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titleknown · 7 years ago

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Tips On Making Fan OCs For the TITLEWave Setting

So, in the thinkworks for a while, here’s a few tips for making fan OCs for my own completely-open TITLEWave setting!

Because only Mortharris has done it, and I’m egotistical enough to want more! And also because I couldn’t think of a good drawing for a drabble this week...

LETZ DO THIS! PAST THE BREAK!

Post-Post Cyberpunk- A good quote summarizing the morality of the setting is “THIS STORY IS DEDICATED TO ALL THOSE CYBERPUNKS WHO FIGHT AGAINST INJUSTICE AND CORRUPTION EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES!”

It abandons the capitalism-kowtowing of post-Cyberpunk for the anti-corporate rage of cyberpunk-classic, while keeping its idealism and often pro-transhumanism. It’s a world dominated by vast; vile systems, megacorporations engaging in regulatory capture to an extreme extent if they aren’t running their own almost feudally-organized states themselves; but with people fighting against it tooth and nail every day of their lives, and with a possibility for them to win even; rather than the hopeless bleakness of classic Cyberpunk

Though it pastiches a lot of earlier media, this is a story for our times, where there is great evil, but those under its power must do everything to resist and bite. It’s angry at a cruel world, but hopeful of building a better one.

A Wonderland Of Color- If you like muted colors and greys and browns… Well A) You are everything I hate about the dominant cultural aesthetic these days but B) TITLEWave is very definitely not the setting for you. TITLEWave’s aesthetics are about bright; fry-your-eyes-out neon colors, with lots of contrast between darkness and light. It should be like pretty much any synthave album cover.

Tropey as Fuck!- While not directly derivative, the characters/designs should feel like they fit in with the aesthetic they’re pastiching, which is basically 80s pop culture; particularly of the bombastic urban-set kind. From cult classics like Streets of Fire and The Last Dragon, to the B-Movies of Charles Band, Roger Corman and Golam/Globus from this era to the wild and wacky games of this era before aesthetic pretentions towards relevance ruined the medium’s aesthetics, there’s a vast pool to draw inspiration from!

The barrier of eras isn’t the most rigid though; as there are quite a few aesthetics that fit comfortably there too. 90s anime before otaku and moe aesthetics ruined everything and the comically-grimdark McFarlane toys/90s antihero excesses for example fit well, and with a bit of tweaking (namely replacing the cynicism with earnestness) I could even see some stuff like mid-2000s-Hot-Topic-core in there! So go with whatever fits; but that core is still living in the Eighties!

Setting Fundamentals 101- And now for the nittiest of grittiest parts. While the setting’s worldbuilding is a bit loose (As befits an open setting like this) there are a few things definitely there. So many things are controlled by global megacorporations that they tend to be the main villains at the highest point on the chain; either that or those deranged-idealist billionaires who’ve gotten their money from such or the aspiring punks and creeps (Think Macheath from the Threeepenny Opera or any 80s gangleader villain) who want to be them.

Robotics and bio-engineering technology are incredibly advanced; allowing for a wide degree of strange creatures and machinesscattered throughout society to go rogue; and even more bizarre things emerging from the castoffs of those things. Robots are more-or-less mostly sentient or emergently-sentient but also treated about akin to how Droids are in Star Wars, IE treated as people until it is no longer convenient. And even then they had to fight hard to get it to that point and it is always in danger of backsliding.

There’s a shocking amount of genetic mutation amongst the populace; both human and animal; both due to all that biotech being misplaced and nasty; subtle efforts at “biosocial engineering” from said megacorps, and a lot of the treatment thereof is roughly similar to the ableism of today (Tho regular garden-variety ableism still exists, along with new and exciting forms of the other -isms).

Humanity has a few space colonies; mostly Lunar and Martian; but they haven’t discovered FTL yet. But there are quite a few aliens who’ve made contact; but they tend to stay relatively aloof from our affairs; either using us as a “backwoods” where they can operate on whatever freely or trying to work on their various agendas in the shadows.

There are supernatural elements and no active masquerade, but they are subtle and well hidden; but awe-inspiring and huge when they do go off. Think Ghostbusters; The Last Dragon; Big Trouble In Little China, ect.

Open Your Heart, Open Your Source- Lastly, two big points. While these are basic guidelines, I will forever say that some of the best concepts come from the things most resonant with you; the creator. So; I’d recommend not just slavishly following these tips, but also make sure to keep a little of yourself in there as well, even if it means binding things a little.

I know I sure did when I created this setting. And, relating to that, while it’s no means a requirement, it’d be nice if you’d put your additions to the setting under the same sort of vanilla no-frills CC-BY label, to give a little back to this pool you draw from...

But yeah, that’s my advice. If you want more clarification, feel free to ask, and I may add my answers to this!

And, if you want to support me in these endeavors and more, consider being a Patreon sponsor!

I got a few doozies in the works that you’re only gonna get a first look at there with even a dollar’s worth of sponsorship, and great spoils for those tiers above...

#TITLEWave #open source characters #character advice #my writing #writing advice

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