Has anyone ever had a character they had for so long that they have had to deal with all of your changes and personal taste through the years? Did they end up pretty different from their first adaptation to what they are today?
The main character I use on here, Dar’ma, is one of the first original characters I ever made when I was maybe 16…and dear lord that was about 7 or 8 years ago now. I had RPed a lot before then but it was in already established worlds like Halo and such, but Dar’ma was made for my very first DnD campaign. Let me preference this right now, not a single damn one of us knew how to play DND, the only dice we had was a D20.
Dar’ma started vastly different, she was a custom class I created called “jester” and her race was “Vixen” or something. I was really into anthropomorphic creatures at that age despite not having any clue what a furry was. So she was like this fox, lady, thing. The assassin sneaky character of the group while my other two friends played a warrior and monk respectively.
Her personality actually has stayed somewhat the same, her back story has gone through many changes however. Her story always involved a messed up brother killing her father, the only difference was at the time there was about uh…0 motivation for why he did that. Also, instead of being tribal folks, they actually belong to a Nobel rich man who adopted the two who were orphaned. Of course.
One of the biggest changes came from a rather strange place. See I used to like creating my characters in video games and what not, and me and my friend picked up Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and we wanted to make Dar’ma and his warrior character. Well you can’t really make a fox lady in that game so instead I created this woman with tan skin, and these dark animal stripes along her face. If you look at her now, you will see that this design basically stuck besides adding the beast ears and tail.
The three of us, despite our first campaign being a bit cringe and bad from how ignorant we were to how things worked, could never get over our characters. Despite their janky beginnings the trio of the hunter, warrior, and wise monk, really stuck through our whole lives. We are still friends today, and have evolved all three of our characters into much more and still use them often. Dar’ma has had the most radical changes since her beginning, going from noble daughter, to a tribal hunter, and going from a furry to…uh…50 percent furry?
And as I was making her profile I was just thinking of all the changes the little identity crisis went through to get to where she was today and was wondering if anyone else had a journey like this?
The main character I use on here, Dar’ma, is one of the first original characters I ever made when I was maybe 16…and dear lord that was about 7 or 8 years ago now. I had RPed a lot before then but it was in already established worlds like Halo and such, but Dar’ma was made for my very first DnD campaign. Let me preference this right now, not a single damn one of us knew how to play DND, the only dice we had was a D20.
Dar’ma started vastly different, she was a custom class I created called “jester” and her race was “Vixen” or something. I was really into anthropomorphic creatures at that age despite not having any clue what a furry was. So she was like this fox, lady, thing. The assassin sneaky character of the group while my other two friends played a warrior and monk respectively.
Her personality actually has stayed somewhat the same, her back story has gone through many changes however. Her story always involved a messed up brother killing her father, the only difference was at the time there was about uh…0 motivation for why he did that. Also, instead of being tribal folks, they actually belong to a Nobel rich man who adopted the two who were orphaned. Of course.
One of the biggest changes came from a rather strange place. See I used to like creating my characters in video games and what not, and me and my friend picked up Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and we wanted to make Dar’ma and his warrior character. Well you can’t really make a fox lady in that game so instead I created this woman with tan skin, and these dark animal stripes along her face. If you look at her now, you will see that this design basically stuck besides adding the beast ears and tail.
The three of us, despite our first campaign being a bit cringe and bad from how ignorant we were to how things worked, could never get over our characters. Despite their janky beginnings the trio of the hunter, warrior, and wise monk, really stuck through our whole lives. We are still friends today, and have evolved all three of our characters into much more and still use them often. Dar’ma has had the most radical changes since her beginning, going from noble daughter, to a tribal hunter, and going from a furry to…uh…50 percent furry?
And as I was making her profile I was just thinking of all the changes the little identity crisis went through to get to where she was today and was wondering if anyone else had a journey like this?
A number of times. Some of my characters have undergone dramatic changes without even being all that old. ^^
Probably my most extreme example (with a character that I still use at all) would be Kyra Lo'ora. I'm pretty sure her profile still has lingering fragments from some of the more recent points. I was probably something like 14 or 15 when I first created her (maybe 13) so... bleepedy-bleep, she's going on 2 decades. @_@
Aaaaanyway, at this point, she's a second-generation hybrid of human and Isari (semi-orgininal-ish race that got its start with the question: why the heck are the dark-skinned, white-haired elves subterranean when the sun darkens skin and bleaches hair? Y'all in the desert, now, and y'all got more important things to worry about than racial mixing, too.). As can probably be inferred, her parents were both half and half, too. When she was a young adult, a big ol' magical disaster happened that wiped out a significant chunk of her tribe. She survived, but it messed her up bad enough that she basically temporarily died, revived as a violent monster that proceeded to attack remaining members of her tribe, and because of that, she got exiled as being too dangerous once she returned to her senses. Now she wanders around surviving on what she knows how to do: trading and fighting.
