Which character represents you?

[Terotrous]

Am I the only one who gets really annoyed by that question? I find it's almost always the first thing asked by anyone if they find out you write / draw anything, as though anything you might create has to essentially be about yourself and people you know in real life. This is especially bad if you're writing anything that includes a romance, because then they also want to know who that special person was. No, I can write about characters who I don't know personally, thank you very much. Watching a character come alive even though you've never met them is a big part of what makes writing fun.

I actually pretty much always go out of my way to ensure that none of my characters match up with me or anyone I personally know. There are frequently some character traits that are shared, of course, but it's never close to an exact match.


This was just a random venting topic, but I'm curious about how other people handle this. Do you try to avoid writing characters who are too similar to real life people, or do you do just the opposite and let real life inspire you work?

[robotthepirate]

All my characters are quite like me. They tend to represent different aspects of my personality. That said none of my RTP characters have had very long to define themselves properly. They fall into the catagories of Happy Me and Skeptical Me. Robot, Pup and Amanda make up my polite, see the best in everyone side. Monty, Safes and Maddy are more likely to mistrust people and give sarcastic retorts. The redheads are somewhere in between while Crowe just sits at the top of the mast shouting down like a grumpy old man.

[Corgan_dane]

Deadhead is mostly me.
Klik is my positive side.
Herbert is my childish side.
Sludge is the rare case when I'm depressed.

The rest have no relation, really.

[Laemkral]

In my comic, the characters were all based upon real life inspirations or other characters.

The character of Aaron (Smalls) was based upon Arthur Dent.
Jason was based off Kevin Smith but with a dash of Matt Damon.
Sargon was pre-sobriety Robert Downey Jr.
Other Aaron (Biggs) was inspired by Plank.
James was based off of a beanbag chair I came across in a Salvation Army.
Cameron was Tom Cruise pre-Scientology.

I am of course being completely silly and sarcastic.

Given that in my writings the main character does bear a small reflection of myself or how I wish to be or some other shard of my personality, I try to distance them from myself and give that bit of me a twist.

[RobboAKAscooby]

Urgh...yeah I hate that assumption, also I get friends assuming I've based characters on them.
Sh!t Happens gets it the worst, especially since it started (long ago) as video project me and my mates were to star in.
Flying Tigers not so much (yet, fingers crossed) although the screenplay it started as many years ago had the same issues. Although now with the exception of a few characters very little of the original exists beyond the basic premise of two rival groups of teen martial artists - even the lead character is someone completely different.

Generally I try to mix and match various personality traits to create characters - often I seem to have a similar group dynamic, similar character types popping up in all my works - sometimes I take from real life sometimes not.

[McDuffies]

Yeah, it can be a bother as with many other common wrong assumptions... I think I already whined about people who thought idea was worth half of the work and such things.

Yeah, I never base any character on me and I make it a point of interest that they all have characteristics and attitudes different from mine. That's where the challenge of writing characters lies in, in trying to understand different people and making them act accordingly... what makes others tick, how do they think - that's what's interesting from psychological side, and I'm interested in psychology. If there is a strong similarity between my characters and me, it's an inevitable product of my shortcomings as a writer of characters. Although it's inevitable that they do share some of my characteristics, I guess.
Also, I always feel like stories with too obvious ersatz authors in the center are narcissistic. I specially dislike stories that have comic artist/filmmaker/writer main hero, and then through it, writer either whines about difficulties of his work or otherwise mythologuises his occupation. If I have some talent, in my opinion staring at the mirror is not the best way to use it.
But for some reason people often assume that the central character of the story is author's alter-ego, and also that all that happens in the story in some way supports author's opinions. Like, any author who in his stories has some misstreatment of women (Lynch, Polanski) instantly gets accused of misoginy... They never think that authors sometimes tell stories about things that terrify them or disturb them, or things that fascinate them even though they hate them - and not only (nor most often) about things they'd secretly like to see in real life.

[Cope]

I've never actually received this question, but my sister has asked "which character represents me?" quite a few times. She's so conceited.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Not in my drawing work, no, but usually in my written work I get asked who represents who. Typically write in first person though, so obviously I'm the narrator It does make it easier- "So in my book when you and me are talking and we get to the park and we"

I also tend to find parts of myself in characters, but it's much the same way as you'd feel a kinship to another actual human being who shares a trait. I will say that as I've developed the characters further, they remind me less and less of myself. At first they were nothing like me, then I used aspects of my behavior as templates (not so obviously but you know what I mean), and now they've come around to stand on their own. goody goody, says I.

