people might think creating OC lore involves a lot of thinking & planning, but in my personal experience, OC development is more like a divine vision from a god slamming you over the head with a mallet while ur doing the fuckin dishes or folding laundry

April 09, 2025 - 23:32 UTC

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I love jellyfish, maids, veis, armor, and swords so I'm combining all together but will take awhile as I feel like patience is it. But yeah I agree with this as pieces make sense in my head as I sleep so I stay up late to draw them.
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best times I've experienced:

5 hour drive? good luck bro

wake up from a dead sleep at 3:27am? here you go!

bored at work doing manual labor? 💡

remember this one embarrassing moment when you were 13- ooh here's an idea!
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Fr, I'm vibing on my phone and have been possessed with a new idea for one of mine
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I can hear the bonk sound effect from here
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even when i try the thinking and planning route, carefully crafting their background and info, i get the divine mallet overruling my planning lmao. sometimes years after the fact |3
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it’s always “wouldn’t it be fun if” and then it snowballs into “wouldn’t it be incredibly fucked up if” and then suddenly you have 3 seasons worth of content on you
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So accurate it hurts. Oh wait, no, that was just the mallet hitting me
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And in comes inspiration with the steel chair!
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Never got over this because it's so accurate
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the rush i get from realizing a plot twist for my OCs i came up with while loading the dishwasher is unmatched by anything
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I literally made this goober yesterday, out of no where, with lore and everything.
And it was literally just that they are a nerd and like to try new foods. You don't need extensive lore!
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honestly
i just create some basic foundations for my ocs and then they live their own lifes
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Fucking accurate. Some of my best OC ideas have been bestowed upon me while zoning out at my service job.
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aint it the truth
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You suddenly sit bolt upright, just as you were drifting off to sleep and it's there - a whole person, pre-formed in your mind.
They're very insistent that you write down every detail about them, or you might lose some, and they will keep bugging you about it until you do.
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strokes of inspiration🌈 the more divine the whackier the lore <3
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*folding laundry*

"...and he knew a prince!!!! Gotta write this down!"
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I was just doing wordle the other day and suddenly

“...What if I made a Ciphertologist”

Now I have a new gravity falls oc who is an albino in a family of Greeks and Aztecs and an immigrant who moved to Gravity Falls all because Why Not™ that I wrote an entire backstory for in less than an hour
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Or when I was playing star rail, completely random quest

Next thing I know I'm making a cookie run oc and doing my own worldbuilding for a game with already insane worldbuilding
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Every time I come up with a cool piece of lore or a cool new way to foreshadow it in my comic, I just hear MatPat's voice in my head shouting "THE LORE!"
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The amount of imagery in this is insane..
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i have recently made an OC named beebo, they are my simple and easy to draw character. the way i got the plot for him is that we were talking about popular characters and they just said "get a cult following for them" and now beebo is a god for a fantasy cult
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That
Is accurate.
Most of my stuff is random inspiration.
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Was having a completely normal conversation with my mom and I just stopped mid conversation and left the room saying "WAIT I'M INSPIRED I NEED TO WRITE IT DOWN BEFORE I FORGET" and she had no idea wtf I was talking about

I then shot my oc 57 times
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More for vtuber lore.

Some of it comes from certain interactions or happenings. "Is Canada near where you are?" ("Oh crap... he got me with that friendly joke...") "Um.. yeah! There's a Planet Canada in this solar system!"
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I once had a character tell me their entire life's story over the course of about six hours, beginning at midnight. My input was neither necessary nor desired, and they were NOT interested in taking a rain check.
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FELT THIS ONE TO MY CORE
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I go to bed and suddenly "what if... This thing... Had a SISTER?!?!!?
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Or listening to a song with them in mind and key character interactions / story points just appear suddenly and revealing the main direction everything goes
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80% of my own OC's lore is entirely because I tore my cheek open kinda bad once and could see more teeth than usual.

This lore shit comes out of nowhere with a baseball bat and a brick.
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Guys, how do u manage to not self insert too much?
Like... creating OCs feels like a dark magic to me 😭
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use that self-insert to build
more of a character,
or a new character.
use it
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Not me opening my crown chakra strictly to receive more juicy oc lore. 💀
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I don't know what it is, but I always get the most ✨ IMMACULATE ✨ ideas in the shower.
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Accurate
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For me it involves me listening to a single song that reminds me of my OC on repeat until 2AM when the divine intervention brainworms hit and have to write down as much as I physically can before I become delirious.
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Ah yes, the classic "Dr House" moment.
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REAL
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A majority of my ocs just kinda appeared mostly fully formed when I needed to fill out a world x3 It just kinda happens!
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My OCs started like that too! Just a glimpse of what their stories could be — like 'she's an orphan' or 'his parents are underground musicians'. And when I use them I develop their stories deeply with ideas that flash into my mind when I should be working 🪄✨
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“when i should be working” is so real 😭🤝
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Talking to yourself while driving is my go to.
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Don't forget while in the shower... that holy watery cleanliness time has literally changed the world in a few cases...
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Spiked hammer, but yeah basically
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Oh thank god it isn’t just me, like I do like to hammer out character ideas over a period of talking into the void and stuff, but the number of OCs, Concepts, and hell, full blown settings that hit me like a bus randomly is way higher, and being anywhere from 30-80% formed already 🤣
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yea for me it feels less like im making stuff and more like some sort of god is speaking through me, not just with my characters but like everything
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or trying to go to sleep
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Definetely true. Some of my favorite or most intricate ideas came from me having a vibe for something or going "wait the fuck up, what if this" while doing something unrelated
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Me when I’m at work and pass the cereal aisle: “AND THEY’LL BE A DEMIGOD!”
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100%
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I write a lot of lore

