#idk I hope this was helpful and not just me rambling

[amphibious-thing]

Do you have any advice for historical fiction authors who want to try harder to use historical queer language without confusing the average reader? It's something that has been a challenge for me and I've been finding your posts helpful, but I was wondering if you had specific tips on how an author could write better queer histfic for the modern reader.

It can be difficult because it is a balance. You probably don't want to just dump a whole heap of molly slang on your reader all at once. But you also don't want your characters to feel disconnected from the real history of the period.

In regards to molly slang you do have to remember that it was somewhat unique to the subculture. Only people involved in the subculture would be familiar with a lot of the slang. So if you wanted to include a character that uses molly slang you could aways have a character who is not part of the subculture, or new to it, who would serve as and stand in for the audience. This way the explanation of slang words can be weaved into the story in a more organic way.

Of course 18th century queer language is much more than just molly slang. It's good to know what the words mean but also what kind of people would be using them and in what context. For example legal writings will talk about sodomy and sodomites while a casual conversation might be more likely to talk about mollies.

While you don't want to overwhelm the reader you also don't want to underestimate them. If you pepper in historical terminology most readers will be able to pick up on the meaning form context. I think the Montague Sibling series actually does a pretty good job of this and it's a YA historical fantasy adventure novel. If Mackenzi Lee can trust her teenage target demo to pick up what a molly is from context then you can certainly trust an adult audience to.

It's also important to remember that it doesn't have to be perfect. Historical fiction is first and foremost fiction. The most important thing in my opinion is to create the feeling of a full fleshed out world. And for queer historical fiction that should be a world that includes queer people and thus have at least some queer language. You don't have to fill a novel with molly slang to do this, just give a bit here and there where it makes sense in context. The best advice I can give is to do the research and understand the history. If you understand it you will be better equipped to figure out when it makes sense to use historical language and when it makes sense not to. If you understand the rules you will better understand when to break them.

I think this is one of the reasons I like the Montague Sibling series so much. Mackenzi Lee has studied history and while her books are historical fantasy that strong base of historical knowledge really helps bring the world of the books to life. Also I just like that she actually used the word mollies in her YA book!

[Spoilers for the Montague Sibling series ahead]

Though it's not perfectly historically accurate the following scene form The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue feels very grounded in the period. The conversation is between the protagonist Monty and his little sister Felicity. Felicity largely represents the perspective of the popular rhetoric of the day.

"Honestly, Monty, I've never quite understood who's really got a hold on you." "Do you want to know if I'm a bugger?" She winces at the crass word, but then says, "It seems a fair question, considering I've seen your hands all over Richard Peele and Theodosia Fitzroy." "Oh, dear Theodosia, my girl." I collapse backward into the sofa cushions. "I remain inconsolable over losing her." I do not want to talk about this. Especially with my little sister. I came down here for the sole purpose of getting drunk enough to sleep and avoid venturing anywhere near this subject, but Felicity goes on staring at me like she's waiting for an answer. I take an uncivilized swipe at my mouth with my sleeve, which would have earned me a cuff from Father had we been at home. "Why does it matter who I run around with?" "Well, one is illegal. And a sin. And the other is also a sin, if you aren't married to her." "Are you going to give me the fornication without the intention of procreation is of the devil and a crime lecture? I believe could recite it from memory by now." "Monty—" "Perhaps I am trying to procreate with all these lads and I'm just very misinformed about the whole process. If only Eton hadn't thrown me out." "You're avoiding the question." "What was the question?" "Are you—" "Oh yes, am I a sodomite. Well, I've been with lads, so ... yes." She purses her lips, and I wish I hadn't been so forthright. "If you'd stop, Father might not be so rough on you, you know." "Oh my, thank you for that earth-shattering wisdom. Can't believe I didn't think of that myself." "I'm simply suggesting—" "Don't bother." "—he might ease up." "Well, I haven't much choice." "Really?" She crosses her arms. "You haven't a choice in who you bed?" "No, I mean I haven't much choice in who it is I want to bed." "Of course you do. Sodomy's a vice—same as drinking or gambling." "Not really. I mean, yes, I enjoy it. And I have certainly abstained form abstinence. But I'm also rather attracted to all the men I kiss. And the ladies as well." She laughs, like I've made a joke. I don't. "Sodomy has nothing to do with attraction. It's an act. A sin." "Not for me." "But humans are made to be attracted to the opposite sex. Not the same one. That's now nature operates." "Does that make me unnatural?" When she doesn't reply, I say, "Have you ever fancied anyone?" "No. But I believe I understand the basic principles of it." "I don't think you really can until it's happened to you."

