Do you make your characters like you?

[countrygirl824]

I was wondering if anyone made the characters they use resemble who you are. Like if you have an illness do you have your character have that illness to? For instance I have seizures and I just decided to make a character in one roleplay of mine have seizures to.

 

[Dusky]

Well, I think people tend to stick to what they know, especially with things like illnesses and occupations. And honestly, unless you're willing to do the research that's a really good thing.


All my characters have elements of me, sure, but generally turned up to 11 and then fleshed out to be their own person.


It gets especially sticky when you consider that our personalities can vary with our moods. Conceivably, every character you make could have an element of you no matter what you do to avoid it.

 

[Coward]

In general I make them as different from me as possible, because I know that subconsciously I'm going to let them drift towards my personality. Therefore I start out with like 'this guy is an extreme insensitive asshole' or something, just so I don't end up playing a string of self-inserts.


My first characters as a young lass were all just me but like, an elf, or a vampire. Or a vampire elf.

 

[Wood]

I go through phases of writing characters that are a lot like me, because that's the kind of person I'm most familiar with- Short, pale, depressed, kind of socially stunted spacey girls.


I also get these really strong impulses to play characters that are wildly different from myself, huge axe-wielding berserker men who love to kill and maim and do all the naughty things I'm not really inclined to do. I think that stems mostly from Mary Sue anxiety, though.

 

[call me rae]

I'd say. It's of my non canon characters have aspects of myself. Like @Anomaly said I'll use my own work experience for jobs or just exaggerate parts of my own personality.


Now that's not to say I'm just doing self inserts as I play a fair number of canons and people based on characters from books, etc.

 

[Felix Wrightwind]

I totally understand man. I'm, like, completely emotionless on the outside in real life, so I actually made my character a robot. So, yeah, I understand, most certainly!

 

[Amberglas]

Most of my characters are actually pretty different from me in a lot of aspects; I roleplay partially as a kind of escapism, for one thing, and I like trying out things I might never do in real life.


I would say that the deeper parts of their personalities (motivations etc) tend to be pretty similar to mine, though. It's just hard to write a character that I can't envision being.

 

[eclipsa]

I sometimes take one part of me, just to make sure I can relate to my characters, but mostly I don't. A lot of my characters are completely different. I like to make them into something different. Characters I would like to read about mostly.

 

[Vasey105]

I try to make my characters as different to me as possible, but it's hard for my own mannerisms to not come across into the character.

 

[Zilla]

I tend to play characters around my age, but that's about it. Anything else that is similar is just coincidental.

 

[Saccharine Cyanide]

Similar story: I have ADHD, and I made a character with ADHD. Funny thing is, I actually didn't realize he had ADHD until quite a while after I wrote him and was discussing him OOC. Nobody else had picked up on it either.


I'm led to believe that even if I don't base my characters on myself, some facet of my personality is going to sneak in subconsciously. But I think I like it that way. I think that what I get most out of writing is the ability to explore the deepest and most personal parts of my self that seep into my characters.

 

[MechanicalSnake]

Absolutely not! I can be me in real life. In RP, I wish to play out things, character traits and visual traits I normally cannot experience.


(That being said, everyone´s personality is, in a way, reflected in their writing, that can hardly be prevented - nor should it be.)

 

[TheDarkHour]

Yes but I tend to make them more problems.

 

[redroseknight]

I generally have a character trait that I desperately wish I had in my characters, like a very charismatic personality or the ability to be completely detached from people. It helps me analyze myself at the same time. When I first started role playing, though, I tended to either play characters a lot like me or the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. There was no such thing as a grey area between the two.

 

[James Koach]

I find RPing a character that's identical to me quite boring. To me, the whole point of RPing is not to insert myself in some interesting story, but rather, to put myself in the shoes of someone else, who's got different life experiences, personality and behaviour.

 

[Pine]

Especially for modern/realistic settings, I borrow from all different aspects of life that I see, feel and experience. Naturally, sometimes these things are just parts of me that I've noticed about myself. For instance, I have one character who habitually checks the pulse in his neck every time he gets nervous, which is something I do quite often. Then another common theme with my characters is aggressively acting arrogant (meant in a humorous fashion or not) to cover up insecurities, which may just be a watered down version of my own. I have one character that behaves somewhat like me when I'm at the peak of self-consciousness 25/7 and he's annoying af to write for. Then I have one character that comes to mind which I quite literally just tried to make a character out of someone that I was (sort of) acquainted with, though with some changes here and there and freedom of interpretation and what not. Even then, it would be a lie if I said I didn't share any qualities at all with that character.


