#oughhghhhhhh

Follow-up: what about them captures your attention so much?

EASY QUESTION YEAH. Yeah. Yes. I do. My yeehaw ocs. They're spinning around in my brain like it's a particle accelerator in here God Damn

I love my wild weast ocs so much its unreal. I'd always been at least a little interested in classic wild west stories and that sort of aesthetic because I grew up around it (coughs. southern californian) so I was bound to make ocs based on that interest one day. For my yeehaws though I ended up making them during like. The perfect time in my life to hyperfixate on them forever AGSHDH... I was deep into my first playthrough of RDR2, I was super invested in my field of study at university but still had enough free time to be creative, I'd just gone on a bit of a spaghetti western binge, and to top it all off I was starting up field school work excavating a historic "wild west era" (late 1800s) property. I got like... a LOT of education injected into my brain on the time period, the history of the land and its people, the developing culture, etc. It all came to a head when I decided to incorporate and use all that knowledge as inspiration for a cowboy dnd character for a one shot!

The second i finished my first drawing of them it was OVER FOR ME... I ended up expanding the world and adding more fantasy elements and added more characters to fill everything out, until I had basically created my own setting/universe to play dolls in. I made an unreal amount of art for my blorbos lmao... I made comics. I never have that kind of energy but I made comics... I'd do anything to go back to that era where I had the kind of time and inspiration to stay up until 3 am doing that lol

I guess what captures my attention about them the most is the fact that they're like... wholly mine, if that makes sense? Like they're not based on anything besides the whispers of classic fantasy/dnd elements and just 1800's western history. Everything else came from me.. I have my own lore for their world, I made up my own history and got super deep into the worldbuilding, and I got to put every ounce of my personal interests and personality into these guys. I gave them relationships and personalities that made for interesting dynamics, I think about how they'd grow and change and react to certain situations endlessly, and they give me the opportunity to continue researching and learning about a period of history that fascinates me and is relevant to my career as an archaeologist. Idk, they feel like a love letter to myself and they make me so extremely happy!