The Academy For Mythical Creatures discussion

GOULE'S GUIDE TO DEVELOPING CHARACTERS ; part i
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[ 01 ] overview
[ 02 ] starting concept
[ 03 ] finer details
[ 04 ] repetitions & trends
[ 05 ] disabilities & abilities
[ 06 ] compact brainstorms
[ 07 ] final thoughts

OVERVIEW | my creditentials, I guess

hello, and welcome to this guide. it may seem very lengthy, but I think as budding writers, these are important things to consider. I'll try to be as concise as I can. to start, I've been roleplaying for a while now — I had another account that's been around since 2016. I took a break from GR and only recently came back, but I still roleplay on other forums. so, I know a fair amount about creating characters at this point.

while the process I will be detailing is more of what I do when I create characters, this is what I have come to learn over the years as a roleplayer. with that in mind, I will be creating a character of my own, and using others of my creation, in this guide. I will not be putting them up for adoption, and ask that you do not take the idea of the character from this guide. the purpose is to serve only as an example.

STARTING CONCEPT | the very basics

sometimes, different aspects of a character may come to you at different times. I've known people who have started with face claims and worked up from there. i typically do either or; there's no one correct starting place for a character. but for now, we'll start with a face.



so, I've found a face I like. while I am aware of the art/who it's based off, I don't want to make that exact same character. if that was what I'd want to do, i'd do it in a different setting; but this would be a discussion for another time. if you want to do it that way, more power to you? but I would discourage you from doing so. but now that we have a face, we can think of a name.

note ! if you happen to be using face claims of actors/models/celebrities/etc., it's best to keep their age in mind bc it looks weird to have a 40-50 y/o playing a teenager. there's also general respectfulness by not using deceased people as face claims

like I said before, we can have influences from where the subject of the art originates from. in her world, the place she's from resembles China, in general. but I've seen some thoughts on the many different cultures that exist in and around China. for this example, I'll make the character Vietnamese.

we now have two things (technically four, actually): a face and the start of background. but this can also help us, in this case, with a name and a species. since this character will be vietnamese, I can look up a name and species based on Vietnamese culture.

note ! if you ever want to find names common in a specific culture/language, you can just google [ culture name ] + [ gender ] + name and it'll give you plenty of resources. the same can apply for looking up mythical creatures. [ culture name ] + mythical creatures.

using google, I can find a couple names that I like, as well as information on naming conventions. I'm going to use a surname from a list of common surnames — Ngo. in a quick search, I found that middle names are common and that girls typically have two-syllable names.

another search lead me to a species. normally, this might not influence the naming or much else of the character if you're very set on some of the basic things about them. however, at this point, I'm not letting too much of the art influence my choices. which is how the species has changed something: gender. doing some research is important. i wanted to create a trickster of some sort, which every culture has at least one of. in this case, i went with a fox spirit. in Vietnamese culture, they appear as both evil and good spirits. but there is also an important note to be made, that is common in a lot of trickster tales: they are typically male, but appear female when they approach the hero/victim of the story.

note ! some cultures may have the same creatures, but with differences to the way that they work. for example, while Junfeng is a dragon, he's an eastern dragon. dragons in eastern mythology are typically depicted as wise, benevolent guardians. in western mythology, they are often seen as destroyers and terrifying monsters that heroes are meant to slay and take the gold of.

so now, the name has been changed and I've added on a gender identity. this character will be male, but appears female. he will identify as male, completely. this may have presented challenges in the past for them. now i have more: part of a history. building from the ground up can influence the entirety of the character.

to recap: we have a name, a species, a gender, and an appearance. these influence history and personality. the species will work into powers, which i can explain a little about later.

Name: Ngo Nhung (middle) Tu (given) — as per the combined searches
Species: Ho Li Trinh — the fox spirit
Gender: Male
Appearance: See above

age is something you can come up with based on your preference, but again: some realism is encouraged. depending on the country, students at a high school will start their first year at about 14/15. they graduate around 18/19. circumstances, where they would start earlier or later, are rare.

an example of this that I have is Kai Yun. she's 85 years old, and currently attending as a junior. but she's also a jiangshi who was died in 1955; educational standards were very different, particularly in rural areas of developed nations. she was born in rural China. because she lived in a fishing village, she did not complete all years of schooling, to help her family as well as save money so she could move when she was 18. by that point, to her, an education is not quite so important. now, however, she has the time and freedom to pursue an education, which is why she's enrolled as a student.

typically, I prefer playing older characters, so mine will generally always be closer to my own age. anja would be my youngest character, for example, at 16.

but now, with this in mind, I will be making Tu (his given name) around 17-19. most likely 19. so now we have the age set. we can move now to the next set of details.

