The Brothers Tora: A Tainted Legacy
Only the second post and I'm already waxing nostalgic. Is that a bad sign?
Publish Date - July 7th, 2025
Uh...Hi! How you doing? Been a while since I updated this space, eh? What can I say. This year has been ROUGH, but I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. But I'm here with some more words to share with you! Yes, YOU!
Anyhow...You never forget your first. That's what they say, right? You never forget your first kiss, your first dance, your first triple bypass heart surgery, etc. It's the kind of schmaltzy crap I don't really buy into, but I can't lie. I certainly do remember a lot of my firsts. Including one which brings a lot of heavy, conflicted memories back to the surface.
My first OCs...Yes. Really.
I know I'm kinda overselling it already, especially considering that talk about original characters shouldn't be so overtly dramatic, but my first OCs went down like a sack of bricks and I can't look back on the good times with them without remembering the bad. So as a sort of trauma therapy, I'm going to tell you about the minorly sized rise and meteor like fall of my first OCs: The Brothers Tora.
Albeit with one small caveat: I'm going to be super vague with my wording.
I make no bones about it, I don't want anyone to find the old blogs out of embarrassment, and the baggage these two bring with being the first OCs. That's for me to nostalgically look back with conflicted feelings and for you to never see. But you might be able to eek out a few minor detail here and there if you pay attention to some of the clues.
So without further adue, let's begin.
Part 1: It Begins
I didn't know how I could visualize late 2012/early 2013, but posting the old Tumblr look felt appropriate
The Brothers Tora began all the way back in late 2012. A better time debatably, as I was a younger man taking his first steps into the world of post high school education. Aka, community college. I was eager and full of energy waiting to take on the world. And it just so happened that at the time a movie was coming out that I was super excited for! A movie that featured one of my major interests in the spotlight! So much so that I was discovering real online fandom for the first time. I was engaging with fandom based roleplay on Tumblr!
Don't laugh, it was the style at the time.
"In those days, the like/reblog/link buttons where at the top of the post! And clicking on someone's blog would actually take you to their blog and not some shitty pop-up!"
Unlike my friends and other contemporaries, I never really did forums or anything like that. The most was using Deviantart long before it became a garbage can full of AI slop garbage, but even then I mostly just lurked. And the times that I did do forums was to get music from games that hadn't been uploaded to YouTube yet (ffshrine anyone?). So I was fairly new to it all, but so was everyone else in this small circle of folks. Things were really loose, but cozy. But one thing that caught my eye was the sudden rise of a small sub-fandom within the community. Something that sparked a light in my head that made me want to make something new. Something original. Something to hang my hat on and call my own. Something that would let me flex my esoteric knowledge about arcade gaming and the weirdness that used to come with unlockable characters that really didn't fit in places they shouldn't have been.
This was when I made my first OCs: The Brothers Tora, Light and Ray
"Thank You Heroforge For Making Them Look Presentable!"
Armed with nothing but a shitty art program and a sprite sheet of Billy and Jimmy Lee from Double Dragon Advance (as well as some Scott Pilgrim sprite edits I've lost to the sands of time), I made my first ever characters! Characters who were coincidentally just knock offs of Billy and Jimmy who were hidden away in a fake video game as ill-fitting guest characters!
Yeah. They did not fit the fandom AT ALL, but surprisingly things went pretty smooth at first. Again I owe this to everyone being new on the scene so no one really had any RP experience, but the Brothers were on the inside for the first few months! I was nowhere near the top of this micro-fandom food chain, but I was able to rub shoulders with some of the top brass! Even got some cool art from one of the bigs!
But all good things must come to a close. And for the Brothers...It was more like a total meltdown. Because it was.
Not...my best moment...
2. Eric Fucks It All Up
I'm not entirely sure if this works towards my metaphor, but damn if I didn't feel like this at the time.
Since I was busy with college at the time, I would usually go a few days without logging on to the blog to check up on things. This meant I usually missed a lot of things, including this big multi blog story about Missingno from Pokemon causing havoc and one of the bigs had to do this thing with their character and it was a whole thing. Schlocky in hindsight, but man did it seem like a gas.
But it was missing out on one of these that really broke the camel's back. And boy is it really embarrassing to look back now.
During one of my many absences, everyone from the top brass to the bottom boards got involved in an elaborate AU (alternate universe for the uninitiated) that seemingly had a spot for everyone! Everyone but Light and Ray.
And I didn't take it well.
Immediately I went into a full rage quit, giving out to everyone who forgot I existed despite my continued presence in the community. I felt so damn betrayed. And this was coming right off everyone getting excited for an AU of my own about everyone being detectives and gangsters, which some people even made sideblogs for! That meant something if folks were willing to do that!
Needless to say my acting like a child did not go over well, and everyone began to unfollow me en masse. The Brothers Tora had their time in the spotlight, but it wasn't meant to last. The community continued without me, leaving me to RP with blogs who had even less experience with talking to people.
There stands a broken man...
I still kept on the blog for a while and I was even able to reform a friendship with one or two folks, but eventually I had to move on. The damage was done and the fandom was a ghost of itself. That tends to happen when your micro-niche sub-community within a fandom was centered around a single movie and you kinda had to make up lore to keep up appearances. Not to mention that at the time I was developing another fandom OC who would later bloom into Tiago, but that's a story for another time.
I secretly had hoped to do some big, climatic send off with whoever was still around, but it was more in the style to just log off and move on. So I signed out for the final time and never looked back.
3. Lessons Learned
Really scrapping the bottom of the barrel for visual metaphors if I have to use imagery from games I don't play.
We jump to nowadays. The scene the Brothers were a part of is long dead. The much larger fandom itself was also pretty dead following a pretty middling sequel that I liked but will still admit that it's vastly inferior to the original. I myself am still making OCs and full on stories even (albeit at a snail's pace), but I still look back at those days with some fondness, warts and all. The Brothers were far from perfect, but you always remember your first. Besides, I'm someone who recycles old OCs ALL THE TIME! Surely I could give The Brothers another chance, right?
Well...Not this time.
It's not that I couldn't do it, it's more so they're representative of a snapshot in my life that doesn't need to be touched upon again. The Brothers had their time and that's all they needed. Plus I don't really have room for a pair of Double Dragon knock offs when my rosters are filled plenty with various fandom expies (mainly Homestuck if you can believe it).
But hey, anything can happen. Maybe one day I'll revive the Brothers for a one off thing and that'll be that. Who knows?
Join my next Drabble for the story concept I had to take out back with a shotgun because idiots on on the internet can't read the fucking room: Ring Rabbit - Or "Don't Post About Your ladies MMA Story on Deviantart!”
Also while you're here, why not leave a nice little message in the Guestbook? Maybe you guys could tell me about your own embarrassing OC moments?