Young Writers Society

I change my avatars a lot. It usually changes depending on what fandoms I'm into, but sometimes it's based on my mood as well - if I'm in a more productive, eager mood for a few days, I'll might change it to a cute and simple anime character. If I'm a more serious mood and less active on the site for whatever reason, I might pick a more serious mood. Sometimes it's none of the above. My avatar at the time of this post is a fandom-related one, but it's mainly for the holidays.

And, most of the time, my avatars come from icon posts over on Tumblr.

But I know that everyone's experiences with their avatars differ, so I have a question for the site: how do you pick new avatars?

I rarely pick new ones

But when I do I usually feature some characters I'm fond of like Sheeta for instance. Last time I swapped to Snow White from my initial hummingbird because of a Disney team we had!

Maybe I should swap my avatar to something...the question is what?

When I look for a new avatar, I think of the avatar I want, say a cat avatar then I put into the search engine in something like ''silver cat in grass wallpapers'', search through the images that come up until a find a wallpaper I like and save it on my computer to use for my avie.
Simple.

The last time I changed my avatar for pride month, I looked up “bisexual owls” and got a cute owl in the bisexual pride flag colors. Otherwise, why mess with perfection?

I don't change my avatar too often - had one of the anime-looking characters from the big database YWS gives, I think I had like a husky icon, then of course, had a gray cat for a while until my most recent one.

My avatars usually involve a wave of inspiration, coming from either a wanting to look through cute pictures, or that I find something I like and just keep it for as long as I can, haha.

I usually do it according to my moooood, like my sister.

Since I've been pretty hyped nowadays, it's stayed Punk-Rapunzel. It miiiight change to a bunny sometime in the future - but you never know!

I don't have 2020 vision.

But yeah, depends on my mood!

Oh great forum thread! I'm enjoying learning how everyone chooses their own avatars.

My very first avatar on YWS was something I made in microsoft paint -


Isn't it adorable?

Then I kept it as that one for quite a while, maybe a year or two? - and then started making ones that were similar with different versions of capital "A" and "alliyah" generally with a red/black/white color scheme; red's my favorite color, so that's the reasoning behind that. I didn't add any other colors until I'd been on YWS for several years - because I really liked the consistency.

Then I think I finally changed the color scheme when we had the username color changes for the Faction Wars April fools day event, and then for RevMo too.

I really enjoy making different avatars while keeping the same sort of theme with a little twist and save all my old ones - I try not to change it too often but recently it seems like I change it at least once a month. I do always tend to change it at least for holidays & whenever my username color changes to coordinate my avatar.

So far I've never used an avatar that isn't an "A" with "alliyah" somewhere in the background - though I've occasionally added hats, pumpkins, and other decorations. (Edit: an exception was one year I believe I had @captainjack's avatar for April Fools Day)

Even though some of my oldest avatars are maybe not quite as interesting as some of my newer ones I still like throwing those in sometimes because they're kind of nostalgic. Some of my favorites are my mostly red ones and also a few dark cyan ones - also the "A" that has the birthday hat!

I've had my avatar for five years. Before that it was the same avatar for two years but without the hat. When I have to pick an avatar I usually pick a character that reminds me of something good, so that whenever I log on that's the feeling I remember.

I think one of the reasons I'm so fond of my Squid avatar is because it was made for me by @Fortis (who one day will get tired of me tagging them in conversations about my Avatar), and every time I see it I'm reminded of the playfulness and companionship I associate with some of my oldest friends on YWS, and I've never had reason to change it.

@alliyah I've always had a particular fondness for your capital A avatars.

I will never get tired of that, @Tenyo 😊
I've had mine for a long time, but before that it would be the same bacteriophage but dressed up for different seasons/holidays. I've just been too lazy to change it tbh.
The reason why I picked the phage in the first place, way back in like 2013 or 2014 is because I remembered a picture of a phage or a cell in one of my bio textbooks that I really liked and I thought it looked so cool. didn't find that, but I did find this picture and it's been my trademark since then, going through different photoshop versions, but rarely ever changing. One year I did have doug from Up as my avvie for halloween since all the mods were "dressing up" and another time I changed mine to Rydia's avvie for april fools day where staff pretended to be each other

I'm also somebody who rarely changes avatars. Once I find a good image that works with my account, I'm inclined to stick with it. (When I say "works with my account," I mean a picture that somehow just perfectly suits my username and the essence of me as a person. Which is a lot to ask from one small image, I know, but sometimes it happens!)

Back when I was really active on here, I had an avatar that was kind of my signature picture. Old-timers may have a foggy recollection of it—it was a photo of me: just a close-up of my face, with an aloof expression, and my chin resting on my hand. I pretty much always had that as my avatar. I would change it up every now and again, for brief periods, but always reverted back to my standard. It became so synonymous with my account that I'd get a ton of comments any time I changed it, and even more comments whenever I changed it back (y'know, lots of "the classic avatar has returned!" or some variation thereof, posted on my wall ad nauseam).

Now that I'm older and wiser, I don't use pictures of myself as avatars anymore. Instead, I usually go for character images that 1. capture my essence in some ineffable way, and 2. weren't created by some random artist on DeviantArt (I don't like to steal art so I always try to find official character art or concept art from Disney, Pixar, et al). My current avatar is a piece of concept art that was made for Tangled: an early version of Rapunzel's design. I love it to death—it's beautifully rendered, and I think it fits my account perfectly. (Also, it kinda looks like me?) I plan on keeping this picture as my YWS avatar for all eternity.*

*I say that now but don't hold me to it.

Update: Andddd I changed it. XD

It is a truth universally acknowledged that changing your avatar is boorish, uncouth, and tremendously gauche in civilized cybersociety.

↑ Truer words have never been spoken so beautifully.

In all seriousness though, conceptualizing, mostly!
I have a team of characters and symbols I like to use to represent something I want to do or remind myself that I'm supposed to be: so, basically, I require masks to properly remind myself of my own actual identity, then project it.

One time, I had this group of twelve characters called the Temporal Machine Gods, or Jikaishins for short. Every month, I cycled through one of them so that they'd each represent a monthly task I wanted to launch myself towards finishing; and because they all had similar getups, it sometimes took a while for people to even realize that I had changed avatar several times. It was fun while it lasted.

When I don't do that, I just cycle through my favorite characters and symbols.