Backing up through multiple changes that were all in roughly the same direction, all the way back to her original iteration... Her dad was a generic elf and her mother was a black human, and they all live secluded out in the woods because racism. Her family got attacked by a vampire and only she "survived," she ended up turned into a vampire, and her escape included falling down a waterfall. She was left with amnesia, and proceeded to wander around because wandering, just carrying a duffel bag of her stuff around. Basically magic piece of jewelry let her be out in the sun, she tried to stick to feeding off animals (pre-Twilight, thank you very much), she automatically disliked other vampires but couldn't recall why, and honestly she behaved like an angsty teen with some anger issues. (I mean... she still kinda behaves like that... but usually less angst and more intentionally obnoxious...)
Interestingly, in ceasing to be a vampire, eating people became more of a norm for her. To be fair, though, she still doesn't hunt people just to eat them.
Probably my most extreme example (with a character that I still use at all) would be Kyra Lo'ora. I'm pretty sure her profile still has lingering fragments from some of the more recent points. I was probably something like 14 or 15 when I first created her (maybe 13) so... bleepedy-bleep, she's going on 2 decades. @_@
Aaaaanyway, at this point, she's a second-generation hybrid of human and Isari (semi-orgininal-ish race that got its start with the question: why the heck are the dark-skinned, white-haired elves subterranean when the sun darkens skin and bleaches hair? Y'all in the desert, now, and y'all got more important things to worry about than racial mixing, too.). As can probably be inferred, her parents were both half and half, too. When she was a young adult, a big ol' magical disaster happened that wiped out a significant chunk of her tribe. She survived, but it messed her up bad enough that she basically temporarily died, revived as a violent monster that proceeded to attack remaining members of her tribe, and because of that, she got exiled as being too dangerous once she returned to her senses. Now she wanders around surviving on what she knows how to do: trading and fighting.
Backing up through multiple changes that were all in roughly the same direction, all the way back to her original iteration... Her dad was a generic elf and her mother was a black human, and they all live secluded out in the woods because racism. Her family got attacked by a vampire and only she "survived," she ended up turned into a vampire, and her escape included falling down a waterfall. She was left with amnesia, and proceeded to wander around because wandering, just carrying a duffel bag of her stuff around. Basically magic piece of jewelry let her be out in the sun, she tried to stick to feeding off animals (pre-Twilight, thank you very much), she automatically disliked other vampires but couldn't recall why, and honestly she behaved like an angsty teen with some anger issues. (I mean... she still kinda behaves like that... but usually less angst and more intentionally obnoxious...)
Interestingly, in ceasing to be a vampire, eating people became more of a norm for her. To be fair, though, she still doesn't hunt people just to eat them.
Zelphyr wrote:
A number of times. Some of my characters have undergone dramatic changes without even being all that old. ^^
Probably my most extreme example (with a character that I still use at all) would be Kyra Lo'ora. I'm pretty sure her profile still has lingering fragments from some of the more recent points. I was probably something like 14 or 15 when I first created her (maybe 13) so... bleepedy-bleep, she's going on 2 decades. @_@
Aaaaanyway, at this point, she's a second-generation hybrid of human and Isari (semi-orgininal-ish race that got its start with the question: why the heck are the dark-skinned, white-haired elves subterranean when the sun darkens skin and bleaches hair? Y'all in the desert, now, and y'all got more important things to worry about than racial mixing, too.). As can probably be inferred, her parents were both half and half, too. When she was a young adult, a big ol' magical disaster happened that wiped out a significant chunk of her tribe. She survived, but it messed her up bad enough that she basically temporarily died, revived as a violent monster that proceeded to attack remaining members of her tribe, and because of that, she got exiled as being too dangerous once she returned to her senses. Now she wanders around surviving on what she knows how to do: trading and fighting.
