Eee! I've always wanted an excuse to just talk about Thirty!

...Self-centeredness aside, I really love hearing about other people's AEs and why they were made/sprang into existence. It's interesting, awesome, and also a little puzzling. My own story of how Narrator Thirty-Three was made begins differently than others.

I was at a voice lesson, preparing to audition for Into The Woods Jr. My voice...teacher person? was helping me with the audition. She was talking about the narrator when she mentioned a piece of advice she had given the narrator of a Joseph she had directed. 

It was that the narrator is every character. 

Months later, I remembered that advice (no, I don't remember why) while I was browsing the CB. I had been seeing so many AE threads, and it just clicked--that was my AE.

Thirty has become the part of me that secretly (emphasis on secretly) imitates Rapunzel when she's by herself, and lives for a story. She is immature and crazy about books. However, her personality reflects a stiffer, more mature person (though she is easily offended and wild) that I cannot find. 

She is the little girl I was and the woman I have seen in strangers.

Thanks, *insert voice teachers name here*. You'll probably never know you inspired a part of  me--it would be too hard to explain to you. You still inspire me. 

When I first created my AEs, I was fairly new to the Chatterbox. Hailey came first. She's a special case. While Harper and Ace are solely confined to the CB, Hailey's kind of always there for me, and she has been for a while. When I was younger, I used to talk to myself all the time. I gave the voices names and personalities. Then, a few years ago, I did the same thing to the voice I talked to most frequently. She became Hailey, and since then, she's grown and helped me through a lot (here's the part where I realize I sound insane). So, when I leaned what an AE was, she instantly popped into my head. I thought, let's put her down in writing, give her an image and let other people hear her. And, for the most part, it worked. But recently, I've been finding that she hasn't really been growing as an AE. My Hailey has developed and grown into a more mature version of myself, one that I still talk to and go to for help (again, I sound crazy), but AE Hailey has been stuck in the same personality for her entire period of time on the CB. She's never really developed or become anything more than crazy and immature. That's why she may be leaving soon.

Harper came from a character that was created and existed in multiple stories, but never really had a personality. When my friends and I were younger, we used to play make believe all the time. That was what gave me the inspiration for some of my first stories. I would take the characters we made up and put them into my writing. One of the names we chose was Harper Grace. I loved this name, so I took it, put it into a short story, and forgot about it. Years later, I was looking through old stories, and found the short story containing Harper Grace. It was a terrible story, but I still loved Harper Grace, so I moved her into a new story that I was writing at the time, this time as the main character. I was working on this story when I created my AE Harper. I took the character from my stories, and a bit of my shy side, and combined them into one person. Thus, Harper was born.

Ace was never really meant to be anything. I created him to be my fun AE, the one who was always up for an adventure, but didn't really have a personality. His name came from playing cards, because I've always like card games. That was it, really. But he surprised me by being my only AE to ever really grow. He changed to be mature, goofy, and somewhat insecure. He now has a distinct, recognizable voice, which is more than I can say for the other two. I've been working on developing a new AE, who may replace Hailey and/or Harper. Ace, to my surprise, will be the one staying.

That was surprisingly enjoyable. I also liked reading about everyone else's experiences with AEs. Good question, Viola?.

Ocean Song is like Ace. She came out of nowhere, and has nothing to do with me. She's mainly a warrior with a heart. *Shrugs* She is what I admire.

Using Alizarine's catagory system I have one chunk and one separate character. Counter's the chunk; he's the painfully shy, awkward side of me. I think this is also why he was difficult to develop, as one 'facet' of a personality can't be a whole character. I had to figure out a way to change him into a fully fledged person because as an embodiment of shyness he simply wasn't interesting. I ended with him as somewhat awkward, but patient, funny, and kindhearted. He's still not entirely developed, but I think it'll be easier once he has some interactions with other AEs. (If anyone wants to be Counter's friend, please do so!)

Eris is an entirely separate character. I drew this girl with a really awesome metal leg and thought that she looked like she had a lot of personality that I wanted to look into. The best characters always kind of spring up fully formed, for me. I get a name or a face or something and the rest quickly follows. 

My AE, 0ink is the crazy, extroverted side of me that enjoys running around in circles while flapping my arms and screaming, and is comfortable expressing their lack of a specific gender. They are a side of me that only really emerges when I'm super tired or super sugar high. 0ink is the part of my personality which in the real world I only express with my friends. 

and unlike most CBers, I only have one AE, because my online persona is more like an AE than what I'm like in real life. Perhaps I should develop another AE who reflects my creative, artistic, optimistic side. We'll see how that goes.