#How do I play the role?

If you've peeked at my Ask Box, you may have noticed an answer authored by Teal Haden, one of my characters. It's the one I wrote in a different color. The same night I also roleplayed as the same character in a chat room. I like the concept of character ask pages, like the ones that are popular on Tumblr, and I think it would be fun to do something like that myself! This is something that I'm a little rusty at, though. I haven't roleplayed with others as a character that's not myself for many years by now, and it is fun, but there's something that's been nagging me about the prospect, so I'm putting these thoughts out.

Teal and many other of my characters are not freestanding. By that I mean that these characters have a story associated with them, they have their arcs, their relationships, their development. Even if these things are not finished, even if they're not released, or even completely set in stone, this still holds true.

Now, if I'm to roleplay as such a character, I immediately come across a small problem. When should this interaction take place? Where should I take off a slice of this character's development so that they're fun to roleplay as or interact with? I have to make a choice there.

Picking a point early in the character's development means portraying their flaws as well, portraying negative traits that they've not yet had the opportunity to address. It means a character that may know little about the things that matter in their own setting. It means a character that may be impressionable, and easy to manipulate, or a character that simply doesn't want to talk to you.

Picking any point at which they're significantly developed, especially in this case of a character whose journey is not publicised in any way, means that the other party doesn't have much context. I suppose that this makes it a lot like meeting someone for the first time and getting to learn about them, but in a sort of meta way, where it doesn't happen only within the bounds of the roleplay, but outside of it as well. A real person meeting a fictional one. It could also mean they're at a point in their journey where they don't really want to talk about hobbies or the weather because they have to save the world, or maybe they've already done all of that and their situation has become stable, and everything they say and are might be spoilers!

All of these things can be fun in their own way, but I'm not sure where I stand on how I feel about them.

Regardless of the choice that's made, when taking a character that's already established in some way, for the purposes of roleplay or an ask page, you sort of need to freeze them to a singular point in time, and forbid further developments unless you want to get into "multiverse" stuff (which I am thoroughly uninterested in.) This runs a risk of making a caricature of them, or flanderizing them, especially if it's done for any extended period of time.

None of this is a problem for characters that are freestanding, or characters whose story is directly tied to the roleplay or to the ask page, or even characters that are in a stable position, which don't present much development. You can come up with their background and then character development can happen as a direct result of the interaction! This is fine and fun, and that's exactly the kind of thing I would like to do more.

That's my ramble. I would like to know what you think. Am I just overthinking it? Maybe this is this a sign I should just get working on some sort of media that uses my characters so that I can finally show how they interact and develop without needing to roleplay as them. I dunno!