Board Thread:Fanon Wiki Proposals/@comment-5277627-20190606013813/@comment-26485526-20190607020938

Seeing that I was name-dropped about a dozen times in Nexus's answer, I feel a bit obligated to respond.

I feel like you have to know a bit about your character to write about them. I agree that Aleks does have a special case and should probably be except, because their lack of bios clearly isn't from a lack of trying.

Nexus, you have said that you "just give everybody a trait and I go from there." That is perfectly acceptable under the policy we have now. It still tells us a bit about who the character is.

I do not expect you to write bios like me. I probably write the longest interview-bios on the site, but that is because I write like I talk. I ramble, and if you've looked at any of my comments on blogs, episodes, etc., it becomes clear that I have trouble keeping things short and concise. DO NOT look at the bios that I have written for your Foreign Island characters and think that is the expected standard, because clearly all you are doing is psyching yourself out.

Upon reading the comments for the "Oppose" side, and with people voting "oppose" agreeing that there should be some exceptions, such as the Alek's case, I feel like that is roughly where I actually fall, so I am officially changing my vote to.

Survivor Fanons can't exist without characters - they can't. If Survivor didn't have castaways, it would be one episode and finished after Jeff Probst's iconic intro. I know a couple writers for novels IRL (including the person Brianna Foy was based on), and they spend a lot of time thinking about their characters, because they are such an important part to the story. I even introduced one of my other writer friends to FaceYourManga, and she was very appreciative because on top of writing a backstory for each of her major characters, she also got to design what they looked like.

Bios can be a fantastic tool to help with your season in most instances. It is a mistake to play Philip DeFranco and "Just jump into it" when it comes to your fanon without thinking about who these characters are. As someone said above, bios help you prepare for the long road of actually writing the season. The more you write, the better you will get.