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*How do you Create a Character? - Jiggly_333 - 09-28-2020

Hi there!

You must've read my first article. Or you're reading the NSFL ISFL Media sequentially and this is just higher up on the list because that's how forums work. Maybe I ended up writing even more parts to this thing and you read those first. Well, you should still read the first part first because that's how parts work. There I explain why this matters to me and what exactly I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to help you create a character.

Let's actually define what I mean by character, because there's a bunch of different character types I've seen in sim leagues through the years (literal years).

First of all, there's a few different ways people approach this. There's the hands-off, the media-only, the diva, and the extremely rare method actor. Let's go over these approaches:

Hands-Off
This person does not give a fuck about "building a character." Whether it's out of laziness or disinterest, they just don't put effort into who their player is supposed to be. It's fine, those people are valid if they just don't want to do media. There's a place for those people. But I'm not here writing for those people.

Media-Only
These are the guys who I'm more writing for. The people who want to make their player a person, but are fine with letting it just be on paper. They can handle themselves in an LR like a (mostly) normal human being and they won't go out of their way to do something "because that's what their character would do."

The Diva
The name sounds worse than what it really is. This is someone who likes to slip into their character outside of media and PTs. They go into contract negotiations saying that they want massive amounts of money because that's what their player would do. They might get into some fights in general discord over a rivalry. It's a bit over-the-top, but it's okay.

The Method Actor
I have seen this only a couple of times and it is the strangest thing to me. Someone will come into the league and make their entire identity a persona. They will affect the way they speak, they will treat conversations behind closed doors like they're still playing to an audience. They'll just do everything in character. NEVER DO THIS. Even in actual acting, method acting is supremely annoying. I appreciate what he tries to do, but fuck Daniel Day Lewis. The most you should do for a role is consistently speak in the dialect/accent you need for your character and maybe minimal physical changes, not Christian Bale yo-yo-ing from role to role.

Wow. That went a bit far.

Anyway, don't be a method actor. If you're here, try to be media-only, as it's the best way to make sure that everyone has a good time here. Divas are fine too, but it does get to a point sometimes where it's a bit annoying to deal with. But most of the long-time people here who are GMs know how to handle them. It's a balance. Just never go method.

So now we've got the way you're going to approach the character. Now let's figure out who that character is. As I said, there's a ton of different archetypes, so let me rattle them off for you since that's how we're doing this thing. There are:

Me, but successful
This is the favorite of the Hands-Off crew. You don't want to deal with creating a character, just make yourself. When they ask what your player's opinion is, say your own opinion. Effectively, the only difference between you the writer and you the player is that the player is actually in professional football and probably has a better physique than you. Maybe not. I don't know your life. But I do know that your writing is boring.

Meme Name
There will be more than one in every single group. They will have some name that's a pun involving either a real player's name or literally just a meme. I'm not against dirty jokes, I'm not against having fun with this sort of thing, but the people who name their players this totally dumb stuff also have to write about a guy whose name is "Dick Smalls." When it's a real player's name, they just write this caricature of that player. Or they do it like a normal meme name player and just make them absolutely bat-shit crazy to the point where realism doesn't matter. It's certainly a way to go, but it annoys me greatly. It's very hard to pull it off and even harder to stick around in the league when you have to write that name every time you want to talk about your player. I actually know of people who came in with meme names who later changed it because they felt like they really wanted to take this seriously and looking like an idiot wouldn't help them. But do what you want, I guess.

The One-Off
This is like the meme name, but a sub-category of that. Essentially, their name is a joke, a singular joke. And they just run with it. The most legendary player who was able to do this was Borkus Maximus V, who was, in everything but official renders, a dog. You can make it work, but make sure that you have a strong starting point. Otherwise you're just telling the same joke over and over. You need to be able to come up with enough variations on a theme for your entire career. I also advise against this one.

The Asshole
In every real life draft class, you've always got some guy who develops an attitude. Who thinks they're the best. Usually they actually have real talent and are seen as a top player already. You just walked in here and are talking shit. Who even are you? There's honestly a very good reason why people like writing for this kind of player and that's because it's easy to develop drama to write about in terms of plot for PTs and media. But it makes sense in the real world when players perform at a high level, even if it's just for a season and then they ride that the rest of their career. Here, you're kind of at the mercy of the random number generator we call our sim. It's still an option and honestly, the catharsis for a person who's normally mild-mannered to be able to let out their pent-up aggression is kind of healthy, I guess. As long as it doesn't somehow unleash a demon onto the page, which i have done before (oops).

The Nice Guy
Another popular character archetype similar to the "Me, but successful" trope, except they're built to simply just be a good guy in the locker room. Positive dude, loves his dog, helps be a leader for the team. It's fine. It gets boring though. There's a lack of conflict. They contrast really starkly with The Asshole.

You can kind of tell that I once again have a bias. Except this time it's a bias against all of these archetypes. Because these are all one-note characters. Barely even two-dimensional. Eventually you got teams that are made up of 60% default settings, 20% Peak Randy Moss, 15% Captain America, and then 5% some dude just jacking off in the corner. Every human being is the protagonist of their own story. Every athlete has a success story that brought them here. They had struggles, passions, fall-back plans.

I get it. None of you are professional writers (probably, most of you aren't, maybe one or two are and you just haven't revealed yourself yet). I shouldn't be holding you all to such a high standard. But wouldn't it be cool if you could write cool stories? Or have a character who you genuinely cherish as though they were an actual friend? Maybe even like they were your child? That sounds weird, so I'm going to go to another paragraph.

In the next part of this series, which will hopefully be the last part, I'm going to explain how to create a fully fleshed out character who you can feel proud of and how to wield them like a battleaxe against the hordes of unimaginative content made solely for the purpose of making fake money.

RE: How do you Create a Character? - Ben - 09-28-2020

Woah Borkus Maximus III has a grandson? @bovovovo can u confirm?

RE: How do you Create a Character? - bovovovo - 09-28-2020

(09-28-2020, 05:39 AM)Ben Wrote: Woah Borkus Maximus III has a grandson? @bovovovo can u confirm?

confirmed

also nice Borkus got a shout out

RE: How do you Create a Character? - timeconsumer - 09-28-2020

(09-28-2020, 02:51 AM)Jiggly_333 Wrote: Eventually you got teams that are made up of 60% default settings, 20% Peak Randy Moss, 15% Captain America, and then 5% some dude just jacking off in the corner.

Dude warn a guy before you drop a line like this so I can stop drinking my coffee