The conversation then goes into Monty feelings for Percy which leads to this exchange:

"What are your expectations, exactly? If Percy did feel the same way about you, what would happen? You can't be together. Not like that—you could be killed for it if you were found out. They've been sentencing mollies by the score since the Clap Raid." "Doesn't matter, does it? Percy's good and natural and probably only fancies women and I am ... not."

While its perhaps a bit of an exaggeration to say that they've "been sentencing mollies by the score since the Clap Raid". It works the word mollies, a word most readers probably aren't familiar with, into the story in such a way that the context makes the meaning pretty clear. While Clap Raid might go over some readers heads they will still get the gist of the meaning behind the conversation and perhaps even inspired some readers to look it up and learn some real history.

This scene also takes advantage of words a modern reader would know like sin, vice and natural. They're talking about queerness in a more-or-less historically accurate way without using too many unfamiliar terms.

The Gentleman's Guide to Getting Lucy then gives us this fantastic scene that uses an 18th century euphemism:

He licks his lips, then nods. I reach for the buttons on his trousers, but he cries, "Wait! And I freeze, panicked I've done something else to muck this up, but then he says, "Just ... slowly, yes? Maybe not ... a full game of backgammon just yet." And then every inch of him goes red. "Percy Newton." I sit up over top of him and cross my arms. When he looks back at me with his eyes wide and innocent, I parrot, "A full game of backgammon? What erotic leaflet did you pick up that filthy vocabulary from?" "None!" he protests, but his mouth twitches. "Some." "Some?" Impossibly, he goes redder. "Some erotic leaflets." "May I have their titles? For purely academic purposes, I assure you."

Again the context allows for the readers to gather what is being talked about even if they've never heard the euphemism before.

And in The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy they even go to a molly house!

It is our only topic of conversation as the three of us walk to the pub in Shadwell called the Minced Nancy, which from the name alone brands itself a place where mollies like my brother and his beau can be together openly.

Tho I have to point out that while minced is 18th century language the earliest use of Nancy in this sense isn't until the 19th century.

[pup-pee]

he is the dirt under my fingernails

[revenantghost]

Man! I feel bad about being not as present for bookclub as I was last year, and also about how behind on messaging/responding to peeps between migraines and health stuff I am, but the community here and support and kindness has been amazing even as I feel like I'm letting everyone down, and I've just gotta say:

Thank you <3

[lucabyte]

Your gender thought type essays have made me curious about what your oc creation/development process is like! It seems to be something you put a lot of thought into and that’s very interesting (especially cause my circles don’t often go into detail in that area)

I'm delighted to hear you're curious!! I'll give as thorough an answer as I can manage, though it'll likely be a bit disorganised. Okay, so... I'm gonna use a couple examples for this, and since you specified gender stuff I'm gonna go for some where gender/sexuality are integral, even if in seemingly counterproducive ways (but that'll be the last few...)

So. The first character that comes to mind here for me in terms of like... A lot of thought going into their gender is Lavender.

So going all the way back... Lavender was made in 2015.

Spreadsheet puts her at the 13th character in the setting, creation-date ways! So she's Been around a while.

Part 1: A Core Idea

Now, why was Lavender made? This is the first step of character creation. Well, she was made to tick a bit of a box. I realised my only girls at the time were all tomboyish so I needed a cute girl. And this was 2015, so she arose in the form of a Waifu Joke. She was intended to be a side-character with no real plot ties, so I just designed a character as cute as possible, named her simply (Lavender Wafeu == literally Colour and Waifu) and was basically done? 7 months later I would make Mafioso to slightly further the joke, in that giving Lavender a girlfriend makes her unpursuable* as a waifu. This also gave me a stark butch/femme pair, and I recall around this era there was a joke going around on tumblr of 'Indestructable Lesbians' as opposed to buried gays. This kinda became their thing. Two lesbians the plot wouldn't touch and they wouldn't be endangered.

