litphoria

Expresses an interest in characters who are dissimilar to each other, often in size, age, employment, and/or species.

This seems pretty vague. I would imagine people into the particulars of e.g height difference might not particularly care if there was a difference in employment.

Character Contrast does sound better, thanks Korra. Editing that in.

I figured people could fill in which sorts of contrasts they enjoyed under the context field (hence the "and/or"). I figured submitting only one interest rather than multiple would offer less interest bloat, but for me, if something like employment is contrasted, it may bring differing priorities in a character's values and different personality traits.

For example, an accountant will typically value organization and record-keeping, while a landscaper may instead prioritize health of themselves and their surroundings. Plus, one may make more money than the other. For storytelling, those are not only good vehicles for conflict, but a preference for employment contrast could also indicate a lack of interest in a character having a relationship with a coworker.

I think it's valuable to let people express whether they're distinctly interested in roleplaying with characters who are very unlike themselves, considering a typical matchmaking behaviour is to find like-minded characters.

Why does this need discussion?

To me, it comes down to this: some people like lots of contrast. I listed examples in the description to offer a hopefully-clear idea of what contrast entails. Someone can easily pick one or more and specify which contrasts they like or don't within the context box: similarly to how a person might add notes on character development to describe that they specifically want to break their character through the course of the story, and want to reach a bad end through psychological trauma..

I was just dubious of the value of something so generic. I imagined for anyone who was interested in character contrast, they were interested in a specific kind, so to find everyone interested in any contrast whatsoever seemed unhelpful.

Ah. My intention had been to avoid bloating the system with too many new interests at once, but I suppose that does make sense.