philosophical talk with my gf while we're on a road trip, so i wanna ask a question to all of you. how do you define your relationship as a creator to your characters? is it a parental bond? is it a god + creation bond? is it something else? is it too complex to explain? i wanna know.
I'm a god or parent or friend or lover depending on my mood.
I never rly percieved myself with them. They live independent from me and when I try to force sth on them, it just doesn't work. They're making their own choices. So I'm guessing I'm like a random happenstance that gave them life. A thought that will breathe life into them as long as it lives
Well.... i kinda see them all as little parts of me. They've been with me for so long that i ended up getting attach to them, i wanna see them be content with themselves despite the circunstances the plot may threw at them. So...yea, kind of a parental bond come to think of it lol
They're people. Imaginary, but they take on a life of their own and when I'm doing everyday things I can imagine what they'd say or do if they were there, the way we can guess at a good friend's reaction. And then there's Shane. He kicked out my muse and took over and that's how it is now.
i can't write my entire thinking bc 300 characters is too fucking short, but i compared my bond between my characters like how greek gods in mythos are. i built them a world, i created their lives, their being—& i definitely thirst over them lmfao... like any greek god 😭 i don't wanna be a god tho
REAL
They're constructs that serve a purpose but at the same time they're people. I feel bad about getting them hurt or changing their personality traits at will, for example.
I think of them as my lil brain-children/blorbos, and I want the best of the characters to have things to be happy for, and the awful characters to get their comeuppance (or occasionally redeemed if there's more to them than meets the eye).
I think about how they would feel. How would it feel to have had your best friend die? How would it feel to continually be the brunt of racist "jokes"? How would it feel to discover you have a talent for drawing you never realized you had? And, how would those feelings manifest?
My brain is a house and they live there and tell me what they want to do. I dont control what they do in writing or rp, but sometimes I try to steer them a little bit. Writing underdeveloped OCs is harder. It's like trying to tell someone about an acquaintance you only met once They're my idiots.
I feel like the word ‘conduit’ feels right! I love the characters I make, but they’re independent and distinct from me. Telling their stories isn’t even a matter of what I ‘want’ at times, and simply just what my characters would do. My job is getting it out in a way that makes sense.
Ooh, I like this one! It makes sense to me, I’m the same way with my characters.
Sort of like dolls and action figures. I pull them out a drawer, make them kiss, sometimes twist their heads off (then feel a little bad, but can't get them back on).
Imagine being a very anxious wizard and you can't explain HOW you know, but you're certain that if you create these little poppets and homunculi to endure horrible, HORRIBLE misfortunes, you can ensure they do not befall you.
I don't know and I'm blocked because of this sometimes but hwen I was younger I thought of them as basically sims... like figurines I'm playing with and making up stories. They don't know I exist.
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Like the incarnation of an avatar
idk, I just write them. like, I don't understand when people say their characters are separate from them and they're just turning them loose. (it's totally valid, I just can't relate). someone could say "Royse sucks" and I'd take it as an insult to my writing, not an insult to her.
For me it depends on the character.
It's more like me being sad that ill never properly get it on paper
i don't create them, i find them. they frequently say and do things that surprise me (and sometimes break the plot I intended to write)
when it's going well i'm a conduit, and when it's not i'm a pupeteer or a ventriloquist
Ok yea this is how I feel too
I've put a lot of myself into this lil OC over the years, in indirect little ways. Used them to explore so many facets of myself. They've become less like me over time but that's okay. Idk what kind of relationship I have with Rue. I'm like their cheerleader but I don't ALWAYS root for them. :3
Its like trying to sew together a doll from old fabric. Sometimes its your own material. Sometimes you borrow a bit from someone else. Sometimes you gotta rip one up and repurpose its bits for something new.
Like Stapledon's Starmaker: they are my creation, to do with as I will. Except when I'm out of Creator mode and into Reader mode, which almost made me cry at the death of two young characters in my novel recently.
Initially they're little parts of me, concepts I put into a little guy out there. Eventually they develop their own unique personalities and it's almost like friends- Sometimes i feel i dont know something about a character until they 'tell me' in a sense.
when I think of myself in regards to my characters, I think that I'm an observer; I try thinking from a perspective of these characters existing outside of the context of my imagination, that the actions they take & the emotions they feel are all their own & I'm just capturing flashes of it.
I like to think I'm some eldrich being that made the eldritch beings that made my characters. Like I'm chilling in the even further beyond & the gods in my story are my Middle management/board of executives I exchange info with.
Though more realistically I feel more like an amoeba absorbing anything I think is cool and siphoning it into the characters in exchange for them to simply exist in an increasingly complete way like some weird symbiotic messanger mosquito.
Voices+coffee=words on paper. Lol. Serious answer it definitely leans more towards the God thing. Not out of any grandiosity or sense of rulership over the characters, but just because writing is a very free experience for me. I can write whatever I want. Nothing constrains me.
See its not parental cause i am unfathomably horny for Emi, it is also not god + creation because she hates gods n i dont want her to hate me, shes more of a mirage to me, her own person to whomst im just a narrator of her lore to, out of physical reach but always in my mind and vision
peter parker situation where i’m both a humble photographer documenting events and also absolutely responsible for said events
idk if it's parental bc like yeah i made some of them...but sometimes im like "DAMN YOU SEXY AF" I guess it's closer to a god thing and I am like, "haha, now suffer" but i love my babies...🥺
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i'd say ryss is both a medium and a muse. i explore a lot about myself and the world through her, and she inspires me to be a lot more creative than i had been in quite some years
for me it's basically the ideal me, who I'd like to be and with who