It is. Fuck it. Posting here 'till they move it.

My system is a little strange [s]I thought you knew I was strange[/s] but seems to work a good portion of the time. It fell apart lately, and I'm still piecing it back together. But it did alright for years.

Each character tends to get their own little "compartment". A little voice, something I let freely develop into something of its own. A character for me is not the backstory and wall of text on a sheet. It's the sum of three variables, which is a character's core, biases and experiences in relevance to their personality. The core is usually a bunch of little wrenches I throw into the mix that serve as modifiers for their voice. Their biases help determine how they approach any particular situation. Their experiences are modifiers based on the things they've done and lived that have a baring on how they act. All three can be changed over the course of interaction, though the core is pretty static. From there, I tend to try and squeeze a physical appearance into the mix; a mental image of how they look/react during a given scenario. This is usually in addition to making a mental scene of everything that is going on relative to the char so they have something to react to, and sometimes this will be done in conjunction with many other characters doing the same thing - reacting to the new variables placed into the mix based on how their personality is structured. Opposing characters also take part in a scene, and I'm obligated to create a "shell" for them based on my system to handle the specifics.

From there, it's a matter of transcribing what occurs in the scene.

The biggest issue is when the scene itself falls apart, either by too much time passing or someone throwing in a wrench that causes a "logical exception" that shuts me down. Sometimes it recovers, other times the scene fails, and my ability to roleplay is compromised.

An edited expansion: The "easy way" of doing it that many roleplayers do (especially introductory or free, but all the way up to people in advanced here) is just put themselves into the place of the character. From there, they modify elements of their personality - or not - and that makes it easy to answer occasionally tough questions if they don't have the patience or energy or ability to create a character from an almost completely different foundation (almost, because while I like to think my characters are their own individuals, my head must cause a heavy bias in many of the angles they take). It's easy for reliability, and being able to relate to characters and things always makes it easier for people to roleplay. It's viable, provided it's done right.

Below, I would say = done right. "rawgh imma demon lord edgy teenager (repeat across a dozen platforms)" = probably not as alright.