Can I make a character popular in school without having them be superjocks?

Or have them play a sport other than football or basketball. And can you give me examples when a character is popular fue to charisma rather than athletic ability?

Athleticism only really seems to apply to male characters, and I know of plenty popular male characters who are popular due to wealth, looks, or their bad boy attitude moreso than their athleticism.

And can a baseball or track star sometimes be as or more popular than a basketball star or quarterback?

Sure, why not? Depends on the school. Say if the school's baseball team always makes the championships, the players would probably be pretty popular.

Popularity is based more on connections than being good at sports to my knowledge. It's just that being on a sports team gives you a lot of connections by default (the team itself) and pretty much guarantees you're rich compared to other students, which improves your social life because bribery becomes an option.

In practice, this does mean most people on the sports team will be popular, but it doesn't mean that most popular people will be on the sports team. In fact, regularly, individuals outside of the main power blocs will be the most popular in an absolute sense, but are lower in the social hierarchy overall. Numbers of friends don't actually vary enormously between individuals, so just a couple people can really make the difference.

Where the sports team's real power comes from is that they're usually pretty front-facing relative to the rest of the students, and thus generally have some level of protection provided by the staff that other students don't have access to. They're less likely to get in trouble for the same behavior, because overwhelmingly, they're richer and more important to the school in a reputational sense, and the easiest way to have a good reputation is to simply not record things that go wrong.

So there's no particular reason why not other than the generic school plot featuring the popular sports team guy, but keep in mind in many schools the sports people aren't more popular, they're just more powerful because they are more likely to have the staff on their side. A student from a sufficiently rich family (or one who does something like start a cult of personality of their own) might be able to get a lot of power from the staff in the first case and the students making sure no one speaks up about them in the second.

I am very much the last person to know about these things, but isn't popularity to a large degree a matter of charisma?

The student council president could also be a immensely popular person as well.

So are the "good looking" ones without a club.

TBH, I don't think that connections (especially not connections to anything staff-like) are the major determinant of popularity in such a setting. I suspect in most cases it's the other way around - popularity determines connections.

In my high school (class of 2013), one subset of the popular kids were the polymaths who did everything. They played a sport (usually something less flashy like swimming, baseball, soccer, track, tennis, etc.), were in the arts (choir, band, theater, or more than one of the above), took all honors, dual credit college, and Advanced Placement classes and got perfect grades, and were in multiple clubs. They also kinda had connections through their parents and often knew how to charm school staff, particularly the guidance counselors, both of which helped them get more scholarships for college. They also usually knew which areas to focus on that would look good to college admissions. That's what they were all about- getting into universities they considered prestigious.

We also had the "traditional" popular kids who were football and cheerleading stars and were Prom King/Queen/whatever, but my school was still large enough (~800 students) that I basically never heard about or interacted with any of them.

Edited by CrystalGlacia on Jul 12th 2022 at 11:44:16 AM

I'm sorry, but kind of give me a show where the popular kid is not a sports star, but just very cool. And I won't bother anyone.

Or shows where the main character is the cool kid and has more going for them than just a sport.

What does it matter whether other works do it?

If we were constrained to only include things as already done, then there would be no development, it seems to me.

(And that's presuming that there aren't extant examples—I'm not in a position to look right now, I fear.)

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jul 13th 2022 at 5:58:22 PM

Off the top of my head, there's The Fairly Odd Parents. The "cool" kids there are cool because they're rich, not because of sports.

It's just in most shows they are so stereotypical, that I actually see them as lame. Plus, in real life they aren't always cheerleaders or football players. The only trope that I can kinda bring up is Alpha Bastard, the boy isn't always athletic, although mean. And most of the BMOC characters can be satellite love interests. In my story the point I'm trying to get accross is that the kid in question is so likeable that even the football jocks drool over him, and he is higher on the social scale, he does work out outside of school, but his coolness stems from his style, good looks and his almost too wholesome and pure attitude. He treats everyone with respect and doesn't care about status, in fact he sometimes hates the attention he gets. He's also popular with girls, but doesn't have that typical macho attitude, though he is assertive. Plus, he is a social butterfly whose main drive is his love of socializing. And he is more of a musical kid. He is somewhat good at sports, but it isn't his main focus in life. And he is rich, but not full of himself. And he's more of an OC. How realistic is this? And have you met someone like this who was popular?

Edited by leaczinkota2003purple on Jul 13th 2022 at 12:34:21 PM

I had some kids in my school who definitely were sort of just "friends with everybody". I think it's realistic enough if you restrict it slightly; like everyone knows and likes this person, but most people aren't really friends with them, just friendly with them. Or they're able to just bounce between cliques without necessarily being part of any of them.

I don't see what the problem is.

Now, if I saw this kid in real life I'd absolutely write him off as a pretentious douchebag, but every popular kid has their detractors because they're popular. What matters, from a worldbuilding perspective, is that the audience goes "Oh! Okay. In this school, these are the traits that the other kids value most."

So whether it's "realistic" or not (and this is by no means unreasonable), you can totally pull it off as long as you tailor other characters' reactions to make it believable.

Go for it, get it all on the page, then send it to the seasoned writers you know and ask for feedback. First drafts aren't the time for second-guessing.

Edited by AwSamWeston on Jul 13th 2022 at 5:19:37 AM

If there are more examples, I'd be happy, but thank you. I asked a similar question on reddit and they said that some popular kids didn't play sports at all, had other interests. Plus in order to satisfy my needs, I read threads about some celebs, actors and musicians, who were suprisingly popular in high school, I was quite suprised how many were. And I'm pretty sure there are more, it's just not every redditor knew one. Plus some female examples aren't cheerleaders, like Heathers, Mean Girls and so on, they are just status and fashion concsious. It's harder to find male examples, but thanks for your example. Plus, what kind of tv shows would they like, or how much they use social media. And as you can see I'm not American, I live in Hungary, but I like to imagine my OCs as Americans. In my country we don't really have distinctions, our school barely even had extracurriculars.

Edited by leaczinkota2003purple on Jul 14th 2022 at 4:19:44 AM

Going back to the OP question, I can imagine many other sports. Or a combination of many things.

The two characters in my story are runners (one of them also plays basketball and skateboarding) and won a combined sport-academic competition for the island their school is part of. And they are thought to be handsome and kind by their school-mates.

Popularity in students sadly tend to boil down to two things:

A) Aggressiveness

B) Looks

Sports just happen to be the easiest way to display point A

IDK if that's true. A lot of the more outwardly aggressive kids in my school were ones everyone pretty much agreed were just annoying and rude, while the "popular" kids more or less got along decently with everyone.

Aye, I think that A) should say "success" rather than "aggressiveness". Although it's probably oversimplified either way.

Remember, force is often met by resistance, not acquiescence.

Perhaps the OP would like to scroll through specific examples on Big Man on Campus, School Idol, and Class Princess to for context as to why those characters are popular. Not all of them are due to athleticism.

I did, but most older ones are the classic quarterback, I search this website a lot when it comes to character archetypes.

And with females, the sport could be lacrosse or gymnastics. Though what kind of TV shows would they like or which celebs do they care about.

For girls I'm pretty sure it's almost always cheerleading. I've never seen lacrosse or gymnastics used for the popular girls.