pimpmyverse | OC Pimping Is a Hard Knock Life

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OC Pimping Is a Hard Knock Life

This is an OC meet-and-greet/discussion meme! We all love Original Characters here, so let's chat about them ones we have, the ones we're working on and even get some advice if we need it.

RULES

There are some headers already. If you want to talk about something related to OCs that isn't mentioned in one of them, feel free to make a header for it or ask me in the contact post and I will make one and link to it on the front page.
All Original Characters are acceptable here! Whether from an Original Universe, MMO/RPG game designed for building OCs, or even a Fandom universe. All OCs are welcome.
Yes, discussion can take place anonymously on this meme if you feel more comfortable doing it that way, but if it becomes too rude/disrespectful/out of hand, I will disable anonymous comments. This is a safe place for anyone who comes here to talk about original characters. Please find other venues if you get the urge to act otherwise.
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I think the main problem people have with urban fantasy OCs is a mix of "it's too common" and the fact that it can be hard to figure out how to make an OC that's compelling to other people. The main complaint I've heard is that so many urban fantasy OCs tend to seem really generic, follow the same old tropes, and substitute things like "snarky badass vampire hunter" for unique, fleshed out personalities.

Which, you know, fair enough. But I agree with the player above me: If you want to play something, play it, and just concentrate on making them a compelling, interesting character in their own right. If you do that, it won't matter if they're urban fantasy or anything else. You can make a great character for ANY kind of genre, as long as you flesh them out! Don't worry too much about the people who are sick of urban fantasy, because if you make a good character, people will be able to appreciate that.

[Brief Description] Altalita Bastion is a nearly immortal Seer who hails from the same universe as our dear Ms. Kintotech. Altalita's an attractive woman of fairly average height, with ridiculously long, straight black hair, piercing blue eyes, and the ability to divine pasts, presents, and futures of those surrounding her. Topping this off, her magic is otherwise Lightning themed, following the trend that the various branches of a bolt of lightning are paths of fate untaken. Flirtatious, sensual, well aware of her appearance and how to play with it. The surface glance of Ms. Bastion gives you a lazy, decadent woman who'd rather lay around and drink/smoke all day or party all night than someone who's been granted powers of the Sight. However, the longer one knows her and spends time around her, it starts to become apparent that the surface is a front to a woman who's lived hundreds of years of life, who's well aware of how Fate treats her, and tries to keep people at a distance due to her apparent immortality. The keyword here, however, is 'tries'. As she makes connections regardless. Falling for people and friendships anyway. Unlike Arabelle, Altalita tries to avoid direct involvement in most metahuman affairs, preferring indirect involvement, if she has to get into things at all. She's difficult to anger, and while her position as a Seer tends to force her to be neutral on many things, Altalita's personal philosophy tends to lean more towards neutral good.

Otherwise, she simply runs a fortune telling business out of an old mansion she lives in and acquired from advantages of being immortal.
[What's the Canon Like?] see Arabelle's comment. Altalita is, however, proof that the metahuman (I use this term for mutant and magical alike) types have existed for far longer than you might think.
[Important Links] Info on some of her spells, although these aren't all she knows, they're merely the most important.
[BONUS IC QUESTIONS] To help show off your character's voice a bit if you want to do them. Your character is more than welcome to lie if it's IC for them.
1) List five words you think describe you and why. Sensual, Flirtatious, Playful, Seer, Fated. How're those, dear?
2) What has been the most important event in your life so far? I fear that's a little personal for a little survey thing. Such things aren't to be shared so easily, sweet.
3) Someone just punched you in the face on the street, what are you going to do about it? Ask them why in the nine hells they punched me in the face. And how, since I'd be unaware of it coming in this scenario, of course. I'm not one for vengeance.
4) You are now trapped inside a jamjar. Yes a glass, oversized jamjar. With little holes in the lid for air. What are you going to do about it? Aside from the seer absurdity of it (and coming from me, dear, this is saying something), I would probably simply create a Summoning Gate and leave. If my powers were somehow blocked? I would sit and wait until whomever trapped me arrived, and speak with them on the why they have me.

