If you RP a character long enough it is inevitable they are going to change as you become a more skilled writer, you grow as a person, and your tastes change. They could change in appearance, personality, history, or even more radically such as a complete species or world change.
So please tell me how your characters have evolved
So please tell me how your characters have evolved
Probably the one I am most proud of is Kiran. He's gone from a very shy bullying target (which he can still be at times), with zero self worth and believing he is at fault for everything terrible in the world to now actually having a backbone and knowing that there are people in his life that do care for him and that he is loved and valued 
Rene has become much more jaded and has lost more of his humanity the longer he spends away from people scuttling around in the forest. At least at the centre he may have been locked behind bars but he'd play card games with the night guards and talk and be human. He's changed and not for the better.
The others are still relatively new whereas these two have been around for over 2 years
Rene has become much more jaded and has lost more of his humanity the longer he spends away from people scuttling around in the forest. At least at the centre he may have been locked behind bars but he'd play card games with the night guards and talk and be human. He's changed and not for the better.
The others are still relatively new whereas these two have been around for over 2 years
The one that's probably changed the most as yet and that still is up for use would be Kyra. Her name hasn't changed, but details about it have (pronunciation of first name, meaning/function of last name). Her basic appearance hasn't changed much, but why she looks that way (primarily referring to genetic make-up) has undergone a very notable shift; she was originally the child of a black human woman and a generic elf guy, and that was a taboo thing, but that got reworked to being a second-generation half-elf with that mostly being a non-issue among her desert nomad elf tribe. The big turning point in her background is still an event that turned her into a sort of monster, cost her her family, and involved a a significant amount of death (including her own temporary death); but instead of that being getting turned by the vampire who killed her parents (the only people she even knew up to then) and then forgetting basically all of that because of both emotional and physical trauma, she was more generally corrupted by basically a wild magic surge that wiped out a chunk of her tribe and got her exiled when she proved to have become unpredictably dangerous. I also learned to better present her overall attitude and brawl-loving nature, but have come to probably overdo her lazy accent a lot. There's definitely still areas to tighten up, but I think she's come a long way from how I first made her when I was, like, 13 or 14.
Others have had plenty changed, too, including one who got an entire second profile that's an older variant with, naturally, a more complicated past (that was actually developed through an RP) and one who's presently in the early stages of an overhaul, but one other I want to actually focus on is the sort of non-change that Jackson got, just because that worked out sort of interestingly. He was initially created as a very flat, charming, crazy murderer who happened to have a weird shapeshifting ability and a love of music. He didn't really have any real background (don't recall if that was intentional or just lazy) and just sort of existed to be a villain. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to better flesh him out and went to look through some possibilities to work with, and quickly found a creature of lore that seemed stunningly perfect. Most of the adjustments were simply adding some more details to better fit some of the varying stories of such creatures, which also helped me in giving him some more clear weaknesses, filling out some more skills and interests, and even developing an origin. The nature of the character makes it extremely difficult to fit him into games (though I've been working out more ways to keep him a little more predictable and somewhat better under control), so it's hard to say if I've actually improved my ability to play him any. The big point of issue that came up early on was how much I made myself uncomfortable when given the opportunity to just see how horribly evil I could be with him, plus some difficulty sustaining a game with him. So far, I've recently determined that I can still get pretty self-conscious about how narrating his kind of thought processes might be taken as a reflection on me and concerns about what might just plain cross lines (never been good at that last bit, even in just regular OOC conversation, so... still figuring out how to appropriately manage that). But anyway, yeah, I managed to change what he is, give more definition to various aspects of him, generally add a lot more depth and detail and even some nuance to him without having to really change any noteworthy (or even much of the not-so-noteworthy) things I'd already established from the start. Everything just sort of pieced pretty nicely together.
