I’m a teacher. Today I was covering for a grade 9 science class. Decent kids, if a bit rowdy, and didn’t want to do their work. Wtv, it was textbook work. Not the point.
1 girl (reminder that these kids are, like, 14/15) was doodling bust portraits (head & shoulders) in an art book. I had a squiz and asked her if they were her characters. She said they were and excitedly told me she had so many characters for this one story of hers. I laughed about how I wished I could draw mine, and moved on.
Later in the class, I hear her enthusiastically telling her friend all about her main OC - a gay kitsune prince with a tragic past. It was so, pure, classic Deviant Art: my first OC. And you know what? I loved it. I was just sitting there half overhearing, smiling to myself and glad that her friend was engaging and interested in her story and characters.
This is a girl who will become a creator. She will draw and write and imagine, get better and better. She’ll probably move past this stage and start making more nuanced characters (she was already lamenting she didn’t have enough girl OCs). But this is where she started. This is where so many of us started. I had a tiger catgirl, goth witch/sorceress OC in high school. I found my original design for her recently. Look what I create now.
Let kids be kids. Let them explore and invent and go wild and be cliche and make overpowered OCs. Let them have their anthropomorphic animal OCs. Let them try everything before they settle into maturity.
i started writing original fiction because of a comment i got on a house md fic i wrote when i was 12 years old. someone said “this is out of character, house and wilson would never act like this.” so i thought, “if i make my own characters, no one can ever tell me they’re out of character, because i decide,” and i started planning my first novel. now i’m 23 and i’ve written 4 novel-length works, i have a degree in publishing and i work at a literary magazine, largely because someone insulted my house fanfiction. follow your dreams.
