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Was wondering if I should start a topic or such. But well, here it is.

So, I personally am interested on characters people themselves make. Like, from start to finish. Maybe to some series or to fully be a thing of their own.
Where did the idea,to make the character begin? What were you planning at first? Did the character evolve into something very much else than what you had thought of? Or change somehow into something else with years passing? Did your interest shift more towards another style? What about the overall design?

So, how is it to you? Are you interested to know more about these kinds of things? What have some of your characters gone through? Why did that happen?
Well, with my OC Garnet, I made him in the summer of last year, and at the time, he was an anomaly made spontaneously out of malicious computer data. He loved to bug people, had little remorse, and looked very monsterlike. Since then, I changed him to look more humanlike, though I did keep his old body as sort of an alternate monster form for him. His personality changed, too, seemingly on its own, but especially after I started working more on a backstory for him, and more characters of mine and other people's became involved with him. ^_^ He's definitely less annoying, but still pretty bothersome. And he's one of my most developed characters now! I'm very attached to him, he's my favorite ^_^

I love hearing about how characters changed over time, especially when it seems to just happen on its own as opposed to being intentionally done by the creator. It's almost like they create themselves sometimes!
PANGAEA


History of Mister Orlitt


I believe I made Mister Orlitt back in 2011 and he was very far from how he is portrayed now. I had intended for him to start out as a protagonist who gradually becomes a tyrant. So, yes, Nelís was meant to be evil. In 2012, however, I began to notice that many people made their characters that way and I didn't want to have a character whose personality and goals are pretty banal. Instead I vouched for a character who would never be a disappointment to RP with. It took me a long while to think of a character who would ultimately be original. I look around and I see angels, demons, nekos.. and I was like 'eh'. Eventually I thought to make my own original race and I did, yet I had no idea where to go from there. Seeing that there were a lot of romantics out there I made Nelís a romantic too. Even then, I wasn't satisfied. It was all the same and I was indifferent UNTIL I thought of the best love story I've ever read.

I'm not religious or anything, but when you look at love you think of MxF, MxM, or FxF. The only place I saw where there was a love that looked beyond orientation and sex was the Bible. It's like a non-discriminating love that has nothing to do with the flesh. Honestly, I've never seen a person- real or not- who has that type of personality. It was everything I was looking for, time to change Nelís again.

I threw out his old, irrational and prude behaviour and brought in some humility and benevolence. I'm trying to make him as lovable as possible though I'm making him easy to hate as well. Either his first appearance will make you say "Oh, he's such a gentlemen" or make you think it's all a façade, he's just trying to suck up to everyone. He'll be a character who will either anger you because he's just too damn concerned about you that it gets on your last nerve or he'll make you flattered- something along those lines. One way or another, though, he'll get to you. Also, when RPing with him I told myself never to flaunt him. Never try and get out his story, my focus needs to be on the other character. If I'm trying to RP a selfless person I have to be selfless outside of the RP as the one writing the response. The RPs will never revolve around Nelís, just the other character. I'm not gonna spew out his history and all unless you ask, but even then I'm not going to douse you in Nelís's past. When RPing with him my focus is solely on the other character and their needs/dilemmas.

As for his back story I didn't need to mess with it too much as it was already underdeveloped. It took me a long while to come with a good back story, but after RPing with Kuroi_Neko (who I thank for helping initiate most of my character development) I had the perfect idea. I don't have it on his profile at the moment because I'm finding it difficult to word it, but every time I think about it I end up weeping. So as of now I'm trying to gather up my vocabulary to make this back story without flooding my keyboard with tears.

Funny, throughout all of this Nelís's appearance never changed. At least not drastically.

I still kept some components from the original Nelís. He still has what you would call 'magic', but of course I had to change that a bit too. Nonethless, I'm very proud of who he turned out to be and is still turning out to be. It's always alleviating to RP as him and I find myself less angry and frustrated when I'm using him because it kind of shifts my own personality. All of a sudden it's harder for me to be offended and I'm so much kinder than I was before. I love it. Nelís is the ideal human being in my head. He's what I wish to see in real people and I hope my RP partners feel loved when RPing with him. Doesn't matter what you did, what you're doing, who you are, your gender or sex, just know that he freakin' cares about you and your wellbeing. The motive of this character is just love in the purest form I can think possible.

