how are ocs created?

@littlepinkbeast thanks!

and yeah, you can info dump if you want.

 

Ooooh, kay, lemme see here! :3c

Moonscale, from City of Heroes - real name Tori Mayhew. She was a young actress in a big-budget fantasy epic movie where the director and studio were doing sort of a tech demo of biosculpting some of the main actors into their characters rather than using makeups and prosthetics, playing Moonscale, the half-dragon barbarian warrior princess sidekick! The contract said that all the actors were going to be returned to their original appearance afterwards, but the movie was a terrible flop because the writing and plot were terrible even if the special effects got good reviews, and so there wasn't any money to pay for the re-sculpting. The actors sued, of course, but there wasn't any money to give them and so all they ended up getting was the rights to the name and likeness of the character they were stuck looking like. Tori was pretty much out of luck as far as acting went, and ended up taking up superheroing instead, because really, there's not much else you can do when you're half-scaly with wings and tail and horns that don't fit nicely into a cashier or waitress uniform. (I have no idea how superheroing was actually paying her bills; nowadays I'd probably have her set up a Patreon or something for it.)

Shikarra the Kinslayer was originally made for a Black Crusade campaign that ended up never happening; she was a favored scion of a minor noble family, had been put in nominal command of the family's militia, was being groomed for command and leadership as a potential Head Of Family someday... and then her siblings and cousins did UNDERHANDED BACKSTABBING NEFARIOUS POLITICS and she found herself right out of favor! And so OF COURSE it was COMPLETELY REASONABLE for her to get the biggest gun and most powerful armor she could find and massacre everyone at the family reunion before torching the estate and going off to be a mercenary warlord. (She is SO not a narcissist you guys, she's even willing to admit she's made mistakes! Mistakes like killing *everyone* everyone instead of leaving a few of the younger ones alive to seek revenge so that she wouldn't have to work as hard to find good enemies.) I remember there was definite influence from Vriska and from Bangladesh DuPree when I was coming up with her, and maybe a bit from Richard the warlock from LFG, and as I've poked around and thought about writing stories with her she's acquired a bit of Pizzazz from Jem and the Holograms.

Kovalska Soulforger was another character I was batting around for the same campaign, a tech-priest who'd been in charge of repairing "machine spirits" and got a little too fascinated with how they worked, and tried to build better ones. (in the Imperium, self-aware AI is Very Very Forbidden and inventing anything is somewhat frowned upon.) And she was on the verge of a breakthrough, and then her secret project got discovered and she had to fleeeeee! She ended up working for Chaos renegades and cultists mostly just to pay the bills, rather than out of any ideological affinity, but hey, at least they didn't object to her trying to work on her AIs. Now if they'd just leave her alone for a few hours and stop asking her to fix their guns, no it's not fixable, you let a daemon eat half of it and didn't even bring me the daemon to make replacement parts from! I was really pleased with coming up with Soulforger for her byname, because to her it means she's trying to make mechanical consciousness, and to her former colleagues in the Adeptus Mechanicus, it referred to her trying to counterfeit Real Humanity.

SUMMER PLUM! Summer was my Pathfinder character in a campaign that lasted for what, like two and a half years? It was wonderful and we had the best DM. Summer was a kitsune bard with ALL the charisma and none of the int or wisdom. She was also a dragon disciple. She hit on pretty much anybody who wasn't either really creepy or actively trying to attack the party, she licked things and tasted things and stuck things in her mouth, she threw gigantic parties in between missions, she was this tiny golden bubbly carefree party-girl, and then on missions she turned into a dragon and hugged people REALLY HARD until they stopped trying to cast spells on her friends. She was also known as Snacks, not because of the putting things in her mouth, but because any time we were up against things big enough to swallow her whole, she jumped into their mouths and shoved her way down their throats and proceeded to give them a very bad tummyache, on the completely sensible and logical grounds that it was lots easier to hit them in the soft squishy inside bits than the hard scaly outside bits. She once left porn golems in a church, because the high priestess of that church had broken up one of her parties (admittedly, the party had been going for like three days by that point and had gotten a little out of hand) and well, she had gotten her hands on some really... explicitly detailed... golems from a dungeon crawl (they had been intended to distract people from traps, if I remember correctly). For some STRANGE REASON after that she got told to stay out of that church.

 

So, since I have finally found a name for one of my OCs, I’ve decided to do a recap on how I created my OCs, featuring all the named ones:

Bast: Forum RP, I had no idea of the plot but cats were important, so a player thought there was a conspiracy of evil cats, I thought they must have a leader, so there. She had to have psychic powers for communication, and the hive mind thing happened because of a particularly lucky roll.

