/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>46727506
>and the only other notable OC is Goro who I'd bully and thus didn't write.
Pulling at this thread I think to leads to the larger issue of character development in communal, thread-based writing projects.
Goro started as a narrative device to examine the story on a macro perspective, grew into a Seija foil, and then landed on Yukari's end because I thought the situation was unbalanced and it will be more interesting if the Jaku duo were on the other side(IIRC this was before Flan, Seiga, and Konngara were introduced). The problem this has created is that his character's not really consistent across the length, if someone were, for example, to write Seija, they know from the source material that's she's pragmatic, devious, and enjoys angering others. The way I think of Goro now is someone who's compassionate, business/diplomatically-minded, and risk-taking, but the meme of 'bully the secondary' tends to drown all that out and it doesn't help that his goals aren't always clear. It's not impossible: the Reimu and Kiene bits were pretty good representations of the positive and negative aspects of his traits, taking the risk of visiting Kiene almost got Seija and Him immolated(justified punishment for risks taken without sufficient caution), while helping Reimu with her daughter's birthday present makes them less of a stranger in the future conflict(compassion/business mindedness).
But even for canon characters like Marisa and Alice, I think there's a tendency to make them a little too pathetic, which doesn't reflect Marisa's hard-working nature at all. You could say this was just her falling off, but I think it'd been more interesting if her hard-working nature caused her to pursue a more difficult path when an easier option was available, like maybe training her ass off to fight Reimu, neglecting Hana, instead of just spiriting the two away, because she was too stubborn about strength.

tl;dr: Pick the three most important character traits for anyone you're writing(forsaking the others if they're in conflict), make sure their goal is clear, and it should make it easier for yourself and others to add to your writing.