Rogue Sloth

Cirque du Sombre [Siaya Dragalorn & Summer]

“Oh, right,” Rayth laughed, catching on to how Lune could have made that connection. To him, there was a gulf of difference between brownies and dwarves, so the joke had missed its mark. In fact, he nearly wrinkled his nose at the thought of bunking with the latter. The only dwarves he knew were stubborn, easily offended and quick to pick a fight with the first person to look at them the wrong way. Compared to that, his fun-loving brownie roommates were much more his speed.
There was no way Lune could know she was talking about a very real mythological creature in the circus, though, so he had to give her a little grace. Plus, the way she referred to him as mijo made him chuckle.
“Vale, mamá,” he quipped as they walked.
While they stopped by his room, he looked down at the scattered playing cards the human was referring to. At a glance, it definitely looked like his roommates were card sharks, but he knew they mostly played simple games like Blackjack and swapped their hoards around as collateral. If one of the brownies lost a game, he would just steal back the prize he’d forfeited when no one else was around anyway.
“Those are the trophies of guys who barely understand the rules of the games they play,” he told her with a shake of his head. “Actually, if you’re ever short on cash, you should challenge them to a round of Hold ‘Em. If you know anything at all about poker, you’ll clean them out.”
Idly, he noticed that she was starting to pick up on more details if she was able to make out the shadowy mess in his cabin. He wondered how much time had passed.
“Just this,” he shrugged his bag in response to her question. “My roommates are the slobs, I swear.”
If he spent more time in his bunk, he might have been bothered more by the state of it, but since he only used it for sleeping and holing away when he needed time alone, he had no qualms with the disaster zone.
When he escaped from Mount Stolen Goods, he tapped Lune passively with a hand to indicate that they were moving again before he continued on down the dark corridor. A smile played on his lip at the surprise in her voice. “I’ve had a lot of time to learn how to use all my senses,” he explained with a glance at her over his shoulder. “I can hear your heart beating too… and smell the mice hiding under the train. You know, you can learn how to do it to a degree. It’s like a muscle. A lot of people get so used to relying on their eyesight that they don’t think to exercise their other senses, but I taught one of my cousins a long time ago, and he got really good at listening… Well, as good as a human can be, I mean.”

Cirque du Sombre [Siaya Dragalorn & Summer]

Rayth let the subject go without a comment when Lune mentioned lines for the showers. Somehow, he doubted she was going to ever have a problem with that. Most of the creatures in the circus didn’t even use them except to rinse off their stage makeup after each show. While they were on the tracks between performances, the car that housed the showers was always empty. He was one of the few who stopped by more often because, as a half-human, he could work up a sweat if his cabin was too warm or if he decided to work out as an outlet for his pent-up energy during the troupe’s travels.
He had it on good authority, though, that he never stank even if he glistened after a weight training session.
Once the runaway was ready to keep moving, Rayth took a step away from the wall to lead her back to the shower car. “Snow White?” he snorted, glancing down at his own bare torso. The darkness sapped most of the color from his skin, but he could still see that he was tanner than she was, thanks to his father’s Hispanic heritage.
“Híjole, I must need sunlight if I’m being compared to the pastiest of Disney princesses,” he pulled a face, then moved toward the door with audible enough footfalls for Lune to hear him if she couldn’t yet see his silhouette in the cabin. He didn’t know exactly how long it took for human’s eyes to adjust to dark spaces.
“You can use my shoulder again if you need to,” he offered with a glance back at her.
Only pausing long enough for her to decide whether or not she would accept the gesture, he strode back down the shadowy corridor that would take them to the other end of the sleeper cars.
Along the way, he stopped by his own cabin to grab his collection of soap and a clean change of clothes. The space he shared with the brownie troupe was an obvious mess that he couldn’t have hidden if he’d tried when he opened the door. Discarded clothes and random assortments of jewelry, playing cards and other odds and ends littered the floor. The air also smelled faintly of tobacco from his roommates’ pipes.
The half-vampire skirted around the hazard zone to get to the lower bed bunk, which he reached underneath to retrieve an old, cheap bag with a New Mexico State University logo printed on the front in faded lettering. It was where he kept most of his personal belongings, and he didn’t feel like digging through it to find his shower supplies, so he slung the whole thing over one shoulder and stepped over an unfinished game of Jenga to get back to Lune.
“I heard the doors to the storage cars open a minute ago,” he mentioned offhandedly as he adjusted the strap of the bag to sit more comfortably against his collar. “The others are packing up the Big Top right now, so they’ll probably get here right when we’re done with the showers.” He just hoped they’d all fed well enough to behave around their new human troupe member.