Others have had plenty changed, too, including one who got an entire second profile that's an older variant with, naturally, a more complicated past (that was actually developed through an RP) and one who's presently in the early stages of an overhaul, but one other I want to actually focus on is the sort of non-change that Jackson got, just because that worked out sort of interestingly. He was initially created as a very flat, charming, crazy murderer who happened to have a weird shapeshifting ability and a love of music. He didn't really have any real background (don't recall if that was intentional or just lazy) and just sort of existed to be a villain. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to better flesh him out and went to look through some possibilities to work with, and quickly found a creature of lore that seemed stunningly perfect. Most of the adjustments were simply adding some more details to better fit some of the varying stories of such creatures, which also helped me in giving him some more clear weaknesses, filling out some more skills and interests, and even developing an origin. The nature of the character makes it extremely difficult to fit him into games (though I've been working out more ways to keep him a little more predictable and somewhat better under control), so it's hard to say if I've actually improved my ability to play him any. The big point of issue that came up early on was how much I made myself uncomfortable when given the opportunity to just see how horribly evil I could be with him, plus some difficulty sustaining a game with him. So far, I've recently determined that I can still get pretty self-conscious about how narrating his kind of thought processes might be taken as a reflection on me and concerns about what might just plain cross lines (never been good at that last bit, even in just regular OOC conversation, so... still figuring out how to appropriately manage that). But anyway, yeah, I managed to change what he is, give more definition to various aspects of him, generally add a lot more depth and detail and even some nuance to him without having to really change any noteworthy (or even much of the not-so-noteworthy) things I'd already established from the start. Everything just sort of pieced pretty nicely together.
My oldest character, who is under a profile rehaul with a landing page that says a SMALLLL bit of this text is a great example.
Her essence has grown and changed over time. So has her name, her species, her continuity (a ton, she's been every-when but sci-fi!) , I have rebooted her entirely three times. It seems like a lot, of course. But I have been playing her in some form or another for <<; About.. 19 years? Her energy has outlived countess other characters, she's just eternal in ways that I might struggle to describe. I'll do my best!
TLDR I have a crush on her or something lol.
Her essence has grown and changed over time. So has her name, her species, her continuity (a ton, she's been every-when but sci-fi!) , I have rebooted her entirely three times. It seems like a lot, of course. But I have been playing her in some form or another for <<; About.. 19 years? Her energy has outlived countess other characters, she's just eternal in ways that I might struggle to describe. I'll do my best!
oops i wrote a novel
Her concept itself beyond vague I want to draw the coolest girl. There are no dolls like this girl, not even bratz. I think she's a scary girl too! began shortly before I'd discovered RP was even a thing! I used to draw her to occupy myself on car rides, she was like a martini glass with a T for a body and these god-awful red bangs. I was proud of that idea. When I was in maybe 5th grade, I had two friends. We were all obsessed with storytelling and would pass notebooks back and forth, writing out different sections of a story in which we all had characters and contributions. It made no sense because we'd made up a special alphabet to write in, but to be fair when our last notebook had been found we were teased relentlessly. I constructed this girl who was pretty, and brave, and never once called a man. She had so many friends, and so. many. cool. clothes. I'd write whole paragraphs about her dresses or her shoes. The friend in my little group who happened to be a boy was annoyed by that. We were not yet at an age when "girl stuff" wasn't yucky and boring to a young gentleman very waiting patiently to talk about how cool wolves are. (She's still painfully fashionable.)
She started being a whole character when I started RP, and I want to say that I was 11 or 12. Just dinking around on AOL 7.0, under a very unfortunately misspelled username belonging to my mother. I remember that for her I have always favored the color red, her signature font in public chats was equally icky- Comic Sans, red, bold, 8pt. How did I SEE!?
The character was like most characters made by tween girls, she didn't have any of my insecurities, hardships, or weaknesses- but also looked very "cool" (She did not look cool, and briefly dressed like a caricature of a pimp for reasons beyond my understanding). Her name was Fox because I liked a shirt in Delia's catalog (I'm that old.) which had a Fox on it and we were super poor.
