hey everyone. so this is my problem right now. i haven't really written much for a very long time, and there are no ideas flowing through me for my pets. like, at all. ayahuasca is going back to galactic asap and i'm thinking i'll do something along the lines of other worldly and enlightened states, according to his name. something like that. osiria, something with roses? she's names after the osiria rose. ellery i definitely want to be harvest. the rest are just names i liked and i have compiled a lot of my favorite colors (on my profile) but i'm not going to really go for anything until i have a theme/personality for my pet yet. what are some things you all do to feel inspired when it comes to starting from scratch with a pet, let alone 7? what helps get your brain flowing? where do you start and build from? i haven't done this here in years.

Hah I'm kind of in a similar boat, in that I have several blank pets. Plenty of my pets have characters, but of my 66 pets, about five or six of them are basically just names that I impulsively decided to get and have virtually no character.

I'm not sure how much help this will be, but.. there are several ways I might hit upon a character idea. Sometimes something will click with the name or pet -- like when I adopted Evyline. I saw her in the pound as a dawn malticorn, saw that she had very slightly above stats, and pretty much said to myself, "Oh my god, she's totally a secret badass" and adopted her. I like to think she's developed a little more as a character since then, but her main concept is still being a girly badass! Sometimes I'll look at a pet I want and just go off the "feel" the pet gives me: my spectrum hipottu is an artist, my chibi kumos is very good at playing up her innocent looks, my galactic pets tend to be magical, my mallarchy is an adorable dork, etc.

I pretty frequently get inspired by media. Skyrim and Oblivion have given me a ton of inspiration (I often listen to the Skyrim OST and look at screenshots when trying to brainstorm for medieval-y characters, and I like to make my OCs in the game and see if I can draw inspiration from how I play them c: ), and I've also gotten ideas for characters from characters in the media that I'm intrigued by. Like, for example... there's a character in a manga I used to read who is basically a mass murderer and expresses regret in a way that feels self-centered (making it about his feelings rather than the people he killed); he's remorseful, but makes it about him. I wanted to play with that kind of selfishness in a character so I made a character whose key trait was that she was a monster more concerned with how hard it is on her to have to kill people, rather than the actual lives of those people.. though she somehow got kind of away from me and ended up basically a sociopath. :') Whoops. But inspiration from media can be a good starting point if you find a concept that you want to play with haha. Howeverrr, everything kind of depends on what sort of characters you're making? Like, I pretty much make characters for three different settings (plus Pokémon fancharacters, because I am extra cool :'D) and all of them are humanoid at least most of the time, so I always have a pretty solid place to start, I guess.

I'd be happy to listen if you want to try brainstorming! c: Your pets are really nice, I hope you're able to figure out characters for them.

i usually go by names, and if there's a particular color/species i want, i try and make something work from there. for example, i found veranda in the pound, the name made me think of tea parties, i also like sweetheart pets and i love the expression of the sweetheart legeica so i thought, ok, how about a cute little pink unicorn who throws tea parties?

sometimes i actually get more inspired by the desire to collect certain items for a tc - for example, i started collecting diner/deli items and realized i could use them as a tc for a pet. but which one? i looked through my pets that i didn't have ideas for and thought Maeby sounded like she could be a waitress at a diner. from there, the idea of her character and story came about pretty naturally.

so maybe ayahuasca could be a guiding spirit, or something along those lines, and you could write about what he does - does he have reasons for doing what he does? does he like it? dislike it? how long has he been doing it? is it something he was tasked with, or has he chosen this life for himself? idk just one idea.

osiria, maybe she's a gardener/horticulturist/botanist. you could write about her studying flowers, maybe trying to reach some sort of scientific breakthrough; or you could write about her as a gardener, cultivating her flowers; maybe something interesting happens in her garden. again, there's plenty more directions this could go.

so, yeah, there's a lot of different ways to come up with ideas. oftentimes just the smallest thought can be expanded into a bigger idea for a character and a story.

angels! just angels!

yeahh that definitely makes sense and it mostly where i'm getting the ideas from. and like...i'm totally inspired right now about making some or one of them into an incarnation or resemblance of an interesting character from a game i play. i dig that. and lea i definitely think i should go the route of coloring them to my favorite pet colors and working from there. osiria is named after the osiria rose, which has a very distinct look and flavor to it. but like, "osiria rose" also sounds like a bad ass name? but i'm not finding any direction to that. a horticulturalist or botanist hits close to home too, i'm very into that stuff. i can see something even deeper playing in, at least in her mind, about life and death. i want selin to be an experiment and i'll stop when i get one i REALLY love. then i can go from there.. i kinda feel like he might be bad tho. ?? annalie has to be a a sweet little thing. but then again i love even the most pure of creatures to have a bad side. i'm digging the ideas for ayahuasca. i mean, what would make the most sense would be all of that but he is an ayahuasca shaman, which is the main guiding spirit for other people experiencing ayahuasca. he could just be the embodiment of it. i know a lot about it. astrielle, something about stars. denys i have a vague story for, his name means a follower of dionysus, the god of wine. so... i'm going to let him be an outlet for drinking tendencies, too, haha. but like.. what if hes like truly religious about it? i'm training him, too. no one else as of now. mesha is aries in indian astrology. so, reborn devonti or sheeta. aries is the god of war.

