Discussion Faction 'Personalities'

[Sunfrog]

After agreement from several people that factions do indeed have personalities, I delved deeper into the topic to try and find out more. I’ll mostly be looking at the SJC for this since that’s the faction I have most experience with, but you can look at your own faction with this in mind.

Factions are Chaos’ subcommunities. We’re all on the same forum and have that in common but each faction has its own culture, hierarchy and even colloquialisms. A lot of what I said in my previous post about being part of a group is relevant here but I’ll try not to repeat myself. Also, none of this is meant to be generalising. None of this is all factions or all members of a faction. It’s just some food for thought.

I was struggling to objectively look at the SJC so I did an unceremonious sliding into the DMs of people in the faction and from other factions and asked them what they think the out-of-character ‘personality’ of the SJC is based on member interactions on Discord and people believed the atmosphere in the SJC to be generally nice, sarcastic, jokey, heavy on the memes and laid back because you can select your own role in the Discord server which gives you access to almost all channels and invasions aren’t the faction focus so it’s pretty chill.

I don’t know how many people agree with that judgement but those are the words of 5 people summarised and they’re not alone as several themes overlapped. Others may have a different take but there seems to be unanimous agreement that there are faction ‘personalities’ which is referencing the atmosphere of the faction OOC. I don’t mean it like a faction is a personality type like someone has an ‘SJC personality’ but just that the faction has a personality. Like, faction personality = atmosphere of the faction and the general behaviour of its writers.

So, when looking at how these ‘personalities’ form, I think that factions’ personalities are largely influenced by their Faction Owner’s personality which then influences the behaviour of the faction’s community. I don’t mean this in the way that everyone conforms to the FO’s personality and everyone is the same but just that the FO sets the tone for the faction which can influence the faction’s behaviour. I’m also not saying this is the be-all and end-all. There are obviously a lot of factors that determine the ‘personality’ of a faction and I think this is one of them.

I also think part of the reason why factions tend to have an overarching personality is also partly due to members sometimes already sharing personal beliefs or qualities. I think often times people will write a character that they can relate to be it by race, gender, personality ect (that is a whole other topic). This isn’t true for everyone, of course, but I have noticed it in myself and in my friends that we share some personality with some of our characters. If we project part of ourselves into our characters then we’ll naturally herd with a faction of like-minded people. Again, this isn’t true for everyone so please don’t come at me. I don’t think Bryn’adul writers are really genocidal zealots. I’m interested to see if anyone else feels they write their characters to relate to them though, either intentionally or unintentionally.

This was just a long-winded way of saying that I, and the several people I have spoken to about this, feel that some factions do have personalities which can be pin-pointed, such as the SJC. I’d also be interested to see if anyone else feels they can relate to this but be mindful and implore the rule of: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

 

[Mairéad Solus]

Love this sort of stuff. A lot of it will stem from the personality if the canon faction too. Like players who want to play jedi will try and get themselves into a film jedi like mindset. Sith players will be playing sith because they want to be dark and sinister, mandalorians want to play the edgey loners etc.

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

I've noticed there are a lot of people in Sith factions who suffer from chronic illnesses, both physical and mental. Years ago I read that people who feel like they have little or no control over their bodies (and/or their day to day lives) are drawn to figures in real life and fiction who embody power and control, which is what the Sith are all about. The article was specifically on the subject of why certain people like metal music, a genre which often focuses on power in terms of lyrical content and composition. A lot of people in Sith factions also like metal music.

Writers who are or were members of the military and law enforcement in real life seem to gravitate toward Jedi or "heroic" factions. It also seems to attract a lot of nurses, doctors, med students, etc - people whose professions revolve around helping others. I've seen writers who worked in politics write politician characters, archaeologists write treasure hunters, and so on. Shared interests are a powerful unifying factor, but so are shared life experiences.

I'm not trying to generalize, oversimplify, or state anything more than the obvious (people tend to write characters that either reflect some aspect of themselves, or who they would like to be) but I find this stuff very interesting, so thank you for writing about it and giving me an excuse to talk about it. I know I tend to write characters who are based on some interest or hobby that I have, and they usually share commonalities with how I view the world or are drawn from things I've experienced. After all, writers are supposed to "write what you know". It's part of what makes all this so fun is getting to see all the different perspectives reflected in how people develop their characters and factions.

 

[Tefka]

I'm not trying to generalize

Also, none of this is meant to be generalising.

It's like you both noticed what you were doing, but had written too much to turn back.

 

[Sunfrog]

Sunfrog posted a new thread in general discussion

Tefka:

 

[Vesta]

pro-tip: some people also write characters that embody things they hate.

 

[Aveney]

pro-tip: some people also write characters that embody things they hate.

Absolutely agree with you! Or they are the polar opposites of themselves (the writer)