OH, it was a thing at the time for shirts, stickers, and essentially any softlines product in every store- to read something like "Princess, Angel, Foxy, Devil, Dreamer" Every single one of these terms was popular as a component of a username due to this. Well, all of them except for the weirdest one, which was heavy on my mind after seeing that shirt! I also thought it was very uncommon, so it had to be a good idea, right?
That long, weird, orange Crayola mullet transformed itself into a very bad-ass stacked bob with angled bangs. That's funny to me looking back because this is the haircut that I've worn on and off for a hot minute personally. Fox's hair was originally ginger orange, but when I changed the cut I changed the hue to a deep black cherry/vivid red depending on the day. While I'd started her as a vampire, I encountered so much teasing that I made her into a demon. Angels were very popular choices in these chats and I wanted Fox to be different, I think.
Fox the demon had very cool bat wings and the cutest widdle horns. She took no one's mess, and despite having two brothers, she didn't need protection. Yes, she was out here in a whole prom dress and a side holster or a sword depending on the continuity. The modern version of her isn't a fan of physical violence, especially the sort done with weapons. It's fun to think about why and how my perceptions of power and
of conflict resolution have changed since then.
Thankfully, Fox stopped dressing like I'd made her with Dollzmania once I'd discovered Gaiaonline. This was back when you could mail $5 a month and get two monthly donation items for your avatar. Yes, you just put a $5 bill in the mail. Wow.
She got a modern makeover that was no longer a mismatch of fashion eras and went back to being an orange-headed vampire (except for that brief stint as a fox-eared girl. I will not be taking questions as her muse is in the corner of my head, glaring. Thank you.) It started with a very cool leather jacket and motorcycle, but those had to come with a French accent for some reason which makes sense to a 14-year-old Mina but not a 31-year-old one. I don't recall what her job was, but what I do recall is that she became a bit of a workaholic. She still had an expansive closet and a new interest in analyzing people's behaviors. Most of this is still intact. Well, except for the motorcycle! I can't see her on one in this iteration, though it's cute to imagine.
From that point, over the years I bounced her around various platforms, groups, settings, and themes and had many other characters. She always did surface again and each time she did the core of her was forming into something very orange, very opinionated, and less of a "bad girl/tough girl" trope. Her name changed through the ages and a lot of my understanding of who I wanted her to be changed as well. I learned more about vampires through books. I learned about Jazz, and magic practices, accents, perceptions of vampires in roleplay spaces and of femme characters, lady villains, and the speculation on what qualities and roles these characters will have as a component of a story. I did my best to find out more about how an interest in things such as behavioral analysis could be applied to a job. Steadily, I added pieces of what I learned to her. I learned more about strength and about the different ways you can highlight it in a character without being so visual or so hard around the edges. I gave her flaws, some of these were the very same ones that I'd originally created her as an escape from. Not all, but some. I felt that these made her more real and that they could justify some of her remaining edges.
I believe it wasn't until 2011 that I hit a point with her that felt the most 'like' her. It was unsurprisingly a reboot and the very last name change!
I don't know where 'Jay' Came from, I've just always really liked neutral naming conventions. I still wanted her to read as the fang tainted southern belle she'd been for quite some time, so I'd kept the last name I'd used for her and tacked them together. I thought I could use whichever felt right once she'd begun rolling.
I'd never played her as someone wide-eyed and innocent, still fractured and weak in ways that had caused earlier versions of her to harden. I think at this point I really was interested in writing a story that could round her out in my mind as a person who had such vulnerability, uncertainty, fear, and naivety. It was also so much fun to consciously construct her "battle armor" style wardrobe instead of just deciding from the outset that she liked certain colors. Red was always, and still remains her color. Even now after what feels like dozens of other characters between the conceptual and pseudo-versions of her- I have never given that color to another character. In my mind, she will ALWAYS be Red. **(Pink has a character too, Her name is Devin now. She's named for wolf-boy who I mentioned earlier.)
I went on to be graced with the presence and influence of many talented partners. Their input, inspiration, and wonderful storytelling helped to build a sturdy foundation for her. These writers and their continued collaboration truly were the reason that "Fox" got a full story with an origin. She did harden again, but now there were reasons, there was subtlety, nuance, scarring, and aversion instead of just..
