OC stories/themes important to you personally

Hendrix - Around the time I made Hendrix I'd resigned from an extremely toxic job where staff were seen as slave labor, we were verbally, emotionally and mentally abused, manipulative gaslighting behavior was the norm and acceptable and our group could barely function as a team because the managers set us against each other to stop us groping together against them. It'd affected my mental health big time. It took just under 2 years to fully recover from it and in that recovery period I worked out a lot of my feelings into Hendrix. I used him as a vent sona for work specific issues after that. It's where a lot of his cynicism comes from and his personality reflects how I felt at the time. He's practically a caricature of the person I was then. Nowadays I'm in a good job so I rarely need to vent through him so these days he's a regular sona I love dearly because I have a deep emotional connection to him. At the time, having that means to vent and properly express what was going on in my head but in a creative way or even just allowing Hendrix to heal and move forward was a godsend. I can't put into words how much he's helped me out of a really dark place. Beck helped too since I created and developed him alongside Hendrix and I had them supporting each other but Hendrix took the brunt of the heavy emotional crap I was working through. Hendrix being an overachiever because he's always been told whatever he did, no matter how hard he tried, how much effort he put in and if he went above and beyond wasn't good enough for a job that'd be considered great work if it'd been someone else doing the same task task is something that deeply resonated with me at the time too. Still does to a degree.

Jasper gets a lot of my mental health bullshit. Though from different root causes, we have similar mental health issues we both struggle with so it's very easy to project onto him. He struggles with a depressive phases that flip-flop all over the place that sometimes he doesn't know if he's coming or going. It's so random and so sudden he can't begin to predict the pattern and it's draining to keep up with. It can hit out of the blue and can be really intense for a day before going back to a good phase or he can have a good phase that lasts a few months before a depressive phase slaps him in the face out of the blue. This mental flip-flopping is the crap I have to deal with. I allowed Jasper to struggle with suicidal thoughts and self-destructive tendencies because that's something I do think about and the reason I don't follow through with self-harm is because I can project those thoughts safely onto Jasper and get the catharsis I need from that. I do like to handle him learning to work with his mental health and learning healthier coping mechanisms rather than constantly suffering for it though because it gives me hope I can continue to move forward and get better. I love recovery stories that deal with mental health for that reason. 

For William I was trying to get across how his abusive father has impacted his development in his personality and behaviors rather than outright stating "he grew up with an abusive father" in his bio and I didn't catch that I'd projected onto him more than drawn from experience until later. He has to confront his father before he's deployed to the Western Front (he still lives with his parents at that point and joined the Army to get out of a difficult home life) but stating that his father was abusive outright in his bio just felt wrong. Some of it is exaggerated a tad as he has had a more tougher time of it than I have. His tendency to isolate himself is something I will do in a depressive phase and likewise, when William isolates himself that's when he really needs to socialize or he'll feel worse.

Oscar. I projected my struggle with emotions onto him. He has a background of having his thoughts/concerns invalidated and constantly being told he has no right to feel X thing/he's too young to feel like X/wait until you get to my age/I've or someone else has it worse for the majority of his life. He really struggles with working out if he's feeling emotions correctly or feeling the right emotion for any given situation especially for those situations that provoke a strong emotional reaction. Because he's been scolded for his emotions and being "too emotional" or for having emotions in the first place he tries so hard to keep those emotions private. He second-guesses what he's feeling a lot and sometimes lies on instinct when asked how he's feeling because of those reactions he's come to expect from people. I had similar issues but in the workplace and I know it has heavily impacted me because I got it so often I'd be like Oscar here so I do tend to project that a lot onto Oscar.

Werner deals pretty heavily with death, he lost his brother who he was close to out of the blue. Though this happened after I'd had him a few months I lost a friend who didn't want people knowing she was terminally ill unless it was absolutely necessary and unavoidable until the last possible moment suddenly and when I was working out of the country so I couldn't see her before she passed at the time when I was working on developing him. That brought up a lot of weird and unpleasant feelings I didn't know how to deal with or if I was right to have those feelings so I projected the feelings of grief/anger/feeling of betrayal/disgust at self/sense of wrongness for feeling those things heavily onto Werner during breaks since I didn't even have time to grieve and process what'd happened. I haven't touched him since I worked through those feelings because I eventually got a sense of closure and a feeling that it was right to move on but I also need to pick him up again since I need him for my sci-fi plot and he was never intended to exist just for me to grieve through.