Well, I'm finished blabbering now. This is an awesome topic Reima! Excited to see how everyone else's development~
I looked at Orlitt's profile after I had read what you had to say, and I wanted to say that I think you did a great job with him ^_^ He seems very cool, and it looks like you put a lot of effort into developing him.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to add... I find a lot of the most interesting characters are the ones that have been around for a long time and developed in ways that nobody thought they would and, I guess, kind of develop more and more personality over time as their creators age and mature. I have a few characters like that, but I won't mention them just yet ^_^
Reima Topic Starter

Oh boy, I've been sooo busy~ But really I think that tomorrow I'll finally have the time to read these through and then maybe try searching for the old bad pictures I wanted to put up alongside with some writing~

But hey, I'm exited that there are more people that like to see how characters actually evolve with time~ It's Awesome, and it kinda like shows how the person that created the character has grown too
I can show just a small little thing on overall character evolution on my design side here~
See more
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This particular character stareted as a, well, basically they were/are a mixture of two other characters. As you might guess, one of those characters is blue and the other one red. It's been 6-ish years when I created the character. I always thought of them as being purple, but never really went through with it. The hair was very generic, not really even a mixture of the 2 other characters. It was baaaad. And all the tails of my characters used to have the similarily typed tail.
This particular character here is drawn in the version of a chess based kingdom that I have, and his class is a custom class 'a Flier' and I could say that the new design, although quite similar, is much better xD
Gnaea (played by Yuka)

This character has the longest history. She came to life because I wanted to make a magic user, and a friend had a setting of their own making that was a good fit for how I had imagined magic working in hers. She also gave me a chance to explore and vent my enthusiasm for ancient Rome in a more creative way in addition to the re-enacting that I already do. She was already a quite well-developed character by the time I started actively plotting with her, thanks to numerous drabbles and side-plots that opened up her past.
Merin (played by Warlocke)

Longest history I've ever done for a character is Merin's.

He originally started out as just a random idea I had to sort of fill a niche in my rp that was lacking. I had really enjoyed playing my previous dragon character, but as he was evil I often found my interactions very limited. I first, just started out with the idea that I wanted to make a 'good guy' dragon, who was very sociable and interactive, since I have a bad habit of making standoffish or socially awkward characters.

I went with D&D as a foundation just because I love the designs of the dragons, and it provided some good base information to start with, but I also found that D&D stuff, the logic and 'balance' of the races applied better in 'game' settings than it did in writing/rp. So, I took the general idea of his species of Dragon and used my own system for magic, and my own made up places, This also helped me cut back on having to dig through six thousand miles of Forgotten Realms and D&D lore. I didn't want to spend more time obsessing over perfect accuracy within that world, I wanted to have fun with a character.

What I never expected, was when I started working on all the reasons why he was the way he was, that he'd take off and gain such a massive sprawling history. I'd have him make mention of some made up historical event in passing, but I'd write down what I said, so I could keep track of my own canon.. and it just kept snowballing.

He now has two full length novels, with plans for there to be at least one more. I can basically just run with an idea and write short stories about various points in his life, on the fly at this point. I've never had a character come to life on the level he has.
Micheru (played by Micheru)

Micheru began as just some shiftless cat-man who stole a priest's robe after washing up on a not far off shore in the aftermath of a war. He fell in with a bad lot and became a career criminal because it's where things went, and then he became a monster because he had to, to survive.

His backstory came to him over a decade of play, as others I met added to it. It turned out that the war was one his uncle, Trench, had been at the head of, and that he was born with the taint of the Shadowlyng race, and so he joined up with his long-lost family, and became a truly big monster.

Originally, though, he was a blank page. That was in 1997.
It's funny; my two oldest characters (Nessa & Ardira), both started off their life as characters I made on an old PC game (Neverwinter Nights). I think there's a lot of nostalgia there because of that, but since being made they've both developed way more than I initially anticipated.

When I first made them both I was mostly concerned with their personality, design & class. I didn't really think too much about their background until after I'd played with them for a while - then it just sort of hit me: where did these characters actually come from? What's their story? Because the game they were on was set in the Forgotten Realms D&D setting, I just kept their stories linked to that; I think having the map, the places and stuff already laid out gave me a decent guide for figuring out where they'd both fit into the grand scheme of things.

Nessa's I'm still sort of figuring out, even now. But I'd say Ardira's just keeps developing more and more. I'm hoping this year for NaNoWriMo to focus on her background story in more depth, actually. ^_^ I really love how it's like an ongoing project; a bit like a constantly developing piece of art, haha.
Asroc

I really don't RP as OCs, due to some...issue I had and it kind of brings back memories.