Backing up through multiple changes that were all in roughly the same direction, all the way back to her original iteration... Her dad was a generic elf and her mother was a black human, and they all live secluded out in the woods because racism. Her family got attacked by a vampire and only she "survived," she ended up turned into a vampire, and her escape included falling down a waterfall. She was left with amnesia, and proceeded to wander around because wandering, just carrying a duffel bag of her stuff around. Basically magic piece of jewelry let her be out in the sun, she tried to stick to feeding off animals (pre-Twilight, thank you very much), she automatically disliked other vampires but couldn't recall why, and honestly she behaved like an angsty teen with some anger issues. (I mean... she still kinda behaves like that... but usually less angst and more intentionally obnoxious...)
Interestingly, in ceasing to be a vampire, eating people became more of a norm for her. To be fair, though, she still doesn't hunt people just to eat them.
Probably my most extreme example (with a character that I still use at all) would be Kyra Lo'ora. I'm pretty sure her profile still has lingering fragments from some of the more recent points. I was probably something like 14 or 15 when I first created her (maybe 13) so... bleepedy-bleep, she's going on 2 decades. @_@
Aaaaanyway, at this point, she's a second-generation hybrid of human and Isari (semi-orgininal-ish race that got its start with the question: why the heck are the dark-skinned, white-haired elves subterranean when the sun darkens skin and bleaches hair? Y'all in the desert, now, and y'all got more important things to worry about than racial mixing, too.). As can probably be inferred, her parents were both half and half, too. When she was a young adult, a big ol' magical disaster happened that wiped out a significant chunk of her tribe. She survived, but it messed her up bad enough that she basically temporarily died, revived as a violent monster that proceeded to attack remaining members of her tribe, and because of that, she got exiled as being too dangerous once she returned to her senses. Now she wanders around surviving on what she knows how to do: trading and fighting.
Backing up through multiple changes that were all in roughly the same direction, all the way back to her original iteration... Her dad was a generic elf and her mother was a black human, and they all live secluded out in the woods because racism. Her family got attacked by a vampire and only she "survived," she ended up turned into a vampire, and her escape included falling down a waterfall. She was left with amnesia, and proceeded to wander around because wandering, just carrying a duffel bag of her stuff around. Basically magic piece of jewelry let her be out in the sun, she tried to stick to feeding off animals (pre-Twilight, thank you very much), she automatically disliked other vampires but couldn't recall why, and honestly she behaved like an angsty teen with some anger issues. (I mean... she still kinda behaves like that... but usually less angst and more intentionally obnoxious...)
Interestingly, in ceasing to be a vampire, eating people became more of a norm for her. To be fair, though, she still doesn't hunt people just to eat them.
I quite like that, her story is close to Dar’ma’s (not really they close just adjacent to the idea of an exiled tribe member)
It’s always crazy looking back on how characters evolve with you, I have to wonder what may change in another decade if I decide to keep them around lol
A character who has changed a lot for me is West. You can see an older fantasy version of him here. I created him to conflict with the hyper-friendly fantasy characters I saw being roleplayed at the time. A group of teenagers meet up, immediately become best friends who'd die for each other. So he was a moody badarse who was first and foremost self-serving. He was described as being cowardly but I was too gutless as a writer to actually have him lose a fight. I roleplayed him for years, he was a highly established character.
But two things happened which radically changed his personallity.
Firstly, I drew a 'Modern AU' of him. My roleplay parter at the time was very dismissive, saying that she didn't have any interest in modern characters. But the idea never faded and even though I avoided creating art, I was constantly thinking about it.
And secondly, I got older, my worldviews changed, the way I look at characters changed. And I thought to myself that being a front line in radical, bloody, world-changing events doesn't turn a man into a sassy loveable loner. It breaks him.
So my current version of this character reflects that. He still stinks like a fantasy character. He still has a tragic anime backstory and lives in a highly magical world. But now he drives a cool car and uses a cellphone 8). Personality-wise he's more mature. He struggles with the past, very avoidant of real combat, slow to open up and doesn't talk much about himself.
I drifted away from the friend who kind of dismissed the modern version of this character (nothing dramatic, we just drifted away to different interests) and I wonder what'd she'd think of him now. We RPed together for probably the better part of a decade, and he's so fundimentally different to those times. They'd probably be horrified, but I also... just don't care. It's been too long, and somebody who I haven't spoken to years doesn't get to dictate how I enjoy writing a character.
But two things happened which radically changed his personallity.
Firstly, I drew a 'Modern AU' of him. My roleplay parter at the time was very dismissive, saying that she didn't have any interest in modern characters. But the idea never faded and even though I avoided creating art, I was constantly thinking about it.