"SWORD." She was able to progress through the things that hurt, and gain new intricacies from them. Oooh and thankfully, not in ways that limit future opportunities for continued living...vampires do live quite a long time, after all!
I wish that I could tell you exactly how all of these weird ideas have been the same character. They're very disconnected from the outside and I'm quite aware of this. I just know, she's like a playlist I guess. You turn on certain music because it makes you feel prepared to do a certain task like clean, drive, or study. The songs on the list of (task) songs change over time, but older tracks remain. Even as new outweighs old, you still know exactly how the songs on this list make you feel as you work. That special inspiration. That's her. She'll always be my main muse and I don't think that I'll ever really be done with her. Sure, she goes on little hiatuses while I play others, but the color red is perhaps the most visible on my mind's horizon and the empire on that horizon will only ever know a singular queen. Good for her.
It's been immensely rewarding to watch 'Fox' become 'Renarde', 'Rene/Renae/Nae', 'Sam', 'Sadie', and finally 'Jay'.
Her concept itself beyond vague I want to draw the coolest girl. There are no dolls like this girl, not even bratz. I think she's a scary girl too! began shortly before I'd discovered RP was even a thing! I used to draw her to occupy myself on car rides, she was like a martini glass with a T for a body and these god-awful red bangs. I was proud of that idea. When I was in maybe 5th grade, I had two friends. We were all obsessed with storytelling and would pass notebooks back and forth, writing out different sections of a story in which we all had characters and contributions. It made no sense because we'd made up a special alphabet to write in, but to be fair when our last notebook had been found we were teased relentlessly. I constructed this girl who was pretty, and brave, and never once called a man. She had so many friends, and so. many. cool. clothes. I'd write whole paragraphs about her dresses or her shoes. The friend in my little group who happened to be a boy was annoyed by that. We were not yet at an age when "girl stuff" wasn't yucky and boring to a young gentleman very waiting patiently to talk about how cool wolves are. (She's still painfully fashionable.)
She started being a whole character when I started RP, and I want to say that I was 11 or 12. Just dinking around on AOL 7.0, under a very unfortunately misspelled username belonging to my mother. I remember that for her I have always favored the color red, her signature font in public chats was equally icky- Comic Sans, red, bold, 8pt. How did I SEE!?
The character was like most characters made by tween girls, she didn't have any of my insecurities, hardships, or weaknesses- but also looked very "cool" (She did not look cool, and briefly dressed like a caricature of a pimp for reasons beyond my understanding). Her name was Fox because I liked a shirt in Delia's catalog (I'm that old.) which had a Fox on it and we were super poor.
OH, it was a thing at the time for shirts, stickers, and essentially any softlines product in every store- to read something like "Princess, Angel, Foxy, Devil, Dreamer" Every single one of these terms was popular as a component of a username due to this. Well, all of them except for the weirdest one, which was heavy on my mind after seeing that shirt! I also thought it was very uncommon, so it had to be a good idea, right?
That long, weird, orange Crayola mullet transformed itself into a very bad-ass stacked bob with angled bangs. That's funny to me looking back because this is the haircut that I've worn on and off for a hot minute personally. Fox's hair was originally ginger orange, but when I changed the cut I changed the hue to a deep black cherry/vivid red depending on the day. While I'd started her as a vampire, I encountered so much teasing that I made her into a demon. Angels were very popular choices in these chats and I wanted Fox to be different, I think.
Fox the demon had very cool bat wings and the cutest widdle horns. She took no one's mess, and despite having two brothers, she didn't need protection. Yes, she was out here in a whole prom dress and a side holster or a sword depending on the continuity. The modern version of her isn't a fan of physical violence, especially the sort done with weapons. It's fun to think about why and how my perceptions of power and
of conflict resolution have changed since then.
Thankfully, Fox stopped dressing like I'd made her with Dollzmania once I'd discovered Gaiaonline. This was back when you could mail $5 a month and get two monthly donation items for your avatar. Yes, you just put a $5 bill in the mail. Wow.