Minecraft(-ish)!Dom Irossi: Started as a MLP self-insert OC and is now a mostly-unrelated-to-me (superpowered) human (formerly) in a Minecraft roleplay server. Well, he has always been that in-universe, the whole pony thing was some kind of hallucination. These are the facts and I’ll stick to them. Has the particularity of being the one OC I had a trans headcanon for, until I found a way to make it canon. Is bad with names, as seen with his own, which is roughly derived from his original name (and kinda sucks). Currently in the Bar RP as I think about what to do with him.

PPC!Dom Irossi: Was intented to be basically me, and was used in a PPC RP. I plan to use him (them? Do I want to stick to a self-insert until I write him/them or do off-screen character development?) for missions, but I’m too lazy for Permission. Name is also based on real name, but for different reasons than the other Dom.

Morgan: Created herself. No, really, I thought about maybe making a bird OC one day and she went “Hello there”. She was originally a New Caledonian crow, but I later changed it to a hooded crow. The name Morgan is something I thought of later to keep the vaguely-mythology-related theme naming for animal OCs (”Morgan” and “Morrigan” are not etymologically related but who cares). Picked that name herself(-ish, she got some help but the dude was not really inspired) in-universe, so it’s totally her fault. Probably to use as a partner for Dom in the PPC, if that ever happens.

Sol (the one I was talking about up here!): Showed up one day. I had a setting. I wanted to describe that setting. They just started existing and did a in-universe exposition scene. I was confused. And then character development happened a lot and they’re getting used to it. The name is a pun, because the last time I mentioned them, I called them “Still Unnamed Navigator”. Hence, Sol. Because, you know, the SUN. Also chose that name themselves in-universe. But I still suck at names out-of-universe.

The Hoodie: Based on a joke post I made about how my hoodie was attempting to take control of my body (which is stupid, clothes aren’t sentient in real life, hahahelpme). Got grafted to Sol’s universe once I semi-seriously considered writing a character like that. Might not actually be a hoodie all the time if I write them, their soul is linked to the fabric but it’s kind of a ship of Theseus thing. Did not chose any name (Aside from stuff like "Uh, Human... McPerson?"), and neither did I, but I think it's staying that way.

Stealthlock: From a RP in a French MLP forum; also the one OC I’m considering the least likely to use again. Was maybe originally based on 14-year-old me’s ideas of “cool and badass character”, but even 14-year-old me realized he was kind of an asshole as soon as they wrote him, so they decided to just have some fun and dropped the “kind of”. Don’t get me wrong, I love my evil trash son, but I don’t know where to put him.

 

How I create OCs

[20.04.2016 15:32:23] whimsy: espc if we go the route of lusus sex influences troll gender
[20.04.2016 15:32:45] whimsy: (fun fact: suff shouldve been a girl, if that line of thought is continued)
[20.04.2016 15:33:07] Ivy: maybe he was tho. what if trans!Jesus is true on alternia
[20.04.2016 15:33:16] whimsy: (and a male heiress wouldnt turn up because glubglub is female and therefore the tyrian grub she adopts is female)
[20.04.2016 15:33:24] Ivy: yeah
[20.04.2016 15:33:41] Ivy: would that mean male jadebloods have like drones as lusii?
[20.04.2016 15:34:06] whimsy: asdfghjggfdsaDF
[20.04.2016 15:35:21] Ivy: buckets as wriggling day gifts: poor Doneoh still cannot stop dying of embarrassment at age eight
[20.04.2016 15:35:50] Ivy: ... did i just accidentally a male jade fantroll?
[20.04.2016 15:36:08] whimsy: apparently
[20.04.2016 15:38:32] Ivy: Doneoh Lumens, Skater, rainbowdrinker, Soft-bro-aesthetic
[20.04.2016 15:39:06] Ivy: His dad is more embarrassing than your lusus. no seriously. You cannot beat him in a dad-off. He is simply the best there is
[20.04.2016 15:39:23] Ivy: I can't believe this

 

I like characterization guides that are about like... the structure of a character's personality. Ways of getting at the cores of what makes a person tick, which you can then build layers and layers on top of. Came across one yesterday that I liked, and I think I'll start quoting such things to this thread.

(source)

 

:D the structure idea reminds me of how i built layers and layers on top of norm the genie's canon personality to create the characterization(s) of norm i use in wt, spr2, my fics and my art, and 'cause of that, it really resonates with me. (well, i did either that or the reverse, which would be looking at all the already built layers and then diving down to the core. either way, it gets at the same sorta thing.)