I have a LOT of thoughts about this phenomenon and the real question is am I going to write a thread on it or am I going to not enable my own procrastination https://twitter.com/klausdykegf/status/1345831229397102598

maybe;;;;; j-just a quick one

This was something that was illustrated VERY clearly to me with the game Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which may sound ridiculous to say, but. It's a game with a huge cast and a VERY short time for you to get familiar with them.

So some of the early interactions may even come across a little clunky because they're WILD things for humans to say and do in the vicinity of a stranger. But it's because it's aimed at telegraphing *who* this character is in a nutshell, fast.

And doing it in a way that helps them stand out from the 30-some-odd OTHER characters you're meeting around the same time. The game has later opportunities to develop the cast so they're not just one buckwild first impression, but those early interactions are ALL character work.

That kind of character introduction is hard to pull off in a book because the inclination is to get to the meaty, interesting part of a character later in the story, and start with the public image. But there's nothing to say that public image has to be boring either!

One of my favorite moments in a WIP that will hopefully make it to print someday is when the MC learns her glamorous, canny, and powerful aristocrat guardian... secretly loves extremely tacky miniature shrubs that she can't keep alive to save her life.