Today I started a research at Steemit using as tags a couple of terms that I frequently read and we use within the geek/otaku world, noticing with honest surprise how the search engine didn’t register a single result, at least on Spanish (though I perfectly know that Steemit handles prefixed labels).

Then, I realized a unique situation that keeps repeating whenever I am at one chat room at Discord, and even in the middle of normal conversations within a group of the community: They don’t know neither understand many terms that some users say sometimes, terms referring to the fandom world, and shipping, or Role-Play.

That’s why in such a situation, I can’t let pass this opportunity to share a note talking about this activity/hobby that has been with me for 10 years, and that I still happily practice almost every day: Role-Play.

An OC can be developed beneath the premise that their creator imagines them, within the plot or story of a series the Role-player admires or is a fan of: For example, there are several OC created for fan-fictions and Role-Plays of Saint Seiya o Pokémon (if we are talking from the end of 90s to early 2000), Naruto, Persona, D.Gray-Man and Yu-Gi-Oh! (for the most contemporary).

If we are talking about millennial of the last generation, we will find OC´s created and inspired on The Walking Dead, Glee, Orange Is The New Black, to name some example.

OCs can be created for many reasons, from pure personal enjoyment, to make them participate at Role-Plays.

I like to describe Role-Play as the activity you share with a duo or a group, assuming the identity of a cannon character or an OC, and whose interactions derivate into a story, created by the narrative sequence from each “Role-Player’s” interaction when it’s their round to reply and participate on the plot.

Long story short, Role-Play is about writing a story between two or more people, taking as starting point what is known as the “Starter”, initial text which give context to start writing, i can be a situation, a place, an action, or all this together, even a whole story; a “Starter” is an explicative and introductory text with the information to place the characters or OC´s on the role.

Talking about Role-Playing equals touching a super extended topic, but at the current moment I want to share the basic notions to place us on this huge yet discrete sub-culture.

A Role-Player can use characters from a series, manga, comic, movie, novel, book or videogame in order to interact trough their own interpretation with another Role-Player, after previous conversations and agreeing on what kind of story is going to be developed, along with the guidelines on what is allowed or not.

“Role-playing” has many, many variations, and depending on the level, experience, and training of the Role-Player, the matter can become quite serious and structured.

Not all Role-Players are open to role-play with several persons, there exists Role-Players that are “exclusive” of one single Partner, that is to say, they are a duo who “role-play” exclusively between them, without allowing any third intervention or participation on the plots they develop or the relationship between their characters.

Imagine what it must be to write a book that never ends, in company and by the hand of a person who you feel tuned with.

There are many means for role-play, and with the current technological age, the range of options to interact with your Partner (or group) is huge.

As it was before, there are still forums and webs (aka: Servers) for this activity, especially those that are created for an specific fandom.

However, getting affiliated to one or more of those servers or forums with topics arranged for "Role" are no longer the only options that are counted if you want to play as a Role-Player. Now, you can create your own private servers on Discord.

Before Discord, Messenger, Skype, Twitter, and even FB where the viable means for “Roleplaying”, but they weren't the most suitable for their type of graphical interface and few to none options for the creation of topics and files.

Currently and for a long time, Tumblr is an oasis for Role-Players and OC´s creators, nowadays you can find thousands of accounts/blogs on this platform solely dedicated to representing a character.

I want to close this post, which took me days to write despite my excitement, with a table that defines the several concepts that I consider most relevant, in order to understand the language of this role-world, plus a personal note about my experience as a Role-Player.

My start in the world of Role dates back about 15 years ago. At that time, there were forums and servers for this activity, and groups of Messenger dedicated to characters and OC's, we called them "Sanctuaries".

For example, more or less by then I met the one who would be my favorite character of all times: Kurama (Shuiichi Minamino) from Yuu Yuu Hakusho. There were several "Kurama Fans" with so much more time on the series fandom than me, and who dedicated pages to condense bios of the character, along with images, curious facts and even sections with files of Role publicly posted so the rest of fans could read them.

This, almost 20 years ago, was known as "Sanctuary". So, if we are talking about Kurama, he had tons of those dedicated to him, which could range from Fotolog and MySpace pages, to Messenger pages.

Through one of those "Sanctuaries", if my memory is correct, I met my first Role-Partner, an adorable girl from Mexico whose nickname was "Hika", and with who I spent long afternoons interpreting my husbando Kurama. Hika and I used canon characters from other series to role-play, we didn’t have OC´s.

The second Role-Partner I had was a classmate, but as she didn’t have Internet at home, we used a notebook to write, notebook that we exchanged by turns. She would write a chapter, and I would write the following one. On this occasion, we had OCs.

With time, I lost contact with both of them, and I spent many years without touching the Role topic again, because I didn’t trust anyone easily in order to share this kind of hobby (besides, I’m terribly exigent when it comes to choose a Partner). Not many accomplish my expectative; coherence, good syntaxes, carefulness in details are essential for me, also one single orthographic horror can make my rage to explode, and also my scorn towards the person.

I’m a Role-Player of a single Partner, I’d never had many Role-mates at one time; personally for me, it represents some conflict since through Role, you can create very strong affection bonds.

That’s why all my attention and creative energy goes directly to interact with one single person, and the results are fantastic.

I know well that this is not the common way, a lot of people go from one Role-mate to another, or change them periodically (due creative differences, lack on time zone synchrony, having little to none interest on the plots, fandom changes, within another ton of reasons).

At the present time, I’m able to write and follow the rhythm of almost any genre: Romance, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Angst, Drama, Action, Comedy, and almost everything. Although I have a preference to avoid scenes and plots that are too sad or filled with angst, and the hetero romance isn’t really between my lists of interests.

Normally, I’m who takes the initiative and writes the Starters (that can go above 2.000 words. I sent a 9.000 words starter once, I was really excited and I didn’t pay most attention on the quantity of text); and my average time of reply goes around 3 minutes to 8 minutes max per reply/paragraph. I’m always really thankful with my Partner, cause she knows how to encourage me to write more and better, and appreciates my testaments, instead of complaining "about them being terribly long".

All are characters on who I have spent a lot of my love and dedication, not only in what comes to the graphic part, but mostly on their stories. I’m really motivated to condense each one of them on an auto-conclusive story format in order to create a story compendium (I read once that every person most publish a book at one point of their life, just as they shall plant a tree).

To mention some of them, there is my precious and absolutely no-sane "Atnizka", inspired by the Mad Hatter of Alice in Wonderland. "Monique" (who I already presented above), a delicate Trainer placed in the Pokémon Go Universe. And my spoiled baby, "Adhara" (who I also presented already, and who I must change her name, cause this really doesn’t convince me, and isn’t in synonym with the character’s soul, also the phonetic of the name doesn’t appeals to me at 100%), daughter of Sanderson Mansnoozie (aka, Sandman, of the Rise of the Guardians).

Beyond of the fact that I think is a topic that hasn’t been developed/explored/shared on Steemit (and one that’s super interesting!), soon I will start to share content about the OCs who occupy the heart of my Partner and mine, and I feel that talking about this topic is very super suitable before filling my blog with stories and drawings about characters that you would end asking yourselves, “Where is this character from? Where do they belong to?”.

I’m even considering the idea of opening a second account on Steemit, in order to place there all the drabbles, one shot´s, fan-fics and stories per chapters that I write.

I recommend reading this long (but super useful) note if you wish to have a better and more formal notion about the Role-play world on this modality, although the note is placed on the WoW fandom; this is the only User at Steemit that I was able to find that talks about this world (Link on Spanish ):