Character Creation: Guideline ~ Age & Gender

“All human beings deserve equal treatment, no matter their gender identity or sexuality.” ~ Andreja Pejic

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Mark Twain

Throughout this blog series I’ll be doing a bit of a guide throughout the character creation. Mostly from an alphabetical standpoint as to what I focus on when making a character. So hopefully you’ll enjoy this as I get to the first topic of the day, Age & Gender.

How Old Are You!?

Age is something that’s a little important. Not many people think about it in the concept of the day to day life. Most people are sometimes only concerned with the term of ‘age’ as a way to finally open the bottle of whiskey on a sunny evening in the winter months of the Rockies. It’s also a factor for how people treat you, how others approach you, and simply sometimes as an insult.

With this way of thinking it wouldn’t be surprising to see age treated as a minor detail in a story. And usually, that part is right. What is age to a character when it’s either brought up once or nearly mentioned throughout a whole story only to affirm that, yes, indeed, this person is that old. What I figure though is that there is one aspect in which everybody can relate to in this day and age.

Yes I’m pretty certain that in terms of this question of the importance of age, every person has always had something floating over their head. Especially when mentioned about one’s age then comes the realization of just how drastic one is treated when the magical number is shouted to the world. So in the case for characters, it’s up to the author to make it feel important.

As a sort of thought experiment who remembers when you were treated like a kid? How did it feel to be looked down upon? What did it feel like when you were a teenager? When did that stop and when you were finally treated like a grown-ass adult? If you can remember those times, then I’m pretty certain, depending on your own experience, it’ll only vary in some cases. And sometimes, it’s either something drastic, or not at all.

What your age is will and does, to some extent, give a representation of what the world views you as, and how you should be and have become in the society you grew up in. In the case of the story, this is absolutely no different. If your character is at least nine or eleven years old, just before the teenage years come along, how their family and friends view them shouldn’t be any different from either your own experience, your parent’s experience, or a friend’s experience.

While it is important to note that, depending on the time period, a lot can change cultural-wise, there was still an all encompassing factor that “these kids are the future of our generation” so it means that no matter what, your character will be expected to be raised in that mold. Of course this “expectation” can be inverted in a lot of ways.

As of course this comes back around to how the character’s personality is within this time-frame. And how you, the author, have molded them. The first character I can think off that fits this type of example is none other than Apple Bloom from MLP. Yes, while the majority of her efforts were in the goal to obtain a cutie mark, she was treated just like any of us. In fact, this was very well shown in the episode, Somepony to Watch Over Me.

Apple Bloom, much like quite a few people, under her older sister’s watch, her sister named Applejack, had a decent reaction to worry over her little sister. But from AB’s perspective she felt the scrutiny of it, feeling like it was some kind of bar that kept her from becoming independent. Even as much as it was necessary once Apple Bloom proved to have trouble with the chimera, and even when she had Applejack save her and everything turned out okay, that age is still a noticeable thing.

As a kid this of course resonates a lot with others who also have older siblings. Sometimes even being a kid, depending on where you are, some kids have incredible responsibilities. Sometimes they are treated like adults. Sometimes… some kids don’t get to be kids. From here on you move into the dreaded or not so hated teenage years.

It’s not hard to forget these years because, let’s be honest, it’s about as hard to forget these memories like the minefield that was the school hallways. Hormones everywhere, testosterone and estrogen all over the place. That probably paints a pretty good memory reel of middle school, and essentially high school as well. But from this time period of now thirteen to eighteen, the responsibility for a character, depending on the universe and or culture, increases significantly.

While some people during this age diversify into different groups and or fascinations and hobbies, then comes the stifling reminder of a world around them. School is important. Finding a job (even as crappy as it’ll be) is important. Getting a good education for the future of college is important.

And unfortunately for the slackers out there, the time to play-around isn’t exactly all there anymore. Actually, the cartoon that comes to mind for this example is the series “As Told by Ginger”. I remember growing up with this show as a kid, only then, I didn’t realize what it was telling me. Now looking at it from an older perspective, the character Ginger has had to deal with the growing pains of nearing adulthood.

Life only becomes that much more complicated in the long run, from worrying about friends betraying you like in the episode “Wicked Game” which also deals a bit with relationships and the consequences that come besides the positives. And this is just a sliver of the complicated life that comes from this period of growth. It is the pinnacle time for one to grow, and, in turn, find out who they are… this in general is, if your character is a teenager, should be one of the many complications they have in their story. To learn more about themselves, essentially, is the important part of a story for them.

Past middle and high school comes college life and beyond that true adulthood. Now, depending on the choice of your character’s age, if they’re a kid, they’ll have some responsibilities and or have some unique life. Teenagers of course have to deal with a more complicated life and the ensuing tidal wave of responsibility. Eventually it all accumulates to the real world. Here exists the true growing pains of growing up in a world… that becomes all the more complicated.

At ages like eighteen (if you went to college after school) or such later times, or if you didn’t attend college at all, then life, no matter what, still becomes a complicated mess. At this point it is essentially up to the person in general to figure their own shit out. Not forgetting the bumps along the road, and you have a fine line of where two sides seem to separate into either moments of calm bliss or moments of anger and despair.

Now for certain this is where a majority of the characters you’ll find are aged around here, while the second majority still are teens, this is where most stories begin. Here we’ll find some character in his or her late teens, early twenties, name every teen or young adult flick about growing up ever, and you’ve basically got a summarized idea, which is probably exaggerated or fluffed up at best, to soften the blow of an ever increasingly misunderstood or chaotic world around you.

