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my favorite oc is an intellectual manbaby named Allan, who basically tore open the world after his girlfriend dumped him, because he wanted to prove that he was special enough to do this super difficult thing. without. considering that he was actually tearing open the world and no one is able to fix it. basically doomed mankind for the vine.he comes from a super pleasant family background: supportive parents, house in the 'burbs. BUT THEY WERE SMOTHERING HIM AND UNAPPRECIATIVE OF HIS GENIUS
he would also like it if his ex would call him. sometime. maybe. please.
i also have ferrnando julio narayola d'riotime from my high fantasy series. he plays shitty acoustic guitar at the tavern, has a magical flashlight hand, comes from a family of priests, is actually a reborn old god, and has entire paragraphs devoted to describing his pectorals.
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If I'm being honest, my favorite is probably Roland, the male main character of the werelynx-librarian-vigilantes series. He works at the zoo! He's married to a goddess! He's ace! He has a big Italian family who live on a witch commune outside Toronto! He turns into a big floofy-pawed kitty to mete out social justice!I find him a bit easier to write than Cora, the other protagonist, because his mind and viewpoints are similar to mine. On the other hand, Cora is more fun to write because she says and does things I could never. But Roland's cuddly and modest and has interesting tattoos, and likes coconut frozen custard, and drives a Jeep.
And is pretty fine. I was weak. /is in love with all her OCs
(also I could have sworn I posted this earlier but apparently I didn't :B)
Leah wrote: "i also have ferrnando julio narayola d'riotime from my high fantasy series. he plays shitty acoustic guitar at the tavern, has a magical flashlight hand, comes from a family of priests, is actually..."omg shitty acoustic guitar, i love it. And what a name!
I've got two favorites from my current WiP, both of whom will probably have bigger parts to play in later parts if I ever get around to writing this stuff.
Victoria Varona is one of Zeke's older sisters. She's overprotective, hates pretty much everyone who isn't related to her, likes to beat her problems with her fists, and is generally a giant, blue haired grump of a human being always. Like all of her siblings, she's also a supernatural hunter; she's a lower level then the rest of them, but mostly because of her aforementioned "smash first, ask questions later" policy than lack of skill.
Thatcher Finnegan is Althea's only friend, with potential love triangle arm possibilities if he wasn't, you know, sorta kinda a ghost. (Spoiler alert: he gets better.) He's a WWI veteran who fell in love with a girl with shady family connections, got himself murdered in a godforsaken corner of Nebraska, and now haunts a cemetery. He's a bit of a stick-in-the-mud with Althea (because she has Very Bad Ideas all the time), but he's also charismatic as hell for a dead dude and quick on his feet. Also, vintage hottie.
Does my love and affection for these two have anything to do with the super angstastic love story I created for them? POSSIBLY. But w/e, they're fun supporting characters.
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My fave is Amelia Pierce, she looks like this . She is small and cute and fast and can tell the future, and while she isn't exactly short tempered, she isn't especially socialised and so doesn't bother to hide when she isa angry.
She doesn't have a lot of people she cares about (mostly due to the above tendencies, but also because she has a Goal and no one has time for friendship when they have a Goal!), and as a result she's the kind of person who'll lie to save the feelings or peace of mind of the few people she does care about. She tries to make like she doesn't have an ego, but she totally does. She's fought hard to get her powers recognised, and there's a big part of her that craves acknowledgement for that as well as just achieving her Goal (fatal flaaaaaaaaw).
My favorite is probably Jordan Langley. She's rough, cocky, kind of arrogant, judgmental, a huge liar, and quick to anger. But she's also super protective, especially of her younger brother. She's kind of been forced into becoming a wolf demon, so it's slowly driving her crazy (she can't handle the magic because she wasn't born to handle magic). She's often torn between the duty that her mother set her up on (protecting her brother to the point of obsession, freeing the Robes from the Woodsmen, bringing magic back) and her own feelings (she's in love with a guy who she basically left to die and who is now really pissed at her crazy ass).She comes from a pretty wealthy family because of her father's Woodsman status, which she recognizes over time gives her a lot more privileges than she would have had in their world.
Jordan's basically a hot mess that tries to do good at the expense of her personal life.
Jess, I think your Victoria would get along well with my Cora. I love grumpy girls.
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They're so much fun to write, too. I think a lot of writers still don't want to make their heroine "unlikable" so they give them flaws like being clumsy or babbling in place of something that would actually give them dimension. This particular story universe of mine has a lot of unhappy and, most likely, unlikable women in it. One of lingering themes of the story is bad mothers, oppressive family legacies, and the marks they leave behind, so having my MC Althea being a well-adjusted, "likable" character was never in the cards.
They are so fun to write! Writing Cora is kind of cathartic because she just *does* things, and goes in directions I would never go, and is very grouchy and very assertive. lol Hannah, you really hit the nail on the head; there are so many entries in my journal from around age 18-19 about how I felt that I wasn't allowed to feel and display certain emotions (anger, distaste, grumpiness).This was one of many things I loved about the Bel Dame series. Nyx and most of the other female characters were stone-cold grumps who did bad things. Kameron Hurley is definitely not concerned with making her women "likable." Trying to learn from that.
Making up characters is my favorite part of the writing process, as is seeing them grow from their original form. So, who's your favorite? The most interesting? The background character who inexplicably became incredibly important in draft two? Do they have tragic backstories or are they pampered brats? Is there a significance to their name or their eye color? SHARE.