This is accurate
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true
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A vision
Of what is to come
Cannot be outrun
Can only be dealt with right here and now
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Totally this! Even to the point of it feeling like "not AGAIN I haven't had time to draw/write the LAST OC I was slammed with 😭"
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The way this is so freaking accurate! I could be walking down the street, notice a leaf drifting on the wind or something, and then BOOM, my mind is shunted through the astral plane as I experience a Lore Awakening™
👁️ 👄 👁️
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Me, most of the time. Official projects require more thought on the character’s purpose and relationship with other characters, but this is basically it
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Very real,,

I somehow came up with the details of funeral rituals while doing homework and listening to Cosmo Sheldrake,, 😔✨

Like??? This is not something i needed, but certainly something I can use -
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I agree!, I found sometimes even when telling someone bits of lore I thought of, I suddenly get slapped by ideas and thus I have to scramble to note it down before I forget, yet still talk to the person, my memory is like a sieve when it wants to be haha
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for me id say its mostly just "oh my god this dosent make any sense." and i end up spending 9 hours rewriting it
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It is just like - *hammer to the brainpain* "Get lore'd, bish"
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When you're commuting or taking a shower and these visions hit you but you can't stop to write them down 🫠
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OR RIGHT BEFORE YOU FALL ASLEEP 💥💥💥 “i’m too tired to write it down, i’ll remember this tomorrow” YOU WONT!!!
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One OC creates another, and then another, and before you know it you've built a small interpose into the world. Even better when a theme starts to happen and your starts doing the Jimmy Neutron Brain Blasts!
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REAL
All my best ideas happening when i"m in the middle of like mundane tasks and shit
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"haha you know what would be so funny/traumatizing"
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Me at 4am, half asleep: wouldn’t it be cool if they were gayer
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sometimes ill be chilling then it hits me like a metaphorical brick to the back of my head...

then i aggressively work on it and figure out how it can work
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Getting hit with inspiration that I NEED to write down just as I'm going to bed is the worst (but damn that inspiration is crazy). For someone as detail obsessed as me it also takes the form of having an idea and then thinking "wait does this make sense?" followed by hours of furious searching.
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Why is this so accurate though, it's like my oc is wispering to me saying "Father you forgot this"
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Gog, this is so true
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sometimes the most random single words inspire a whole dang character and I'm like ??? but I just go along with it now 😂
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FELT THAT
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This is actually so real 😭
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Especially when you RP your OCs it can suddenly double the lore. One of my favorite OCs now has a husband and he also has a bunch of kids. Neat.
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"Oh this would be a cool idea. How did we get there?"

Me, as I think it'd be cool to give my OC a metal arm after his was torn off in a fight.
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They walk up to me and start telling me about themselves. I can't stop them. Who are these people??? I love them so much 💜
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For me it's the shower. Real shower thoughts.
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Legit
Like i was thinking of a trend ppl were doing on tiktok between two of my own ocs while i was getting ready to nap on a plane when suddenly i got the thought "well what if they kissed?" And suddenly i got like half a lifetime worth of lore between the two ocs that were otherwise unrelated LMAO
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and i wouldn't trade it for anything in the world... though i might need another ice pack
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Or when going to bed
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I literally created my best and favourite D&D character from scratch. Like she just spawned on the screen. I love Makaria. She's my baby.
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😭😭😭 they really do just pop up on their own whether you’re ready or not
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I miss this feeling. Stupid Long COVID.
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por que no los dos
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I tend to notice i get the best ideas for oc stuff while walking.
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I’m playing any game and I see a character I like and then suddenly the OC idea hits me like a truck
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you are so real for this
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Addition to this is that if you try to add your own input it DOESN'T FEEL RIGHT, like I am WRONG somehow 😩
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This has happened to me so many times LOL
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I can't fucking stop thinking about this silly wizard guy I made up in my head I am going crazy!!!!!!!!!!!
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The worst time it happens imo is when you're waking up and if you don't write it down immediately.....aaaaaaand there it goes back into the aetherial sea
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this is how emilia started, but then she just took my brain by a chokehold and has not released me in months. every time i think she's done she whispers a piece of her past in my ear- 🫠

meanwhile my other oc niko just sort of was a funny "hey what if" that turned into a whole grown man-
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[nodding seriously] many such cases…
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📌
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Always when I’m at work, trying to work, and ideas come to me and I can’t do anything because WORK 😩😩😩
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but this is so real though
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yeah, pretty much
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Genuinely. The only times you are thinking, it's just for the general idea. Divine inspiration comes later and smoothes everything out
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if someone else didnt already say it, there is also the method of thinking "hah, what if *insert throwaway, stupid, silly, for the giggles scenario*" and then going "unless...but what if i keep that and make it cannon", and it somehow becomes a major part
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I couldn't have put it better myself 😭