A cartoon that actually summarizes the life of an adult, at least to the many who struggle, comes with a representative the likes of Rocko from “Rocko’s Modern Life”. Again, growing up as a kid and seeing this show back then a lot of the material flew over my head. Nowadays I truly see how adult this show really is. Synopsis of it is simple. A wallaby, that being Rocko, is trying to live the life of an adult who moved from his native home of Australia to America.

One of the major things about Rocko’s Modern Life is how well it shows this type of growing up story, at a still particularly troublesome part of life as you set your foot out the door into a world, whether that be unforgiving or not, is really up to the storyteller. In this case, most stories like Rocko’s Modern Life follow some aspect of that situation. Character A finds themselves in a situation and has to usually figure this out for themselves.

Parents can be there when times are tough but at this point the character has to completely rely on themselves. Friends, a good source of company, can only help so much until the problem of the character drags them in for the unnecessary ride. Farther into adulthood it is similar in its place for a young adult, where the adult character must deal with these issues completely on their own.

Better yet it would be good to see what they learned from the young adult period and then apply it to any situation that comes their way. If and when it does, how would they react and then in turn, how would the world react to them, now that they are free to be criticized by any and everyone?

In short, characters who age find themselves in a disarray of situations that only further the confusion of life. Of course, with age, not everything is downcast. It’s simply a number for characters that, at times isn’t important, is nice to reflect upon to truly know what it is that they will be dealing with in that certain period of time. But next to another topic, this one is probably just, or in the days of today, maybe more important than age.

How Does Gender Affect the Story?

Gender, much like age is another small detail. But a major one at that. At least from my experience gender is… well, besides the controversial topic it is nowadays, for a story it usually is as simple as this. Depending on the universe you have your character in their gender can either have no effect of their surroundings, have some effect where their gender is seen as something of a small but rather medial issue.

Or… you can have it akin to something like our world. Where gender is and always has been an issue to certain degrees. Sometimes to the major degree. Think of it in a scenario like one of the interesting universes from a movie, Planet Earth, where it takes a look at the dynamic (and possible paranoia) of how men might view a world where women have taken control of authority. And thus, in turn, men are treated in the minority compared to genders. As for movies of women in this particular scenario, well, not surprisingly, can be shown throughout a mass number of movies, most doing it with the utmost respect to show this inequality. Whether that's shown by the author, and how far they're willing to go to show this inadequacy of the rights of a certain gender, whether it be how men treat women, or in some alternate universe, how women would treat men, is completely up to you.

Gender can be used as a rather trivial and unimportant topic, such as the case where a universe might not even recognize gender in terms of what jobs men and women can do. Basically, think of any fantasy scenario where, while gender may be recognized sometimes, it is usually never addressed the way we would in our reality. Even a world not as fantastical like, say, She-Ra, or other settings, any place where both men and women have access to some power, supernatural or otherwise, gender isn’t such a heated debate.

Yes an author can choose to focus on it as it still is a very prevalent topic in today’s modern society, but in the case of fantasy, it is more or less a topic that is not entirely encroached upon for the sake of losing oneself from the realism of their day to day lives. Now, the more difficult scenarios where gender is either somewhat important or heavily important to the story, take a more drastic approach that has to be, at all times, respected.

Somebody can say they could write from the perspective of both men and women, whether it being a man’s perspective on his own gender, a woman’s perspective on her own gender, or vice versa, but even then, it must be noted to be careful of one’s own bias, or even the dangers lack thereof. My approach to something like this is, more or less, to remember stereotypes, and yet to always make sure to avoid them as much as possible.

A mix-match of both conscious knowledge of both common misconceptions of both genders, and a self-conscious understanding that nobody truly follows these ideals one hundred percent of the time. A man can have feminine traits. A woman can have masculine traits. There is no black & white here. To write in a way like this is self-destruction and the characters, therefore, cannot expand beyond their stereotypes.

Or, at least, if written like this, make sure for them to find a way to break out of these stereotypes, or in the more morbid case, fall because of these preconceived notions of what a man and woman are supposed to be. Now, again, it is a morbid way of describing the last part. But it is fairly expected that some people have possibly died because of they followed the notions of these societal norms.

Unfortunately, because of the vast amount of media I’ve seen, from anime to video games, the best example of a single male or female character showing the traits I’ve mentioned is hard to really decide upon, as while they do show some exceptional breakthroughs, even the best characters still fall into some of the familiar trappings of the societal norms.

Conclusion

Age & Gender for a character can at least be a simple basis for figuring out the first steps of your character. But from there, when it comes to the author, it all depends on how they want to go about it. What I hope from this though is that it helps give an idea on how to take a more meaningful approach to this detail. Age, while it can be regarded as minor, should at least have some effect to the character. It should affect them based on how others see them, and thus, what they conclude from the personality as well.

But in tangent with it comes gender and what this could potentially implicate for said character. The two go hand in hand and have both positive and negative effects from their surroundings. And in the case of transgender, well, it only gets more and more complicated. Something I won’t really delve into as… well, I couldn’t really do it the justice it most likely deserves. However, I at least hope this got some beginning writers to think a little more. Maybe with this minor detail seeing how it can truly change the perception of their character from the viewpoint of protagonists, supporting characters, antagonistic, and etc. characters in the story.

And hey. If this also makes some experienced writers think, then I call that a victory in my book. But until next time, I hope this was at least interesting. And I hope, at least, that this also gets some conversations started.