Cirque du Sombre [Siaya Dragalorn & Summer]

“I never thought about it that way before, but yeah,” Rayth nodded, smirking as he went on in a cliché pirate voice, “Stay in your lane, and you’ll get along just fine here, matey.”
When they stopped and he gave her time to choose a bunk, the half-vampire laughed at the way she reacted to his ‘guideline’ for living. She was already more fun than many of the other members of the troupe. The other supernaturals took themselves way too seriously and acted like they were better than everyone else, especially humans and half-breeds. Whoever ended up sharing a space with Lune was probably going to be upset about it.
He’d had the same trouble when he had first joined the circus. The pureblooded creatures had been hostile, and he’d seen his fair share of bared teeth and raised hackles as he’d tried to find a place to sleep. It had been fortunate for him that Oscar and the other brownies didn’t mind adding one more body to their shared cots. Since he was on a nocturnal schedule, they were rarely even in the car at the same time, so the arrangement worked out conveniently for everyone involved.
Relieved that Lune had decided to bunk with Juliette over the other two options, he followed her into the cabin while she got herself set up on the top bunk. He didn’t know much about the shifter since she was so quiet, but he hoped the living situation would work out better that it would have if she’d gone with Genesis or Briella.
“My bunk is in the car we just passed through,” he answered her, absentmindedly glancing over Juliette’s neat bed as he rested his shoulders against the wall that partitioned their section off from the rest of the train. “You probably won’t be surprised to find out I sleep during the day, so I split a bed with two other guys who use it at night… They’re part of the, uh, midget brigade, so they both fit comfortably in just one cot instead of taking two.”
There were four brownies in total, and they were a tight-knit group, so they all shared the upper and lower bunks in their cabin by choice. The space was crowded at night, but he never had to put up with their twitching and snoring since he had the luxury of using it when none of the other residents were around.
The drawers and other hiding places in the room were stuffed with all the watches, wallets, cell phones and other things the brownies had burgled though, so he didn’t have much storage space for his own belongings.
“The one downside to this bunk is that the showers are on the opposite side of the sleeper cars,” he noted, glancing up at Lune again when he caught the dull floral scent of the shampoo she’d pulled from her backpack. “I need to wash the paint off my face, so I can walk you over now, if you want. They’re back the way we came, just one more car down.”

Tips for writing POC, LGBT+, and other minority characters in RP

In regards to writing people of color specifically, one thing I'll add is that roleplayers can sometimes have the tendency to fixate on things like eye and hair color in their RP—which isn't necessarily bad, of course, but they can additionally imply a certain level of importance to that color variation, variation which most people on Earth simply don't have. I haven't seen it especially much here, but having a section in, say, a personal description for hair color and eye color is pretty Eurocentric when the majority of people in the world will have dark hair and dark eyes as a rule. I know that culturally in the West we put a lot of significance into those things (feisty redheads or pure blue eyes or what have you) but they're also tropes reflective of a white-dominated culture that don't really apply to other people. There's also a tendency to ignore that, i.e. have a character who's Asian except for their blue eyes (which really just makes me think of Toni Morrison and The Bluest Eye) in a way that's uncomfortable because it can be read to say that PoC characters aren't interesting enough unless they have colored eyes. The one exception I'd make would be anime settings because of mukokuseki, because then everyone has colored eyes, but that's a trope of the genre rather than a player choice per se. Outside of that one exception, however, I think that these sorts of characters can tend to make it hard to feel seen and appreciated as who you are—instead they can make you feel that people like you aren't 'interesting' or 'beautiful' enough to be worth exploring as a character.

@Fiscbryne

I'd never actually thought about this before, but, well, damn xD I've read and written so many RPs with an emphasis on those specific physical traits that I'm gonna have to start thinking of more features to describe for my characters in general. That's good info for the future to get me out of my limiting box. Thanks for sharing!

Tips for writing POC, LGBT+, and other minority characters in RP

I'm so glad to see that this thread gained traction overnight.

