About your process, when you’re developing OCs like for Sovereignstuck do you try to avoid repeating things like Classpects or blood color + Aspect combos that were already used in Homestuck? I personally feel compelled to do that like even to the point of not using Extended Zodiac signs that we’ve seen in Hiveswap and I’m not sure why
Hmm… I wouldn’t say we, as a team, avoid it at all, honestly! It’s one of those “If it happens, it happens” type deals. Our concern is less with Repetition and Total Originality, and more with Accuracy. If that Accuracy happens to result in an already canon Classpect reoccurring, or an already dub-canon Sign reoccurring, then so be it! It’s not really a crime. Repetition of Classpect/Signs/Themes/Motifs isn’t an issue at all, really, it’s just a matter of whether or not it fits.
Hell, Sovereignstuck has two Maids of Space! There’s @unexiled’s Dynama Zarrow, and Porrim Maryam! It’s not an issue, because it fits both characters, and they aren’t copy-pasted in any way. Being a Maid of Space is an important part of both of their characters, without there being much overlap at all in how they function during the course of the story.
One’s a religious zealot who doesn’t know how to be their own person, take up any room, or put their foot down unless it’s in the name of God, and the other one is a sex-positive feminist activist who already figured out how to take up space and defend herself for the sake of herself only. They’re two entirely different characters at two entirely different points of their development, with vastly different Themes and vastly different ways of interacting with their Class and Aspect!
We have a Prince of Heart, as well! Annomi Errata, who I’m in charge of. He’s an incredibly different person from Dirk Strider, and their character arcs in their respective stories aren’t identical at all. Dirk’s state of being a Prince of Heart throughout the course of Homestuck was defined largely by his catastrophic concern with the idea of becoming/being a bad person. He had a crippling fear of it, and was absolutely negatively obsessed with the concept.
Annomi, meanwhile, is in a situation where he had that fear eat him alive for so long that he gave up, and started actually being a bad person as a wildly self destructive method of reclamation of control. Once again, they’re two entirely different characters at two entirely different points of their development.
It’s all a matter of figuring out what works! Sometimes we get repeats. Sometimes, we even get repeats within the confines of the same story! There’s no harm in it at all! It’ll be fine as long as you handle it with some confidence!