Ha! Here's one then: Never have I ever learned t'drive a car.

I know how t'drive motorcycles though.

[Brief Description] David Long is a lieutenant in the 1804 British Royal Navy. He is tall and lean with long, dark hair that is very curly. He generally wraps his hair in black ribbon to make his queue, and just a bit of a tail sticks out. He is an admiral's son and dresses like it. His uniform is high quality and usually fairly untattered. He might not always have a flintlock pistol at his side, but his officer's sword is never far away.
[What's the Canon Like?] David's canon is the Napoleonic war and the events that led up to it. His world is entirely historical and non-fantasy. There is no magic, no dragons, or anything like that. The Peace of Amiens has just ended, pitting France and England against one another again.
[Important Links] An application for a game written previously.
[BONUS IC QUESTIONS] To help show off your character's voice a bit if you want to do them. Your character is more than welcome to lie if it's IC for them. 1) List five words you think describe you and why. Officer, son, brother, husband, and loyal. Because a man is only as good as what he associates himself with.
2) What has been the most important event in your life so far? My marriage.
3) Someone just punched you in the face on the street, what are you going to do about it? Retaliate. Only way to respond to a blow, especially in public.
4) You are now trapped inside a jamjar. Yes a glass, oversized jamjar. With little holes in the lid for air. What are you going to do about it? Hit the sides enough, and it should tip over. Roll it off something and break it. Sure, it'll hurt, but probably not worse than some splinters I've seen.

I'm looking for either a live action or Western comics PB for a Black girl, under fifteen, very dark, lots of hair, bonus point for prominent ears and/or nose. The character is from a historical setting, so any actress that has a role where she's suitably dressed etc. would really help. Thanks!

Right then, I'll give it to you straight: there are just too many of those kind of characters, and all of them that I have seen without exception have been generic as fuck.

They are all from a world that can be described as "just like our world except X mythology is real". Which is not a terrible concept, except X mythology is always some vague, uninspired 'twist' on a popular mythology like Judeo-Christian angels and demons, Celtic faeries or vampireswerewolvessirenspsychics blah blah blah. No one ever seems to think to look into any more varied world mythologies, to do some more in-depth research about the mythological underpinnings (you'll never find a world where you have Jewish holy men banishing the toilet demon with combinations of letters from God's name, even though that is a real thing), or to think of a genuinely unusual twist on all the the vampires and werewolves (c'mon, even the original White Wolf people could do that!). The resulting mythological creatures are always the Beautiful People, they always seem to inhabit only major cities in the Western world and have fancy jobs and mysterious organizations that don't really seem to do much (except 'protect normals' or fight among themselves or preserve the Veil/Masquerade/whatthefuckever). Their existence never seems to impact the world in any meaningful way, which generally gives the appearance that the writer hasn't really thought their cunning plan all the way through and has no understanding of how the world works because goddamn would it not be "just like our world" if vampires were real and have been real for all of human history I mean come on. The world always seems to be convoluted and uninspired and tailored just for the needs of a very specific character or plot without any wider sense of... anything.

And the characters suffer from the same problem. They all seem to blend into the same beautiful but troubled young woman, generically sexy but bumbling guy, Suave Supernatural Seducer, you can enumerate and count the types. They all have very exotic and mysterious backgrounds and complicated life stories inevitably revolving around Secret War, family issues, romance and betrayal. These life stories leave them all with the same sarcastic, sassy attitude hiding a sensitive and wounded inner core, with the same trust issues, the same wannabe-tough practicality, and the same lack of engagement with the world at large beyond their personal woes. And for some reason sex always plays a very prominent role in their characters or lives, which is just fine except it's always like this. The women are all Strong, the men are all cute, none of them is ever over thirty (unless they're immortal and don't look or act it), none of them ever has a real job or a family without Very Exciting Problems or lives anywhere except Generic Western City.

