rpanons | Do your taxes

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Be honest with me, guys: how much would you side-eye or just have completely no interest whatsoever in a character that is pretty standard-looking straight white male on a first glance just on the basis that he's SWM? Because I actually find this particular character setup really interesting to play.

For me, there's a challenge in writing a character like this because it seems pretty easy to fill up a character background/persona with a lot of weird shit and flaws and quirks and a crazy detailed fictional setting, but a lot harder to take a character that is representative of a nonfictional majority and is otherwise pretty nondescript, and somehow make him interesting. And then I run into people who go 'bawww poor suburban middle class white man has ~problems~' or 'I'm never going to tag a whitebread-looking character because they're so boring'.

real people have flaws and quirks. Someone that's only a representative of the average or majority isn't really that much of a person at all because everyone's always going to have SOMETHING that places them on the far end of the bell curve.

I'm not saying an unflawed character, I'm saying starting from a character background that is pretty unremarkable and building someone from there. I'm just trying to figure out how to build that without coming off as glorifying the existence of the boring white man, because I've noticed that this is a Thing nowadays and I want to avoid doing that.

idk, I guess the best thing you can do is just...don't glorify him? portray him as a person with strengths and weaknesses that just happens to come from the "average" background. He'll probably have times where he assumes stupid stuff because of his background--let him, and don't portray that as a good thing, just a blind spot of his.

if people accuse you of glorifying him when you're just treating him as an average person, well, they're the ones that have issues, not you.

Thanks, that's helpful. It's kind of hard for me to figure out a balance because I don't have much experience with that background (I don't even live in the US), I just think it's an interesting character setup with a really wide range of potential paths. Mostly, I'm trying to tread carefully because I know people get touchy about this.

appearance-wise, i like it if the character looks interesting or has a variety of expressions. part of "looks interesting" does mean that a visibly-minority character may snag my interest at first just because they're uncommon, but i don't actively prefer them and they still have to sustain my interest beyond "oh look an X".

design-wise, i care more if the character has a decent concept, engaging personality and well-designed background.

are people saying "baw whities" to your face, or in places you stumble across?

I've never been called out on this directly, but a lot of people around me (including RP buddies) complain about the abundance of SWM in fiction, and discussions about this have bled into RP.

I think I've actually been less likely to have sustained interest with a character that made me go 'oh look X!' because it's easy to bank on an obvious gimmick that makes them stand out, only to find out that they're actually not really well-developed past that.

unless you suspect your rp buddies of trying to passive-aggressively snipe your characters i wouldn't worry about it too much. there's a difference between fiction media and pretending to be fake people for fun.

you'll never get all the people to love all your ocs all the time. if you're still concerned you could ask your friends to critique your oc, but you're better served by focusing on making a good character than worrying that someone somewhere might not tag you.

You're probably right in that I might just be reading too much into things, I guess. Mostly, I'm trying to have a solid, fleshed out character while still trying to be sensitive about certain character traits just because a lot of his background is grounded in reality, rather than a fictional world.

i don't know your rp buddies, so i can't guess at whether they're being PA or not. you're the best judge of that. otherwise, sounds like you're taking a good approach. godspeed, oc player.

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