My mom did ask if Marie was meant to look like me, though. We are both small and blonde, I did have short hair, and the droopy eyes, I guess it makes sense. I actually worried when I got my hair cut short that people would think I did it on purpose, thankfully not many people who know me in real life read my comic so nobody made that conclusion. I suppose we are also both dicks, though. I guess if I had to pick one, to assuage such people, I would say she and I are most alike. The difference is that for me it's all an act, but for her she's really like that.

But for some reason people often assume that the central character of the story is author's alter-ego, and also that all that happens in the story in some way supports author's opinions. Like, any author who in his stories has some misstreatment of women (Lynch, Polanski) instantly gets accused of misoginy... They never think that authors sometimes tell stories about things that terrify them or disturb them, or things that fascinate them even though they hate them - and not only (nor most often) about things they'd secretly like to see in real life.

This is something I do worry about, though. There's going to be points in Loud Era where my characters say and think some very racist things. On one hand, I don't want to tone it down and sugarcoat it, because things really sucked back then in that regard. On the other hand, I don't want to lose readers because somebody clicked my comic and saw the N word and thought that was rooted in views I espoused. I've tiptoed around it thus far, I think there was one instance in which I used the phrase "colored," but who knows what happens in the future. There are some words I really don't want to write, but pretending that nobody ever said them would feel like a slight against the real people back then who suffered, and whose suffering was often accompanied by such terms.

[Terotrous]

I specially dislike stories that have comic artist/filmmaker/writer main hero, and then through it, writer either whines about difficulties of his work or otherwise mythologuises his occupation.

This is essentially the plot of Comic Creatorz, but it's supposed to be ironic.

This is something I do worry about, though. There's going to be points in Loud Era where my characters say and think some very racist things. On one hand, I don't want to tone it down and sugarcoat it, because things really sucked back then in that regard. On the other hand, I don't want to lose readers because somebody clicked my comic and saw the N word and thought that was rooted in views I espoused. I've tiptoed around it thus far, I think there was one instance in which I used the phrase "colored," but who knows what happens in the future. There are some words I really don't want to write, but pretending that nobody ever said them would feel like a slight against the real people back then who suffered, and whose suffering was often accompanied by such terms.

I don't think there's really any way around this when dealing with controversial subject matter. I don't even really like the idea that I might write something that involves sex and is read by other people, let alone something more controversial like racial intolerance. But if you believe in the art you just have to suck it up and put it out there.

[Dutch!]

Well, I'll be honest.

Casper is probably me.

Cody (and now Jackson) are the me's I would have liked to have been had I the guts to cut loose a bit.

Otherwise, most of the kids are amalgamations of personalities, phrases, actions and little perspectives of the decade's worth of kids I've taught.

[Jops]

In SDXF i deliberately had an alter-ego character to avoid people making any assumption of the sort. The in-comic Jops was, in fact, just one of the many background-ish grunts that never really did anything of particular relevance, always overshadowed by the main protagonists. (Even in the episode where none of the protagonists make an appearance, such as the one when the grunts are cooking minced meat in a "creative way", it is stated that the whole idea belongs to one of the mains.)
This trick turned out pretty effective in avoiding not just the question but also not having people wrongly think i was being represented by someone in the main cast.

When i started NGITK, which is much more story driven, I didn't think about it and, yeah... one of the first questions a friend of mine asked me was: "which character are you?" I didn't know what to answer.
Point is, nearly every main character receive some traits from myself or some people i know really well. I do this because, in an attempt to make my characters human and give them a personality that makes sense, i use the real life folks as reference... just in the very same way as i look at photo of an Audi on google images when i'm drawing Mika's police car.
So far, this was an issue only with people who know me, since they can spot the similarities (and, surprisingly, always fail to note the differences).

