[quote=@Altered Tundra]
<Snipped quote by Inkarnate>

So knowing things about what might make a character more interesting is bad? Got it. 
[/quote]



I guarantee the most interesting characters across whatever fiction medium you prefer are the ones where you can't arbitrarily list out five likes, five dislikes, and five quirks. What makes a character interesting isn't the things they don't like and the things they do like. What makes a character interesting are their flaws, their actions, their deeds, how the evolve and grow, how they react to the situations they face. 

One of my favorite characters I can only think of three things he 'likes' and one thing he 'dislikes': backgammon, hunting, and board games being the former and people telling him what he can't do the latter. None of those things are what makes him interesting or compelling and they tell you nothing about him as a character. 

Think of any character you like and try to make them a character sheet. You might find that it's harder than you think to distill "likes, dislikes, and hobbies" down to anything other than something they did, like, once ever. 

The thing about a section like that is that, especially in SoL RPs, it's grounded a bit more in reality and you can really like Big Macs, but you're probably not going to eat Big Macs every single day and you liking Big Macs isn't something you would tell people about in normal conversaton. "Hey, my name is Timmy Jones, I'm seventeen years old and male, I'm completely heterosexual, and I like Big Macs but I dislike Whoppers, let's be friends." 

Yes, people and by association characters have things that they enjoy and things they don't. I fucking [i]hate[/i] lobster but I [i]love[/i] shrimp. I wouldn't say that I like seafood or dislike it. But that factoid doesn't make me any more or less interesting as a person, it would just suggest that I wouldn't suggest going to Red Lobster for dinner or something. The things you like don't define who you are, why should that be the case for characters you create? 

You don't need to surface your character's hobbies and likes and dislikes or whatever in a character sheet. That's what RP is for, but even then at most all that's going to do is add a line of dialog or thought where a character expresses their opinion/reservations/whatever and that's all you really need. No character is more interesting because they like one genre of music over another genre of music or they like spicy food instead of sweet food and if someone pulls the "they like this thing because it reminds them of their dead parents" card or whatever then the interesting fact there is their response to the death of their parents and not the fact that they like something specifically.