However, I RP as Akira from some Japan only game when I wanted a new and fresh start from my dark ages of RP. HE has little to no information about him aside from Japanese sites and a Wiki that me and some friends work on and edit. I explored on more of his character and fleshed him out a bit more. He's one of my favourited muses.
Well, my character S.I.N. was created because at the time, I was in a Roleplay with a dear friend of mine and I needed someone to help develope the character Rachel more. But, as it turns out, they soon became something... More, surprisingly enough. In fact, they became a joke character throughout the entire series, with an obsession with throwing plates if any were around, until the very end of that, where her personality changed rather dramatically. Because that was the point I combined two characters together in order to see the result. And from there, I've been tweaking things, toning her down, fleshing out a backstory I refuse to share. You know, stuff like that. Now she's the top of her game in the Military, the Main character, future Dictator and a rather selfish Mercenary with an eye for loot.
Here goes everything and nothing. Tell me if I get off track because I fail at explanations...

The oldest character I have on file is my phoenix agent Lexi. And I've had her since... 2004-2005 is a guesstimate (ironically, ever since I started drawing seriously, maybe even before then). She is VASTLY different than how I originally made her to be. In a way she grew up with me as a character, becoming her own person.

Honestly, at first she had pigtails. She was a princess of a galaxy and had everything she needed and a large backpack that held EVERYTHING in the world, oh, and she was half everything too! And she also had many, many sisters who looked just like her (think Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny from Pokémon). She was a rebellious sort who still cared about her friends and was generous to a fault and her sisters loved helping her and whatever canon character was with her on her adventures, blah blah blah, Mary Sue self-insert stuff.

As I worked on her, I came to realize her massive faults/author wish-granting fantasies; it came to a point where I just stopped using her in general for a bit other than RPs with a friend. It wasn't until I joined a casual RP group in 2011 or so that I tossed her in again with another character that I was using and came up with a different personality on the fly to shake things up for myself: a hotheaded, dominant, and cocky woman who won't take your crap and does what she wants to get what she wants (which usually gets her into a ton of trouble.)

Her initial changed attitude wasn't well-received in that group because it "was so unlike me," and was "really mean to think of using dirty tactics," but I stuck with her regardless. She can be a mean person to some, and I can't please everyone. Now she's the alien phoenix leader of a ragtag team of agents that travel the multiverse on jobs that are assigned to them. Who knew?

She went through a major look and job change over the years, from large Sailor Moon-like pigtails and flowy dresses, to just this punk-looking chick with scars, work gloves, and a shnizz-eating grin.

Her back story changed as well: from being an OP princess of a galaxy with countless amounts of twin sisters that all look and act the same, to a former duchess-to-be of a province on her now war-torn desert planet with a tall younger sister who's much more cool-headed and noble than Lexi's rambunctious down and dirtiness.

And as I look at her now, I realize she's a good representation of the person I was and am now: I used to be an idealistic child who couldn't wait for all her dreams to come true with a snap of my fingers (ultimate princess Mary Sue Lexi). Now I'm a dreamer with a more realistic outlook that's hardened by bad experiences and life in general (Lexi today.)

She's developed her own life, problems, and ideology since then; she's forever a work in progress to this day, along with the race and world she comes from. I also have her to thank for the characters I know today and love like my own children because she's met them (and/or fell in love with them) on her own adventures.
So I think Jackie has an interesting history

Way back when I was in elementary school I created her, though as completely unrelated character. Originally, Jackie started out as Jake the Springhare. He was a Looney Toons fan character and was Bugs Bunny's son. Outside of him being a superhero, I really don't remember much of anything from this stage.

After that when I got to junior high, my 'Sonic' phase started. During this time Jake changed liek two or three times. At first, he was a young Hyena. Outside of that I literally don't remember anything else. Not long after that I revamped him into a Hedgehog. He was created, in story, through the sheer crazy coinicidence that some of Shadow's DNA, some of Godzilla's DNA, and a Chaos Emerald came together, resulting in him. He was basically a recolor of shadow with an op 'Rage mode' based off of Meltdown Godzilla from Godzilla vs. Destroyoah. He could also turn into a full sized Godzilla. Then I lousily wedged the Halo canon into things and I forget what happened after that.