I'm not saying it's impossible to create an urban fantasy character that's different. And hell, I'm not even saying you shouldn't create a character like that if that's what strikes your fancy. Play what you like! Write what you enjoy! You're not doing this for anyone but yourself. But since you asked, my problem with urban fantasy OCs is that their writers inevitably look as though they haven't read anything but urban fantasy. The world, the characters, always seem to be coming from within a closed system that has a finite number of templates, elements of which are continuously being recycled in minutely different configurations (or parodied, badly), with no new ideas ever being added or the limits of the world and genre ever expanded upon. If you want to write a good urban fantasy story and character, my honest advice is, start by going to the library and reading up on some real world city and its history, or some real world mythology that you've never heard of before, or some good investigative journalism, or really, anything but urban fantasy.

Do you know, doma, I don't think I understood even one word of that statement.

Oh man, THANK YOU. That sums up exactly what I needed to know. So it sounds like no one really cares for another Supernatural/Teen Wolf/TVD etc settings or characters and would rather see something else within the genre? I guess it helps that those kinds of shows and books aren't my thing, though I'll take you up on reading up on the history of a city. What would you recommended for investigative journalism? I'm not familiar with that and it sounds very interesting.

And... that's all I got, haha. This makes for a great checklist of things not to do or to think more about, so again, major thanks.

My pleasure! The truth is, I do love well done modern fantasy, I think there's a lot to be said for it - the state of urban fantasy OCs in RP frustrates me more because of what's not there than because what's there. I mean, I imagine lots of people do care for these settings because of all the OCs that are from things like that, but if you want to stand out from that crowd, then yes. And I think you should always strive to stand out!

I don't know what I'd recommend for journalism - it's usually history and mythology that I end up reading - but see if you can find any sources on the "real" underworlds of cities so to speak. There are quite a few books on the actual "London below" for once (look for Stephen Smith's "Underground London"). If you're willing to go the distance, academic bookshops and libraries are worth browsing for books about organized crime, about marginalized communities and their stories and mythologies, slums and homeless populations, about urban exploration, urban wildlife - just read about cities. If there's anything that urban fantasy could really use more of, it's actual cities.

Drop a note if you do end up creating a character and journal with any of this stuff, OP. I'd like to see it!

[She looks at him with a bit of confusion.] ...I'm pretty sure what I said was self-explanatory. Do you not know what making out is?

[She shifts a bit, bringing up a hand to prop her chin on.]

[And she won't be taking a drink.] Who needs to learn to drive? Flying works just as well in my opinion.

Pretty much exactly that. Though somethin's gotta be said about a kick ass motorcycle, if there's at least that!

[Brief Description] Brattle is imaginary. Oops.

Named after Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the little girl he can thank for his current existence first saw him, Brattle is what happens when little girls are prone to naming their hallucinations. (But don't say "hallucination." The official word is "imaginary friend.") Brattle is subject to the rules of his little girl's imagination when he's with her. And according to her imagination and her current needs, he's a dog.

Fortunately for him, though, when she's not actively hallucinating him, he has a little more freedom to roam around Cambridge and the surrounding cities and explore the rich landscape of Cantabrigians' imaginary worlds. Never let it be said that this city has no imagination. He's free to take on different forms and make himself visible to the non-imaginaries, should he so desire-- though he rarely does so, and only when in human form.

As a human, Brattle is around 5'10", skinny, and relatively unremarkable in appearance. He gives off the impression of never quite being completely serious; there always seems to be a certain note of dry contentment in his manner. Seeing as he's around to protect a little girl (officially), he's generally patient and can be a bit brotherly in the way he approaches people, and he tends to err on the side of treating people like they're younger than they are.

[What's the Canon Like?] It's sort of an exploration of the bounds of imagination, in modern-day Earth. People have collectively created an imaginary layer over the real world, but only very few people are able to see what's happening in it. A little girl has recently dreamed Brattle up so he can deal with one of her more dangerous imaginary friends. As the official story goes, Brattle happened to see the little girl and her mother pass by with a rather dangerous imaginary friend in tow, and he decided to follow them to protect them.