FINER DETAILS | personality and history

personality and history are obviously important parts of a character. at one point, it used to help to write out a character's history to figure out their personality for me. now, usually, I have the concept of them started from their personality, and that can influence a bit of their history. or not; a character can turn out very different from what their history has shown.

using Tu as an example with his species, we can kind of base something on the archetype of a trickster. this would be an individual who is mischievous. they can be cunning or foolish or both. a hallmark of a trickster can sometimes be a direct questioning of authority. however — I don't think I want Tu to be like that. or, not entirely like that. I'll take the trait of mischievous, sure, to keep the general archetype. cunning will also stay. now I have two traits: cunning + mischievous.

depending on how you play it, those two traits are only positives. or, they can be only negatives. Tu could be cunning, and use that solely to his advantage. He might use his intellect to outsmart others for nefarious purposes. His mischievous nature may also influence whether he uses his abilities to play practical jokes to lighten the mood or bully people. while it would be great to make a super nice character that everyone loves, I do like to play characters that are definitely not favored all the time by other characters. Lucyda goes out of her way to bully students. the detention hall might as well be a torture room. but I have other characters that are somewhat nice/about average. they don't outright go out of their way to make life difficult for people.

so, Tu will be a bully.

note ! I'll talk about this a bit later, but while there are plenty of nice people in the world, not everyone is. not all characters will be nice, and there's a difference between being nice and being polite. being polite means meeting a social standard, where being nice is going beyond that. things to keep in mind.

that note also inspires a new trait: politeness. being polite does not, as stated, automatically mean you are nice. you can be polite and still be mean. so we'll add that in to his list of traits, bringing us to three traits. we can stop there or continue.

if we were to write this out in paragraph form it might look a like this:

On the outside, Tu is an exceptionally polite individual. Someone with all the social graces and manners of a well-behaved person. But — Tu is not to be mistaken as kind. He excels at being just polite enough that people don't think much of his slightly off remarks. The mischievous curve of his lips as he politely informs others of a thing he might have heard someone say about them. He's learned to be quite apt at maneuvering in social spaces, using his cunning to turn others against each other for his benefit. He most enjoys watching younger students get lost in his illusions after he so kindly guides them to where a class ought to be.

in this, we've also added that he can be quite deceptive. this falls into another negative trait, but it still fleshes him out a bit more. i could probably add more of him being a chronic liar or something along those lines if I wanted to.

if we settle with just that, we can move into the history.

history is important, to me, because it can help you flesh out a character. it can be detailed, with every event — major or otherwise — written out. it can just be major events, or it can be as simple as "They lived here, with these members of their family. Their childhood was nice, and they were sent to the Academy to learn more about the world" or something. from that we learn that they have never had to struggle for anything; there were no major confrontations that they had to worry about. some of the other students may look at them strangely, but this can also influence their personality. they're probably very sure of themselves if they've never had to deal with an actual challenge.

fox spirits across the board tend to be on either side of conflict. some have been wronged and some have wronged others. i think based on some of the stories I found, there may be a history of distrust of humans in Tu's family. to add to this, while he may have never had any particular sort of incident with people, he's heard enough about it that he's prejudiced. so this can tie back into his personality, while also being in his history.

GOULE'S GUIDE TO DEVELOPING CHARACTERS ; part ii
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[ 01 ] overview
[ 02 ] starting concept
[ 03 ] finer details
[ 04 ] repetitions & trends
[ 05 ] disabilities & abilities
[ 06 ] compact brainstorms
[ 07 ] final thoughts

FINER DETAILS | continued

you can also take his appearance into consideration. he looks very much like a beautiful young woman. he could have led many people to their doom with this appearance, as is often written about of fox spirits.

so where we are now is a character pretty well fleshed out. they look a bit like this now:

Name: Ngo Nhung Tu
Age: 19
Year: Senior
Gender: Male
Species: Ho Li Trinh
Appearance:

