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GREETINGS MY FELLOW RP-INITES! My name is CoyBoat275 and today, I decided to talk about a topic that is dear to my heart... MAKING CHARACTERS!
Now, we all know what we do when making characters. There are super detailed characters that go over every single detail about them or short characters with a lot going with them. Sometimes they have created characters like Sans from Undertale, or maybe... No info at all. Woooooooooo. Spoops...
But, from what I have seen, there is always one thing in characters that never fails, in oc and characters you act as. Heck! Even real people!
It's this.
There is always a little bit of yourself in them.
Yeah yeah, sounds dumb but hear me out.
When I make my characters, they will always portray a single part of me, be it a girl or a boy. Stoic or not, and when I try to make a new character, I try to follow that idea. It is quite hard to make new characters, but! When you base them off yourself, it takes a chunk off of what you have to do.
Another thing is, everyone when they play their ocs, will act them how they feel. So if they are angry, you will see them be angry, happy, happy. You get the idea.
So, if you want to make a good character, or make your roleplaying better, go ahead and act how you feel, and feel how you act! Become your character! Have them become you!
From me to you:
-CoyBoat275

That is the most amazing thing that I read all day! That is so true and many of my characters are based off me, part of me, or family members! It's fun to make characters but a bit of a challenge to write what they are or what happened to them

Depends what you mean by a part of yourself.

Naturally my characters are likely to share 1 or 2 personality traits, but I wouldn't exactly say being an extrovert is putting a part of myself in them. I simply decide if they're an introvert or an extravert by the rest of their personality.
Some of my characters legitimately do share a handful of my tendencies, but saying 'all' is a bit of a stretch unless you mean any small similarity at all.

Having characters react differently, even over small instances, is what really makes them interesting. I'll give an example.

If memory serves, in the TV show "Teen Titans Go" the characters seemed to have different personalities. But often times their reactions were the same or overly similar, and so the characters really weren't all that diverse. (Of course, this wasn't a show that was meant to be in depth and character driven, but you get the idea.)
The reason I'm bringing this up is because of your statement of "everyone when they play their ocs, will act them how they feel. So if they are angry, you will see them be angry, happy, happy. You get the idea.
So, if you want to make a good character, or make your roleplaying better, go ahead and act how you feel, and feel how you act."

I strongly disagree with this, one of the reasons for it being what I stated earlier - lack of diverse reactions.
If you just act out how you feel, your characters will certainly be similar in their behavior, especially in emotional situations.
Because of this I actively try and make my OCs have different reactions that correspond with their personalities. Now, similar reactions are completely acceptable at times because there are instances in which most people would react in a certain way, but it's important to think about how he really would react...Not just what you'd do, or what would look the coolest.

Another issue with it is that if you feel the emotions your characters feel or your characters feel what you feel, is that it won't be consistent, realistic, or nearly as objective when it comes to treatment of your OC.
If you feel mistreated as your character, you won't want negative things to happen/want your character to win or prove them wrong...Even if it isn't realistic. Separating your emotions from your characters is important; just having knowledge of how they'd feel is best in my opinion.

I like to believe most of my characters are not at all like me, as a fair few of them are pretty despicable people. Maybe they represent a subconcious nastiness, a way to voice those deepest darkest most awful thoughts or maybe I just enjoy being someone who isn't ME for a bit lol.

I mean, im me every day and have been for over 30 years. I'm kinda bored of ME.

I rp to escape myself, so I try to have characters who are their own people.

however i'm sure if I sat down and really looked into it certain tropes or traits would be in common, as with all writers there's often a similar "theme" to a lot of their characters. A sort of.. artistic signature if you like, a fragment of themselves they can't help but put into their brain babies.

I personally insist upon a detatchment of character and player. If I don't think a player can detatch and not take IC stuff personally or allow their character to be wrong or fail then i don't really want to play with them.
Being "too close" to your character makes you reluctant to allow bad things to happen to to allow them to screw up, which limits your ability to really tell an interesting story.
Not to say I think you shouldn't love your ocs, I adore my ocs and enjoy playing most of them, but if I couldn't let them get stuff wrong, couldn't let them be idiots sometimes or explore their worst traits and let them be jerks every so often, they would feel.. kinda flat and wouldn't be themselves, they'd just be an idealised me wearing a mask.
Which feels kinda.. boring to me. (see above, bored of being me! hahah)

I mean, I have a lot of characters. This is because I like making characters but also because it lets me tell different stories that I can't do so easily with other existing ocs.
And I LIKE to believe they're diverse and different enough from one another and from me.