.... And then that was kinda it. She was a cute girl who was fun to draw, shy, and reserved in nature. An opposition to Mafioso's brash (but secretly a little nervous) demeanor. I would literally just liken this to flutterdash outright. I was basically just doing flutterdash in terms of their personalities.

SO: This is the first step to all my characters. Find a core concept, or more likely, a core joke. Lavender's core joke is a very rough and (frankly unfunny) "your waifu isn't going to fuck you" joke. But you can see how she was built out of it. And we'll get to how that building happened next.

(^ Weird 2015 era lavender with her total lack of emotive range and flat characterisation)

Part 2: Dormancy

Lavender stayed unchanged for quite a while, in this flat state. She picked up a few things, mostly little 'twists' to her character. ie. she could hold her own in a fight, is surprisingly quick to jump to (cartoonish) violence, and likes a good steak. All very basic little things, obvious "oh bet you didn't expect That" contradictions.

She didn't recieve much attention during this time despite me really liking her design still. Mafioso languished even worse in this era, with her mother Omerta picking up most of the development instead. Overall, these two were very, very boring. No amount of little superficial additions could save them from this.

But it... hints at something, right? It hints that maybe there's a facade somewhere, that maybe the perfect-cute-girl thing might actually take a little bit of effort to upkeep...? Hrm...

Part 3: A Fresh Perspective

So, sometime in 2020, I was finally remaking my 2016-era spreadsheet of all my characters from the ground up, since I needed to remove a lot of ms excel specific formatting it had in it.

And while going through, I was being helped by @samhainian, who I had befriended in the years between. And they remarked that I didn't have enough directly trans characters in the cast, to which I agreed. I had a handful of tokens at the time (Adder and Angel spring to mind?) but not many more, so we literally just went down the list with suggestions. And when Sam suggested Lavender, I reacted with confusion. Because... Wait. Is she not trans? But she's so feminine? All of my characters lean extremely gender-neutral in presentation unless they're trying to do gender on purpose...?

And this just, unlocked her whole character like a skeleton key.

I was making her do her gender on purpose. The reason she had those contradictions is because she's putting in the effort to appear like this perfect, girl-next-door, waifu type. Something that doesn't really work if she doesn't have girlhood to prove.

From here, her coy 'maybe she has more to her than cute girl' hints were instantly recontextualised as a thing She was Doing. And instead of being random superficial tidbits, they were Depth. And her cartoonish 'extremely mild-mannered and polite persona' suddenly became a very human facade.

So, she had a new core to build around. And her lack of anything going on before in terms of backstory suddenly felt contextual? She's clearly fresh new to this. She had already had the backstory of being a very young (about 19~21) person who had moved to a new town to live on her own-- Suddenly that makes sense. She's forging a whole new identity. Her polite 'never really talking about herself because she's an object for the audience to desire' quietness becomes intentional evasion. She doesn't have a backstory, because she doesn't want it to be any of your business.

And ironically, this immediately Gave Her the backstory she had been missing. Her wiles and hidden 'smarter than she looks' becomes so relevant as to be real character traits...

I already somewhat went over this (and a number of other gender thoughts, including my thoughts on my myriad 'cis but not' or 'nb in a specific direction') in a thing I wrote, woof, 2 years ago: (LINK) which was a ramble about a lot of my character's genders... In that I summarised Lavender's gender as such:

Part 4: In practice

Okay so it's all well and good that I realised Lavender is Trans Gemder. But that's not where it ends, because she finally became refined and polished to the point of um. Quadrupling her image count on toyhouse. because of Purrgatorio.

See, the other reason I was getting my spreadsheets in order was for Purrgatorio (the original flavour of it, the visual novel) and I needed to just do some general housekeeping.

Lavender, Mafioso and Ess shared a route in VN!Purrgatorio, being that I saw them as a triad of characters. While this characterisation of her basically did nothing interesting, aside from showing her fiery side, this would later become the basis for her being one of the first characters met in actual purrgatorio, where she, being polite and nice, and established back in 2016ish to be one of the few characters Chrome isn't a total asshole to--- She gets to meet Ali.

