About Me
Hi! My name's Hayley and I run The Character Consultancy, or "TCC" for short.
I'm English, in my mid-40s, undiagnosed but likely autistic, and live in Bristol in the UK with my partner. We're both childfree, meaning that we chose not to have kids.
I'm a counsellor working towards a qualification as a psychotherapist. My training is in a particular style of talking therapy called transactional analysis, which was designed to analyse peoples' differing interpersonal / communication styles. This helps me to explore why fictional characters are the way they are, and any tweaks they might need in order to be more psychologically realistic.
But my training doesn't just help me understand individuals. Everybody grows up in a particular cultural environment, and that influences the experiences they have while growing up. These, in turn, affect their psychology. Somebody who grew up in a peaceful village in rural Croatia is going to have a different experience to someone who grew up in a war zone. Someone in an immigrant family is going to have a different experience to someone with deep family roots in that area. This is called the "Cultural Parent", first explored by Pearl Drago in the 1980s.
This helps me to explore entire cultures, hence my ability to assist with worldbuilding.
I have a few interests and hobbies, including hiking every week with my partner, writing short stories and blog posts, developing my own projects (Kaleida, The Four Flamingos of the Apocalpyse, Knightmare n, and The Four Little Pigs), drawing (mostly landscapes at the moment, but I'm starting to explore anatomy), and witchcraft. On that last note, I'm an atheistic Kemetic Pagan.
TCC's History
I founded The Character Consultancy in 2018, because I needed to be able to work flexible hours to complete my counselling diploma, and because I was already trained well enough to use what I'd learned. Offering consultations about fictional characters seemed like an ideal way to pay my bills until I qualified. When my employer of the time turned me down for flexible working, The Character Consultancy was born!
The Character Consultancy seemed like a great name at first... but then I got deeper into the work.
How, for example, do vampires handle uneven power dynamics in their relationships with humans without letting domination snowball, Stanford Prison Experiment style? How can a farmer's daughter plausibly become a Navy Seal? Do your dragons lay eggs and abandon them to fend for themselves, or do they nurture their young, and what does that mean for the adults' feelings of autonomy in that culture?
Each of these issues involve interpersonal dynamics, but they all base their responses on their culture. Vampires may make use of ritual and tradition to regulate their behaviour towards humans. That farmer's daughter will need experiences to toughen her up so the Navy doesn't reject her outright, and farms are dangerous enough to explore likely options. Reptilian dragons may respond differently to prenatal abandonment than an eagle chick, or ant larvae.
Culture is broad and deep, so holding fictional cultures can be demanding, but I'm trained to do just that.
I qualified in 2022 and have put TCC on the back burner since then, but I still love running it and take the occasional commission.