Cliched Characters

Honestly, everything has been there already and tropes exist for a reason (often because they are well liked/people tend to gravitate towards certain things).
Even if you go completely the opposite of what one might expect when seeing a design...that's still a cliché in itself. Take the big brutal guy character. Make him look that way but be soft and have a heart of gold? Common. But nice.

It's not about coming up with something totally new, surprising, complicated or whatever. What matters is to make the character well rounded and believable. It's not about reinventing the wheel, just make sure the wheel does its job.

So if you want more depth, make it believable. Why do they act the way they do. Why do they have these interests? Usually things feel "too cliché" because of bad research, not because it's common. Make sure to really look into what you want to present and do proper research, and don't go with what you believe it should be like. Make sure it's presented the right way as well.
This is also true when it comes to adding details like mental illnesses, physical disabilities, nationalities, sexualities and co., research and avoid falling into the trap of fetishization. One can tell when a character is just X because the maker thinks it's so quirky/sexy or special, but in reality have a very warped idea of what it means to be X

For your desired aesthetic anything goes. There's no limit for a dark guy design with dark makeup. Maybe he just likes it. Maybe he belongs to a certain subculture, is into fashion or whatever. Maybe he's nice, maybe he isn't and it has still nothing to do with his looks. Possibilities are endless.

 

I agree with the above post, I'm new to the hobby but I have taken a few character courses so I know my way around making a character. Fitting your OC into a certain niche will always help in developing it to be believable. I don't want to just repeat what the above poster said because they can probably put it much more eloquently than I.
A good tip I have is taking personality quizzes from the POV of your character, it helps you develop by asking you questions you might have never thought of before. Also having discernible personality types (MBTI, Alignment Charts, etc.) helps others understand what your character is and who they are in a more modern and easy to understand sense.
And honestly? It's 2020, avoiding a character that YOU want to make just because it's cliche is no fun. It's a hobby for a reason!! Let loose every now and then, if it makes you happy you should go for it :]

 

Starting with a cliche character is not a bad thing at all because from there they can grow and become unique. So maybe he is a badboy and that 'cliche' causes people to see him as a badboy. But in reality he is working hard to change how people see him. Or something. A certain cliche can be treated differently. A character afraid of spiders? Maybe instead of trying to scream and burn the house down they end up telling the spider to stay in that specific corner and not bother them. And the character grows fond of his little house buddy and ends up greeting them every morning. And one day the spider is missing and they search the whole house for it, missing their little friend.

Another example. My favorite doll started as, and is still, a typical pastel boy who loves squishies and happy things and a lot of pink. Always smiling and pretending to be happy. However, under all that he is battling a heavy depression. But unlike how I have battled mine, he battles it with the love of his family and boyfriend (my other dolls) and by making new friends.
So something cliche (being a happy cute pastel boy or something), can have a lot underneath. Or can have a different effect on how they'd handle things.

 

So what if a character is cliché? I try to embrace the cliché. It makes for fun roleplaying and storytelling. You probably have something cliché about you but that doesn't mean you're not interesting. Your doll's character can be both cliché and interesting as well.

 

Having a starting place for the character journey never hurts, it's where they end up that makes them yours.

 

If I understand correctly, you want to make your Yujin a non traditional bad boy. As everyone else has said so well, developing your dolls character/personality is a journey, and defining him as a bad boy is just the first step. Making him yours is half the fun, enjoy the ride!

 

I'm sort of confused about what you're aiming for, since you want a dark bad boy character, but also... don't want him to have any elements (look, attitude, personality) of a dark bad boy character?

I feel like the important thing is to focus on what you want him to be instead of what you want him not to be. "Bad boy" or "Dark boy" is really just an extremely vague jumping off point for a character design, and you have a ton of possibilities for which direction you want to take that. A dark vampire boy could be a victorian goth, a tattooed modern punk, an aloof western-gothic cowboy, a weepy emo, or a brooding aristocrat. Hell, he could be a shady, vaguely-threatening carnie. There's a lot of ways to build on this particular cliche and make it your own.

My favorite way to make a character "feel" less cliched is by giving him traits that aren't meant to be flattering. I find it's very common in the BJD world for people to make "bad boy" characters with every single trait designed to make him as sexy and appealing as possible, even his negative traits. But no one is fully cool and sexy all the time.

I'm not sure if this is what you're referring to, but I definitely recognize that there are aesthetic BJD-specific cliches (the early 2000s goth look, the pastel kidcore look, the Instagram model look, etc.) too. I think the best way to avoid that is just to base your desired aesthetic off of real people/other characters you like instead of other dolls you see. Though unfortunately I think the main reason for the sort of homogeny in BJD styles is because there's only so many accessories to buy, and only so many ways to wear them. The only way to avoid that is to really go ham with customization and make everything yourself, but that can be fun!

 

Don't know if this helps but... I have a traditional looking "bad boy" who isn't exactly a bad boy. He's sorta moody in that he mopes and pouts a lot and he loves working in his uncle's flower shop. He usually has cuts and bruises visible on his face and body from fights others start with him. Yes, he has a tortured past and present. But his girlfriend is a pastel, cute everything loving "marshmallow". He might be a bit clinched but like someone else said, pretty much everything has been done. So what's important is what makes you happy with him. If you want him to be blonde with pastel pink highlights, wearing a cute teddy bear tshirt with suspender shorts and studded purple army boots, then you do that. This is your boy and you should have fun with him and love him no matter what dorection you take him.