Now this is where I would say a lot of the real development happened. Right there, in action, in putting her to the test of real writing. All of her characterisation stops being hypothetical, and instead something I have to portray. And I found as I wrote, she grew more deep simply by giving her such an odd situation to be in. And of note, by having Ali be intimidated by talking to cute girls, it gave her the upper hand in the dynamic-- Really allowing me to show off her ability to lead a conversation, and her quiet confidence in herself-- as well as hinting at the thing she isn't quite so confident with.

It's also allowed me to start thinking about her sexuality, too. This is another thing that goes back to her flimsy core concept. The Waifu is generally a sexless being in their own right, having sexuality projected onto them by the narrative or audience. In fact, a lot of shounen girls don't get to be romantically forward-- both because it risks alienating the intended selfshipper-audience, and also because showing too much confidence and autonomy in their sexuality can be too threatening for the chuunibyo audience, who aren't yet comfortable with their own sexuality and-- wait! Look at that! Another part of the core concept I can toy with! Wouldn't it make sense, if she's meant to be a deconstruction of The Waifu Archetype, for her to have that confidence and autonomy? This is what 2015-me was clumsily trying to grasp with the whole lesbian thing... So why not just re-angle that into her being confident and forward. It fits with her new personality, so it works!

*oh hey there's that asterisk. I also realised she had chemistry with Ali! Given the way she is level-headed and rather logical deep down, her curiosity drives this. She's not going to pass up a chance to know a literal Alien... But it also further illustrates how badly Mafioso has been left in the dust by her. (She's been quietly tinkered with behind the scenes ready for her reintrodcution, but for a while, I was really struggling!! Like, considering overhauling her character levels of struggling!! But, we managed, I think. She's yet to be introduced and put into practice yet, but it's upcoming.) To the point where I've broken them up! At least for now. Mafioso needs to prove herself I think, since now she can't rely on Lavender being waifish and easily won over.

TO SUMMARISE THE MAJOR POINTS THERE:

Any joke/idea can be a suitable core, even if flimsy, you just need to find which parts are interesting to either double down on or deconstruct

It's okay for characters to take a long time to form! If you don't feel connected to a character they might need a shake up, but also YOU might need a shake up. Lavender needed a new perspective from someone with a different approach to gender as me, and for I myself to become more comfortable with Real Sexuality (ive literally just aged nearly 10 years itll happen) before she could really shine.

Following on from the above you basically never need to throw a character out completely. You should try and find what it is you like about them, or consider core, and perhaps try and reframe or refract those elements. A character might get demoted to non-main status sometimes, but why throw away that depth? They can hang out on the sidelines if that's better for them.

Sometimes a character won't feel done until you write them! You can do this with RP if you have the ability, but I wrote Purrgatorio instead, which is intentionally low-stakes and non-canon so I don't get too freaked out about writing it. It's a playground for testing characterisaton, and putting characters in weird pairings they otherwise wouldn't to see if something interesting arises.

SOME OTHER EXAMPLES FROM MY BACK CATALOGUE:

Lavender is a bit of a daunting pick, given that she's spent nearly 10 years slowly rotating in my brain, only to finally become realised in the last 3-4 or so. But I do have some more recent quick examples, as well as another giant thing you can read if you want to.

GIANT THING TO READ IF YOU WANT IT: I've posted abt this before way ages ago but I wrote up a whole gigantic thing on my probably 2 most in depth characters. It can be found here (LINK) and also has a longass diatribe about their genders, sexualities, and the core thing they were originally riffing on. (Which was like. a specific type of anime boy ship i was a sucker for, that I eventually realised I was making way more interesting than most anime i was into was bothered to do)

It's a very thorough look into my thought process, including ANOTHER diatribe on purrgatorio granting me some good boons of character.

OTHER EXAMPLE 1: ALI

Okay Ali is too complicated to get into thoroughly here, but they're another good example of a core idea spiralling out.

Core idea: Blank slate visual novel protagonist, so gender neutral and a bit of a flimsy everyman. No real name, only a default name if you left the entry blank. (Ali, a shortening of the canon surname). #FFFFFF skin to keep the jokey ambiguity and pink hair to reference Dante's silly red hat.

Twists: Canon assigned surname of Alighieri, implying them to be some descendent of The Real Dante. And they're in a VN so there's a spooky easter egg where you can roll a death screen that shows them as an ominous demonic Thing instead of a regular human.