thats all i got about now

I find that having my pets support each other in stories is helpful. I also try to make them each have a different "cultural" theme. I also like associating them with different fairy tales or character tropes. One pair is British (general folklore, prophet), another based on Scottish and Icelandic folklore (selkies as whales, Treasure Island), one pair is supposed to be Cajun/Southern (Beauty and the Beast, Persephone/Hades), one is Russian (Agamemnon, Ex Machina), one is Japanese (kitsune, some legend I read as a child), one fantasy/medieval (King Arthur, Robin Hood), one based off the book I am writing, one hipster/pagan, and another is Italian/Godfather-y. There's a group of three that are very a la Arabian Nights, and a lone guy for Greek stuff. The last four pets are just tributes for my favorite books (Lolita and Deathless), where I grew up, and my hobby (tea collection).

None of them really have any story on their profile, but I enjoy creating HAs that match their pet color and filling their treasures with aesthetically appropriate items, so that's mostly what I've done so far.

I think you just need to consider what kind of character you like, then try and spin that with a name and pet color, try filling their treasures with 20 to 30 items that "look" like that image, see what comes up. If you're into HA building, try that too. When I have an HA that fits the person and the color well, the pet really begins to take shape for me. (:

another angel. <3 i am currently coloring all my pets and slowly starting to formulate a short story about them. do i need to buy there HA wearables? or is it appropriate to screenshot in the wardrobe? i have an idea of what my pets will be...even concrete character ideas. but i..i'm not finding a way to formulate these things, even though i know i'm capable of it. do you think it might just take time and motivation? i'm sort of using this as a way to be back to the writer i used to be. mesha. another word for aries. a devonti (ram) but has turned cold. something significant can come of that. denys is a follower Dionysius, but an alcoholic, in a religious way, but still entirely irresponsible, making excuses. astrielle.. stargazer. lives for stars. zapping to get more insight. sumaya will be a reborn noktoa. no ideas as of yet. osiria: botanist, horticulture, etc as mentioned above, but with a deep-seated heart-felt and ethereal sense of life and death. ZERO ideas for ellery. annalie. sweetheart. pleasant meadow. but is there a bad side? ayahuasca, an ayahuasca shaman. doing research to find more deep meaning, than it ilready is. i want a twist, maybe.

You do not need to buy the wearables. I just apply the Whiteout item for a white background and then screenshot. If you have a MacBook, you will need to resize it in Paintbrush because it's twice as large as it says it will be when you copy that part of the screen, but it's easy to do. (:

Your ideas sounds really good so far! A big hurdle is probably how you want to structure their stories, or if you just want their page to be a description of them, you know?

This is a little unrelated, but I decided last month that I want to write a book by the end of the year, because that is what I went to college for and I feel like I haven't accomplished anything in my life. (Kind of gloomy, but... I don't really think I am healthy enough for children or marriage, and everyone in my family treats that as a huge life event, so I might as well show them up and do something I've been saying I would since I was a kid, right?) At first it was really freaking hard to write everyday, but after a few weeks, it became easier to force myself to sit down at the time that had the most creativity (unfortunately midnight to 2am) and just write. Currently at 13,000 words, but everyday I have written at least SOMETHING, which is more than I can say about myself after I stopped receiving school assignments, haha.

I think that, if this is something you really want to do, you might want to try and make yourself accountable to someone. I keep a spreadsheet with my progress and report to my close friend almost every day with my word counter, and I also report to her when I finish a Pet Treasure or a HA, or when I paint a pet, or really anything I do here. Feel free to sMail me if you want to talk more in detail about anything you're planning, and I will try my best to help!

Whoops, double post!

what you said about writing is really inspiring. i haven't really accomplished anything /considered/ meaningful in society, and i am not healthy enough for marriage or kids either. thank you for sharing that with me. i could use this as a platform to get back into writing.

still, i have vague ideas, and i'm still not getting anywhere. i've been mostly just making sP and finishing all my pets physically. idk

Sometimes I find it really hard to find inspiration, too! And when I do I get inspired by the weirdest things c: With one of my pets the inspiration came through my love for this item: which just made me want to have a pet that makes cute animal shaped foods. Other pets are based on real life things from objects and animals to my own interests. And sometimes I just make a HA that I love so much that I just have to come up with a story for it. But I think just looking at different pets and colors can help inspiration, too. And sometimes it helps to do someting completely different like playing a game or doing everyday stuff c:

If you only have vague ideas I find it best to talk with a friend about them. It might even help to just write it down and suddenly the idea might refine itself!

i'm trying to start with treasure chests to help but i dont even know all the items that would be good for that? idk how people come up with those all so well

is anyone here willing to help me through the writing process? like i really would need some guidance because it's been so long since i've written and i have some ideas but i can not figure out hoe to execute them so if anyone has any tips or can walk me through it a little it'd be amazing