Help making a character more realistic?

[Vars]

I have this character who I've had since 2004, been trying to update him every so often because I would like for him to be more realistic.

So his origin is that lycanthropes were discovered by cryptozoologists, and tl;dr military came in and ended up with half-lycan babies, all of which died except my dude. My OC was originally pretty gnarly-looking but when his caretaker/"dad" kidnapped him, he put my OC through several cosmetic surgeries to make him appear more human. Except they left his tail. My OC thinks he's totally human (with a tail birth defect) due to this.

My OC, nicknamed Q, is basically a stereotypical mercenary character at this point. He was originally developed with random fainting spells and sort of a comedic-leaning, and I guess I read somewhere that smoking could help prevent fainting caused by hypotension. So I made it a big thing that he smokes all the time even though he dislikes doing it and a lot of his character is built around things related to that. But now I don't think smoking would really help anything, and in fact would just make things worse for hypotension?

He still has a tail, which I originally wrote off as being incredibly risky to remove surgically because my version of lycans house a major artery in the tail. But surely, if cosmetic surgeries had advanced to the point where they could make a lycan look human, they could remove a tail? I'm really stuck on this, because I don't want to remove Q's tail but it also doesn't make sense that he still has one.

Another thing is NSFW that I'm kind of hung up on: [spoili] Originally I just gave him a normal, totally average (human) penis. But then I thought, how can he have a normal penis (possibly created from surgery) when they couldn't be arsed to remove his tail?
So then I thought I'd give him a lycanthrope penis. And I actually started RPing that out but that doesn't seem to make sense either!! ??[/spoili]

I don't know where to go from here, really. I've tried changing up his species- like making him a were bear type of thing, so a half-werebear-thing would originally appear more human which would make his surgically-created human appearance make more sense, but then what bear has a long tail like Q's? =[
Or maybe I'm over-thinking this whole thing?

I'm just a little lost, really, not sure how to make his tail make sense or his smoking. I tried to replace the fainting spells with chronic headaches for vision/hearing acuity but I don't think it works and I'd like to bring the smoking/fainting spells back. But I don't know how to justify it or where to look or what to research.

Another problem I have (as if this post weren't long enough) [spoili](Can you believe I actually deleted like half of this post already? It could've been longer!)[/spoili] is that I made his daylight vision so bad that he cannot see anything that's backlit. It just looks like white light to him. [spoili]It's not central to the character, but I thought it was a really interesting weakness/disability so I decided to go with it and would like to keep it if I could![/spoili]
With his hearing acuity, phones are also pretty difficult to use. This makes running a business basically impossible. I'm not sure on how to fix this. I have thought of giving him a partner character who is basically his agent, but that would mean Q would have to admit he has a problem, and I don't think he'd do that. .___.

Help maybe? He is supposed to be in a modern, mostly realistic world.
Thanks in advance.

Here is the actual character information on Q if you have way too much time on your hands.

 

[Adaon ril'Morgerard]

Well, the first thing I would ask is are you willing to change him? Not through character development in RP but just change him. Shore him up and fix him like a crumbling brick wall.

Secondly, I personally would just shrug and say, this is a bloody RP, and I'm not trying to reenact real life but emulate it in a fictional world. Good fiction creates a compromise between realism and suspension of disbelief. Have you decided if you've reached that compromise yet?

I am by no means an expert at this. I am just a person who's just been through this before, except perhaps on a lesser scale since I haven't been RPing as long as you. My early characters were flawed. Not in personality but in the way they were constructed. Sometimes they have evolved but sometimes I just updated them (AKA blunt retcon) and changed them and then blatantly said later onwards that they were a version 2.0 or 3.0 or so on to my partners. Once, I even rebooted the RP to the beginning and started over.

 

[Vars]

@Adaon ril'Morgerard
Yeah I'm willing to change him a bit, but not completely... That's what this post is about. Trying to change other things about him while still trying to keep true to it, if that makes sense.
Keeping the tail but maybe having another reason for it (not they coudln't surgically remove it). Have him smoke but maybe for some other reason than hypotension, etc., etc.

It's not just for rp, this is a character I've already written a book with (although I had to change him a lot for that). I want to write another book with him, but better, patching up the holes that were made apparent from the last one.