[BONUS IC QUESTIONS]
1) List five words you think describe you and why. Oh, god. I've never been any good at these. Deceptive, protective-- I think those are fairly straightforward, er. Affable, I would like to think. I'm sure some would say old-fashioned, but I would suggest "ageless" as considerably more flattering, and that's five. (Don't tell me that's cheating.)

2) What has been the most important event in your life so far? Hardly a question; being called into existence this time around.

3) Someone just punched you in the face on the street, what are you going to do about it? Well, it really depends on who's doing the punching, doesn't it?

4) You are now trapped inside a jamjar. Yes a glass, oversized jamjar. With little holes in the lid for air. What are you going to do about it? What a question. Let's wait and cross that bridge when we come to it.

[Abstain. Are you shocked.] What about in mid-air?

Never have I ever worn a dress in public that wasn't monocolor.

No point in anoning, I need it for this account and I plan on throwing him around this meme anyhow.

Looking for a 20s-30s white guy with red hair; dyed unnatural red, not generic redhead. Short hair, preferably kind of messy. I'll take any medium, and it actually doesn't matter if there's a huge variety of icons because the PB is only going to be a placeholder until I finish drawing his icons. Thanks!

Still working on drawing his icons and/or finding a PB, so forgive me for that! If you would rather not be tagged by a faceless account, just let me know.

[Brief Description] He's called Wolf, as in "boy who cried", because he can't tell the truth to save his life and he changes his name like most people change their socks. His whole deal is that he finds joy in constant change. This means that he frequently drops everything in his life, moves across the galaxy, and starts over with a whole new identity. He's extremely friendly, but he's not very mature and tends to make bad life decisions in the interest of having fun. His appearance changes a lot (for obvious reasons) but he's on the short side with an average build and a babyface. I usually play him when he has short shaggy red hair and gold eyes, thanks to colored contacts.

[What's the Canon Like?] A futuristic world, spaceships and colonization of lots of exoplanets, but without aliens. There are robots, but AI has very strict limits for ethical reasons so the only androids are made on the black market. His current job is the pilot for a police shuttle, which is the galactic equivalent of a meter maid-- except that his boss is the crookedest cop that ever did crooked, so they take on side jobs from shady people.

[Important Links] Nothing yet, sorry.

[BONUS IC QUESTIONS]
1) List five words you think describe you and why. Well, that’s easy. Handsome, brilliant, creative, multi-talented, and adventurous. The first one should be obvious. If you want to see the others, just stick around for a bit.

2) What has been the most important event in your life so far? When I was a kid, there was this military air base a mile or two from our apartments. Our parents all thought it was a pain, shuttles taking off at 4 AM and all that, never mind the huge flammable fuel depots less than a block away. But to a ten year old boy, that’s the stuff of dreams. They had all kinds of crazy security systems to keep us out of course, but my best friend was this crazy electronics prodigy. It was pretty easy to talk her into disabling them just for the challenge. Probably helped that their stuff was 50 years obsolete, but hey, whatever works.

So anyway here we are, two little brats running around this high security compound at three AM. We find this big hangar-- I think it must’ve been a mechanic’s bay, because there were all these half-assembled ships—and we’re just having a field day looking through all this stuff. Suddenly these lights come up and a bunch of sirens go on. We think we’ve been caught, and we scramble for a hiding place. Now I could tell you it was a R2-Gazelle, the most agile lower-atmosphere plane of its time, but at the time all I know is that it’s the only thing that hasn’t been stripped down to a lousy skeleton. There’s a bunch of voices and noise outside which Layla and I totally miss because we’re shoving each other around, fighting over who gets the roomier supply cabinet and who crams themselves under the floor panel, and then there’s two guys in the front seats.

What happens next is a bit hard to put in words. They’re stunt pilots taking this out for a test run. You can imagine me, ten years old and scared shitless, curled up under the floor panel so tight that my chin is digging into my knees, stowing away on a state of the art stunt plane doing tricks. I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the engines, but I could feel every twist and turn and flip they made. I was hooked. It felt natural. I mean, it also felt like I might die any second, but that was fine. I’d finally found the place that I belonged, if you’ll excuse the cliché.