After that I began working on original ideas, rather than fan ideas. Jake once again change, this time to a shapeshifting Elf based off the stories of Changelings. He was liek that for a while and his story became a slice of life style rp. The world he was made for evolved from there, starting out as a mismash of sci-fi, fantasy, and modern day. The Changelings and Elves evolved as well and I think I managed to make Jake a reasonably restricted shapeshifter. Save for that, Jake was in this stage for a few years.

Finally I got the idea for Jake to be able to change genders. Whcih spawned Jackie. Over time Jackie began to be used more andm ore inplace of Jake and I just evolved the character into Jackie. And now Jackie was a shapeshifting Elf! At this point the world became more of a modern day fantasy world.

A whiel after that, I decided to completely overhaul the world Jackie was a part of and now she's in her current energetic and obnoxious alien merc incarnation.
Probably the most thought out and longest creation/adaptation of a character is my own avatar. I originally created him WAAAY back in 2010, when I was a wee(And also creatively stifled) lad. Initially the character had an extremely bland design, with long black, hair styled in your classic 2010 "Emo" fashion, along with boots, a shirt, and a black overcoat, complete with a ripped sleeve. His story was also the blandest of the bland, and the most uninspired, of the uninspired, being mostly an amalgamation of other stories built to fit into his.

As you can probably tell based on the picture... His design has DRASTICALLY changed, and though it's not apparent, his entire story has too. Originally I was just trying to have a character to RP with, but slowly became dissatisfied with this and decided it was time for a major revision. So I sat down with myself and worked as efficiently as possible to create a design which could still take from other things, but was ultimately unique, but then again, I realized I don't like when a character just has the same clothes through their story and I made multiple outfits and looks that he'd have throughout. Initially I had two designs which strayed from the others entirely and was originally going to scrap them, but I'm glad I didn't, as they're now retroactively placed as the designs for his alternate forms. I then sat once more, coming up with a story that to this day I'm still working on, which I feel is slowly coming together as probably one of the best stories that have ever been conjured up by this feeble head-meat of mine.

Ultimately, after six years of changes, revisions, and decisions, the character which now represents me is truly something I feel greatly satisfied with, unlike the blandy-bloo I had before.
Wow I don't even remember when I made Klaus. I know it was before "The Vampire Diaries" got a live action series because--while the show is WAY better than the books--I took the name from Klaus in the books. But I DO remember why I made him: I have a character named Mira who I created first. She was my first vampire character, and I was LOVING her and I really wanted to build my own vampire world/lore. I know I wanted someone to contrast her introverted and honest personality. So I created her sire.

Enter Klaus. Now, Mira is named after a fictional vampire, so I continued the theme with Klaus. And since I'm on the subject, I've thought about changing his name because "The Vampire Diaries" is so popular now, but I can't bring myself to do it lol. But anyway~

His initial design was similar to this. He had gone through a few changes before THIS point, but it's the oldest picture of him I have on file, aha. But, as you can tell, he was far more unkempt and his eyes were obnoxiously red (I was an edgy preteen). While he's still ridiculously beautiful, he is less bishie. He was also turned into a vampire earlier in life (early twenties) as opposed to his apparent age now (late twenties to early thirties). Ironically, his actual age did just the opposite: he's way younger now than he was when I first made him. This was adjusted because I now know more about history lol and I wanted to keep the content of his history the same rather than get sucked up in the numbers.

I don't think his personality has changed much... I've always had a solid idea for his personality, but what HAS changed is my ability to better write/express it. I must've made him when I was 12/13 (possibly younger) and if you learn about him, he is definitely a more mature character. I'm still barely an adult, lol, but I was WAY in over my head when I first started writing and role playing as Klaus. So now he's more accurately written as an antagonistic/dark character (and these characters are my weak point in writing but they're my favorite :( ). As for his sexual preferences--and this part isn't huge anymore--I was struggling on and off about my identity so he was my first queer character. He's still bisexual like I am, but he won't label it. :P

Anyway, he obviously isn't my oldest character. But he is my favorite of my OCs and I'm always making little tweaks to him as I grow older. I mean, I'm never going to have 2,000 years of experience to accurately write into this character, lmao, but he is definitely my most thoroughly developed.

As for me and my curiosity, I don't really wonder about the history of other peoples' characters. I'm always far more interested in the character itself. That said, I won't turn down the chance to learn about their thought processes.

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