What is your favorite thing about each of your OC's?
(Since I have a truckload of them, I'll post my list later.)
Really, the favorite thing about my OCs in general is that they express my individuality. No one else in the world hybridizes Nick and Baby Luigi together to make a purple, cynical grouchy fellow who loves music and is a medic. As for each?
Dark Light is very sassy and has a sharp tongue with a witty attitude. Not only is she intelligent, she's very powerful too. I've recently established her as an intersex character and her Simself / human-self now reflects that, mostly because it's inspired from the time I identified as a Baby Luigi character despite being female, so images of Dark Light, despite being just Baby Luigi in gear, is ID'd as female and I was very afraid of social stigma and weirdness that you use female pronouns to describe a Baby Luigi. Now that it's far more socially acceptable, I feel like her being intersex is an amazing compromise and takes nods to that inspiration. I also got educated on intersexuals for research on how she should be. She's also the definition of a good cop and she sets a positive example on how police officers should act like.
Redshift is very calm, sophisticated, sweet, and collected (I enjoy writing his speaking roles as him), and his creation has made me have an increased appreciation of Spanish culture. His development has contributed to me making a firm distinguish between Spanish and Mexican culture such as learning the differences in musical styles between something in Latin America and something in Spain. I also learned how diverse the Iberian peninsula is and about how Andalusia is a significant portion and is where a lot of Spanish stereotypes came from. I also learned they have a later schedule too.
Ray Trace's conception led to me being a giant Russophile, which in of itself gave me a huge appreciation for Russian culture and I even learned the Cyrillic alphabet and some Russian phrases because of this! I also read further into the Russian culture in order to learn how to portray him more realistically, such as remembering to NEVER give Ray Trace even-numbered yellow flowers and that he prefers to drink tea and kvass over vodka. As for his personality, I love how light-heated and comedic Ray Trace is, his stupidity is charming and it lends him to have a comedic dialogue, and I feel like he always knows how to be funny even in bad times. It's very fun to write deprecating stuff about him because he has a ridiculous sense of ego and pride so taking him down a notch is never not entertaining because he never takes it too personally.
Bluminescence was part of a culture I'm already familiar with, so not too much research was needed for him. What I do like about him is his tendency to be positive and cheerful. Every time I write his dialogue, I always interpret him from a positive angle, him always making light of the worst situations, and despite him being an adult, he embraces his childish side without much shame. I also like his fat, rotund. stubby portrayal: fat people get too much negative stereotypes about them, so I think having a gentle and very sweet fat person who also doesn't exhibit typical fat stereotypes like being a selfish glutton is a nice change of pace. He's easily the cutest of the Protectors because of his childish nature, and I have specifically designed him to be a little bit on the cute side compared to the rest of the cast (such as smaller nose and chubbier cheeks), though my general cast can be considered cute and would all fit as chibi forms.
Ultra Violet stemmed from the fact that I was a huge Left 4 Dead 2 fan, and the Protectors were pretty much born from the dub languages of Left 4 Dead 2. He is more explicit of it, and he retains some of his personality from Nick in Left 4 Dead 2, in that he is grouchy and snide, but he can have pretty dry wit at times, and this wit and cynical attitude can be very funny. I also like how he's a foil to the more positive members of the group and additionally a foil to Dark Light herself by being a bit disobedient and having a gloomier backstory than the rest. I like his constantly scowling facial expression, it instantly communicates his personality to someone who doesn't know him.
And finally, Kontrast. Oh he is funny to make fun of. I apologize on his behalf but his short temper makes him easy pickings to troll him. LJS knew it was funny to torment him a bit, and I already knew this. He's very exaggerated in his hot-headed personality, but I like how despite that he's quick to anger, that doesn't necessarily make him a bad or evil person: he's well-intentioned. He may be one of the most flawed characters in my group, personality-wise and not because of a traumatic backstory or serious deep-rooted criminal guilt anything: he's considered unattractive, he gets very angry very easily, he's not too charismatic, he's not too committed, he's forgetful, he's uncoordinated, and all of those flaws I think make him more human, and despite these flaws, the rest of the group members still like him and want the best out of him, and it makes his successes more satisfying and he needs to learn how to cooperate with his friends.
