After roughly three months filled with reading + making art (as well as writing alone), I'm roleplaying again with an old friend and noticed that I'm really happy with the way I approach writing and the work I'm putting out. It feels like when I spent several months drawing nothing but hands and can now produce a gesture for a hand study in about 30 seconds. Sometimes when you're doing that practicing and only making subpar work, it feels like you're not improving or changing anything, until one day you're like...oh, all that practicing really paid off.

I guess it's true! Reading regularly and extensively is so important for writing, and I guess there's no way around it. Even if I get in bed late I'm still trying to put in about 0.5 to 1 chapter a day for whatever book I have on my e-reader (usually stylistically or conceptually related to things I want to write about) and slowly making progress. Really happy with how far I've come and excited to see where this art journey takes me next.

I used to love writing only men. But sitting around on my own these days have led me to writing about women more. In fact, most of my men are a little bit one-note now, which makes me a little nervous hahah. But I like pushing the definitions of masculinity a bit. If I write a very masculine, male character, he exemplifies the qualities of masculinity I either like or find interesting to explore. I like writing good husbands that may or may not be good people. I like writing young men with good hearts that end up being very alone.

The women I write tend to be suited more as NPCs, in a weird way. I like cruel, self-destructive women. Cruel to themselves, or cruel to others. I struggle a lot in both RL and animanga RPCs because I don't enjoy the conventional beauty standards defined by the most accessible/recognizable faceclaims in either place. The women I write tend to be older, and if not that then gender non-conforming or tomboyish, or some combination of the two. I love writing mothers, or characters that serve a maternal role. Women who are violent or singularly minded, who believe the ends justify the means. When I want to chill out from all that crazy emotion, I have angry, selfish young women that are impulsive and immature and generally dislikable.

When writing alone, I'm interested now in writing good husbands that love their cruel, self-destructive, singularly-minded wives...I like making my characters very bisexual, and if I write them in relationships with the opposite gender, I like playing with and subverting tropes regarding them. I also write a lot of lesbians. I generally write mlm ships with close friends.

Most of all, I find that I really enjoy writing characters that refuse to reveal their thoughts to me. Sometimes I'm forced to write their actions, describe their tone of voice, their expressions, the way they carry themselves, and make their thoughts felt by the reader, rather than say what they are.

Jul 27, 2024 16:59:06 GMT capsella said:

- Coming with super obvious themes/metaphors! I usually default to giving them animals they're based on/modeled after (recovering furry) (ffxiv dawntrail probably made me one again, though), but I have a group of 4 I've been wanting to RP who're based on card suits, too!
- Musicians... I've rped an awkward amount of classical pianists, for someone who can't really play a single instrument well.

These are super cool...I've always wanted to write characters based off of themes/metaphors but I always make it too convoluted! Sometimes if I'm reading a book I like, or watching a movie, I might just take a character there and morph them into my OC.

I love writing characters that are musically inclined too, especially towards classical music... most of mine are pianists or violinists as well.

Funny enough--I don't know if I like doing dev anymore...!

Back when I first started roleplaying again in high school, I really, really loved it. I would use dev boards as a place to build upon details in my characters' backstories, or collect music that reminds me of them. I like when playlists have a unified sound, so I never really made playlists, but I did make muse playlists of those songs (though I would not share them...and I still make these muse playlists now!) and would put them on while I write because it helps put me in their minds very well. Memes, text snippets, images, etc...I used to love doing character dev like that so much!

But nowadays, I feel like when I do dev on a forum, I feel like I really, desperately want someone to see it? That sounds super silly...even now I'm not sure why that is! I'll put in a lot of effort, say, writing up and formatting a oneshot and then promoting it, but if I don't get the reception I anticipated, I'll get so down...I also feel like when I do dev work like that for a forum, that effort could've been put into doing a lot of replies (which, when I am active on a site, I will always owe--I've never been fast enough to be fully caught up), so this is also a reason why I shy away from it now.

So I don't really do forum dev anymore as a result. If I really, really want to do dev, then I'll just grab my nearest notebook and write a bunch of notes and thoughts about my characters. Song lyrics I associate with them and why, movie scenes that remind me of them, AUs, QOTD responses, etc...just the act of doing that is extremely therapeutic to me, and it feels so personal to be able to flip through those notes later.

Lately, I really enjoy taking MBTI/Enneagram tests and thinking of the answers they'd give, and then comparing the results to my own, vs the results of the people I know, and drawing similarities vs differences between them, like a weird pseudoscience experiment (which is pretty fitting, I guess, since MBTI/Enneagram are pseudosciences of their own). Of course, these long ramblings and experimental results are tucked away in my notebooks!

I have never roleplayed anywhere else except other forum-style formats. I think I got my start on...neopets! Many, many years ago...

Capsellas your description of toyhouse roleplays actually made me super curious, I hopped around the toyhouse forums and found a whole bunch of wanted ads, and a very interesting community over there. So different from what I've become accustomed to in the forum rp world! I'm almost tempted to join some of them, but a lot of the roleplays being Discord-hosted intimidates me, because it somehow translates to "faster-paced"--which, at a different time in my life, would actually be a huge draw! But right now, I'm in my turtle era and I'm not sure if I can commit...

The idea of an email roleplay sounds really cute, for what it's worth. And the draw of an MMO for roleplaying purposes sounds so cool too--but I'd miss the writing part. I'm also curious about how other people roleplay or write stories collaboratively, on what kinds of platforms...I'm so desperate for a cozy writing/creative community that I'm considering looking around for local DND groups now hahah.

I'm Henry, because Henry Townshend is literally me.

For RL fcs, I really prefer models >>>>> A-list celebrities and actors. I have about 300 random models from various agencies I follow on Instagram. I never log into the gram, instead I just treat my following list like a growing model archive I check in on from time to time. Some of my long-time favorites have been Jing Wen, Duckie Thot, Park Taemin, amongst...well, 300 others LOL the list is so long.

For animanga fcs, I will actually just draw my own, and ask my gacha-pilled friends for recommendations on who matches the description the most. Gacha has given us such a wealth of faceclaims, genuinely. I have a collection of favorite artists that I've followed for the past 5 years or so, and I prefer to select one artist of a specific faceclaim to maintain the same mood, rather than a faceclaim and pick several dissimilar art pieces.

In all cases, the character comes far before the faceclaim does. Sometimes it takes me literal months to find a faceclaim because what I have in mind is not always what is readily available + I prefer to stumble upon the faceclaim rather than waste hours at a time looking for them.

- local cryptid is actually just a crazy woman tht lives in the woods
- local cryptid woman's surprisingly well-adjusted child
- a homeless man. he's bisexual
- the mom from ponyo