 

[Kagayours]

I have to agree with @Adaon ril'Morgerard. It sounds like you're getting hung up on small details that could easily be overlooked in RPing or even fiction writing in general. That being said, I can still comment on some of the things that stand out to me:

Firstly, the smoking thing -- if you just want to say that he smokes a lot even though he doesn't really like it, well, that just makes me think of all the real people out there in the world who wish they could quit smoking but can't. Simply being addicted to smoking is certainly a lot more common (and therefore "realistic") than smoking all the time due to being mistakenly told that it could fix his hypotension. Perhaps you could still use hypotension as a reason for him to want to start smoking, but, yeah, if you want him to be a smoker then really all you need is a reason for him to start. And if you want him to be a smoker even though he doesn't like smoking, then you could just say he's too addicted to quit. Perhaps he's tried quitting in the past and he just wasn't able to do it. (Perhaps you could even say there's something in the lycanthrope side of his DNA that, unbeknownst to him, makes him more prone to addiction, and makes it more difficult for him to break addictions?)

Also, why did the military want to create half-lycan hybrids...? That's the first question on my mind. To provide a real-life comparison -- I remember hearing somewhere that it might be scientifically possible to conceive a hybrid offspring between a human and a chimpanzee, but no one's actually attempted to do it because of all the ethical concerns surrounding such a thing. Why were such ethical concerns not an issue when the military wanted to create half-lycans? And what did they even have to gain from doing it?

I think I'll go through the OP now and comment on anything that seems off to me...

My OC was originally pretty gnarly-looking but when his caretaker/"dad" kidnapped him,

How did he kidnap such a thing from the military? I'm assuming these hybrids were some sort of top-secret project or something. And even if they weren't, I expect the military to have some pretty decent security... Certainly no average joe could break into military territory and kidnap a baby half-lycan.

he put my OC through several cosmetic surgeries to make him appear more human.

What doctor did he find that was willing to do this? How could he even show this kid to a doctor without revealing that the kid isn't human? How would a doctor even know how to safely perform any kind of surgery on a non-human child? I doubt they teach much about lycan anatomy at med school... And even if they did know enough about lycan anatomy to do the surgery correctly, there's also the issue of anesthetic...

He still has a tail, which I originally wrote off as being incredibly risky to remove surgically because my version of lycans house a major artery in the tail. But surely, if cosmetic surgeries had advanced to the point where they could make a lycan look human, they could remove a tail? I'm really stuck on this, because I don't want to remove Q's tail but it also doesn't make sense that he still has one.

I do agree that there's really no good reason for him to still have a tail. I mean, you can let him keep his tail if you want to... but if you're this concerned about realism, then you might need to come up with some other reason for him to still have a tail.

Another thing is NSFW that I'm kind of hung up on:

If half-lycan smut is actually going to come up in this story, then I think this is a place where you don't really need to worry about realism...

Another problem I have (as if this post weren't long enough) is that I made his daylight vision so bad that he cannot see anything that's backlit. It just looks like white light to him.

I mean... I guess that's fine. I imagine that trying to go outside on a sunny day would practically render him blind, though. The sun is certainly a lot brighter than your average cell phone screen...

This makes running a business basically impossible. I'm not sure on how to fix this. I have thought of giving him a partner character who is basically his agent, but that would mean Q would have to admit he has a problem, and I don't think he'd do that. .___.

Is he supposed to be "running a business"? In that case, yeah, you'd at least need some sort of explanation for how he rose through the ranks in the world of modern business despite his disabilities (and especially without even telling anyone about his disabilities, if that's the route you want to take).

 

[Adaon ril'Morgerard]

Trying to make a non-realistic character still actually work in this world is something I get stuck up on as well. But sometimes it's like trying to find the end of a stick with only one end. Sometimes you can't modify your character to fit the world. So screw it. Make the world fit your character instead.

You are the almighty writer and the physics and laws of nature in the world are according to your vision. I personally think it is already more than realistic enough to have reached the compromise.

You have the grand and magnificent power of Plot in your hands. Go and use it. RPing is a source of delight and enjoyment. Make it too much like the real world and it'll become just as dull and muddy brown.

However, if this does not satisfy you, then I am perfectly willing to brainstorm and try to figure out a way to make things click.

 

[Vars]

@Kagayours

kidnapping
The father figure was part of the original project. So he didn't "Break in" or anything, it was an inside job, to make it short.

long explanation

Lycanthropes are discovered by cryptozoologists. French Foreign Legion comes in for some reason and decides on the super soldier thing. Eventually they hand over the project to the Americans, who shut it down later. The "dad" was some sort of military doctor/scientist type who was working with the project. And when the US decided to kill the project, rather than kill Q, "Dad" ran off with him.
How that occurs (he fakes Q's death or just outright kidnaps him and disappears), I didn't really work out. Mostly because none of this is ever explained in any stories, it is just history for me to know, for Q's 'character bible' if you will. To help keep things in-line with how the character works.