Personality: On the outside, Tu is an exceptionally polite individual. Someone with all the social graces and manners of a well-behaved person. But — Tu is not to be mistaken as kind. He excels at being just polite enough that people don't think much of his slightly off remarks. The mischievous curve of his lips as he politely informs others of a thing he might have heard someone say about them. He's learned to be quite apt at maneuvering in social spaces, using his cunning to turn others against each other for his benefit. He most enjoys watching younger students get lost in his illusions after he so kindly guides them to where a class ought to be.
History: Tu was born to a relatively small family. They secluded themselves in the mountains of Vietnam, keeping away from the general populace. Throughout his childhood, Tu heard the stories of his ancestors. Of how they had at one point been benevolent guardians until the fleeting opinions of humans betrayed them. He, from an early age, had decided that he would treat humans as they were meant to be treated: as food. He left his mountain home to attend the Academy, to show the world that a ho li trinh should not be trifled with.

now, as per the guidelines, this character needs some abilities.

REPETITIONS & TRENDS | a few things to avoid

one of the things that can happen in a group where people make a lot of characters is that there are trends that occur. a certain species, a certain trait; sometimes it's even a general appearance. that's not so bad when they occur as isolated incidences. if you happen to have characters that are similar to another person's, it's not the same as it being an exact copy of that character. you want to avoid copies.

this is just a thing to make known, of course. having a lot of the same character is just — no fun.

DISABILITIES & ABILITIES | real meets the fantastical

disabilities are a part of life and you may be wanting to give your character some. mental disorders may fall into these categories. they are not personality traits or quirks or flaws, which is something that should be stressed. you don't give a character a disability to make it be their whole personality. that's rude and inconsiderate.

you can write characters with disabilities, while being respectful. Kai Yun, for example, is essentially blind. she works around this with all her other enhanced senses. she can create an image, so to speak, of what and who she might be faced with, but she can't actually see.

her abilities, while helpful, came with her disability (and her death). so let's take a look at Tu. as a ho li trinh, he should have the basic abilities of most fox spirits. across the board, fox spirits are able to shapeshift. that's one ability down. we can do another: illusions. fox spirits are known for creating illusions outside of their shapeshifting to entice their victims. so that's two. some variations of fox spirits are known to control some elements, such as fire or lightning. based on Tu's history and personality, I think this ability would add an extra something to him. but they would also have natural weaponry, such as claws and fangs.

that pushes Tu to four abilities. we can have the natural weaponry be passive. most, excluding the teachers, have tiers of abilities: passive, mastered, and unmastered. mastered abilities fall into the limit, with unmastered available to be used but it's not likely, and passive abilities are just ones that exist as a default.

if I wanted to add anything else to Tu in terms of abilities, they would need to be unmastered or passive.

so now, Tu is at this point of completion:

Name: Ngo Nhung Tu
Age: 19
Year: Senior
Gender: Male
Species: Ho Li Trinh
Powers: Shapeshifting, Illusion Manipulation, Pyrokinesis
Appearance:

Personality: On the outside, Tu is an exceptionally polite individual. Someone with all the social graces and manners of a well-behaved person. But — Tu is not to be mistaken as kind. He excels at being just polite enough that people don't think much of his slightly off remarks. The mischievous curve of his lips as he politely informs others of a thing he might have heard someone say about them. He's learned to be quite apt at maneuvering in social spaces, using his cunning to turn others against each other for his benefit. He most enjoys watching younger students get lost in his illusions after he so kindly guides them to where a class ought to be.
History: Tu was born to a relatively small family. They secluded themselves in the mountains of Vietnam, keeping away from the general populace. Throughout his childhood, Tu heard the stories of his ancestors. Of how they had at one point been benevolent guardians until the fleeting opinions of humans betrayed them. He, from an early age, had decided that he would treat humans as they were meant to be treated: as food. He left his mountain home to attend the Academy, to show the world that a ho li trinh should not be trifled with.

we can add his clubs and such in later. maybe sorcery club, though he might dislike the presence of wizards. or maybe he's in no club at all.

and we are pretty much done! we've fleshed out a character. i would generally add more detail myself, but this is just the basics of how the process of creating a character can look like.

