Anonymous asked:
any ideas or links on how to play a character who acts childish and naive who is secretly anything but? i've played childish/cutesy characters and manipulative characters, but i'm having trouble combining the traits and they just end up more cynical and manipulative than anything. sorry if this question's been asked before!
No problem! Here are a few tips and links I’ve gathered for you!
Personally, I think you need to have a reason for the facade of being childish and cutesy. They could be childish only in public because they know that this person can bring them what they want. It’s hard keeping secrets in the roleplay because you want your partners to know the character well. But only write the cynical and manipulative as thoughts (in italics) during paras or just write self-paras. I’ve written a character like this before. And basically I use her innocent side as a character in itself. She puts on her makeup and dresses as an armour to protect herself. But when she is alone she takes off these performative things and becomes a different person. I also found certain people where she could be herself around, where this childish and cutesy syntax falls apart and she speaks with more advanced vocabulary and more complicated sentences. That way you can play with the difference in voice. I think it’s also a good thing to incorporate body language as well. By adding “bats eyelashes” or “pouts” or “shifts her weight”, you can easily add this childishness to the way the character works in public. You can also add clumsiness as a trait. I think it’s important that your character isn’t just being childish in order to get something. You can play it that they are always childish and it just so happens that by playing innocent and the victim they can get what they want easier. This means that you really need to figure out why they are being childish in public even though they are cynical and more than that. But this facade should be maintained throughout, or else the public will easily notice that they aren’t… really nice.
Here are a few links that can help:
- manipulative tactics
- Covert emotional manipulation tactics
- 9 common tactics of manipulators
- Narcissistic Personality Disorder
- How could one play a manipulative character- kgillsrpc
- Character Development: The Master Manipulator- writingquestionsanswered
- A Good Manipulative character- fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment
Hope that helps!