I deal with a lot of military themes generally in part because war history and Age of Sail does fascinate me but because I've grown up around it and spent a lot of time on Army and Navy bases for a good chunk of my childhood. I'm actively involved with a paramilitry group rn (we get nicknamed Dad's Navy lmao) so it's kinda normalized to me at this point? 

I've noticed that either single mother with absent father or vice versa comes up because that's the situation I was raised in. It's something I'm very bitter about still and whilst I'm lucky to have a really good relationship with the parent I do have I tend to project that bitterness towards my absent father a lot. Also since I have a tiny family the concept of family doesn't mean that much to me so I ignore family all together and tend to prefer a family found in friends kinda theme.

One theme that is reoccurring in my historical plots is how I handle war. I'm very much focused on the psychological/negative impact of it because war isn't just some cool battle sequences and epic gun fights, you see some true horrors in war. People change in war. I think a lot of people forget that especially when it comes to the RAF because you see those gorgeous vintage aircraft and it's very easy to get caught in the trap of de-humanizing it and focusing on the action of the dog fights whilst forgetting how terrifying they really were. People seem to forget that the pilots and bomber crews went through hell too and the pilots/air crews too easily glorified/romanticized that sometimes RAF characters in the movies almost feel like cardboard cut-outs that got overlooked for the battle sequences. It's really difficult finding an RAF drama that deals with it's subject from an anti-war perspective so that's why I like to focus on that kind of thing in my own work, particularly when I'm handling my RAF OC's. It's why my main goal with the RAF plot is to humanize my RAF OC's. I think about how war can affect/change people a lot generally and I often wonder how it'd impact me which is also how a lot of my historical OC's came about.

I almost exclusively work with LGBT+ characters. I grew up around LGBT+ circles and was involved in an LGBT+ friend group so it's normalized for me to be surrounded by LGBT folks. However there was a serious lack of LGBT+ characters in media I like to consume (still is tbh) around the time I came out and I really wanted a LGBT+ role model. I got frustrate with that and decided if I couldn't get a cool sci-fi with a gay male lead I'd make my own and I haven't stopped. Now I'm in a situation where I can't be so open with my sexuality and have had to go back into the closet for safety having LGBT+ only OC's where it's normalized and the overwhelming majority is an escape.

While it's not a 1:1 comparison as while Jessie's first disruption happens at a school age his later ones happen outwith school age. The second one that is most relevant to the storyline as it happens at the start of it. Jessie is removed from his world/planet and transported to another after being dragged across his country by someone he's never met before. There's no preparation given and he's just flung from one world to another. Which is what a lot of my childhood consisted of. In one case even to another county. He has to deal with the knowledge that he cant go back and that other worlds exist. People and different worlds come and go a lot for Jessie but the difference for Jessie as after coming to the new planet he eventually makes some friends he can keep between planets, unlike myself. 

Haze is an outcast on his planet so he leaves and becomes a traveller. He has very few belongings and anything that matters to him has to fit into one single backpack so sometimes he has to chose to let something go to fit something else. Again, I had to deal with this a lot as a child which has left me quite materialistic as an adult. He travels on universal public transport like space trains and such where he gets most of his rest. While I had physical houses to sleep I spent a lot of my time on public transport by my self when I was younger. He becomes pretty avoidant of others and only interacts with them if 100% necessary. Haze really represents the feeling I have of not ever really having a home land to return to.

Haze does have a travel partner but she's mute and cant physically speak with him. She's also super aloof when talking about herself anyway (via morse code). She is also a completely different species and has empathy problems so he cant get much comfort from her.  Thinking about it I suppose she sort of represents my soft toys I had throughout my life, I'd imagine they could talk to me and only me and quite often would be my only comfort. 

Clara is a dnd char that started out as just this asocial & socially inept weird girl but over the sessions she kept getting accidentally ignored and it’s something I can really connect with? It happened completely accidentally but yeah her getting ignored is a running gag and she has social insecurities bc of it now. It’s something that others have expressed being able to relate to too so I’m glad that’s a trait of hers now, I would never have thought about it otherwise.