@Kassarock @POOHEAD189

Really helpful advice from both of you. Thanks so much for contributing! It reminds me of why I started the thread in the first place, actually. One of my closest friends is gay, and we were chatting about the value of minority representation in the media. A lot of film and TV shows seem to depict queer characters as either total stereotypes/caricatures or people who could pass as straight if they didn't tell you they were gay/lesbian/bi. There's much more of a spectrum in real life. However, my friend had a really good point that while caricatures can be offensive if done in poor taste, that doesn't mean that queer characters can't ever have stereotypical tendencies. It can also be offensive/hurtful to send a message that they have to be ambiguous enough that their sexuality is unclear, so having a mix of both can be cathartic for people who may feel like it's been ingrained in them to avoid "being a stereotype" at all costs.

I can't speak much to that same point regarding POCs, but I agree for sure that it would be nice to see more variety on the site. I think a lot of people overthink it and know that I even did for a while before I started branching out from straight white male characters. More than anything else, I've noticed the changes to my minority characters are predominantly in their histories. How they were raised, the building and wounding messages they received in adolescence, what their families were like, etc. At the end of the day, they're all human and that's the most important thing to remember, but I've learned that there's something beautiful in at least acknowledging some of the cultural differences between my white, black, Latinx, Asian, Native, etc characters who were brought up by more traditional families. Which is where some advice from people with life experience could be helpful if anyone reading the thread has anything they want to share in that department! :)

@Crystal Amalgam

Honestly, I love hearing from trans people, so anything you want to add about mental health and psychology is totally fine with me. Thanks for sharing! I think trans people are probably the single most underrepresented group on the forum (at least, from what I've seen) so it's really helpful to hear advice on how to write them as characters. That's the one group I haven't tried to write, myself. It's mostly because gender dysphoria is a thing I have experience with and haven't reached a point of comfort enough to create a character that's been through it too, but for other people, it could be helpful to learn about trans people both for general understanding and for better knowing how to approach a character if they want to give it a shot.

Tips for writing POC, LGBT+, and other minority characters in RP

Speaking as someone LGBT+, "Bury Your Gays" is a trope to be wary of. This isn't to say that LGBT+ people in your writing can't have tragic experiences; many people today still struggle with homophobia, transphobia, being assaulted for being LGBT+, etc. However, for an underrepresented community of people in media, it does get tiresome seeing LGBT+ characters constantly written as someone whose life is hell and/or is killed off to where it is a refreshing (and thankful) change of pace whenever the opposite happens.

@Vatonage

Thanks! I’ve heard that’s a reason why Schitt’s Creek was praised for being a homophobia free zone.

Tips for writing POC, LGBT+, and other minority characters in RP

I'm curious about other writers' approach to this subject. I have multiple POC and queer characters in a few of my ongoing RPs, but I was wondering recently if there are people of those demographics (or other writers in general with experience) who have advice they'd like to give straight, white writers like myself to better represent them in their stories. I've noticed for a while that there aren't a whole lot of POC characters specifically on this site, so it could be especially helpful for anyone who wants to get their feet wet with writing a character who doesn't share their race. For example, if there's anything anyone wants to share regarding their culture, terms/language specific to a minority demographic, mistakes they've seen in others' writing (without pointing fingers) or other details that aren't commonly reflected in RP, I'd love to hear them!

I'll also mention that this could be a good spot for people to discuss and share questions about writing different genders if they have any.

Writing outside of your own life experience can be a powerful thing, and I hope this will be helpful for anyone who wants to give it a shot!

--

Note: Please keep all conversation classy. This is meant to be an inclusive thread designed for learning, and I don't want to see it dissolve into arguments, intolerance or hateful speech. Thanks!

---

Edit; follow-up question for discussion: What are obstacles you have to writing characters who are a different gender/race/sexuality/any other quality as yourself?

Tense and Perspective in Roleplaying

One of the most interesting books I've read in recent years was from second person perspective ("you" instead of I or they). It forced the reader (me) to step into the shoes of a character who was nothing like myself, and it was delightfully uncomfortable to explore.

Anecdote aside, I tend to stick to third person in my RPs because I've heard some partners say that reading posts that use I/me/my throws off their voice for their character, so it just feels safer. Most of the time, I use third person limited, but I'm trying to branch out and dabble in omniscient lately to practice weaving more than one POV together without staggering the flow of my writing. Like the people discussing collabs were saying, it's pretty difficult to do, but I've read some authors who tackle it beautifully, and in my opinion I'll only grow as much as I challenge myself, so I'm hoping to make progress as I work on it.

New World Contention [AnnaWinters & Summer]

Sorry to hear that! I hope things look up for you soon. In the meantime, just let me know when you're ready to continue. I'm not going anywhere :)

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

I had too much fun with that scene haha. The coronation flipped a switch in Cas's mentality about becoming king.