OC Nourishment

This blog is intended as a place of Original Character love - a place where you can come to feel positive about your OCs.

[deaths-rph]

Mary Sues/Gary Stus FACT vs FICTION

A Mary Sue/Gary Stu is an annoying character.

FICTION! A Sue is almost always annoying, but all “annoying” characters are not Sues. Throwing the term Mary Sue around to describe a character you hate distorts the true meaning of the term. 

Only OCs can be portrayed as Sues.

FICTION! Any character can be portrayed as a Sue. This includes canon characters that are warped and portrayed so out of character that they become an unrecognizable Sue.

All nice characters are Sues.

FICTION! Just because a character is nice, does not automatically make them a Sue! Ask yourself does the character have faults? Do they have a breaking point? Perhaps their overly-nice attitude is their fault.

All OCs are Sues.

FICTION! Sure there are OCs who fit the requirements for being a Sue, but there are some fabulous, fleshed out, and perfectly faulty OCs out there who are waiting to be discovered!

Sues are characters that are overly-powerful, one-dimensional characters with no faults.

FACT! If your character is not developing in some way with your interactions this could be a red flag that either:

a) Your interactions are probably petty

b) Your character might be a Sue

Everyone has played a Mary Sue/Gary Stu at some point in their role playing careers

FACT! Most RPers will admit that in their early days of role play they did in fact write a Sue-ish character. It’s all part of growing up (so to speak). Once you get the hang of writing and character development, you’ll be able to write more detailed (and less Sue-ish) characters.

[roleplayingconfessionsfromrpers]

A string of bad experiences with OC’s is a justifiable reason to be wary of OC’s. But it’s not a reason to bash every OC you come across.

[ocnourishment]

I love this blog this is such a good idea~

Thank you so very much!  It doesn’t get as many people signing up for the lists as it used to, but I can’t just abandon it.  I don’t have the heart to do that when nothing else like the lists formed here really exists anywhere else.  @dear-indies comes really close, and I can’t recommend their blog enough.  But even they don’t sort their OCs the same way it’s done here; it’s just a bunch of alphabetical blog names.  Which is still useful, of course - but slogging through so many blogs without knowing a little about who and what they’re about can be tedious.

[falconinthesky-archive-blog]

PS-motherfucking-A

I will literally never understand why the tumblr rolelay community is just so damn hypocritical and hateful towards female muses. It doesn’t matter if they are canon characters or OC’s (Though OC’s have it even harder) So many of you preach more Representation and feminism in the media, yet you turn around and barely give any female characters the time of day. They are all either looking for ships, or in the way of your gay ships. You erase strong females in the media without even blinking an eye after you just posted a whole rant about how there isn’t enough strong female leads a day before. 

It’s frankly disgusting. I have seen hate towards Sharon, Peggy, Jane, Pepper, and other strong characters all because they somehow get in the way of your ability to ship two men together. I am just so sick and tired of these female muses getting pushed around, or picked last and it’s horrible. 

I thought about putting this under a read more, or just frankly keeping my feelings to myself, but dammit I am tired of holding back. Seriously you people need to get your shit together. 

Female Characters are important. Female Muses are important.  Females are Important. 

[storiesofwildfire]

{ outofmagic } Okay, so normally I don’t make my own comments on someone else’s PSA. I literally started typing all of my commentaries into my tags, but I feel like I have something very important to say about this topic, so I’m going to actually type them out here.

So here goes:

I am a female writer and roleplayer. My strongest muse on Tumblr is Loki and yes, I understand that he is usually portrayed as a male. I, however, portray him as gender fluid. I have a couple of other muses on Tumblr as well that I don’t update often. They are both male as well. I enjoy writing for male muses. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the problem is, as a female, I see so much hate towards female characters on this site.

So here’s a simple thing:

It’s okay to love male characters. It’s okay to love female characters. It’s okay to love characters who aren’t either of those.

It’s not okay to discriminate against a character based on their gender.

I actually have had female muses on Tumblr before. They never lasted long because they never got enough interaction to warrant me going on their blogs. There was no point because whenever I logged in, there was nothing for me to do. There are more female muses I would love to roleplay but I am so afraid to try to write for them on this site because I know they will be shat all over.

Even on my Loki blog, where I have perfect justification for roleplaying as Lady Loki–something that I absolutely love to do–no one wants to roleplay with her. When Loki doesn’t have a penis, interest in the character plummets on my blog.

