Something that we've been wanting to talk about (especially 💜Ayla), is just how...odd, writing and creating characters feels when mixed with the fact that we are, indeed, plural. It isn't really anything Huge or Major, but we're a bit curious if anyone else has the experience as well.
Very often, we'll listen to a selection of songs or see a picture or otherwise get some kind of inspiration and think, "Oh, this could be a character for X story!". The story doesn't have to be particularly long or epic, it could just be a short story involving this or that, something more to spark some interest in a topic than actually do a whole creative effort. But, occasionally, this blooms more into just - wanting to Create The World, to really try and understand and make something that feels almost tangible. Wanting to delve into the psyche of characters to be able to write them in a way that "makes sense", I suppose; rather than just going off the cuff, there's an effort to actively understand and interpret these things.
For some characters, it goes about as far as that; what would they think, do, say, ect. in X or Y situation, and perhaps what might lead someone like that to make those decisions. An effort to explain, even if not to the actual viewer, the whys and wheres. Keep the character ~consistent~, yeah? But for some, this kind of spirals into a weird gray area that I'm not super sure about!
Some characters, a (currently) fairly small number, sort of develop into quasi-personalities? Almost like a constructed headspace that has it's own little box in my head; this doesn't happen often, but when it does, those types of characters tend to just stay for a while. Make some metaphorical room and kick up their hypothetical feet while I continue to muse on their identity and personality. Some of them end up going away after a while, either because the story stops development or just because, dunno, things fall out of place. But some, just...Stick, I suppose. They don't quite reach the realm of, "Hi yeah I'm Real and I would like to front and stuff", but it's more like a virtual machine running in the background that just kinda exists in the idle - not by sincere conscious effort one way or the other, but just a kind of stasis until I need to query the idea of them.
I've had at least one person tell me that this isn't all that strange, and I've no reason to disbelieve them, but still. It's an interesting thing that embracing plurality has made that tentative middle ground a little more questionable.