I'd really hate to be compared to any of my vampires (except maybe Asher who's a sweetie, if a bit uh... ranty haha) or my demon character who's a real piece of work. Even though I may empathise with a few of my more unpleasant ocs, doesn't mean I don't think they totally deserve to get punched in the face for being rude.
One of my favourite OCs to play is a character I loooove, like I absolutely adore him, but who about 75-80% of other people LOATHE. He brings out the absolute worst in other ocs and it cracks me up. He's a difficult person to warm to, and I fully accept some players just want to beat his head into a curb. It's not that he's actively unpleasant, he's just... brisk and cold. And it's funny because I have far more objectively unpleasant characters that people don't hate as vicerally, in fact a few of them have a strange fan club (people like a bad boy?) and yet the unfriendly alien wierdo is the one everyone wants to see horrible things happen to. Go figure.
But if I couldn't detatch I think i'd be slightly offended that people hate him so much. As it is, I just find it really funny.

Detachment from an OC is crucial to remain objective and being objective is a rather important part of good story telling. RP is all about story telling right? So being able to differentiate and split yourself and your views off from your oc is a very useful excercise. Not only does it make you a better writer, it also helps irl with empathy. If you train yourself to see things from different viewpoints because you're putting everything through the lens of different ocs perspectives, you can also do that with people you meet out and about in life. It's a massively useful skill and one I find it a shame we don't teach our neurotypical kids. I think everyone should get empathy training hahah.

For me, none of my ocs do stuff "Just because". there's never any "just because he's evil/psycho/bad", there's always some meaning or reason. Some way they've rationalised it because real people rationalise their behaviours. "I can do this awful thing because...." and sometimes it involves some pretty major mental gymnastics but denial and delusion is a powerful thing man.
I have characters who will do horrible things in the name of the greater good, who'll do horrible things because they think that particular group is inferior or unworthy of compassion or whatever, or who'll do awful things in the name of revenge/justice which they often will confuse. Likewise I have objectively evil characters who sometimes do good things because it furthers one of their goals.
Character inconsistancy drives me batty hahah, so I always like to justify character actions to myself. "Why is he doing this?" I ask myself. "Why do they believe that?"
I'm uh.. a little obsessive though.

I pretty much agree with you, CoyBoat. It's not necessarily intentionally that my characters show similarities to my own personality, thoughts, or struggles, but it usually so happens. I try give my characters a problem or weakness for depth, and after detailing out their backstory I realize that it is the same problem at its root as something that I'm dealing with.

Some of my characters more closely reflect the deeper processes of my personality. Others seem to show the way other people see me. And a few tend to be based on a wish to return to simpler times and childlike innocence, fun, and wonder.

I occasionally will have a character whose traits are directly opposed to mine. It's been said that best actors are the ones who portray characters that are exactly unlike themselves (Tom Hiddleston as Loki comes immediately to mind).

Anyway, I'm an analyzing type, and I've always noticed after completing a character creation (and sometimes in the process) my characters do, albeit usually unintentionally, have hidden qualities or drives that reflect my own.

Very insightful

When you post something and you dont expect anyone to post reply things.

As a side note, and I think this makes for interesting RP, make sure there is something deeply wrong with your character. Some flaw, some problem, some kind of demons for them to deal with.

It makes things more fun to both play as and play with.

This would probably be best in the RP discussion board. But that is my opinion.

Speaking of which, I tend to create characters that are similar in terms of gender and gender identity. And that is where the similarity stops. My best characters are brought out of self-reflection thoughts. With the ability to identify traits that are far from yours as possible, you can create some very interesting characters.

Though I did create a character that was my carbon copy! She had every single trait that I had and even shared my likeness with a filter on the picture. What a strange time that was and being critiqued by other characters felt much like real life. It's why I stay indoors.

It feels much better to be the attractive, feline lady than the lady who has too many felines.

^^^^

PLEASE understand there needs to be a perspective difference between OOC feelings and IC feelings. Its totally fine to get in to the mood of the scene and characters, but you should always try and strive to make sure you're not feeling exactly like your character.
We are not them and they are not us.

I love all my characters and a few of my personality quirks are in all of them, but it is certainly best to remember who you are and that they are not real.

If you fully immerse yourself in to your character can seem like a really fun and great way to get in to a story, but it has often times too many been the fault in community collapses, friendships ending, and all due to big misunderstandings of how someone feels about you instead of how someone's character's feels about the character you're writing.

Full immersion may seem like a really grand idea, but there are reasons why it is also against the site rules.

Your heart is totally in the right place for encouraging people to really get in to developing their characters, but this idea is a little on the wrong side of that good heartedness.