And this is what doesn’t make sense to me. Interacting with female characters does not diminish your potential for male interaction. Why can’t you have both? Interacting with female muses won’t diminish anything other than the ridiculous notion that female characters are lesser than male characters. Which is something that needs to be abolished.

We fight for equality in our real lives, to finally reinforce the idea that women are equal to men, but then we throw that away in roleplay? Why? WHY DO WE DO THIS?

If we truly want equality, then we have to practice that in every aspect of our lives, even RP.

My favorite stories and series always have a strong female presence throughout. When Star Wars The Force Awakens came out, how many of us were in an uproar because some douchebag complained about the main characters being a woman and a black man? How many times have we been outraged because an ignorant group of people was complaining about the new Ghostbusters being a group of women? Yet we can’t even give women the appropriate attention and love they deserve in simple roleplay?

When it comes to roleplaying on Tumblr, people take up the same mentality that the rest of the world seems to cling to; that men are superior to women. This is something that we still fight to this day, yet we give into this idea in roleplay? 

At the end of the day, female muses are so fucking important and their importance does not diminish the importance of male muses. You roleplaying with a female character doesn’t stop you from roleplaying with a male muse. If you want to have a gay ship, no one is stopping you, but you can have that ship without shitting all over female characters.

You don’t have to like every female character in existence. That would be ridiculous, just like it’s ridiculous to like every male character in existence.

But you should still treat the characters that you don’t like with respect regardless of gender, race, sexuality, or any other factor in which you can judge them.

[nonukesthanks]

tumblr implemented on-blog advertising, which is why blog theme html keeps getting messed up.

To shut it off:

Click the ‘person’ icon in the top right

Select ‘Settings’

Select your blog from the column on the right

Scroll down to the ‘Advertising’ section

Shut that shit off.

You have to do it for all blogs individually, including side blogs.

[spesiria]

Original characters though

I can’t say this often enough, OCs are the best. I love seeing/reading about other people’s characters. I love talking about my own characters and getting questions about them. Everyone should have OCs. We could talk about OCs all day. I’M JUST EMBARRASSINGLY PASSIONATE ABOUT OCs!!

[ocnourishment]

List Update ~ June 10th - 26th

OCs LIST

 @gentlegiantingvar ~ @notsocommonnow

OC-Friendly Canon List

@interastra ~ @fateswidewheel ~ @skippedouttaheaven 

[confessionsofa-roleplayer]

“Your canon characters were once someone’s OCs. Keep that in mind when you hate on people who rp OCs. This OC hate has got to end. Stop ignoring the good OC bloggers.”

[ocnourishment]

Recent Additions to List

Because I haven’t had as much interest from anyone in this blog lately, I’ve been slacking off in my duties.  Sorry, guys.  :(  However, I have had a few people sign up, so I wanted to take a moment to recognize them.

@karatails - @hellsxnt - @faceofamonster

Also! If you are a blog that joined BEFORE I revamped the site back in March, please check to see if you’ve been added to the right lists.  There was a period from before where I fell down on my duties and no one got added they way they were supposed to.  >.<  I’m very sorry for that.  However, if you find your blog isn’t there, and you want it to be, please resubmit the form.  It doesn’t take long to fill out, I promise!

[ocnourishment]

gentlegiantingvar is an rp blog of a Giant! I'm sure they'd love to see their muse here.

Hello there, Nonnie!  @gentlegiantingvar looks like a wonderful blog!  :D  However, due to this blog’s rules, I can’t add someone without their express permission.  That’s why I created the Submission Form info page - so that I could be certain that people really wanted to have their blogs listed here.

In the past I had a post that people would reblog if they wanted to join.  However, I found that people were reblogging, and then getting upset when I added them to the list.  So now I only add people who’ve actually sent me the form.

Anyway - you should send them a message - let them know this blog exists - and if they want to submit their info to me, that would be awesome!  :D

[ocnourishment]

Whats this blog's theme?

Hello there, Nonnie!  It took me a few minutes to track it down.  I had to jump through a few hoops after clicking on the ‘theme’ link on my page.  ^_^  Anyway, my current theme is called Heaven or Hell and was created by Ilma Arifiany.  You can find the info specifically about this theme by CLICKING HERE.  Or you can view all of Ilma’s tumblr themes by CLICKING HERE.  I hope this helps.  :)

[fictionwritingtips]

Why Clichés and Tropes Aren’t Necessarily a Bad Thing

I’ve tried to be very fair in my blog posts about using clichés and tropes. Stereotypes should generally be kept off the table, but I’ve seen a lot of writing posts about how terrible clichés are. Let me respectfully disagree. While constantly using clichés and tropes to flesh out your novel isn’t the best idea in the world, I don’t think you should (or can) remove them entirely.