We got in huge trouble, of course. The only reason our parents weren’t killing us is they were trying to keep the resident paranoid general from killing us. But it was worth the legal battles and the inevitable exile to boarding school, because without that disaster I might never have flown in my life. Thanks, Layla. Sorry about the jail time.

3) Someone just punched you in the face on the street, what are you going to do about it? Actually, I’m pretty sure this has happened… I think it was-- [He cringes.] Hmm. Yeah. You know what? Let’s not relive that moment.

4) You are now trapped inside a jamjar. Yes a glass, oversized jamjar. With little holes in the lid for air. What are you going to do about it? You know how matter is mostly empty space? If you focus hard enough and think about it just right, you can align the molecules in your body so they slip right past the molecules in, say, a glass jar. Pretty cool, right? Don’t try it with lead, though. That stuff is dense.

I may use this in fiction at some point but I have no plans so if anyone wants it for RP, go for it.

The character is some sort of non-human. I envision an alien visitor to modern earth, but they could be anything. Their real body doesn't blend in very well so they alter people's perception to look human, only it doesn't alter their actual body. This causes unsettling mismatches like them reaching for something 10 feet up, which people perceive as their arm suddenly stretching a couple feet to reach and then shrinking back down to normal, or someone trying to sit in the "empty" seat next to them on the subway and OH DEAR GOD WHY ARE THERE SPINES and such. The character is also kind-of immortal. They can die, but after a while a new them hatches out of the corpse's skin, like a cicada. For added fun, have someone with a grudge do this to them over and over.

The personality I had in mind was an extremely dry deadpan observer type of character. They move at a very slow pace, think at a slow pace, speak at a slow pace, and are generally maddening to be around. But they're perceptive and brilliant, and a valuable asset for whatever cause they may be working toward, even if they're not especially warm and friendly.

[He frowns, swirling his drink thoughtfully.] Depends. Commuter airplane that never leaves the planet, or any kind of flying vehicle at all?

Never have I ever swam in the ocean.

[Definitely drinking. He shakes his head.]

You've got to try it at least once! It's got a whole different feel.

[Welp. This is going to be uncomfortable.]

Edited 2013-03-30 05:01 (UTC)

[He half-shrugs.] Neither that, nor what a plane is. Do you come from a very strange place?

[Arabelle jerks a thumb at the large wings she possesses on her back--coming out of the shoulder blades, and even in their 'resting' postion they take up a lot of space.] Yeah, minor problem with that. I don't do well in small spaces. Unless it's a convertable y'ain't gettin' me in one-a those damn things.

Nope, haven't done that.

my frustration comes from two things. first, the premise: "a world EXACTLY like ours except for incredible magic and magical beings that have had no effect whatsoever on the world" just isn't very imaginative. even if there's a masquerade going on, surely these powerful creatures can manipulate events from behind the scenes? to solve this, i recommend really thinking about how vampires/werewolves/whatever would affect humans and vice versa. worldbuilding may be in order.

second, character development. a significant number of players (and writers!) think that modern day = no research for characters needed. unless you're playing a self-insert, this is not true. to solve this, i recommend doing research into whatever things your character does that you don't. are they a detective? a doctor? from another country? a minority in a real-world way? rpanons has a character advice thread.

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OC Pimping Is a Hard Knock Life

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Altalita Bastion | Immortal Seer

Arabelle "Goldenwing" Kintotech

David Long | Royal Navy Llieutenant

Re: PB HELP/LISTINGS

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OP

AYRT

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Brattle Street | Slightly unhinged realism | Imaginary friend

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Re: PB HELP/LISTINGS

Trevor "Wolf" Hager | Scifi/Space Western | Novelty Seeking Pathological Liar

Re: CHARACTER/WORLD IDEAS YOU'LL NEVER USE

Re: Felicia McCready

Trevor "Wolf" Hager

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Trevor "Wolf" Hager

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