Shui he I honestly dumped myself on her lol, idk i just saw her and went ‘she seems bubbly and she has a square face shape I relate’ and just gave her al lot of my personality traits lol. 

Also if you know a bit my chars you know I have a loot of bubbly girls that are just, unapologetically happy. And it’s because it’s a theme I really care about and connect with. You know how our society is nowadays ‘if you’re positive you’re naive and dumb if you’re negative you’re smart and realist’, and I disagree so fricking hard. My girls aren’t naive, maybe they don’t know much about some things, or they don’t want to be exposed to horrible thoughts or something but like,, just let them be happy gosh. Bonus point if they’ve been through a lot of shit. You don’t get to go to the girl who’s been through hell and tell her she’s dumb for being open and happy. Iolene is that. It took a long time to come out of her shell and start to appreciate things, and you’re not going to come and tell her she should be bitter about things. It’s something that I experience so it’s something I feel really strongly about. Also, happy people just make me happy, so I like ‘em.

Pepper I’m redesigning a bit rn, but I really wanted to dump whatever mental disorder I have on a troll or other character and she was the chosen one. I’m saying ocd but it might really not be that. Basically I’m just really perfectionist and I’m pretty sensitive to loud noises, picky about tastes, etc etc but where the really annoying stuff kicks in is my touch and visual perfection obsession. I used to bite my nails, now I just obsess over their shape and how they feel when I rub a finger on it. I obsess about how something looks visually often, and how something feels, like a bump on a clothe or pimples. It can get auper unhealthy and I often have an internal monologue of ‘kill me kill me kill me’ when I’m obsessing over these. So yeah, I wanted a char to have whatever this is to feel less alone.

Phyllis was modeled after a real low of my life. When I was more numb and sad all the time and my parents were fighting often. I also used to watch a specific anime when they did fight and anything else would fail to take my mind off of it. Idk i just saw the boy and went ‘he’s a sad boi I’m allowed to be edgy’ and just slapped angsty stuff on him. He still comes out as an amazing swimming athlete and a good boi tho so his life isn’t a complete bad time and I love him a lot <3

Mint I just kinda slapped my love for spikes on. He became that kind of wish fulfillment boy in attitude like, I feel cool and you can’t bring me down. He’s a rude boyo that just does his thing and it’s all good. I’m socially anxious and like if someone doesn’t like me I feel super extra bad, but him? He just dislikes them right back and move in with his life. Sometimes I wish I could wear whatever I want and not feel self conscious too.

Last one, Howard‘s sister, she’s not uploaded on here yet. In my family, I’m the young sister and I have an older bro, and during my childhood, he got very favoritised. He was the golden child, could do nothing wrong and gets no punishment for failing while I’m held to very high standards, I had to be better, more mature, more understanding, than my brother was. It led to me having a weird hatred for my brother, and it’s exactly what happens with Howard’s sister. I really needed a plotline like that in a story of mine, I really don’t see complicated sibling relationships due to different treatment often in shows and books. She suffers in silence, never voicing her feelings about it, until she does. In the story, they end up reconciling, which is something me and my bro have yet to really do. More in a, she learns to let go of her hatred and accept her brother than in a stop arguing way, my bro and Howard never had any idea that’s how I/she felt. So yeah that’s a big emotional package and I’m glad I’ll write about it at some point.

Yuzuru here is a young activist who believes in social justice and the promotion of critical thinking. He was always being stereotyped as "disruptive" by public media, yet he never stood down to authority and fight for things he thought was right. The biggest catch, however, is that most of the general public had their blindfolds on, because they are too happy to enjoy the comforts of their present lives and thought Yuzuru was simply a problematic punk who stirs up chaos in society. True, Yuzuru might be a little idealistic in terms of what he was fighting for, but his good heart and a strong desire to something good for the country is what drives him to fight for people who didn't even understand or support him. 

I really enjoyed writing lore for him. I won't get into political debate but all the bull-bulls going on in my home country had really opened my mind to social justice, it was only in the past five years that I began to look at things critically. I couldn't believe I was blinded for nearly 20 years of my life and I'm honestly so happy to have myself AND my parents changed.