She got a modern makeover that was no longer a mismatch of fashion eras and went back to being an orange-headed vampire (except for that brief stint as a fox-eared girl. I will not be taking questions as her muse is in the corner of my head, glaring. Thank you.) It started with a very cool leather jacket and motorcycle, but those had to come with a French accent for some reason which makes sense to a 14-year-old Mina but not a 31-year-old one. I don't recall what her job was, but what I do recall is that she became a bit of a workaholic. She still had an expansive closet and a new interest in analyzing people's behaviors. Most of this is still intact. Well, except for the motorcycle! I can't see her on one in this iteration, though it's cute to imagine.
From that point, over the years I bounced her around various platforms, groups, settings, and themes and had many other characters. She always did surface again and each time she did the core of her was forming into something very orange, very opinionated, and less of a "bad girl/tough girl" trope. Her name changed through the ages and a lot of my understanding of who I wanted her to be changed as well. I learned more about vampires through books. I learned about Jazz, and magic practices, accents, perceptions of vampires in roleplay spaces and of femme characters, lady villains, and the speculation on what qualities and roles these characters will have as a component of a story. I did my best to find out more about how an interest in things such as behavioral analysis could be applied to a job. Steadily, I added pieces of what I learned to her. I learned more about strength and about the different ways you can highlight it in a character without being so visual or so hard around the edges. I gave her flaws, some of these were the very same ones that I'd originally created her as an escape from. Not all, but some. I felt that these made her more real and that they could justify some of her remaining edges.
I believe it wasn't until 2011 that I hit a point with her that felt the most 'like' her. It was unsurprisingly a reboot and the very last name change!
I don't know where 'Jay' Came from, I've just always really liked neutral naming conventions. I still wanted her to read as the fang tainted southern belle she'd been for quite some time, so I'd kept the last name I'd used for her and tacked them together. I thought I could use whichever felt right once she'd begun rolling.
I'd never played her as someone wide-eyed and innocent, still fractured and weak in ways that had caused earlier versions of her to harden. I think at this point I really was interested in writing a story that could round her out in my mind as a person who had such vulnerability, uncertainty, fear, and naivety. It was also so much fun to consciously construct her "battle armor" style wardrobe instead of just deciding from the outset that she liked certain colors. Red was always, and still remains her color. Even now after what feels like dozens of other characters between the conceptual and pseudo-versions of her- I have never given that color to another character. In my mind, she will ALWAYS be Red. **(Pink has a character too, Her name is Devin now. She's named for wolf-boy who I mentioned earlier.)
I went on to be graced with the presence and influence of many talented partners. Their input, inspiration, and wonderful storytelling helped to build a sturdy foundation for her. These writers and their continued collaboration truly were the reason that "Fox" got a full story with an origin. She did harden again, but now there were reasons, there was subtlety, nuance, scarring, and aversion instead of just..
"SWORD." She was able to progress through the things that hurt, and gain new intricacies from them. Oooh and thankfully, not in ways that limit future opportunities for continued living...vampires do live quite a long time, after all!I wish that I could tell you exactly how all of these weird ideas have been the same character. They're very disconnected from the outside and I'm quite aware of this. I just know, she's like a playlist I guess. You turn on certain music because it makes you feel prepared to do a certain task like clean, drive, or study. The songs on the list of (task) songs change over time, but older tracks remain. Even as new outweighs old, you still know exactly how the songs on this list make you feel as you work. That special inspiration. That's her. She'll always be my main muse and I don't think that I'll ever really be done with her. Sure, she goes on little hiatuses while I play others, but the color red is perhaps the most visible on my mind's horizon and the empire on that horizon will only ever know a singular queen. Good for her.
It's been immensely rewarding to watch 'Fox' become 'Renarde', 'Rene/Renae/Nae', 'Sam', 'Sadie', and finally 'Jay'.
TLDR I have a crush on her or something lol.