It is pretty much my throught process every time, before I dive headfirst into my next fanfiction. Here I am, playing Devil May Cry, Monster Hunter or Nier and all of sudden my brain goes 'Character A and B never interacted. Let's make them!'
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That voice gets even louder when at least one of these two characters has been underutilised or their potential squandered by the canon 😅

5 hour writing session starts!
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Me figuring out the motive for this man to have a full villain arc after 3 years of “he’s just having fun”
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more times are created a design are like, but with the time if are inside a group, are can development too, -.are hapens in a lot rpgs groups im inside
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I AM BUT A HUMBLE SERVANT RECEIVING MY BLESSINGS (gets hit with the oc beam) WHAT'S THAT, GOD? ABO AU HEADCANONS? I GO UNWILLINGLY, MY LORD,
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and the true miracle comes when you actually remember to write it down / draw it later
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Personally I go with both
I get the Divine Vision from God™ and then I spent 8 hours reading research papers on the beheaviors of (insert animal here) so I can make my character as accurate as possible
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Well we do create our OC's so we are their god in a way, so we can do whatever we want
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RIGHT??
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Highly collaborative with the artists creating visions of it, as well. Sometimes someone comes up with a fun shitpost idea for a 20 dollar doodle request and that *IMMEDIATELY* becomes permanent canon
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Seriously, like I’m just trying to peacefully have a conversation with my family. When I’m hit over the head with ‘what if X dies by X, and then there was a FUNERAL and everyone CRIED. Oh and also this is where his unknown girlfriend is introduced who you didn’t even know about yet’
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It all starts from a single idea.
Like, almost all of my fics developed from a small interaction I imagined between the characters. Then I wrote a story around that scene so it had context.
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HUGE SAME!! although sometimes it feels like finding the perfect sofa and then having to build a house around it 😭
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Or, if you’re me, reading Bleach and have your brain think of a character from the personalities
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YES. Most of mine are like that.

And then some appear with details missing, meaning I have to actively think to fill in the gaps and I'm like "that's rude? Couldn't you come with your name and backstory already included like other guys did?"
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When I’m driving is when the mallet flattens me. I get so many ideas while driving around.
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You would think the mallet would hurt less over time, but it never does.
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I have a job as a school cleaner and a good portion of my day is mindlessly hoovering classrooms. It is excellent for mallet revelations 😈
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This is so real. I’ll just be minding my business and suddenly get hit by a Truckload of Lore of a character of mine and have to rush to write it down-
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And sometimes you get really unlucky and think of the most amazing thing while you are doing something important that needs your full attention so you can't write it down
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The Muses are a fickle lot
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Absolutely.
Like, one of my main OCs didn't have a real backstory/lore about him for 13 years and then just got actual lore by accident out of a joke between myself and a friend
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Walking to and from work with headphones on.
Then trying to make sense of the new mental scenes while trying to fall asleep.
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Or in the shower with no way to write any of it down but it's just steam rolling through your brain
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why is it always in the shower!
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Or it’s evolving into insomnia armed with enough ordinance to make you eternally tired but still unable to escape the creative visions, to the point where even gaining sustenance becomes a gd afterthought on many occasions.

Never leave loose paper unattended around us, OC lore WILL happen |D
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Had someone passively ask about a character's earliest memory, and he hit me with a vision of a plane taking off from an airport, accompanied by a feeling of deep longing and crushing sadness, and I went "hey bud, what?"

Spent three years unpacking that so far. First thing he ever let me in on ever
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Exactly this. Or you're falling asleep and then SUDDEN INSPIRATION!
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making ocs is sometimes being either extremely bored and randomly coming with a little guy idea or being man i need to kiss this one character and making an OC just to kiss them
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making one of my OCs trans was literally just a shower thought that made too much sense lol
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Yup!!

But also…. Me thinking “maybe that would make sense” and them going No. Over and over to many ideas 😂
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Most of my lore development happened at work one evening while I was grabbing shopping carts in the cold(S.Californian 45-50°) nights at my last job.
I was listening to the Heavenward soundtrack and just thought "Hell. Fucking. Yes."
It's random. It's spontaneous.
My advice: take notes where you can
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A full story arc, the beginnings of a fight, the climax and resolution, all in 2-3 hours of walking around a cold dark parking lot near the beach.
Also if you don't care for Final Fantasy, I still recommend listening to the Heavensward soundtrack, it is amazing.
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most of my oc lore is created at work too, im usually alone so you can find me exploring character voices, sometimes even whispering to myself about my ocs while walking around cleaning the store. the other day i got praised for doing something, but really i just wanted a quiet place to think of ocs
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Or your friend makes a dumb suggestion and you're like "that's canon now"
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