I tried to make most characters in UnNatural gave you enough info to paint a picture but still allow the reader to insert how they fully look.
I really enjoyed the first art competition I did a few years ago now it gave me a chance to see how others see my characters.
I kind of don’t imagine characters, with my aphantasia, but I still use physical descriptors in order to place them a lot of the time. I don’t have my own images of them at all. I frequently get completely lost in the narrative when all I have to go on is a name. Very salient personality descriptors can help too though. So my thought process is more, e.g. “the guy with red hair is the one firing the gun,” or “the rude energetic woman is talking,” not “Alex is eating a bagel.” I already know Alex is eating a bagel; the text says that. It doesn’t help me place the scenario unless I can describe Alex.
I’ll admit I’m a bit guilty of this.
While personally, I take some care crafting a character’s appearance (often adding hints to their background in it), I’m not the best at keeping in mind descriptions in other people’s stories unless it is brought up often.
I think someone brought this up above, but for many of my first runs in Wayhaven, I’d actually imagined Farah as white, or at least olive-skinned, not as a ful PoC as she was designed to be. And I understand that may be a tad insensitive, and I swear my intent isn’t to whitewash any character, but it remains a bit of a struggle to reconcile my original perception of her and what the author designed her to be.
Another game I actually had a similar issue with, or well, series I guess, was Cataphrak’s Dragoon Saga. In it, the PC’s country is inhabited by PoC, since they’re mostly meant to represent people of Northern Africa, the Middle East, and a bit of Central Asia. While I’m glad that’s the case – it’s very nice to play a game where I can roleplay a person of color and not feel like the outcast or the minority-- it still contrasted a decent bit with what I first imagined the citizenry to be.
Personally, as an aspiring author, I don’t think I mind some changes being done to my characters in order to have them fit better for your headcanon, but I think I’d draw the line seriously at anyone attempting to tell me to change them, or posting in my threads and acting like their perceptions are the canon ones. I don’t know how I’d feel seeing fanart of a white Seeker or Nova, either, both characters in my work that I’ve gone on record as being PoC (North African for the former, Latino for the latter).
Nah, not at all weird! I do the same thing, for many of the same reasons. I actually tend to use commissioning artwork as a crutch, whenever my motivation is running low. Getting art of my favorite characters done always gets me pumped and in the mood for some serious writing. It’s a great feeling, even if my wallet often disagrees.
No I have not, I like learning about the characters that the author made, and interacting with them. I am reading to make my decisions, and play myself, I can’t control peoples hair/skin color and what I’ll politely call “other features.”
(This logic also applies to locked ROs in the context of a sub plot but that’s another discussion.)
I can control my actions and that’s all I want to do and a few other things that can let me be me, usually my sex and whatever other details the author deems important enough to ask like skin tone/clothes/background. I want to make the choices that the MC could make, not have the world bend to the whims of someone who is otherwise ordinary.
Now this is not to say I fault anyone for doing this, I understand why, most pure romance is for escapism, just not something I do when I play through romantic sub plots.
Out of curiosity, if you don’t mind me asking: If you can’t “see” the ROs, how does attraction work for you? When choosing which romance to pursue, do you go by personality only or do you sometimes compare them to real people you found attractive (and were able to see) to help you make up your mind? For example, if the text says a RO has black hair and green eyes, would it be more likely for you to choose them if there was someone in real life with those traits who was physically appealing to you?
Haha you explain it better than I could. That’s exactly it. glad to know that I’m not alone 
I’m actually cupioromantic, which is a subtype of aromantic. I don’t feel romantic attraction but do want a romantic relationship. There are certain personality traits that are ideal for me in a relationship, but as far as attraction goes, it’s purely physical for me.
I have almost no visual imagination and a facial recognition impairment, so basically I don’t visualize the characters at all as I read. If some kind of actual picture is provided, that (including the artist’s specific style) becomes my mental image of the character, but even then I’m still not visualizing them as I read. My romantic interest in a character, if I’m playing a self-insert, is entirely based in personality, which doesn’t feel at all unusual or unnatural for me because I don’t experience primary sexual attraction at all. (Actually, my romantic interest in a character if I’m not playing a self-insert is still entirely based in personality - it’s just based on a set of needs and desires that may not happen to coincide with my own.)
I do find that sometimes I age a character up in my mind, without planning to - not his appearance obviously, just my general sense of his “aura.” I’ve never been romantically attracted to young men (let alone younger men), so it just feels weird to me to picture a guy in his twenties as the focus of romantic interest, even if my character is in her twenties as well.
It’s really none of the author’s business how you read a character, so I wouldn’t worry about that.