 

Forget about cliches and simple think how you want him to be. I would think what traits I want and why I like them, then I would know how I want the traits to play out in his case. I don't need a super flesh out characters, just the basics, so I start making up scenes with them in my mind. Try different outcomes for the same scenes or just run with it and explore anything interesting that pop up. Music are great for this, just think of it as soundtrack and imagine what scene this could be playing with. You can imagine specific scenes of why he is the way he is or just random thought and follow it out. You can get pretty surprised how the characters end up getting.

 

I love this, this is what I do too! Especially with music, it is so inspirational for me.

And like a lot of people have mentioned, I wouldn't worry about avoiding cliche's too much. They're cliches because they work and people like them. The only thing you have to avoid is bad writing. You can have the most cliched character on the planet and if the story is good, no one will care. And since that's not something that even matters with BJDS, if your doll is the way you want him, you won't care either.

And letting your doll evolve naturally is really the way to go. Even my most fully developed characters have changed over time, sometimes drastically, when I had them in front of me as BJDs. Normally, I am not a "let the doll tell you what to do" person, but that's only because I buy dolls to fit already existing characters (mine or not). On the few occasions I've bought a doll just to have that doll, I've let them do their thing, starting out how I first want them - in your case, dark bad boy - and letting them evolve from there.

 

Hello! Fellow writer here. Decide what characteristics you want your character to have, put them in scenarios (random writing prompts, for example) and let THEM decide how they would act, rather than doing what you want. It's hard to explain here, but letting the characters lead their story versus their stories explaining them, then they'll be more natural and "real" to you.

 

Cliched characters tend to be a bit one-dimensional, so I think one of the best ways to avoid them is by making your characters three-dimensional. Anything can be a cliche, but combining traits in unexpected ways can make characters feel fresh.

 

Whether its cliche or tropey, who cares? Some of the most beloved BJD characters are completely cliche. When I first started out, I didn’t know how big of a thing demons were within the hobby. So, when my first doll threw that at me, I just went with it. Later on, I learned how popular they were and was even accused of copying other’s storylines. My first doll, my favorite boy, while a demon, has something going for him that most do not.
He happens to be the most Catholic demon I have ever heard of. He wears a cross, keeps a rosary in his pocket, knows his prayers...and says them. He obviously can’t go into a church...but it doesn’t stop him from going to one on Sundays, to listen to the sermon from the church stairs, to pray and to beg god for forgiveness, which he knows he will never receive. He reads his Bible for leisure, and makes confession when he can find a priest who will see him outside of the church. There’s more to him than that, but it’s one of his strange quirks that I very much enjoy.
So, I agree with, if you want to go for a cliche bad boy, give him a really odd quirk that wouldn’t fit his bad boy image.

 

You need to ask yourself, are you creating a doll character for your own enjoyment, or for other people?
If it's for your own enjoyment, then it doesn't matter if it's a cliche.
Do what makes YOU happy. They are your dolls

 

Creative writing major? That’s so rad! I majored in creative writing in my first year, but ended up an English major.

The first thing I think is helpful to think about is what elements of the character you really want: is it the dark aesthetic? Is it a certain type of character/vibe, or experimenting with a common theme in a different way? And what parts do you not want? You say the look, attitude and personality (do you mean all three together, or that you don’t want any of them? What aspects of those things do you want to steer clear of?)

The fun thing about tropes to me, is that they’re a literary conversation—when I write a conflicted, angst-riddled Byronic hero leading man, I’m commenting on a movement through John Milton’s satan, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and more modern works too. Writing tropes consciously is what I like to do—maybe I want my byronic hero angst demon to be femme and pastel, and I want her to be kinder than she has been but still an outsider, and still held apart. Now I’m commenting on how this character is just as deserving of a nuanced psychological exploration, and challenging who people expect this kind of arc from, and pushing back on characters like Angel from Buffy that act like they can do absolutely anything, and feeling bad afterwards is enough (see: downward spiral in s2 of angel).

There are also tropes I want to subvert, not just modify—to pull on another long running trope, Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. Only her face didn’t launch them, her husband and his brother did, and they burned a nation to the ground and enslaved its people because she left him. So if I’m writing a character who is incredibly beautiful, and there is some sort of battle going on over her, I’m going to do other things to make clear that she’s not at fault, like have her leave both of them, or get involved in the fighting, or change how other characters engage with her. Maybe I go the other way, and it’s not her beauty launching ships, she has some sort of power or knowledge her ex can’t have getting out. I think about what part of the trope it is that I don’t want, and I either alter the plot or the character to tell the story I want this to tell. In this case, it’s levelling the blame at Helen. Troy (the movie) does this one way, Euripides’ Trojan women and Helen both do this in different ways.

sometimes I also just ask myself, what is it about my character? What makes them dimensional? What makes them not the stock trope, and gives them their own life? When James Marsters read Spike the first time, he had no idea how he’d play him, because this character was this kinda mean, reckless, larger than life slayer-killing vampire—he was motivated by the thrill, and that’s always been part of his character. James went, what if instead of being disparaging, he was madly in love with his partner? The moment that cements this, he’s mouthing off, gets charged by another vamp, and knocks him down without turning to face him, and then his face shifts, it’s the first we see him human, because his lover is there. He takes off his big dramatic coat because she’s cold, and totally drops the big tough guy thing because she wants that from him. It saved his character from dying a minor villain—it gave him substance beyond the image. William the Bloody—his name before spike grew out of a pejorative for his terrible poetry. When I ask, why that vampire bad boy, and not any other character of that archetype, my answer is because he’s that poet.

If you think of your favourite versions of that trope, what is it about them? That might be a good start point, if you want to work within the trope. No idea of any of this is helpful, Because this answer wound up being ramble town, but hopefully something here helps!