On why you should always read the physical appearance headcanons of the muses you play with
This applies for both canon and OC roleplay blogs. You might think, it's enough to just look of images, the roleplayer has posted of their muse. But on one hand not every roleplayer has the skills or commission money ready to get a hyperrealistic rendition of how they imagine their muse looks like and on the other hand the physical appearance headcanons can include important details, that one could notice, when being in close proximity of the muse, but that might be too minute, or intricate to depict in an artist's rendition.
So just for immersion's sake, it can be useful to ready the physical descriptions, just so you get a clearer picture in your head of what the other muse looks like.
But there's another reason, why it is important. Even if you think, there's nothing new to add, especially with canon muses. You might end up surprised. Because physical appearance is also part of the character design and a story-telling tool. Roleplayers will use the physical description to hint at past experiences through scars, tattoos, piercings, etc. They will tell of lifestyle choices and the subsequent physical development. Was the character malnourished as a child and thus developed a slow metabolism, that had them gain fat easily as a mature person, once they had easy access to food? Are they working on a farm, as a sailor, or an elite knight? And how does that affect the build up of muscle mass on their body? Do they have stretchmarks from a past pregnancy? And if so, do we know where the child is in the moment of our roleplay? Is there a nick in their ear from a stray arrow, after they narrowly survived an assassination attempt?
All of these details can hint both at a general backstory, but also at events from past roleplays, that the roleplayer decided to make canon in their muse's backstory.
And lastly, reading and occasionally rereading your partner's bodytype headcanons can both provide you with new roleplay material - topics your muses could talk about in the future - as well, as combat our tendency to create idealized images in our heads. When we read books, we automatically create images of the characters in our heads based on what we read. And let's be honest, how often did we come to realize, that our mental image of a character did not match another artist's rendition of that same character? The same goes for roleplay. Especially if a muse's physical appearance doesn't become much of a topic during our roleplay, we tend to subconsciously forget, what we know about said muse's physics and start to create our own idealized image of them. Which could lead to awkward situations, if we do mention the other muse's looks and it doesn't match what the player had written in their physical appearance headcanons.
tl;dr: Always read the other player's physical appearance headcanons, they wrote of their muse, even if it's a canon character, because they contain important story-telling tools and backstory hints. Rereading those headcanons occasionally can also help prevent us from accidentally creating an idealized image in our heads, that does not match the original.
