiration, if you like anime, would be to take a look at a series called Jormungand. It has a whole cast of main characters with various nationalities and military backgrounds (with a few spies, mafioso, and arms dealers in the mix) and almost everybody gets an arc delving on their past. There are a lot of ideas to take from it
Adrammalech
Well-Known Member
Well, there can be a fine line between personal experience and personal insert. Like I said, you can usually take inspiration from events, provided you can look at them from multiple perspectives. Like, if you went on vacation to the Bahamas and got pickpocketed by a homeless kid, you could write a situation based on that. An honest testimony from a transgendered friend about trials they go through could be useful as well, as long as you don't color someone's entire personality based solely on that.
It's writing a character's personality and psychology based on yourself or someone you like that things become murky. More experienced writers might be able to write characters based on themselves or others, but rookie writers may wind up accidentally writing an idealized version of someone with insufficient flaws (or flaws that are internally perceived as excusable or positive). i.e. if you write a highly sarcastic person based on yourself or your best friend, you may not realize that some people would find them unlikable or arrogant. If you write an excessively shy person based on yourself, you may not have some people perceive them as standoffish.
It's far easier (and probably healthier) to craft a person's personality detached from yours and say "people like them for X reason, others hate them for Y reason" than it is to write a person who is basically yourself and accurately say "people like me for X reason, others hate me for Y reason".
EDIT: And I agree with this:
I'd like to add to that in response to this:
My advice when it comes to disorders and the like in the scope of this RP is to remember that the application is essentially you (or even worse, a neutral recruiter) selling you to a military organization. No matter how positive or useful it's made out to be, untreated DID or MPD probably wouldn't fly well with a military commander trying to hire people that keep calm in extreme duress. That's not to say it can't be part of your character, but it should be alluded to (i.e. "psych evaluations/squad reviews say they often act like completely different people") more than outright said "this person has DID/MPD". It would make your character seem a little more realistic, and add some mystery to them between application and journals.
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Vlakvark
New Member
I understand what you're saying, and I know that you tempered your position by separating basing characters off people you know, and simply inserting an idealized version of yourself or somebody you know, but I still have to disagree that one ought to avoid it. For example, my character bio for Season 5 is based off myself (mostly my name but some of my personality, flaws and all, as well), as well as my Father and older Brother because they both served in Angola in the 1980's and I am intimately familiar with what it's like to be an African, like my character. So I think if a rookie writer can swing a story where they are the star, and keep it compelling and not some poorly written fanfic, I'd say they should go for it.
I could not agree with this more. I really don't like it when people just toss some random mental disorder in for "quirkiness" or "characterization" and just treat it like some catch-all excuse for a character's idiosyncrasies. Especially if it's in a military setting. However, I do agree that if people understand what it is they're doing, then it can give an interesting angle to the character. Like my season 5 character still suffers from PTSD (despite having therapy and medication) due to the horrible things he did during the Apartheid era and later, but instead of turning him into some kind of blood-crazed psychopath, he instead has become far more emotionally fragile than any mentally-well person ought to be.
PrismaCube
Well-Known Member
Stop writting so much text, I'm in no mood to read them right now and even less of a mood when I have to read them all
Adrammalech
Well-Known Member
This is mainly what I'm warning against, a rookie writer might not know the difference between something compelling and a poorly written fanfic. I think it's something best approached once you have some experience and critique in character development under your belt. That's just my two cents, though.
Stop writting so much text, I'm in no mood to read them right now and even less of a mood when I have to read them all
But it's an interesting conversation
My eyes are bleeding lolThis is mainly what I'm warning against, a rookie writer might not know the difference between something compelling and a poorly written fanfic. I think it's something best approached once you have some experience and critique in character development under your belt. That's just my two cents, though.
But it's an interesting conversation
PrismaCube
Well-Known Member
Well since April Fools is already over where I'm, means that you are telling the truth and I congratulate you
Gahlo
Active Member
I'd hope so. The joke was so she wouldn't think I was serious when I did it. Her face was hilarious when she realized I wasn't kidding.Well since April Fools is already over where I'm, means that you are telling the truth and I congratulate you
PrismaCube
Well-Known Member
Wow this is just amazing!
Edit: Man I'm so excited xD This made me happy, I can just imagine it. Oh my god, I'm a to sensitive guy xD Congrats again man
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Frostlich1228
Well-Known Member
BMPixy
Well-Known Member
Dahlexpert
Well-Known Member
Graylinesgaming bringing people together to role play,And apparently bringing in lovers.
but in all seriousness congratulations,hopefully this is real and not some April fools joke.
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