The, VN!Purrgatorio got shelved, and because they were human instead of a furry they got shuffled into other projects. A furry version of them showed up in a different project riffing on the demon thing, making them a child-friendly antichrist with 2 siblings based on the tragicomedy masks. Then that furry version's stuff got shoved onto the human version who was just a half-demon kid in Creature Feature. THEN we decided they'd be half-succubus to keep the ability to shift between the sexes (referencing the blank slate gender ambiguity of the VN). THEN that became 'nerd who is freaked out by being a sex demon and doesn't like the ethical implications of their existance but is still kinda miffed that they arent Getting Any' who STILL HAD the antichrist stuff from the furry version....

(^ technically a completely seperate ali ive not done anything with in years lol)

Like you get it. It's a giant katamari of STUFF from all different settings. This is what I mean by 'you never really need to scrap a character'. Because after all this shoving them around into different projects and them accruing things (the 'guy who is really concerned with informed consent is a succubus/incubus' angle really informed them here, as well as deciding that they're apathetic about the magic sex characteristic changes.) we threw them right back into the original setting of Purrgatorio and it went WAY BETTER once they actually had some character traits!

But that core idea still stands a little. Not in them being an everyman, but in prompting them to become an altersex character when fleshed out, and in the way that they're distinctly still tied to that second-person-narration that VNs have, and the eventual 4th wall break they got in the VN informed their powerset as 'narrative manipulator'.

also as a note here: DON'T BE AFRAID TO PLAY WHILE YOUR SETTING ISN'T DONE!

VN!Purrgatorio got shelved because I redid a bunch of MYMK's setting when I was finishing it up. But It was worth it even unfinished.

Ali themselves when in Current!Purrgatorio has spent, up until very recently, their whole time with their home setting (Creature Feature) in a state of being deeply unfinished and in need of a reshake. It's finally getting that now, but it was still fine for me to reference what I knew likely wouldn't be changing! They were able to function just fine without their home setting being solid for upwards of 2-3 years. Obviously this shouldn't be done for *finished* works, but when you're just playing, like I am with Purrgatorio, it's okay to keep things fluid and effectively quietly retcon things later.

OTHER EXAMPLE 2: PEACH TRACY

Peach tracy is an actually recent character, and is under @samhainian's purview, as with the rest of Moraine. Now, she was made with a very distinct gender/sexuality in mind, unlike a lot of my characters who stumble ass-backwards into one.

Peach is the 'token girl' of her group (the other two being Red, a closeted and unaware transfem, and Toyon a he/him butch.) and well, her gender is basically "tik tok girlie", as is her core concept. She only works if she's a pampered cisgender straight girl from a rich background. She's nice! But she's privileged.

Her twist however, is that she is wracked by the guilt of her and her group letting a friend take the fall for an Illegal Youtube Prank to save their own skin, and as such her entire character unravels from there.

Because she has all this guilt, it stands that her Girliepop Persona must be somewhat constructed. She's leaning in to the femininity as a shield and a deflector. She's, y'know, a white girl.

So her gender ends up being overperformed, and she's petrified of expressing her sexuality due to it being tied up in this image of purity. She's the exact type of person to psyche herself out into believing those 'having a crush on your friend is problematic' tumblr posts.

But none of this would really work if she did not start as a (white) girl, able to use that shield. If she were a dude or nonwhite-coded she would not have the ability to react to her situation that way. Ergo, she is actually built out of her identity this way.

(As for her sexuality, she is unhealthily self-flagellating about it, so it ends up just being unpleasant. This was a genuine surprise to myself and @samhainian when we were discussing it. We hadn't thought about it prior to starting some lighthearted riffing about assigning characters kinks literally bc we were bored when we had the horrifying realisation that Peach would not be safe about this shit AT ALL due to a lack of self preservation and way more ambient suicidality than we realised she had until we dug here. We quickly resurfaced from the joke conversation into an actual deconstruction of how she's internalised a lot of blame and decided to go distinctly carceral with it for herself. so there's another tip: Even if you aren't making nsfw content, poking around a character's sexuality will sometimes reveal raw truths that come from sexuality being very vulnerable by default.)