So "Dad" is still a somewhat vague figure. I usually think of him as the lab-type guy that helped do medical things, but sometimes he's also biologically related to Q (Q being half-human) and sometimes he might be a double agent spy-type.

He takes Q off to France (usually), where he has a high-ranking position in a military academy, of which Q attends for his whole life. This part is not realistic at all as France doesn't have these (at least not until highschool-ish age) but it's easy enough to handwave away for the world. It, for some reason, doesn't bother me as much as the other stuff.

Surgeries
Handwavey experimental science. Sometimes "Dad" helps with it (he has similar background), sometimes he just has some super secret contacts that are able to do it. It's not completely foreign, Q is half-human and half-animal. I imagine a doctor could sorta do it, or a veterinarian.
Also let me clear something up in case we are not on the same page: Lycan (in this case) is an upright anthropomorphic wolfy thing. It can't transform. So I don't think it'd be a huge marvel of science to perform any type of surgery on it.

Tail
Well it is possible I'm getting hung up on things that don't matter. I'm not sure why the tail bothers me when other stuff doesn't. Just something about it seems like "Nah, this ONE THING is just too much to suspend my disbelief."

NSFW

Spoiler

It's mostly for the 'character bible' that I mentioned up before in the other lengthy explanation.
But also (even more lengthiness you can totally skip)
His "dad" comes pretty close to disowning him when it is revealed that Q's gay. It is the last thing that happens before Q runs off to another country and begins his gun-for-hire thing.
He runs off with his bf at the time, who also ends up ditching him for women. So Q gets really hung up on the whole "Well if TWO people say women are what I'm supposed to like..." situation, and starts trying to lay with a bunch of women to make himself straight, I guess.

In the universe I would like to write about, Much of the story is told in fetish clubs Q happens to go to. Which of course eventually has him being with a bunch of prostitutes.
I originally had him going to fetish clubs because of his tail and that maybe he made weird sounds that "normal" escorts made fun of him for, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense he might not have a totally human penis either? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The sex itself is not part of the story, but it would help to iron out this detail as it would potentially change the relationships between many of the supporting characters and the context of the settings.

vision
That's actually a plot point. tldr: He has special sunglasses.

Longer explanation

He starts out fine but as his health declines, so does his vision. The backlit disability was always there, but the sunlight thing gets worse over time. He does get specially prescribed sunglasses in the beginning, but they don't work after a couple years and he does, yes, eventually become blind during the day.

running a business
I couldn't think of a better shorthand at the time for.... Doing mercenary things, I guess? But yes, there is an explanation of how he rose through the ranks, so to speak.

Spoiler

He runs off with his bf at 18 to help form a mafia. His bf (Named Ves) is the crime boss and Q is his partner and second-hand. Long story but they're doing eachother some favors.
Ves is aware of all Q's disabilities and a.) helps Q deal with them and b.) gives him some solutions (such as the special sunglasses). Eventually stuff happens and Q runs off from the mafia, feeling betrayed. This is the point at which Q closes up and would not accept any further help or tell anyone of his disabilities.

So the story goes that Q travels super far across the country to get away from Ves and the (pretty small) mafia's grasp. He tries to make himself into an assassin, mercenary, or just random gun-for-hire (depends on the story variation). He does this for a few years until his health declines to the point that things get super hard. E.g. dayblindness.

I usually want to put the timeline of the story just before the sharp health decline or in the middle of it.

@Adaon ril'Morgerard
True. I've changed the world enough that some things are easy to write off, but for some reason the things I mentioned in my first post feel like it's just too far to suspend disbelief. I'm not sure why.

It's also possible I'm just thinking about it all too much. I mean I have been thinking about these specific problems for the past year and a half at least, and that says nothing of the other things I've tried to iron out with him.

EDIT:

Somehow missed the first part of @Kagayours post, sorry!

smoking
Yes, he started due to hypotension treatment and now is (probably) too addicted to quit.

Spoiler

I always thought of it as more of a "too addicted to not having random dizzy spells to quit" than a "too addicted to nicotine to quit" thing, but really they go hand-in-hand I guess.
And there's plenty of smokers who hate smoking but also can't quit, as you say.

I myself smoked for 2 years and found it very easy to quit. I know I am a super rare minority (and ultra lucky). But it becomes easy to forget sometimes that that's not how it works for normal people.