My oldest character is this guy and I love him to a ridiculous degree. He started as just, like, a generic villain - a scam artist with no real backstory who just kinda liked the rush of it. I've kept parts of that, but over time Sol has both mellowed out and become even more aggressive LMAO. Also he didn't start as a human because man I was like 12 when I made him so he was a leopard type thing haha.
Anyway, he's changed a lot -especially as I grew up - and I began to draw on things that I saw in life or that I had experienced in order to flesh him out.
By now he's a jaded and divorced psych teacher with boatloads of trauma regarding his ex-wife. I've worked so hard to make him more human- to make his cold demeanor just a front, and to have him open up slowly as RPs progress. He's super fun to work with, as are his wife and daughter when I write them, and I just really enjoy using him overall. Poor guy's been through a lot. Baffling that I've had him for over a decade now.
I've had my other charas just as long - Jack hasn't changed much, though Sab has gotten progressively more degenerate over time. And more British, for some reason.
Anyway, he's changed a lot -especially as I grew up - and I began to draw on things that I saw in life or that I had experienced in order to flesh him out.
By now he's a jaded and divorced psych teacher with boatloads of trauma regarding his ex-wife. I've worked so hard to make him more human- to make his cold demeanor just a front, and to have him open up slowly as RPs progress. He's super fun to work with, as are his wife and daughter when I write them, and I just really enjoy using him overall. Poor guy's been through a lot. Baffling that I've had him for over a decade now.
I've had my other charas just as long - Jack hasn't changed much, though Sab has gotten progressively more degenerate over time. And more British, for some reason.
The only character that has been through a lot (other than Naelia, that is, but she hasn't changed much) is Marida Grady, since she was originally a dwarf of Erebor and is now of mixed heritage; her father and two brothers are still dwarven, but her mother was a woman of Dale who died in a mining accident.
When I took a break from Thorin, I had to find her a new husband, and since this was the time that the first Jurassic World movie came out, I thought that Owen Grady might be a better match for her (which means I had to change the canon around a bit to include Marida, even though most things still happen, but Owen doesn't get together with Claire, so those events might turn out a bit differently). Next, I had to find a way to get Marida to Isla Nublar, so that's where I came up with the idea of a time portal hidden in an abandoned section of Erebor that she comes across after a fight with Thorin that leads her to throw down her crown and get as far away from him as she can. The time portal looks like an ordinary mirror but is anything but and there are strange markings all around it that even Gandalf might have trouble deciphering (how the portal got there is a bit of a mystery, as is an identical one on Isla Nublar, located in the garage of the old Visitor's Center of the original park, or was, since who knows if it survived the eruption, so Marida might be stuck in the modern world).
Due to the volcanic eruption of Mt. Sibo, Owen and Marida are currently living in an underground bunker, though there will be a time when they can live on the surface again, even if Owen has to rebuild his bungalow (since like the time portal that was located in the garage of the old Visitor's Center, it may not have survived the eruption).
When I took a break from Thorin, I had to find her a new husband, and since this was the time that the first Jurassic World movie came out, I thought that Owen Grady might be a better match for her (which means I had to change the canon around a bit to include Marida, even though most things still happen, but Owen doesn't get together with Claire, so those events might turn out a bit differently). Next, I had to find a way to get Marida to Isla Nublar, so that's where I came up with the idea of a time portal hidden in an abandoned section of Erebor that she comes across after a fight with Thorin that leads her to throw down her crown and get as far away from him as she can. The time portal looks like an ordinary mirror but is anything but and there are strange markings all around it that even Gandalf might have trouble deciphering (how the portal got there is a bit of a mystery, as is an identical one on Isla Nublar, located in the garage of the old Visitor's Center of the original park, or was, since who knows if it survived the eruption, so Marida might be stuck in the modern world).
Due to the volcanic eruption of Mt. Sibo, Owen and Marida are currently living in an underground bunker, though there will be a time when they can live on the surface again, even if Owen has to rebuild his bungalow (since like the time portal that was located in the garage of the old Visitor's Center, it may not have survived the eruption).
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