My thought process for making new characters is a bit different depending on whether I'm adapting a character from another medium into RP or if I'm making an original character. If it's the former, I start with the character and consider what I could mold them into and what they would do. If it's the latter, I start with a concept I want to roleplay, and then build a character that lets me try that concept.
Silence accomplishes two things. Firstly, I wanted a character that fought with sheer brute force instead of fancy weapons (Widow Maker, Kauket, Dr. Bulgrave) or magic (the sarahkin). Additionally, I wanted to try writing a major character that couldn't speak. Silence was just what I wanted - there's nobody else like her on my roster.
Silence was, as I've mentioned before, inspired by a couple of real-life wrestlers I've seen here and there on YouTube and whatnot, those being Kane and Jessicka Havok. I bring it up again because of a little cutting room floor: Silence's initial design had a lot more black clothing and she wore a gas mask instead of a leather mask. This, however, made her look way too much like Havok so I swung the pendulum more towards Kane. The red mechanical eye is my attempt at giving Silence something neither of her inspirations possessed.
Normally in the world of wrassling, people like Silence are the bad guys. After all, if you took Silence and placed her amongst the "Divas" of WWE, she would be by far the tallest, heaviest, and strongest. She's more than twice the size of the most successful girl on their roster, AJ Lee. When you have such enormous statistical advantages over your opponents, of course you'd be the villain. You're the odds that have to be overcome. But that's where the magic of ZFRP comes in. Silence is an ordinary human with absolutely no special powers. For all her height and muscle, her opponents are monsters and aliens with guns and magic. In a lot of fights, she's actually the underdog, and it's suddenly easy to make her sympathetic and someone to root for.
Silence was originally supposed to be more rough around the edges, as befitting her appearance, but she revealed herself to be a big softie pretty quick. She makes friends surprisingly easily for someone who can't properly communicate with them. Although she is rather rough-and-tumble, there are plenty of people in ZFRP who love a good fight, so that's not a huge barrier either.
I wanna mention Blade here, too. There are a lot of things in ZFRP I don't see coming, and when I came up with the idea of Blade returning as a regular to be Silence's manager, I was surprised at myself for digging him back up from his relatively minor role in Season 2. Blade helps Silence communicate, which I felt was important. I didn't want a cop-out on the "silent character" idea, so I had even gone so far as to make Silence illiterate so she couldn't just write her thoughts, but she still needed some way to help get people's attention and announce her intentions, and it made sense for a wrestler to have a manager anyway. So instead of a new character, out comes Blade. I think the idea of Silence being "normal" made him a great fit - the Storm Bikers' plot in Season 2 was all about the concept of "normal" and how the kobbers could so easily disrupt the lives of normal thugs.
Silence hasn't yet had too much of a chance to really develop in RP, as she took a sort of hired-gun role in Season 4 - instead of having stories happen to her, she simply joined in on plots whenever I felt like using her. She's on tap to get some development this year, though, mostly in the form of people finally uncovering her past. It's taken me a long time to iron out the kinks, and I still don't have everything, but I finally have some form of backstory for her planned that I think is acceptable, unlike last year where I didn't know what my own character's deal was. All you Silenceamaniacs out there can find out for yourself this summer.
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