Well I have character birthdays coming up! Anima tomorrow, and Apres the day after. And since I planned some big changes to them since they're turning 18, it got me thinking, and thus I made a thread.
How does everyone else handle birthdays with their characters? Do you just have the day set, but your world flows in a different time flow than ours?
Or are you one who has the days basically align with ours?
Or do you simply follow their story only, and real world time has no say on it at all? So then when they age it's written in a story.
Cause yeah I was thinking this could be a neat thread to discuss!
I personally do have my characters get older along real time, since I more or less follow the flow of time based on our world. For most characters I don't really notice, as I don't have most birthdays figured out, so at times if they have a posted age I might up the count, but most of mine are at an age that it doesn't really make much of a difference. But for the ones I do, I associate that day as their day. So there's Anima day, Apres Day, Fancy Day, Vangoat Day(which is my birthday but he's cooler) and Violette and Halloween fun Day.
i just give my ocs regular birthdays! since they're meant to exist at the same time as now, i give them specific days. (fun fact: nate's b-day is the day after mine!!) i celebrate their birthdays too, but i literally JUST realized that i forgot about chris and peet's b-day,,,,, i'm a terrible mother
i feel like their ages are good rn tho, so i don't update them every year anymore lol
Hm, I usually give em a set day and age but I never let them age in real time xD Which is hard especially when times change in the real world and I experiment with letting them experience more modern things (aside from certain ocs I have). Idk I just don't feel like making my characters older unless I'm thinking about what they'll be like in the future and those ideas may or may not be canon ^^; (my oc Archer has been 26 for seven years and shall always stay 26 lmao ♡)
As for how I come up with a set birthdate, I come up with their zodiac sign first then pick a date within that range, hopefully a date that wasn't used yet lol. If they're in a relationship I try to pick dates that make them most compatible XDD I forget about them a lot though, so I should really note them down somewhere and prob do a doodle of celebration or something ^^;;;
Lol anyway happy early birthday to your ocs xD ☆
Huh I surprisingly never thought about having an age freeze. Then again in my 7 years with characters, all the big aging processes would have been lost with my reboots, but I think I finally got a good place in 2016. So well heck I might do that later on. But yeah I already planned out a lot of changes for those two, and their families related to it, so well I mean I have no real big milestone birthdays that I can see with any current characters so I might try out an age freeze sorta deal later.
It's neat to hear about your experiences and ways you handle birthdays!
Most of my human OCs, at least when they're part of a story, have a complete birthday, year included. I just take the year the story is supposed to happen, minus the age of said OC, haha. :') They age within their timelines and I like to imagine younger/older versions of them, but that's it. Otherwise Olivier would be 110, Isabelle would be 89, Judas would be 18 and basically age with me, and Anselm... he wouldn't even be born yet, lmao.
Super old beings like angels have a set date for ~symbolism~ but no year because they're like 4.5 billion years old so,,, how do I do
Sometimes I try to celebrate their birthdays by doing art of them and stuff, but I also often forget (unless it's Isa 'cuz she shares my birthday lel) or I just don't have the time for that :')
Yeah I can relate to that, only a few of mine actually have birthdays, let alone birth years. and I don't think any of my human side of characters have any birthdays. So I definitely have been there, heh. But just some characters birthdays come right to me, and others are relative to anothers. But hey it works for me how I have it now~
Most of my characters' worlds follow the same time flow as the real world, except for maybe certain RP group or CS characters (or characters from universes like The Elder Scrolls, that have their own calendar system/timeline). So like for example in my kemonomimi verse, which is just set in a slight AU of Earth, the year and date match up with our world's current year and date. To that end, almost all my characters' birthdays correspond to the real world and they age as if they were real people (e.g. when I made Nikko he was 17, but 6 real years have passed so now he's 23). If I'm the original creator of the character I will often use the creation date as their birthday, but not always. It just depends! I do sometimes celebrate their birthdays with art or drabbles if I remember/have time, as well >u<;
I just pick random dates, honestly, haha. Just whatever feels right at the moment.
Nobody ever "ages up" each year, unless I'm doing it for rp or a plot thing. But most of my OCs are in a project or I want them to be in a project, so they're whatever age they need to be for that!
Mine usually exist in worlds where time is measured the same as here. I pick via the zodiac! I don't even really believe in astrology but it makes for a great guideline for keeping the character's personality straight.
I give my characters birthdays that match our world, but their aging happens within the story and not outside of it, if that makes sense? I really enjoy the idea of different calendar systems etc but I think ours works just fine and I feel like if it doesn't have a big significance in the story then it'll probably just complicate things. That being said, I don't imagine every setting has the zodiac system as we mostly know it and while I add our equivalent of their zodiac sign for the funsies, it doesn't mean it necessarily works this exact way in their setting.
My sonas share mine. But the others I pick dates I like based on astrological signs I want them to have.
I make sure to date every page in my sketchbooks, so I can usually nail down an exact date for the first drawing I've made of a particular character. So I'll use that date for their birthday! (For characters I first designed digitally I use the last date modified (ie when the file was finished), or posted online since that's usually the same day.) I don't have to think too hard this way, unlike for details like names. Names are much harder for me XD
If I don't have a clear date for when a character was first designed, it's kind of up in the air. Sometimes I'll pick the day I named them (as I just hinted earlier, sometimes it can take me a while to actually name characters). Other times I'll be pragmatic about it and simply pick that very date I decided to give them a birthday as their birthday (haha). If inspiration strikes me I'll pick something else that feels significant, such as the day of a holiday or the birthday of some celebrity or historical figure I feel is relevant to that character. I've seen people say already that they decide birthdays based on what astrological sign they want their character to have, but that is a method I've never used, since I don't pay attention to astrology in relation to my characters, but it's an interesting idea! I can appreciate the convenience for people that are more into astrology than I am.
At the end of the day, it's more of a trivia thing for me and doesn't really have a bearing on the character's backstory or anything like that, and since my characters are static and don't age in real time that's probably all it'll ever be. I mean, if and when I get around to actually USING these characters for something, it might end up being relevant, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Heck, for some characters it wouldn't even make sense to have a birthday on our own calendar system (example: my fantrolls, since Homestuck trolls canonically measure age/time in 'sweeps' that have a different length than our years). But I do it anyway because it's one of those 'fun fact' things I simply enjoy adding, and it can be a satisfying bit of flavor for characters that don't otherwise have a lot of info yet.