In answer to your original question: not really. Some characters I have only a blurry image of anyway, but on occasions when I do imagine something specific (usually an actor the description reminds me of), I tend to work within their canon appearance, because otherwise it somehow wouldn’t feel like the ‘real’ experience to me. Not that I’m saying anyone else is wrong to do it, but I can make stuff up from scratch any time I want; the reason I’m reading is to experience a story someone else has come up with, so I prefer to stick as closely as I can to what they’ve written.
Although having said that, I’ve probably changed some very minor detail like eye colour, on rare occasions, in order to make it easier to stick to the spirit of the description, which is probably more important than the letter.
In any case, that’s why I actually appreciate not being given too much detail, especially not additional information after I’ve already got an image in my head. That way you can have leeway in what you imagine, without going against what you’re told about a character.
Huh, that seems strange to me, since fanfic is - much of the time - all about taking what another creator has come up with and doing your own thing with it. That’s largely been the appeal to me, at any rate.
I have seen people go absolutely bonkers over their OCs, their prefered ships and their interpretation of certain characters. My personal highlight was receiving a pm at one point that went “I want to thank you for your story! It was you who inspired me to start writing myself, and without your story, mine would never exist. I hate your interpretation of character X so f’cking much, that I had to set things right and give people a better one that matches the canon way better!”
Eep. Well, congrats on being an inspiration for the next generation! 
I do often find myself wondering how old the MC is if it’s not stated (or if it is stated somewhere and I just missed it), and I frequently find the MC is significantly younger than I thought. MCs that are under 18 are pretty awkward for me… especially 17. Like, sure, why not, just make them one year younger than age of consent because this isn’t an adult game… okay… there are tons of games without adult content with MCs over the age of consent. There’s no reason to drop their age down. And yeah, I also tend to like older guys, but it’s very rare that there’s a character older than me that is an RO. (I’m probably just not in the most common age group for these games.) Fortunately there are usually ROs older than the MC.
It depends. For some characters the image comes after I’ve read the full physical description, for some I immediately have an image pop into my head that never leaves.
For example, in Community College Hero, when it was mentioned that Downfall has short copper hair and body armour, I absolutely right away had Loreley from Lovestruck’s (RIP) Villainous Nights in my head and I cannot change it now. That’s how she looks in my head.
(Which might also explain my overwhelming thirst for the character despite her not being a LI at all.)
I don’t do that. first if i like personality of the ro i don’t care about looks. And if their personality not so intresting for me then i look at their appearence. And if i don’t like it so i just dont romance them. I dont have this power to change someone’s character after i already read appearance\personality description.
I try not to look at any more detailed physical descriptions/art of RO’s. Some more vague descriptions are fine imo, like hair color/length and perhaps something like skin color… but anything more detailed will often heavily conflict with what I would first imagine, especially if any descriptions comes AFTER you’ve already interacted with the RO.
I understand I’m probably in the minority here though judging based on the amount of WiPs that have very detailed physical descriptions and art in their posts… luckily it’s often fairly easy to avoid at least.
As an author, I have quite a clear picture of my characters in mind and while I can’t control what’s in another persons imagination, I’d like them to stick to the framework I have provided. On the other end I’d refrain from representing my characters in any official artwork or faceclaims, because I don’t want to impede my vision too strongly and whenever I’ll publish my game, I’d love to see fanart and other interpretations of my characters.
There is a limit though, especially if somebody decided to switch up a characters skin color or nationality, I’d find that quite jarring and I can’t really bring myself to respect nor endorse that.
As the author I present the information I deem relevant to the characters appearance, and I’ll let the readers fill in the blank. So if I say a character has tan skin and black curly hair, I’d expect my readers to stick to that description, while everything that’s left unsaid would be up to them.
Interesting, I didn’t think about authors potentially having partially set appearance with some blanks to fill. Whenever I see partial descriptions I’m confused because it feels incomplete. My interpretation was that the author knew exactly what the character looked like but just didn’t describe them in much detail. I hadn’t considered that the author deliberately left it like that.
But also… your RO descriptions in TEoW are more in-depth than what I see most of the time, so I wouldn’t actually think that for your characters.
I do know exactly what my characters look like, that doesn’t mean I want to impose the minutiae of my imagination onto the reader, only what I deem relevant. I didn’t consider that my characters have unusually detailed descriptions, but it makes sense I guess. While I don’t place any particular importance on appearance per se the characters do present in my mind as fully formed people.
With that being said I do believe there are still a wide range of variations within the descriptors, I asked my partner to illustrate his visions of my characters and they came out quite different from my own illustrations, but as the core impression was the same I just enjoyed the differences. The specifics of the facial features and proportions would still vary greatly in peoples interpretations, which is why I have made a very conscious decision to keep my illustrations private, even though I’m literally an artist by profession.
Now, I should point out that I have hyperphantasia which could influence my perspective on the matter.
It’s definitely likely that your hyperphantasia vs my aphantasia makes a pretty big difference in what aspects of a description are most salient.