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Ch@ractR

In my previous Starter’s Guide posts, I talked about establishing a presence, and how to get started on some of the well-known website: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit.

Today, I’m going to be talking about one of the less mainstream social media websites. It just got out of Beta but is growing fast: Ch@ractR at charactrRealms.com

This is a website for writers, artists, and fans of all kinds to share stuff.

Only catch? You can’t do it as yourself.

The premise of Ch@ractR is that you’re posting or following FICTIONAL CHARACTERS!

Types of characters:

• Established worlds
  • Disney
  • Harry Potter
  • etc
• Created worlds
  • a book you’re writing/wrote
  • characters in your head
  • your DND game
  • etc

As usual, you create an account, with whatever username you want. Brand consistency can be useful if you’re planning on adding stuff you want associated with your name. Otherwise, (I can’t believe I’m saying this), you can use a different username.

When you do post, it will always be under [CharacterName]+[a random number]. Once you’ve posted to a character’s page once, your number will remain consistent.

But does everyone know everything you post? Not necessarily.

Privacy Options

• Anonymous
  • You always post with the same number, but they are not tracked back to a profile, just a page that shows all of your posts for that character
• Obscure – Custom
  • You DO link back to a profile page, but only for the selected characters. And you can set character sets to be invisible to each other.
    • For example, if you post cosplay pics of you as Disney character and you write dark memes about Marvel characters, you can self-define the groups. So, people following your Disney postings don’t see your Marvel postings on the profile page
  • You can share a custom profile with each set, linking external works, etc
• Public
  • All posts and characters are shown on your profile page

Every character gets a new profile. And then you can add to their MYTH.

Types of MYTHS:

• Selfies
  • Original fan art!
  • Cosplay pics
• Diary Entries
  • Write as if you’re the character
• Memes
  • You know what these are
• Flash fiction
  • Add to their story

Then, the other people on the site vote.

Voting Options

• ‘true-cannon’
  • This is for myth additions that ADD to the world the character is in
• ‘true-multiverse’
  • This is for myth additions that don’t work in the original world but are AWESOME for the character, so could work in an alternate version.
• ‘cute’
  • Basically ‘liking’, but not feeling that they add to the character
• ‘vicious rumors’
  • Things that run counter to everything you believe to be true about this character. CLEARLY, made up by the character’s enemies.

For the VERY best posts? No matter the format, they go from the character’s MYTH page to their PROFILE page. And your post-name gets a star next to it, proving that you’ve permanently contributed to that character.

But how do they judge the BEST posts? Some characters have more of a following than others. They do it based on the percentage of active users following that character.

NOTE: There IS a review committee to try and validate the characters. Reports of ‘fake characters’ created to harass real-life people are taken VERY seriously.

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Are you on Ch@ractr?

Who are your favorites? Are there any obscure ones you’re just waiting to go viral?

If you’re a public account? Share it an let me follow you!

Happy April 1st!