COMPACT BRAINSTORMS | quick ideas

sometimes you can't sit down and make a character in one sitting, or you just have an idea that you want to flesh out later. you've probably seen my character thread where I put all my brainstorms. having them is also good to reference if you're still new to writing a character or you just need a refresher to spark a new idea in a roleplay. i do them quick and put basic references like powers, personality traits, and history details.

in the case of Tu, his would look like this:

ngo nhung tu + 19 ; ho li trinh / student
powers: shapeshifting; illusion manipulation; pyrokinesis; semi-immortality
. cunning
. tends to pull a lot of pranks on people
. polite
. deceptive; has a habit of lying often
. distrusting of most humans

FINAL THOUGHTS

i do like reading about the different characters that a group can produce. interesting new ideas are always fun, but you can lose that luster when there's no energy put into a character, or if it feels like there's no effort being put into a character. i hope that, through this guide, you can think more about your characters as you make them. because, you are essentially creating something here.

i look forward to the creations you all share with the group.

— goule .

GOULE'S GUIDE TO DEVELOPING CHARACTERS ; additional thoughts on history
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I've noticed that people have been struggling still with history — which isn't bad! Histories can be hard when you overthink them. Sometimes a history sounds great, but doesn't fit well with a character. Sometimes you're just lost on where to go with the writing.

A character backstory can be broken down in several different ways. Depending on the age, you could go based on stages of development (i.e. early childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, etc). For the sake of this group, we might look at it a little differently. You can start from their home life, childhood, into them attending the academy. If you're struggling with this, you can ask yourself the following questions:

— Where was your character born?
. what was this place like?
. did people hate mythical creatures/magicians? did they coexist peacefully?
— What was their immediate family like?
. were they born as a mythical creature?
. are all members of their family mythical creatures?
. was the family wealthy or middle class or poor?
. how did this affect them?
— What was their childhood like?
. were they exposed to violence/persecution/discrimination for being a mythical creature?
. did they live in a place with other mythical creatures?
. were they isolated (i.e. lived in a forest, underwater, in the mountains, etc.)?
. did they have a normal elementary school experience?
— How did they come to attend the Academy?
. did a parent go to the academy?
. did someone they know (not an immediate family member) go to the academy?
. were they given a formal invitation?

It might seem like a lot, but it really isn't. I'm not asking you to write a thousand words for a backstory, but we do ask that you put some thought into the history you give your character. At best, we would like at least 4-6 sentences on a backstory. You want it to be relevant to the group, otherwise we can't really approve your character.

If you would like to see these questions in practice, we can use Tu's updated history from his sheet as an example.

TU'S PAST is nothing particularly special. If anything, one should think more on his family history. They were revered as deities, guardian spirits for the small Vietnamese village he was born in. Somewhere along the way, though, something changed. Lines were crossed as new religions were introduced. The once peaceful relationship of guardians and their charges shifted. Tu had not yet been born when the first of his kin to be struck down had died. But the stories of it lived on.

From his mother's generation, came bloodshed. The Ngo family had turned. A brutal war was waged in the wilds. Both sides faced losses. Tu's own father, who had then had five tails, had three taken from him as a show of power. Peace did not come all at once. In fact, many wonder if it ever came at all. But a victor had been decided and it had been the ho ly tinh. They reclaimed the land which many of them had shed blood for, expelling the humans from their land. Those same humans would try several times to return, but to never permanently stay.

The first two paragraphs alone knock out several of the questions. We know where he was born (a village in Vietnam), how mythical creatures were treated, and how his family was. The next two paragraphs are as follows:

By the time Tu was born and entering into his fiftieth year, humans had gone from charges to prey. The other fox spirits that would have been warded off to protect those humans were bargained with, the humans as their bargaining chips. Tu's family did not expand, their power consolidated into the remaining foxes that had survived the war. He grew up on these stories, the things he could not participate in. His first hunt was of humans, shown the best ways to charm them. He excelled at this, leading them right onto what might as well have been a silver platter.

It was through whispers that he learned of the Mythical Academy. But he had no interest in mingling with other species; he was content where he was. He was content to be the apex. Tu was marked as next head of the family before the current head decided that he would send the young(er) folks out into the world. As upsetting as this decision was, Tu couldn't fight it. So he, and several others, were sent to MC for the sole purpose of displaying the prowess of the Ngo family.

This gives information on his childhood (how he was taught to treat humans, etc) and how he was directed to the Academy. It also shows that he wasn't isolated and that he had regular socialization, which is something that tied back into his personality. (Like I said before, history can influence personality.)

Hopefully, this addition has been helpful. Please remember that you don't need a tragic backstory to make an interesting character. Happy creating,
— goule .