From Readers who don't know me, i expect a different line of thoughts tho.
As long as i keep the adventure running and the focus doesn't stick too much on the character's everyday life (friends, work, dates...), the connection character=author will probably be very unlikely. Especially considering that both my protagonists there are girls and I'm not.
But i do have some worries concerning the introduction of one of the main male characters, especially since I'm planning to shed some positive light on him in order to make him a bit controversial. I can imagine people thinking, as the winning cool guy enters the scene: "Oh, here comes the author's alter ego!"
I know i can disprove them towards the end as the guy will turn out to be a bit of a selfish asshole, but it'll be a while before i get to that point.


I guess this has to do with a lot of people not being used to detach themselves and try to "think as someone else". I noticed that with many of my friends i play RPGs with. A good 50% of them, if not more, they don't really make much effort in character design. They simply play as "themselves the warrior/wizard". They roll a new character, change appearance stats, skills, but personality-wise it's always like player's (maybe some variation, as evil version or goody-good version, but only very superficial).

[Natane]

*cough* <.<

Mariposa Revelation was my high school baby. Every SINGLE one of the characters (every single solitary one) was based on someone I knew in real life, and the main characters were me and my best friends. I was fourteen. What can I say?

I do have to say, though, that in the 12 years since the original paper comic was finished, the characters have evolved tremendously.

[McDuffies]

This is something I do worry about, though. There's going to be points in Loud Era where my characters say and think some very racist things. On one hand, I don't want to tone it down and sugarcoat it, because things really sucked back then in that regard. On the other hand, I don't want to lose readers because somebody clicked my comic and saw the N word and thought that was rooted in views I espoused. I've tiptoed around it thus far, I think there was one instance in which I used the phrase "colored," but who knows what happens in the future. There are some words I really don't want to write, but pretending that nobody ever said them would feel like a slight against the real people back then who suffered, and whose suffering was often accompanied by such terms.

Well people used to think that Cartman was a spokesperson for Parker and Stone's opinions, so I guess there's no way getting around some people's stupidity.

[IVstudios]

I've only ever once been accused of having an author-insert character, back when I was still doing World Warp. (To be fair, Skid was a total author insert.)

I think the assumption that the main character in online fiction represents the artist is sort of inevitable because, quite frankly, most of the time it's a pretty safe bet. Webcomics and Fan Fictions account for most of what people think of when it comes to storytelling on the internet. And a lot of the time the main characters in those are blatant author inserts to varying degrees. So there's a lot of precedent for the notion.

It just sort of goes with the territory.

[Cope]

Well, I hope people aren't simply assuming I'm a cowardly blonde woman!

[Mastermind]

I wanted a main character I would find absolutely awesome so Solana is my superego of some sort but with some flaws because it's supposed to be comedy. She's perfect, I love her and I wanna be just like her when I grow up My brother, who is my only reader never asked me that question, it must be pretty obvious to him. After all, he saw me selling a baby in NWN.
And in the future I plan to remake my old comic, nutcracker so that the characters don't resemble real people anymore.
Anyway, it does annoy me when someone asks, so I never do that even when I'm curious if my assumptions are right. It just seems like a personal question if it's not mentioned anywhere on the website.

[IVstudios]

Well, I hope people aren't simply assuming I'm a cowardly blonde woman!

You mean your not!? That means all this fan-fic porn I've been writing about you is worthless!

[Phact0rri]

i more often find people who remind me of my characters.

weirdest bit was a friend of mine who so was Monika. And later she told me her birthname was Monica she just got it legally changed... that tripped me out.

Stryker (in Decypher) started out as a self insert, but that didn't last. I routinely try to make self-biographical characters but even the so called Biographical strip I did for a bit, the character of "phact" quickly morphed outside of my own personality.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

I routinely try to make self-biographical characters but even the so called Biographical strip I did for a bit, the character of "phact" quickly morphed outside of my own personality.

Which is also true for fictional characters, isn't it?

[McDuffies]

I've heard opinions that creativity is driven by egotism. Most often with this music stuff, I've heard several people told me that they think the only reason someone would get on stage and perform is, he's an egotism and wants to be at the center of attention. By extension, that means that any artist is an egotism who demands to be a center of attention for as long as his work is read/listened to/watched. I really can't get behind it, I feel my motivations are completely different, even if I can't always explain them. To me, that testifies of a major rift between people with strong creative impulses and those without them, to the point where those without creative impulses just can't understand motivations of those with, so they try to interpret them through motivations that are closer to them. One of which is, I guess, that you always wanna basically write about yourself.