Who was the first character you remember creating?
Oh gosh oh wow, umm, there were several who were kind of all created together. They were all anthro cat people. (None of my current OCs are anthro animals, but I have like four werewolves; I have the soul of a furry.)
Arren Shadowchaser was my “Mary Sue”. Like 95% of OC creation at that age is purely aesthetic, so I did a lot of fooling with her Look. She was a gray-brown snow-leopard-ish woman with long brown/black hair that she kept in a half-pony and two braids. I want to say her eyes were teal or purple? I think she went through a phase where her fur, like her entire body, all of her fur, was a truly impressive shade of peacock blue-green, which was unnatural and 100% inspired by this hideous leotard thing I had that made me feel like a superhero, so it’s NOT CANON YOU GUYS it’s too embarrassing to be canon.
Arren could use magic and had elemental powers, I think either air or earth? She was also a ferocious warrior who used a longbow and also a magic sword, and later on she was chief of a clan, the Renegades, who lived in the woods and did a kind of Robin-Hood thing, only I never made up any actual oppressive rich assholes for her to fight so there wasn’t much for them to do besides ride around on their hella-rad telepathic super-smart 1,000-pound lions.
Arren had a little brother, Aro, who was kind of a skinny twerp but in a lovable way. I don’t remember what he was good at except getting menaced cinematically and IIRC dying a couple of times to motivate our heroine. He was brown and black with a white tummy and chin, and shortish black hair he kept in a kind of humiliating cat mullet. He wore a sleeveless vest with peacock feathers over the nipples, and leather pants. In retrospect, I think Aro was probably very, very gay.
Srisin … Flame?catcher???? was Arren’s love interest. He was an orange tiger with flame powers and he wore a lot of black leather. He had a brother named Orin who was a white tiger and I think he had ice powers because water powers are stupid. (That’s what I thought at the time. Pre-teen me had yet to meet and crush on Aqualad from Young Justice.) Orin wore a lot of blue and I think he had his heart ripped out at least once. I was really into heart-ripping. (Still am!) Anyway, they were in a poly triad with Arren. She loved them both, but Srisin was the bad boy so he got a lot more play. But Orin was the wise and mystical one so you kind of wanted him around in case anyone needed to, like, read a fuckin’ book.
When I was 11, I wrote a 99-page (wide-rule notebook paper) book about Arren, Aro, Orin, and Srisin. It cribbed from everything from Elfquest to Dungeons and Dragons to Dragonlance to Tailchaser’s Song to Thundercats to The Belgariad because no 11-year-old is particularly original.
They go on some sort of chosen-four-representatives-of-the-elements quest thing to return the sacred orb/s to their gods, fight a bunch of really fucked up demons, there’s a lot of blood and gore and some excruciating torture of sexy cat boys, they all learn that they have magic powers, their warcats learn to fly, and they totally earn the favor of their deities and are made into elemental demigods. Sweet.
This horrifically gross and violent and no doubt borderline incoherent bit of juvenalia is still out there, probably at my parents’ house, and when I find it I promise to transcribe and post some of it.
I had another character named Kala’an Firerunner, and he might have predated Arren, I’m not sure at this point. Kala’an and Srisin kind of run together. I honestly am having trouble remembering because this was 30 years ago and I’ve had many naps, some emotional trauma, and a more-than-reasonable-amount of teenage-rebellion-era LSD since then. I’m honestly doing well to remember my own middle name.
Anyway, Kala was from a whole separate milieu. I think there was both magic and genetic engineering/far-future/postapoc shit going on in his backstory, like he escaped from a mutant farm or something, he was an ex-experimental subject who got pyrokinesis from being exposed to some artifact or relic or whatever. I think he was the result of that whole persecution fantasy thing, where you create this fantasy world where you’re exceptional but imprisoned by people who only want to exploit you while denying that you have any value at all. Sort of a metaphor for my whole school experience and not at ALL something I carry a massive chip on my shoulder about to this day. Hahaha. *wipes sweat*
Anyway, those were my first OCs.
GOD the shitty Elfquest/Thundercats vibe is incredible, I just want to pay someone to D R A W T H E M A L L.
Oh god everyone please like this post my eleven year old self would be so happy for people to care about the things she imagined.