And secondly, I got older, my worldviews changed, the way I look at characters changed. And I thought to myself that being a front line in radical, bloody, world-changing events doesn't turn a man into a sassy loveable loner. It breaks him.
So my current version of this character reflects that. He still stinks like a fantasy character. He still has a tragic anime backstory and lives in a highly magical world. But now he drives a cool car and uses a cellphone 8). Personality-wise he's more mature. He struggles with the past, very avoidant of real combat, slow to open up and doesn't talk much about himself.
I drifted away from the friend who kind of dismissed the modern version of this character (nothing dramatic, we just drifted away to different interests) and I wonder what'd she'd think of him now. We RPed together for probably the better part of a decade, and he's so fundimentally different to those times. They'd probably be horrified, but I also... just don't care. It's been too long, and somebody who I haven't spoken to years doesn't get to dictate how I enjoy writing a character.
I've had my character Raine since 05/06 and boy has she changed! She started out as a very nice, can do no wrong kind of marysue. She was in a modern comic and was overall a fairly stale character. Over the years though I have worked on her character and feel that I have made her very well rounded. Now she is the main character of a dark medieval fantasy comic. She isn't afraid to get her hands dirty and carries a lot of baggage. This character has gone through some rough things but they help shape her into the interesting woman that she is! Her art has widely changed too! I think Raine grew with me as a writer and she gets better with every year.
Claine wrote:
A character who has changed a lot for me is West. You can see an older fantasy version of him here. I created him to conflict with the hyper-friendly fantasy characters I saw being roleplayed at the time. A group of teenagers meet up, immediately become best friends who'd die for each other. So he was a moody badarse who was first and foremost self-serving. He was described as being cowardly but I was too gutless as a writer to actually have him lose a fight. I roleplayed him for years, he was a highly established character.
But two things happened which radically changed his personallity.
Firstly, I drew a 'Modern AU' of him. My roleplay parter at the time was very dismissive, saying that she didn't have any interest in modern characters. But the idea never faded and even though I avoided creating art, I was constantly thinking about it.
And secondly, I got older, my worldviews changed, the way I look at characters changed. And I thought to myself that being a front line in radical, bloody, world-changing events doesn't turn a man into a sassy loveable loner. It breaks him.
So my current version of this character reflects that. He still stinks like a fantasy character. He still has a tragic anime backstory and lives in a highly magical world. But now he drives a cool car and uses a cellphone 8). Personality-wise he's more mature. He struggles with the past, very avoidant of real combat, slow to open up and doesn't talk much about himself.
I drifted away from the friend who kind of dismissed the modern version of this character (nothing dramatic, we just drifted away to different interests) and I wonder what'd she'd think of him now. We RPed together for probably the better part of a decade, and he's so fundimentally different to those times. They'd probably be horrified, but I also... just don't care. It's been too long, and somebody who I haven't spoken to years doesn't get to dictate how I enjoy writing a character.
But two things happened which radically changed his personallity.
Firstly, I drew a 'Modern AU' of him. My roleplay parter at the time was very dismissive, saying that she didn't have any interest in modern characters. But the idea never faded and even though I avoided creating art, I was constantly thinking about it.
And secondly, I got older, my worldviews changed, the way I look at characters changed. And I thought to myself that being a front line in radical, bloody, world-changing events doesn't turn a man into a sassy loveable loner. It breaks him.
So my current version of this character reflects that. He still stinks like a fantasy character. He still has a tragic anime backstory and lives in a highly magical world. But now he drives a cool car and uses a cellphone 8). Personality-wise he's more mature. He struggles with the past, very avoidant of real combat, slow to open up and doesn't talk much about himself.
I drifted away from the friend who kind of dismissed the modern version of this character (nothing dramatic, we just drifted away to different interests) and I wonder what'd she'd think of him now. We RPed together for probably the better part of a decade, and he's so fundimentally different to those times. They'd probably be horrified, but I also... just don't care. It's been too long, and somebody who I haven't spoken to years doesn't get to dictate how I enjoy writing a character.
I’d say it’s a glowup lol. I am not a fan of modern characters but I am a fan of modern with a twist. When someone says they arnt interested in modern things I think they mean they don’t have interest in slice of life stories. But I mean nothing wrong with a modern world with a fantasy spice involved.
It’s also just really fun to take a fantasy character and imagine them in modern day context, I’ve done it with Dar’ma plenty of times.
Actually really funny story about that.
Like I said I used to like creating my characters in other video games when I was younger, and well my friend was really into those WWE games. So we created our DND trio that I mentioned before as a wrestling tag team trio.