Peach is overall an interesting contrast to Lavender, since they're both Girls Being Feminine On Purpose, but one is transfem and one is. Well god idk what peach will end up but she'll need to unpack it.

(I note that peach is white also, since while I rarely intentionally racially code my characters, sometimes i SUPER do.)

OTHER EXAMPLE 3: VIRGIL MALACODA

Okay because I've talked about a number of girls so far lets be brief about a fuckin Dude.

Virgil is like, some real toxic masculinity shit. He would probably be fucked up in some different way if he were born a girl, but he's distinctly falling into a lot of traps due to his upbringing as "A dude who was promised he'd get power when he grew up".

His dude-ness is a very flat fact to me in that way, and he's similar to Tabitha in that regard since it's one of the ways they're meant to reflect each other. Dudes who's place as patriarch-to-be saved them from being pawned off as a wife, but is still responsible for a lot of their misery. Certainly the better of the two options, but could still be better!

Virgil's themes of masculinity being a simultaneous shield and blinder is a simple one but I go back to it a lot because it can be true a lot of the time in antiquated social situations like, say, the upper class. So, being a villain, he does end up being a condemnation of the structures that disincentivise healthy masculinity. He's necessarily amab because he is the result of how particularly regressive views of masculinity can shape a child into a repressed and miserable adult.

Whether or not virgil stays a dude or not if he ever figures out his way of viewing power structures was Fucked Up and Bad is anybody's guess. It's not really Masculinity that was hurting him, so much as a rich asshole's narrow view of it. So there's no real reason for him to reject a healthier version of it outright, it's just whether he'll ever get there...

CLOSING REMARKS:

Okay writing in the tumblr post editor is starting to scare me with errors so I should probably close this out. But yeah this is a little bit of a run down of where my head is usually at when making characters. A lot of it is just batting jokes back and forth until they become something more solid, which I don't know that I really got across here.

Like, a lot a lot of my characters are built around a core joke. Usually what-ifs like.

"What if a shounen-type card game anime protagonist was just as brash and head-full-of-air as the rest of the, but a girl"

"What if Ed Sheeran had a cheating scandal with two tboys and it made the radio fucking horrible to listen to"

"What if a wrestler was really, really wide and also clearly into rubber"

"What if somebody took the 'blonde anime boy who barely shows emotion' trope seriously because that kind of repression can't be good"

"What if a guy was specifically interested in becoming a Soil Scientist from like, age 4, and never gave up that dream"

^ If you can figure out who's who then you win a prize (a kiss)

But yeah. Jokes upon jokes upon jokes. Assign them classpects and pokemon and put them into speed/power/fly formation and just joke for as long as you possibly can until you hit on something. And if a joke feels really right, or completely off the mark, try and dig in and find why.

Like. I joke about the sexuality thing but it does help since it's so disarming and immediately a bit childishly funny often. Sometimes you'll end up with say, something as serious as "Despite being friends with The Fence, Selene probably shouldn't be left unsupurvised in kink spaces because she ABSOLUTELY does not have the ability to restrain herself and not take her anger issues out on strangers" and sometimes its as silly as "even outside of being asexual, ess is never jackin that shit because if he got caught in any kind of mildly embarrasing scenario it'd ruin his whole year so the cost/benefit analysis of that really doesn't work out"

Because like. both tell you about the characters, and you can also read them more broadly now. Selene ruins relationships by letting anger at unrelated things get in the way, Ess keeps himself from doing even utterly harmless things out of deep social anxiety.

Like yeah, i got to them via goofing about sex but it's still character analysis at the end of the day so long as you put The Reading first*

*DISCLAIMER: im asexual im only ever doing stuff for the read lol . it might be more difficult if youre allosexual . or maybe itll be easier. i dont know just dont get too lost in the sauce. think with ur brain not ur other parts

ALSO gender and sexualty often end up linked so it makes sense to end up at one from the other a lot of the time. It happens.

And as an addendum if you wonder where i tend to literally Design characters? Like visually? It's usually at some point between the first few jokes and before naming them. Though sometimes names come first.

OVERALL: A character should have a core concept to them to start with. This core concept CAN SUCK and be flimsy, or a joke, or even a joke you no longer find funny. But you can always refer back to it when building a character up. If you want to capture the concept, work toward it, if you want to deconstruct or mock the concept, then do that instead. If you sour on a joke, maybe find a way to satirise or deconstruct what you're no longer finding funny.