Also, why did the military want to create half-lycan hybrids...? That's the first question on my mind. To provide a real-life comparison -- I remember hearing somewhere that it might be scientifically possible to conceive a hybrid offspring between a human and a chimpanzee, but no one's actually attempted to do it because of all the ethical concerns surrounding such a thing. Why were such ethical concerns not an issue when the military wanted to create half-lycans? And what did they even have to gain from doing it?

This whole thing-- Q's creation and why he has a tail-- is NEVER explained in any stories (or RPs). Ironing out his history is purely just for me to help write where he is now.

That being said, the loose idea I came up with was just that cryptozoologists found this small lycan population originally and for some reason the french foreign legion (it happens on a french-owned island) swooped in on it and shut everyone up to keep it secret.
Whatever project the FFL originally intended (could be super soldiers, could be something totally different), they decided to hand it off to the Americans. After some time, the Americans wanted to shut down the project. Ultimately nothing would've ever become of it if "Dad" had not kidnapped Q.

Slightly NSFW also triggering?

The ORIGINAL vague idea was that FFL randomly came across them doing field training exercises, a few idiots decided they wanted to rape some female lycans, and the project was born because "Why not, it's already done."
OR
the raping happens, the births happen, FFL doesn't want anything to do with it, so they hand it off to the Americans.

It doesn't even have to strictly be a "super soldier" project, but it is just easier to describe it this way.

 

[Adaon ril'Morgerard]

Hmm. Why do you not change the lore so that Lycans don't have a major artery in that tail. Or just modify it so that it becomes possible to surgically remove it?

I will have to think more on the smoking problem.

On the topic of the genitals, you could make it a bit of both. Or you could just say it's a bit 'weird' and leave it at that, you know. Maybe because the cosmetic surgery wasn't perfect or something.

Maybe he already looked human enough and the scientists just made him look more human.

The fainting thing could have a lot of explanations. Maybe because of genes or maybe he had an injury in the head when he was young and as a result of that, gained epilepsy or something. Watch the ABC Murders of Agatha Christie's Poirot if you want a stellar example.

Regarding the phones, why can't he use headphones, earphones, speakers or something like that? Don't know if the daylight lack of sight thing is important. Make it as severe as you want. *shrugs*

What do you think of these? Perhaps you've already thought of these. If so, my apologies. I'll have to repeat the process until I find something suitable.

 

[Kagayours]

Handwavey experimental science. Sometimes "Dad" helps with it (he has similar background), sometimes he just has some super secret contacts that are able to do it. It's not completely foreign, Q is half-human and half-animal. I imagine a doctor could sorta do it, or a veterinarian.

:/ I still feel like Q just being half-human isn't enough to suggest that your average human surgeon would know what to do with him, if you want my opinion on what does or doesn't sound "realistic". I'm certainly no doctor, myself, but I do know that medical science is rather... complicated, and I feel like a patient's anatomy being so far off from fully-human would be a bit of a problem for a surgeon, who would need to have a pretty solid understanding of how exactly every tiny piece of his body fits together.

Also, anesthesiology by itself is a very delicate science. I can't imagine that anyone would have a good idea of what a safe dose would be for a half-Lycan unless they were already able to experiment on plenty more half-Lycans (and even then, I'm not sure there'd be enough practice with it overall to figure out precisely what a safe dose would be for a half-Lycan of Q's exact age, sex, weight, etc). And simply giving it an educated guess is... really not good enough when it comes to anesthesiology. XD Even slight inaccuracies in their estimates could easily prove fatal.

Of course, you're within your rights as the author to hand-wave all of this if you want to, so try not to take my criticisms too harshly. I'm going into this with a more critical eye than I normally would, specifically commenting on things that I would normally just ignore, because you specifically wanted feedback on "realism".

NSFW
Show Spoiler
It's mostly for the 'character bible' that I mentioned up before in the other lengthy explanation.
But also (even more lengthiness you can totally skip)
His "dad" comes pretty close to disowning him when it is revealed that Q's gay. It is the last thing that happens before Q runs off to another country and begins his gun-for-hire thing.
He runs off with his bf at the time, who also ends up ditching him for women. So Q gets really hung up on the whole "Well if TWO people say women are what I'm supposed to like..." situation, and starts trying to lay with a bunch of women to make himself straight, I guess.

In the universe I would like to write about, Much of the story is told in fetish clubs Q happens to go to. Which of course eventually has him being with a bunch of prostitutes.
I originally had him going to fetish clubs because of his tail and that maybe he made weird sounds that "normal" escorts made fun of him for, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense he might not have a totally human penis either? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The sex itself is not part of the story, but it would help to iron out this detail as it would potentially change the relationships between many of the supporting characters and the context of the settings.