What is the hardest thing you have about fleshing out the characters?
This is one of the very first sketches I had of the Protectors. At that time, they had only a base, rough personality and nothing truly developed yet, and as you can see, stereotypes of their nationalities were heavily prominent. Oh and they were still Dark Light recolors at the time. This was sketched all the way back in 2016 wow.
I think realizing that fleshing the characters out takes time, first to develop an idea, and then to run along the idea, trying to find a good balance between bland and overly exaggerated is the most difficult part, while coming up with a personality was a bit on the simple side really (though you could argue making something like Redshift claustrophobic, something he didn't have in his original inception, is considered developing his personality). Like, say, introducing fishing as a hobby to Redshift: I want to make him enjoy it, but not make him one-note about it. For interests, some research is also needed in the subject too such as Dark Light's job being a police officer and what is to be expected from an average audience when she performs her role. Simifying the characters helped me even expand their identities and gave them hobbies: for example my idea of Kontrast being an exerciser or Phongik (part of my extended cast) being a neat freak came from The Sims.
My characters are also from different nationalities and cultures, so I also need to research some attitudes and quirks too to make a character feel more like they're from there, while also avoiding exaggerated stereotypes. Redshift is Spanish, and when I first created him, I immediately fell into a common American pitfall where he appropriates Mexican culture (he talked about salsa con queso at one point as well Ultra Violet mocking him by putting on a sombrero and playing mariachi). He and Ray Trace would also randomly inject words from their first language in their sentences which is often done to remind audiences of their nationality, but it's not very realistic and it's also very ludicrous for someone like Redshift calling someone an "amigo" rather than "friend" or Ray Trace relapsing into his original Russian mid-sentence while talking to an English speaker even though he speaks it otherwise like a native speaker. These type of nuances and balances aren't easy to grasp and write.
It was also difficult finding new designs for them after I didn't like relying on color to distinguish them, though it was difficult to convince myself to change with an established design, but I felt like I had to do it sooner or later. While Ray Trace and Kontrast had new designs by then, it wasn't until 2018 that I established the team's current design and used Ray Trace's and Kontrast's newer look.
And that was probably the best idea I got for them, it gave them much more personality and individuality. I adhered with the whole military uniform schtick that Ray Trace got because it was a unifying theme across them.
Man, I started talking of their history but I say that developing the Protectors is a constant creative effort and I'm still learning and still expanding them to this day.
Do any of your characters have interesting origins in real life (Like why they were made)
Well I've talked about it here, but I've dealt with it in great lengths in my ask thread. Here are links to said posts. I have it bookmarked because I've been asked about their origins time and time again.
I've told my story of them before when describing why Dark Light is the best Protector but I suppose I could ramble about it again. If we want to talk about the Protectors, we have to talk about Dark Light and her origins.
Dark Light first originated as a Black and Gray-recolored Baby Luigi all the way back in 2010 I believe in a random sprite sheet. She didn't have a real identity, personality, nor a name at the point, and I eventually adopted that coloration as a persona as mine: because of that, she was simply known as "BabyLuigiOnFire" and I didn't consider her a separate character but rather just a fictionalized representation of myself.
What's a fact about your characters that you haven't incorporated into anything yet?
Dark Light had hints of her intersexuality in the Car Wash roleplay where she was reminiscing it during her outings as a police officer. I'm waiting for the opportunity to present itself, but my plans for that are related to the stork finding out her initial gender and notifying her parents and what they should do about it. My character back stories and families in general I'd like to explore in at some point though I don't know how to do this in an interesting roleplay format unless the characters go in an expedition through memories but I need to figure out how they get there in the first place. I'd like my backstories to be a little bit more...active than just a character talking his memories to another.
