lovebug Right! Right now is so vague because I think about them in all versions of themselves, old, young, future and past. As original characters, they don't really exist at a specific age unless they stay that age forever, but I don't have an OC like that at the moment. But now that I think about it, maybe I should lol.
This is more of an opinion than anything, but I find it hard to give my characters a specific age because while most of the time they are at a certain age, I also like imagining what they do and what they are like when they are younger and older. One of my OCs that I write about is 15-17 during the story, but there's a prequel where she's five at the time. So I want to draw her at that age as well. Essentially, I really love timeline pieces where they show different ages of the character.
I don't know. Maybe I'm rambling and it doesn't make any sense.
wormancer I'm sorry the title scared you! 0.0 My characters age is strictly dependent on the timeline of the universe they live in. Closed species are much harder for me to give ages because I don't really know enough about the universe to venture a guess. Usually they just stick to an appearance rather than an age.
I do like to list a specific age though it's more what age the character is in what I consider to be their present day. Most of my fics are written around that character's present day but I do like to bounce around in a character's timeline. I tend to plan stuff out usually over a 3-6 year period depending on which plot I'm writing and a specific age tells me what should be happening at that point but I need a present day age to work that out. That's also why I like to include a year of birth in my OC bios.
For instance Jasper's 26 at what I consider his present day (1914/beginning of WW1) but if I write him on his 28th birthday (which does come up in his plot) that makes the year 1916, puts him in the Somme, makes his rank Captain and him the Company Commander. This also tells me loads of other character development related stuff I have planned and should be using too both in relation to Jasper's character and what his dynamic with other characters is like.
It depends on the character and what I do with them but for example, characters in my stories have not one age listed because they age throughout the story!! I've just been putting their ages in the respective parts of the stories... whoops. It was the only way for me to make sense of the "age" section which I felt should remain.... in that case their "refs" just show how they look 'most' of the time, hahaha
A few of my characters age with me, in real time, but that's very very few.
Your title managed to alert me too haha but yeah I do the same! I usually put the age there I use the most / what people know as their "main canon" but I often then make tabs for them where they're of different age because as their creator I just naturally think about their life as a whole? I don't really dare to post my adult versions of characters most people know as kids to NSFW games though like they are adults and it's not comparable to aging up fandom characters, but I just really don't want to take the risk of making other people uncomfortable.
oh yeah i'm the same tbh :0 my characters also vaguely age as i do? i seem to age them up on their profiles every year ish bc of that u know (or my main OCs anyway)? but their ages in their stories just... is anywhere from fucking birth to like... 50 or older i swear - i mean my human AU is set in highschool technically speaking? but there's also story long after that? so i've got characters who are like... 15 in the story who are also 35 in the story? but are also 10? my characters just live thru life like any normal person so their ages just kinda... don't exist i guess bc it's regularly changes
like i don't do canon things either w/ their 'TH selves' in terms of 'age'? like canonically in the human AU timeline, krypt'n gets his hair cut short when he's 17 (like in this western AU pic), but on my profile he's 18 (and i've been considering bumping him up to 19 bc i'm almost 20 and he's a year younger than me technically speaking) but i like his long hair :0 it's kinda his... thing? so even tho it TECHINCALLY should be short - i don't draw it that way?
i'm kinda getting off topic slightly but yeah it's cool to see it's normal for other ppl to have characters who don't technically have a set age too
my words aren't working but i hope that makes some kinda sense rip
I have ages listed for my most important characters because for them, it's pretty important when they were born since their backstories are interwoven. Two best friends having no age gap between them is very different from them having a five year age gap, and it also makes it easier for me to track where everyone is at the time. For characters who met after they became adults, it's less important how old they are, but I still like to have a general idea of how old they are ;v; On the less important characters I usually only add an estimate or an age group when I'm not sure or haven't determined it yet.
I have a few set ages. Vincent cause he shares my birthday, and Anima and Apres, as their stories are about them really figuring out life, but could very well easily work as general young adults, so might change that. Fancy used to have a pretty set age, but now kinda hangs around a range more than just one age. And the majority have age ranges, as they don't really need a precise age.