I have never admitted this anywhere else but my friends and I never forgot this and while it was a good laugh at first they turned into a serious break within our gaming universe, so there is in fact a very alternate universe for Dar’ma where she is a wrestler with her two buddies lol
InquisitorCat wrote:
I've had my character Raine since 05/06 and boy has she changed! She started out as a very nice, can do no wrong kind of marysue. She was in a modern comic and was overall a fairly stale character. Over the years though I have worked on her character and feel that I have made her very well rounded. Now she is the main character of a dark medieval fantasy comic. She isn't afraid to get her hands dirty and carries a lot of baggage. This character has gone through some rough things but they help shape her into the interesting woman that she is! Her art has widely changed too! I think Raine grew with me as a writer and she gets better with every year.
Dang she went from 90s anime main character all the guys hit on to…well bad ass, like you said though she grew up with you, it’s nice seeing the artistic changes too. I wish I had my drawings of Dar’ma from all that time ago but I was dumb and didn’t take much care of my stuff back then so I think all those little sketches are gone
DynamoDumpling wrote:
Like I said I used to like creating my characters in other video games when I was younger, and well my friend was really into those WWE games. So we created our DND trio that I mentioned before as a wrestling tag team trio.
I have never admitted this anywhere else but my friends and I never forgot this and while it was a good laugh at first they turned into a serious break within our gaming universe, so there is in fact a very alternate universe for Dar’ma where she is a wrestler with her two buddies lol
I have never admitted this anywhere else but my friends and I never forgot this and while it was a good laugh at first they turned into a serious break within our gaming universe, so there is in fact a very alternate universe for Dar’ma where she is a wrestler with her two buddies lol
A friend of mine did something similar actually, made all our Shadowrun characters in the WWE game! It really is a strange kind of fun to watch your OCs duke it out
Well, oldest character I have that I still actively use is this one. She was first created when I was a kid as a Sonic OC.
She was a fox with psychic powers named Feral. I don't remember much of what she was like when I had her like this.
The next major incarnation of her character I made was when my characters, and at the time sona, shifted from being sonic based to being in an original slice of life style fantasy setting. She became a kitsune in that setting, and her personality shifted from whatever generic personality I initially had for her to more of a prankster.
When I graduated high school and started up in college I scrapped that old fantasy slice of life setting and instead made a sci-fi setting and made Kat the girlfriend of another oc of mine named Jackie, who is also technically one of my oldest characters. She went from a kitsune prankster to a half-human half-alien straight man to her girlfriend, Jackie's, goofball.
Tho still in the same setting, I retconned her to be a partner to Jackie, who was a mercenary from the first reboot of the setting. Their roles were still relatively the same, with Kat being the more mature, less goofy of the two, with more of a dry sense of humor.
And, again, still in the same setting, I've been thinking of resetting things again
This possible incarnation takes some ques from 'isekais' like Owl House, with this version of Kat being a normal human taken to a strange fantastical world. Specifically this incarnation of her character would have been abducted by aliens and dumped onto Jackie's home planet. I would imagine that she would still fill a similar role to what she had in the last few incarnations, being the straight man to Jackie's goofball, but would also serve as a fish out of water in an entirely alien setting.
She was a fox with psychic powers named Feral. I don't remember much of what she was like when I had her like this.
The next major incarnation of her character I made was when my characters, and at the time sona, shifted from being sonic based to being in an original slice of life style fantasy setting. She became a kitsune in that setting, and her personality shifted from whatever generic personality I initially had for her to more of a prankster.
When I graduated high school and started up in college I scrapped that old fantasy slice of life setting and instead made a sci-fi setting and made Kat the girlfriend of another oc of mine named Jackie, who is also technically one of my oldest characters. She went from a kitsune prankster to a half-human half-alien straight man to her girlfriend, Jackie's, goofball.
Tho still in the same setting, I retconned her to be a partner to Jackie, who was a mercenary from the first reboot of the setting. Their roles were still relatively the same, with Kat being the more mature, less goofy of the two, with more of a dry sense of humor.
And, again, still in the same setting, I've been thinking of resetting things again
This possible incarnation takes some ques from 'isekais' like Owl House, with this version of Kat being a normal human taken to a strange fantastical world. Specifically this incarnation of her character would have been abducted by aliens and dumped onto Jackie's home planet. I would imagine that she would still fill a similar role to what she had in the last few incarnations, being the straight man to Jackie's goofball, but would also serve as a fish out of water in an entirely alien setting.
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