Sometimes this core concept is steeped in a specific cultural thing, be it race, gender, sexuality, ect, and those necessitate thinking about. Sometimes it's not and those things can practically be an afterthought, but once you lock it in it's likely to begin informing the later choices as it becomes part of the scaffolding.

(To hop back to why you even asked this Q: I so thoroughly read Siffrin as amab BECAUSE they had so many themes about Not Having Changed and clinging to what they knew, and so working backwards from that it only made sense to me that they mustn't've done a big overhaul YET or made any big decisions about that YET by the time we see them in game, because that's what gels best with their themes of being Too Afraid To Change and being a contrast to Isa who has changed a bunch, and a comfort to Mira who hasn't changed at all in their gender. Then it was a case of looking through the game for more evidence either for or against this reading, and I found a lot of evidence for it, in my opinion. But I did so Because I noticed that the themes were Stronger if read this way, and because I conceptualise characters as themes and concepts FIRST it made sense to try and work back to those themes.)

But yeah. TL;DR:

Ground yourself with a Hook for the character, sometimes making it sillier makes it easier to think about.

Try and think about how they would be formed by the world around them, or what their behaviour says about how they must've been formed

Don't worry about things taking a long time. Sometimes a character needs someone else to make a suggestion, or for you to grow and change a little before they click

Putting it into action helps a lot, even if its just roleplay or short snippets. If you can't 'feel out' what a character would do in a situation, that's when it's time to think about their goals for how they want to be seen as a person (including, if they don't want to be seen at all...!) and what hard boundaries they have say, morally.

I am by no means a like. Expert on any of this. I'm fumbling through it all just as much as the next guy (AND... I'M ACTUALLY SOMEWHAT OF A HYPOCRITE. I THINK CHARACTERS ARE BEST SEEN AS 'NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTS' RATHER THAN 'PEOPLE', SO ALL THIS ADVICE BEING SO CHARACTER FOCUSED RATHER THAN NARRATIVE FOCUSED IS MISSING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES LOL....) but apparently people do Like my characters? So, what do I know i suppose LMAO

[edwinisms]

wait yeah hold on how the hell did edwin open a door from hell to earth? like if powerful beings like the night nurse or certain demonic entities are necessary to open and close doors to other planes (especially hell where souls being trapped there is kind of the point) then what the fuck did edwin manage to pull off? did he somehow trick a demon or whatever into opening one? was one opened for one reason or another– maybe upon a demon’s return from retrieving a soul– and he timed it, booked it, and jumped in? there certainly isn’t just some constantly open ever-accessible door at the top of The Endless Staircase considering that would make hell kind of pointless. did edwin payne manage, somehow, over the span of 70 years, to figure out how to open a door from limbo/the staircase to earth by himself? am i just missing something here?

[ghost-bard]

Love being an arcane warrior in dao i love swinging a giant maul around and being in armour but also casting walking nightmare and horror on my enemies i think swords are cooler but the affect of a maul is funnier than big sword in my opinion. I have like 3 affects (at the minimum) going on at all times and then i do an aoe chug some lyrium just in case and bludgen some guy to death. What.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

four walls playlist

[spoopdeedoop]

this might be personal, but how did you know you were aro? asking for a friend!!

also, got any tips for joining the lmk art fandom?

ah!

i realized i was aro bc i’ve been asked out three times by three seperate friends and i would always say yes with the mindset of “they’re my friend, it’ll be weird if i say no, and i want them to be happy” which was the first red flag — romantic relationships should be for the pleasure and benefit of BOTH people, not just one. it’s not a transaction; it’s supposed to be a mutual thing.

i kinda glossed over that because, again, they were my friends and i want to make them happy, and kind of tricked myself into thinking i liked them romantically because i liked being around them (there’s a difference between platonic love and romantic love that i didn’t know yet, but looking back, whatever i felt for them was definitely not romantic. just wanting to be around your friends because you like their company doesn’t have any romantic connotations, really).

