idk if this is a good question but i'm curious, whats your process like for coming up with ocs??
OOOOOH yes this is a great question thank you!!! Omg ok if you've known me for a while you know i'm RABID for preplanned game structure & player choice interacting to create stories beyond what either could imagine. So i'm very zealous about being conscious of tbe way my choices and the game's mechanics (i create the vast majority of my ocs as player characters for video games) will interact.
to that end, usually i'll start with a set of traits i think would be fun to play and work as the foundation for a new character. If its my first time playing a game i won't decide anything beyond the basics of their personality at that first step, and then of course with character design i'll work out their appearance (tho tbh a lot of them end up changing a little once they're more fleshed out as characters if the game allows that). I will also usually set up a very basic backstory.
THEN i play, and do a combination of finding and creating story. So like, ill follow the plotlines set by the game but pay active attention to how i think my character would react to them and what their motivations would be for getting from point A to point B - stuff the game doesnt explicitly decide for you. More in depth backstory and character details start appearing here.
As the character emerges i conform my gameplay to them as well. i get really into this! it is a massive part of how i play rpgs and why i love them. when i first played fallout 3 i literally wrote journals for my character, from her perspective/in her voice, for every day she lived. i deliberated over which items she'd loot from bodies and which she wouldn't. my fallout 4 character - a lesbian ex-housewife - carried the wedding rings, both hers and her deceased husband's, unequipped in her inventory. when she and piper were in love i had her give piper one to wear. ivory can confirm how unreasonably faithful i am to my characters' inclinations in fallen london, often even when it's to my own great inconvenience. etc
SO ..... that is how a character is born. they grow throughout the game. and this is still all for the first time i play the game, by the way; for later runthroughs i'll let myself be more creative, especially via spending less time actually playing main plots and more time, like, populating cardboard boxes in an abandoned trailer with clothes and supplies my courier would have accumulated there over her several-year mid-game self-imposed exile. things like that.
for ocs that aren't player characters (but are still from existing universes - i don't have any active original work rn) i will let myself be a little more lax n loose but those only really happen when i have a specific idea in mind for them already (eg to pair with my favorite canon character lmao)