I think there is a limit to how much I can empathize outside of myself. For instance, I really struggle with characters that have an idealistic mindset rather than a cynical one. BUT I'm always willing to try things, though I may fail... *wipes away a tear* Then I also make my share of kind of "peppy" and/or "nice" characters, but I tend to lose a lot of muse for those kinds of characters and it ends up being really hard for me to motivate myself to make a post.


Edit: I've been meaning to experiment with a character with type two ADHD and another one that would be straight up "me" and gauge reactions in term of ideas of "realism" for the latter, but I haven't gotten around to either thing yet.

 

[Under the Bridge]

No.

 

[Sesquipedalian]

Yes and no. Usually, in creating a character, I give them some aspect of myself. I take one little piece of my personality and insert it into the character. However, I then build a unique personality for the character. So, if I give a character a bit of my friendliness, I might make the character friendly for different reasons, or maybe extremely outgoing.


I always give my characters one of my likes and/or dislikes in addition to their own. It's just a fun little thing I do, and sometimes I make it a game. "Find the piece of me in this character."


But my characters are their own people too. I almost never have anything in common with the history of the characters, mostly because I don't want to rp my own life. I write to create a different world, so having that world be the same as the real one would just be boring. My characters, though having pieces of my personality, have their own personalities and do things I would probably never do.


I suppose you could compare my characters to mosaics. I put a fragment from the same pot into each mosaic, but use fragments from many other pots to create the rest of the mosaic.

 

[Negative Zone]

I used to bring a bit of the 'idealized self' into OCs, or how I perceived I would act if the stars aligned and none of my personal issues were 'in the way'. Nowadays I'm coming to peace with the fact that my personal issues are, for better or worse, always going to be a part of my life. I've noticed a shift in the OCs I write coinciding with it, and now some of them help me explore my 'actual self'. I'm in a life situation where I get very little varied social interaction so sometimes it helps me feel out things I couldn't feel out otherwise.


As all of my RP is fandom based I often use an aspect of the source material I'm fond of and kind of build a character around that or mix it with other personal interests. Then I kind of think about what I want to explore with the character. I do notice a string of OCs from a year or two ago have a lot of social anxiety issues, which... well, I also have a lot of social anxiety issues so it became a case of exploring that in different situations that wouldn't be possible otherwise.


But honestly most of my RP never advances beyond the conceptual or beginning stage so it's hard to really say how much any of this is true.

 

[GemiiChan]

I think that as an artist, no matter how much you try to separate yourself from your work the less you actually do. You can't truly not "imprint" a bit of who you are as a person into the things that you do, because no one would do it the ways that you do no matter how similar your actions may be, the way in which you achieved that absolution is entirely your own doing.


Weather it be a subconscious desire that you might not even know you have until the actual event is upon you, to something you catch yourself thinking about daily, everything you do contributes to the actions you take in rp, how you (your actual being) perceives an action is how your rp character will react; I personally find it intriguing to find how many ways you dont actually know yourself when writing things, as it makes for great self discovery tells!

 

[Sunbather]

Well, I borrow parts of myself just like I borrow parts from other people in my life, from TV characters, to book characters to even other RP characters. I just meddle and forge everything until it fits, tweak it again so it feels good and original and, yes, there's a bit of me in most of my characters. But it varries. I have one really big self-insert where it's like 60% (or more) me, but I also have characters who are completely and utterly the opposite of me.

 

[Emiya Shin]

Yup, mostly on the personality side so that I don't get Out Of Character whenever I write the responses for events and interactions as well as faster replies. As for the background/bio section I try to be creative, and if possible link my characters to other RPers so I can quickly take and develop the relationships between them.

 

[Saturnity]

All of my characters thus far have been different from each other. I'm always looking for ways to test my limits as a writer, so creating a new and unique character every time I start or join a new RP is a good outlet for me to accomplish that.

 

[CHIMNY]

To me - Roleplaying is an alternate universe where I escape my problems, difficulties, and annoyances but experience new ones with completely different characters, different from me.

 

[SachiGrl]

When I started role playing, I made characters that looked somewhat similar to me, but with opposite personalities. In reality, I am super outgoing, but I made SachiGrl-look-alikes with shy, quiet personalities.


Now, I am quite the opposite when creating characters. I created characters that look nothing like me and they take on extreme versions of my personality. It is super fun! Being shy is boring after a while. Being outgoing is much much funner!!