Clichés:

A lot of experiences that are true to life can feel like clichés because we’ve heard about them so many times. For example, a coming-of-age story about the bonds of friendship has been done so many times and will sometimes utilize clichés to get the job done. There is a way, however, to take a cliché and make it your own.  If you’ve seen horror movies like Scream and The Cabin in the Woods, then you’ve seen stories that have used clichés in a creative way. They started off with a story that’s familiar and used those clichés against the audience.  Harry Potter uses the “chosen one” cliché which we’ve seen in an endless number of novels, but I think Rowling does a good job of making it interesting and adding new and exciting elements to it.

Take some time to think about your favorite parts of your favorite novels. Do they have anything in common with themes you like to use in your own writing? Chances are you’re using clichés! What I’m trying to say is—don’t let anyone scare you away from using common story ideas. Find your own unique way to make them interesting (change the setting, switch up the characters, etc.)

Tropes:

For people who have been reading and writing for a long time, it’s easy to understand the difficulty in maneuvering around tropes. These are scenarios that most readers are familiar with and can sometimes enhance a novel. Sure, overusing tropes and depending on them too much to tell your story is a bad idea, but your storytelling abilities can certainly benefiting from understanding them on a deeper level.

We see tropes in stories because readers can relate to them.  They can be realistic and familiar to a point where it’s nice to come across them. I believe that tropes can provide a common ground that writers can build on to make their stories more exciting. For example, good vs. evil is technically a trope that’s been used over and over and over again. It’s used so much because it works—we have a clear villain and a clear protagonist. We know who to root for. However, when you add in different shades of gray (the villain is the protagonist’s father… a cliché!), you can build a very interesting story. Both of these things have been done before (Star Wars, anyone?), but you can’t deny these ideas can be molded into great stories. It all depends on what you do with it!

Again, overusing clichés and tropes will build a very predictable story, but if you use them to structure you novel and pepper in some unique and interesting ideas…well, there’s nothing wrong with using them. Give something your own twist, switch up a common idea, or use tropes to steer your readers in a surprising direction.  Don’t drop an idea because it’s been done before!

-Kris Noel

[sumnerresources]

how-to: character conversations

There is nothing more discouraging when your character is trying to converse, but the other character keeps shutting you down or alternately, does not reciprocate.  It can be disheartening, exhausting, and no fun.  Even more importantly, it’s bad RPing. 

Examples of shut downs:

the character keeps giving negative responses

the character belittles or dismisses the other character’s thoughts, suggestions, questions, then does not add anything

the character is too shy or afraid to speak or take any action; waits for the other character to take initiative

the character challenges the other character to impress them somehow, before they decide to engage

the character refuses to engage in any way: refuses to consider ideas, shows no interest, abruptly leaves

the character will answer questions but then will offer no follow-up

there is a lot of internal exposition, but then the character only responds with a word or two

If you realize your character consistently uses a few of these tactics, you may think: “but my character is grumpy/an asshole/anti-social/really shy/scared/bitchy/a loner/hates people/has issues!  It’s natural for them to act that way!“

This might be true, but the Mun/Player does not have to write that way.  There is a difference between the Mun’s character’s personality, and the Mun’s writing. RPing is interactive and it’s a two-way street.  As a Mun, it is your responsibility to figure out how to be engaging and encouraging to your partner, regardless of your character’s personality.

Below the cut are some suggested ways to improve RP interaction, and make things fun for both RP thread partners.

There are three sections:

Classic Improv

‘The Best’ vs ‘Show Your Work’

Are You Not Entertained?

Keep reading

[ericbrandonrp]

@theblindangel

// Unfortunately a lot of Marvel RPers (and RPers in general) think OCs are worthless. They aren’t. I am a Marvel RPer, I write Magneto, and let me tell you this: this is bullshit. They don’t know what they’re talking about. In my opinion OCs are almost better than any canon character, simply because it is YOUR creation. You didn’t take the character and the ideas from someone else and write that chara now; you created your own characterisation, their entire own world, their thoughts, their headcanons. Just everything. Don’t get me wrong, I respect people that manage to actually write an already existing character so well that you think they’re real. But anyone who’s saying OCs are stupid/worthless/whatever - they are wrong, and they are stupid. They are not worth talking to. They should get down from their high horse and get their shit together, create an OC on their own first before they start talking shit about them.

