I'm curious what people use their characters for.
In my case I have and create characters as a hobby, to do artistic things such as crafts or drawings. As well as doing plenty of scenarios and interactions (stories) between them. (My own characters only, not with others). I've my own fancy world I developed and like. And another fun part is setting up profiles , coming up with what they're about and so on. All the side stuff such as decorations and giving the viewer an idea of what they're about. IC interactions and RP is not something I personally do or ever did, it wouldn't really fit, even if I would be interested in roleplaying. A big amount of my characters are my own special case and not meant to interact with other characters outside the universe they're in.
I'm especially curious to hear from those who have plenty of characters with nothing but a gallery. Do you just love to collect the designs and have art of them? I definitely have some similar like this as well. They actually mainly exist to be drawn and I store them to keep memories. ^^ The majority of them do have a background or a meaning but I don't ever do anything thoughtful with them nor create them to have a specific universe or Story. They're basically my designs I keep as pretty empty characters. Lol
Ok enough about myself, tell me about you!
I personally am at a loss on what to do with my characters. I used to RP so much for years that it became a 24/7 hobby, to now not RPing at all for over a year now and no longer knowing what to do with my characters, as I do not get any enjoyment from drawing them, writing them, or simply thinking about them. They now just sit there looking pretty and gathering dust.
I have no idea how you are able to enjoy them on your own and I am envious of that ability.
Kind of the same tbh. They exist as a creative outlet. If I didn't have ocs I would still be making some other stuff anyway, they simply offer good ideas for what to actually make. I like worldbuilding and creating characters and figuring out how they fit into the world and how they would interact with the rest of the characters I've got. There are both stories affecting several characters at once and just small one off interactions but I don't think I'll ever write those more than just the basic descriptions that are already on some profiles. I can't write well enough lmao rip. At one point I was planning to make a comic but that would be such a huge project that I'm not sure how to even start. But it feels satisfying to step back and look at all the art and stories and realize "wow I made all of that". don't get that with something like fanarts, somebody already developed those characters before me.
for the most part i collect and get art of them,along with making stories. though i'm not huge on story-making,i really only started doing it to fit in i guess,so i just kinda collect and get art of characters? i like using characters for stories don't get me wrong,and i love the w.i.p of the story i'm currently working on,but it's just kinda...eh? story writing isn't a hobby of mine so it just ends up on the back burner until i decide i don't like it and just trash it. so i just draw them lmao,at least for now.
For me the characters came second to the story I wanted to tell.
Well that's not right, I made my main characters and then made a story around them and the other characters were a necessary consequence of the process of writing a story.
Its only been recently that I've been making them fancy profiles almost to be like a wiki to store information for the narrative if people were curious after reading
Bruh pretty much same as you
I create oc for my stories and universes only and stories only for them ofc, cuz I love doing that, I love my species and universes, I love writing stories and practice development/writing through them. (cuz god damn I'm a terrible writer, but at least I improved a bit compared to before hah)
I don't rp for the same reason as you. I do sometimes draw fun/silly drawings where my ocs interact with ocs of my friends, but its never canon.
Got loadssss of characters, each has a story from small to big depending on how important they are to the side/main story.
There is number of side characters, some of them don't appear in main story at all, but appear in side story/backstory of a character who is in the same universe.
I have 3 universes for now, all 3 have same major species Souloids, but theme and rules are bit different.
First universe-
S: Father
(oldest universe - Modern times theme - inactive - w.i.p.)
Second Universe-
S: Light Lord
(main universe - Fantasy theme - active AF - most developed but still w.i.p.)
Third Universe-
S: Salvino
(Post-apocalyptic theme - inactive - HUGE w.i.p.)
Some characters who are in oldest universe appear in other two, kind of like second versions of the same character (cuz I just love them that much lmao)
So ye ye, drawing them n writing their stories is comfort and therapy to me
I mostly create my characters for my look on the world. They're mostly there because my brain said so. I have no clue why i really have created characters in the past, but i do know that it's fun to create and draw these characters and their story's. I also use them for my own personal shipping reasons 😌 it's really fun to add what they think of a certain character and how they would react near them. When in do grow older, i want to put my ocs out into the world and use them for a story and not for a hobby.
They are all fo my comics, Big Book of Lame Jokes and DANGER COMIC
I also have all of them in the sims
I create characters to make stories. My characters need to have certain scenarios and scenes for me to relate to them and get attached to. With stories I can play them inside my head and feel the characters and that's exciting!
I have em to have fun, really! I create stories, give em relationships, draw em out and constantly think of little info tidbits and full on movies in my head that rarely leave my headspace haha
at first I wanted to write stories, but I've never been satisfied with any of them :( I also used to roleplay on Twitter and that helped me create lots of characters as well! now I simply draw them from time to time and I only create ocs from concepts or content that I like :__ most of my ocs don't have an interesting story or cute profiles tbh but I like storing them in here anyway!!
I just like making stories honestly. Some ocs I have plans to use in projects, others I just have around to develop, worldbuild around, ect.
I used to do text rp constantly, so a lot of my characters are relics from that.
I used to rp constantly.
But. You know how it goes. You get burned a few times, stop rping with people you don’t already know, people grow up, get busy. There’s only one person I really text rp with anymore, and we’ve both been too busy to reply to said rp practically at all this year. @_@
I still play in a weekly shadowrun game, though! My most active characters atm are from that. And until ONE DUDE decided to blow up an entire friend circle over drama I was running tabletop and in a second shadowrun game. Ah well.
Otherwise I’m... slowly working on scripts for a few graphic novels?
Kinda all over the place. I think of stories and in an ideal world I'd love for all of them to exist...but I'm just one person with a full-time job that doesn't involve creative writing/art at all, so I don't really have any time...
When I do have time, it's mostly a) writing worldbuilding documents/drawing/writing character profile info, b) roleplaying with a few close friends, or c) playing/running tabletop games!