Some thoughts on roleplaying and its writing
As you might have seen on my zine page, i am an experienced roleplay gm and worldbuilding scholar. On this page i will write some articles and share some tips from my personal writing documents. It's about giving your characters some soil to grow in and getting to know what you can do with a story.
writing blog beginds belowe..th.....
Reading by archetypes
Anders is a nerd, but is considered a chad among his community. He has been traumatized into low self-worth but naturally shows a big, charismatic personality. He is wary of other people, but opens up to being in a relationship or having sex with new people easily. He is easy-going, but always neurotic too. He is very paternal towards people and animals, but is willing to end human life very easily. He has a big ego, but suppresses it. He has a tone of voice in private very different from public conversations or speeches. By dragon age 2, he is also quite literally two different people that take turns being in control, or influence each other. These harmonial conflicts make him a compelling character, you could imagine in any setting. He embodies several archetypes at once, and you may be able to identify him "mostly" with one, but it wouldn't summerize him.
Leon is a badass who was traumatized young but shows it very little. He is the designated one-liner MC but he could be replaced with another character, if his role wasnt to be slightly more naïve than the other protagonists. His staleness makes it difficult to imagine him in everyday situations where one might express themselves, it's hard to imagine him doing anything truly embarassing like a real person might. It is enticing to mirror his behavior in the franchise, other franchises and with his few traits. He could get stupid scared in some situations, and stay cool in others, be affeminate or sexually active when he isnt in action. Be a sensitive people-person that likes to talk a lot in some situations. Have a tattoo that witnesses the frat parties hes gone too when he isnt a cop. These are popular interpretations by people that are attracted to his character when it implies more interesting traits, but find canon's exploration of them lacking. But these headcanons are enticing, as they layer the character further than canon. They impose new archetypes onto him.
Real people are complicated, so how can one portray this and make following their thought processes both easy and fun for the reader? My favorite way to view fictional characters, are as embodying several archetypes at once, in layers, as personal conflicts, or as conditional "fronting". I gravitate towards characters written by this rule. New archetypes are sometimes imposed on the main character throughout the story, as it was in this one RPGmaker game, as twists: game character -> sportsman -> religious -> exorcist -> killer -> father -> monster. The complete formation of this admiration probably cemented itself during my period as a 14-year old Homestuck fan. Homestuck's characters are made up entirely of archetypes, some of which the story has made up itself, but can easily be applied to characters from other media: hyperflexible mythologies. When you read the story, you notice quite clearly the traits in the character as they are applied or recess. The author is quite transparent on his reliance of archetypes and memefictation of the story content.
Hyperflexible Mythologies
"Hyperflexible Mythology" is a term invented by Andrew Hussie, creator of Homestuck, in the comic's annotations. It refers to the flauderisation of original mechanized worldbuilding ideal for character creation and self-insert imagining which is prevalent in most franchises after the absolution of nerd culture as a seperate entity from popular culture. "Which one are you" type writing. and to me, there is nothing wrong with it, as long as it's acknowledged as a tool to connect to the reader and a shortcut for true introspection. To me, a good story makes you identify with someone you have nothing in common with, but good and immersive worldbuilding favors from hyperflexible mythology.To an extend they are just "the rules of the universe" but making them character-fixated allows you to have many characters at the same time and complicated relationships between them. Now i like homestuck, and i think it expertly uses its many hyperflecible mythologies to create a good story (at least outside of excecution) about fate and absolution. For this reason the hyperflexible mythologies are really only good for epics, as they inform predestination.
"Homestuck teaches us how to read it." it was said on the podcast Homestuck Made This World. Which I highly recommend.
These were my concerns, when i started using hyperflexible mythologies in my own writing. I came to understand that i truly gravitated towards heavy categorization, because i wanted to represent the real world and have a narrative that was all-encompassing to its fields. Hyperflexible mythologies are nice to have as thought-shortcuts, and they are typically part of my research as such: if this character should be an animal necessitates it should have an order, family, species. For me its about making a series of choices with Wikipedia as a guide, and i often learn something when everything should be a possible option.
What makes hyperflexible mythology work is that they are a tool for flexibility, not a final listing of approved options.The concept is explained here by Wakraya.
Hyperflexible mythologies by me
I find that these hyperflexible mythologies are stupidly popular. This autumn, I needed to explain phone-like communication in DND 5e. So i came up with a new type of sending stone with rules of customization. It was not the main feature of the original campaign, but i quickly found it taking over the narrative and character creation, enough so that i had to expand on the lore. My players brought home-made stones, and i found myself making one as well. This campaign also had first-time DND players, so i found myself abusing the established DND hyperflexible mythology to hell and spamming my players with personality quizzes and class explanation essays.