So, please don’t get discouraged because some idiots said they don’t like OCs in their ‘fandom’. There are a few people from the Marvel fandom that I RP with that are more than open to OCs, I will send you a few urls if you want. And I, of course, will also RP with you on my Magneto blog, if you want.

So, head up, chest out, and show them you’re better than what they think ;)

[justsoyouknow-rper]

OC does not automatically equal Mary-Sue.

[justsoyouknow-rper]

This blog is OC friendly.

Opposite post found here.

[galaxychorded-deactivated201608]

[Mini Guide] How to Plot

One of your followers has come into your inbox, cheerfully informing you that they love your blog and want to plot a thread with you. And while you’re happy to finally be getting some attention, you find yourself sweating because plots aren’t exactly your thing. It’s too hard to come up with ideas and you don’t feel comfortable with your ability to do so – thus you end up missing out on a potential partner and chance for your character to enjoy some much needed development. Times like that suck, don’t they? Well, your resident moon mama is here to help you out today in a segment I’m calling SAILOR MUN SAYS: How to Plot!

What is a plot?

A plot is an element that describes the main events in your thread. A general summary of what is taking place and the details around it. A plot gives you basic information about the scene your thread is exploring. Unlike one-liners or random memes that generally don’t include information or detail outside of dialogue (internal or external), a plot will typically supply you with a setting (location/environment/world/etc), time period (of day/year/era), subject of focus (what the characters are doing/going to be doing) and provide you with key points of how it all comes together.

How do I plot?

Simple! Go knock down the door in your followers’ ask-boxes and demand that they do the thing! No, I’m teasing of course, but plotting really can be just about that simple. A common misconception is that plotting requires a ton of effort and time or that it takes out all the fun of the thread because you know everything that’s going to happen. I’m happy to tell you that’s 120% false. Most people aren’t expecting you to create your own Lord of the Rings-esque world when they ask you to plot – they just want some general direction to go in with their muse and yours. You can decide how much you want to plot out – there isn’t a hidden quota that you need to fill. 

So how do you do it? How do you start plotting? My advice is when in doubt, always fall back on the 5 Ws of writing. Who, what, when, where and why? These questions are extremely helpful whenever you’re writing any type of piece – an essay for school, creating an original character, a thread for Tumblr or even a presentation for work. The answers supplied for these questions will help you create a cohesive story that can be easily understood by not only your partners, but by others who might want to read your works. Let’s break down how the 5 Ws can help you flesh out your writing.

The 5 Ws

WHO is generally a good place to start as it’s a little hard to plan anything if you don’t know who the thread is even supposed to include. Who answers questions such as: Who are the characters? Who is involved? Who’s the narrator? Who is the one doing the thing?

WHAT is next up after you’ve established the who of the plot. Whereas who just clarifies the people involved, what can describe a variety of elements in the plot – things that have already happened, are happening or will happen in the future. This is where the foundation of your plot lies. What can answer questions such as: What is going on? What happened? What are they doing? What is their objective? What is the problem? What is the solution?

WHEN and WHERE are being grouped together as they both provide information that will help you and your readers become invested in the story. They describe the setting and point of time the story is taking place, therefore painting a more complete visual imagery of the scenes. When and Where can can answer questions such as: Where are they? Where is this? Where is it taking place? Where is the objective located? Where do they have to go to reach it? When did it happen? When did it begin? 

And last but not least is WHY. Why is one of the questions asked the most as we need validation and explanation to properly understand or even accept that certain things are happening. You can provide all the detail in the world, but knowing the WHY behind it will give you a solid foundation to fall back on if you get unsure with any of actions or advancements in your story. Why can answer questions such as: Why did it happen? Why are these characters here? Why did they do the thing? Why did this character snap? Why did this character change their mind? Why did they make that decision?

Final Notes

Now you’ve sat down with your partner and explained your idea to them using the 5 Ws and they’re ecstatic! You’re passing different opinions and options back and forth, weaving together a story that you’re both eager to begin writing. And the best part is if you get unsure or lose your way during a response, you can look back on your notes you made with the 5 Ws to get back on track with your original ideas or maybe even add to them.

Is this a foolproof method? Of course not. Are there other ways you can plot? Of course there are! This is just one of the ways I’ve found that works for me. You can play around with it and see if it works for you – if not, maybe switch it up a bit! You don’t need to plot every single aspect of a thread to have a good time or tell a good story. You can be as simple or as in-depth as you want with a plot.  These are just tips, simple guidelines that can make it a lot easier. Even the most basic of ideas can be fleshed out and made more interesting with a little effort. So go out there and plot some threads!