Guess what, it's FaCtS tImE!

What about Miriva?

(Shows up two hours later)
1. Miriva actually really needs her glasses, without them she has really bad eyesight. She has polycoria, a condition where an eye can have more than two pupils in the iris. The condition can seriously dim someone's eyes. Miriva's glasses are specially tailored to help with her eyesight, though many colors are still dim.
2. Miriva has the uncanny ability to accurately decipher a building's structural integrity. She's had the ability when she was a young child, but never really honed it until her late teens.

Also random bonus fact to cover up a plothole about Miriva's condition: The glasses are also unique in that they hide her polycorina, if she took them off you'd notice she had two pupils in each eye.

Cool!
She's a really interesting character! :D

Thanks!
I thought of the whole eye thing when I was thinking of ways to balance out Miriva's strengths, and I felt like that was a cool balance.

Np!
I've heard of polycoria before, and I'm honestly surprised that I found somebody who used it for an oc. And yeah, it seems to be a neat way to help balance her! Also, it allows her to have a very unique trait when compared to other characters! :)

I thought so too!
I usually know a little about some diseases and syndromes, some of them come from diseases and disorders I or my family have, (ADHD, Anemia,) or syndromes and sicknesses I view as really interesting (Polycoria). I feel like having something like that, something people can see in real life and get affected by is a lot more real and interesting than: "the scar on my eye from the 3000000-year-old demon that gave me powers."

I agree!
They are really good for making interesting characters with believable characteristics. Many of the disorders I end up using are mental disorders/illnesses because I really am interested in psychology, but I do think I should learn further about more physical sickness too in case I want to use them in the future for a character.

I usually stray away from mental disorders unless I'm confident I can correctly portray them, which is why I usually go for physical diseases or sicknesses like in the case of Devex and Miriva.

Yeah you are right, mental disorders are very hard to accurately express in a character. Probably one of the most difficult parts of any sort of story writing is making characters have consistent personalities/behaviours. At least that's where I tend to struggle more often.

I definately agree on the consistent personalities, I still find that hard when I write short stories.

I sometimes get tempted to make characters nice to each other even when they're adversaries, or a kind character will randomly say something that makes them seem a bit cold-hearted.
It's rare though but still, I'm just not good at it sometimes lol

Interesting.
Stuff like that usually flies over my head, as I think it's like a personality quirk they have, like not being able to talk to people unless they've had their morning coffee.

Yeah, intentional personality changes based on circumstances are not an issue at all though, as you said. You don't want characters to be flat and unchanging because then they aren't as interesting, so it helps with that.

Elaine Devex

1. Devex has anemia, which means she has fewer healthy blood cells than average. Her case is chronic and severe.
2. Elaine also has a good amount of knowledge about things like the field sobriety test and handcuffs, as before the explosion she studied law enforcement, and she still does periodically.