i think at one point one of them kissed me and i did not like it. and that made me realize i didn’t like the relationship at all. and i had to sit with myself for a bit to realize why. im not gonna go into too many personal details but aromantic was the conclusion i came to. i wasn’t happy with it, but it fit. and eventually i’ve just come to accept that about myself :)

for joining the lmk art fandom? i’d just say draw what you like tbh. dont worry about appealing to people, your art is for you :)

[uygfiug]

how do you people study through extreme exhaustion? bc thats what always gets me during the exams & i cannot keep doing this forever

[oh-meow-swirls]

it's kind of weird to me that they didn't bother releasing sushi and tempura internationally at all but at the same time i'm kinda glad they didn't cuz like. yo-kai watch was financially failing in the west by the time 3 released. i feel like if they had released sushi and tempura the franchise would've completely tanked before we got sukiyaki which would've sucked. honestly if anything i feel like it's more surprising that we got all three versions of 2 instead of them just releasing psychic specters but tbf i think yo-kai watch was doing well in the west when 2 released. 2 is just inexplicably what killed the franchise despite being a masterpiece-

[averys-happy-space]

woke up today and the first thing in my stupid monkey brain was i wonder why kazuki took care of rei in the flashback in ep 8. like, any normal person would literally just Leave if they had to live with rei in his trash collecting dumpster of a house. but kazuki didn't. he stayed and he cleaned and he went out of his way to turn that dumpster into a clean and welcoming home. why?

and then i realised like. kazuki probably saw himself in rei. especially right after yuzuko's death, kazuki was probably the exact same as rei. maybe he wasnt as unhealthy or lazy but he definitely would've recognised that listless look in rei's eyes, the way rei was just going through the motions, the empty and uncaring way he carried himself. and maybe kazuki wouldn't know anything about rei's past, but he would be able to empathise with that emptiness.

and maybe that's why he started cleaning. maybe when he saw himself reflected back at him, he realised he would've wanted someone else to step in, to take care of him when he himself couldn't do that. so that's exactly what he did. and in the process of throwing himself into this job, of taking care of the house and of rei, he could give himself something to focus on and to think about which wasn't yuzuko's death and his own guilt and remorse.

and rei, well, he wouldn't understand why kazuki started cleaning. he might know about kazuki's past and his dead wife, but he probably wouldn't make the connections. but what he would understand is the warmth and kindness that kazuki showed him. and he would realise that warmth and kindness felt nice. he says as much in ep8, when he tells kazuki he didn't think much of him until he started cleaning. he doesn't say it directly, rarely shows it even, but he does appreciate what kazuki does. and he likes having kazuki around. because it adds spice to his life which he never had before. and rei may not like spice, he may say he can't handle it, but when it's given to him he'll eat it and he'll enjoy it [ep1]. and the more spice you have, the greater your tolerance becomes, and one day you'll wake up thinking to yourself i want to have something spicy. the more love you have, the greater your openness becomes, and one day you'll wake up thinking to yourself i want to love and to be loved. and you'll do just that. you'll buy the spicy food, and you'll love the people around you.

because food is bland without any spice.

and life is bland without any love.

[donnyclaws]

I was gonan make a post apologizing for lack of regular art but I feel like jts already clear im sporadic and in and out of it bc chronic pain and circumstances. So for now I'm gonna hibernate, get my health steady again, deal with money issues, and art will happen when it happens.

[jils-things]

SKADJKAJFKSFSAA content warning: embarrassing moment during my dinner out... /lh

[tarmac-rat]

TFW you're two weeks removed from leaving your entire life behind and moving to Night City but you're restless and anxious and can't sleep so you sneak out in the dead of night and do something reckless and the only person you know who can fix you up is that old doctor guy your new friend took you to see in a basement last week for back alley chrome and fighting tips.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(insp.)

[ramshitposts]

The flaws with your logic to dating someone being "become friends with them first" is that a) you make it further than you thought and the guy you've been stealing glances at for months is now just this guy you have Conversations with Everyday (insane transition to comprehend) and that b) now you have a friendship to ruin forever if you ask him out and he says no. So that's nice.

[blushedfemmes]

hiiiii

so i have a longer thing I wrote involving a breeding kink and I'm a little nervous to send it even as an anon

could I message you it?

⛓️

i prefer fantasies over anon rather than dm unless we already know each other and have been chatting for awhile! thank you for asking first 💕