Haha, well, if you think that it's relevant to the story then go right ahead and include it. XD I agree -- if he's going to fetish clubs because of his non-human anatomy, then, why stop at the tail? :P

I always thought of it as more of a "too addicted to not having random dizzy spells to quit" than a "too addicted to nicotine to quit" thing, but really they go hand-in-hand I guess.
And there's plenty of smokers who hate smoking but also can't quit, as you say.

Unless smoking definitely prevents fainting spells, to a very obvious degree -- then, yeah, I would say that "addicted to nicotine" is a far more likely scenario than "addicted to not fainting".

The former is a substance that has a definite addictive quality and that many real-life people do become addicted to. The latter is, well... even if smoking does certainly help prevent hypotension by the rules of your own universe (or even if Q is just experiencing a sufficiently-powerful placebo effect), it still seems a bit silly to me to think of someone smoking specifically for health benefits. Common sense suggests that smoking would just exacerbate his health issues, or create new ones. So it's just strange to cite that as his primary reason for continuing to smoke, especially when the more likely possibility of nicotine addiction sort of becomes an elephant in the room.

Maybe Q says that his reason for continuing to smoke is that it keeps his hypotension at bay (regardless of whether or not that's true), because he just isn't aware/doesn't want to admit to himself that nicotine addiction is the more likely culprit? XD

 

[Vars]

Hmm. Why do you not change the lore so that Lycans don't have a major artery in that tail. Or just modify it so that it becomes possible to surgically remove it?

Because I wanted to keep the tail for shallow reasons. XD

I still feel like Q just being half-human isn't enough to suggest that your average human surgeon would know what to do with him...

I can see where you're coming from and maybe you're 100% right that nobody could do it. But none of it is explained or mentioned to anyone in any story. Q just comes out looking human and has some weird scars. It is left up to the reader to imagine what happened. Q doesn't even remember what happened so even if someone were to ask he wouldn't have an answer. So doing it that way I feel it's easier to handwave away.

However the whole tail issue brings me back to square one again, if they can make him look human, why can't they take his tail.. etc.. xP

Epilepsy
I was thinking of that, but then I thought seizures might be too severe? I guess I could read up more on how epilepsy works. I was actually pondering the use of Tourettes instead. That did not have fainting but could help explain some other things, like perhaps bestial sounds were from tourettes and not the fact that he wasn't human? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Phones
I'm not sure what I was thinking in the OP about this, honestly. Maybe I was thinking of smartphones being totally unuseable? But the story could be 90's-esque or he could just use a dumbphone.

NSFW
[spoili]Yeah so that's another thing. If they can cosmetically make him a humany penis, why couldn't they get rid of the tail?
But if they can't get rid of the tail, then they probably couldn't get rid of a nonhuman-looking penis, so.. idk
I guess i just have to make a decision there. I was simply hoping for some outside opinions on it![/spoili]

Change species so he starts out more human
Have thought of this! I am thinking he will be closer to a bear. If you've ever seen a bear skinned, it looks CREEPILY human.

NSFW Gore

Only issue there is the face, really. So if my "lycan" is just an anthropomorphic bear more or less, I think the whole surgery issue (sans tail inconsistency) should be believable.

 

[Kagayours]

I can see where you're coming from and maybe you're 100% right that nobody could do it. But none of it is explained or mentioned to anyone in any story. Q just comes out looking human and has some weird scars. It is left up to the reader to imagine what happened. Q doesn't even remember what happened so even if someone were to ask he wouldn't have an answer. So doing it that way I feel it's easier to handwave away.

Fair enough.

Change species so he starts out more human
Have thought of this! I am thinking he will be closer to a bear. If you've ever seen a bear skinned, it looks CREEPILY human.
NSFW Gore (open)

Only issue there is the face, really. So if my "lycan" is just an anthropomorphic bear more or less, I think the whole surgery issue (sans tail inconsistency) should be believable.

Sounds like a good idea to me! ^^

 

[Adaon ril'Morgerard]

Personally, for the surgery and anatomy relating to the tail and genitals, I'd just deadpan and ask, "You really want to hear the ridiculous medical-y latin-y explanation? Because even I don't get it. And I was the one who made this bloody stuff up in the first place!"

Or words to that effect.

Sophisticated hand-wavey-ness, you know. Solves everything but why the moon split in two.