Forums » RP Discussion » How much of Yourself is in your Characters?

I love you too, Maddi... You coy, coy minx...

She is pretty awesome

In my case it solely depends on the character. The characters I'm most attached to tend to have the most of my personality in some way or another. Though it's fun when I don't play me - for example I have a male character that I play on a forum who is probably the complete opposite of my personality and everybody loves him xD probably because he's like the cheshire cat from the Alice Madness return games xD

I guess all my characters are like me, to some extent. I'm not the kind of guy who makes a lot of crazy, over the top characters. They tend to be pretty ordinary overall.

Oh this question... I love this question so much. Actually, almost all of my characters are well, not like me. I'm not stern yet charismatic (Maxwell) or a strong and proud leader (Lexi and Rekushi). Those three are the most unlike me. I will admit that I love my characters Creatia, Nielle, Alex, and Meliere in particular because I feel a small kinship with them.

Creatia: We're both childish, love sweets, and only want to care for others while being taken care of as well. It's a selfish wish on both our ends, but we cope with it differently.

Nielle: Ah, the sarcastic prankster with a standoffish attitude. A man after my own heart. If nothing else, my sarcasm really stands out more when I play as him. And of course, I kinda pretend to not like people when in fact I'm fascinated with how they tick. However, Nielle's the third (or fourth? Fifth?) character that's least like me.

Alex and Meliere: They're kinda me, yet not me at all if that makes sense. They're one of the closest characters that has some of my personality and being in them. Alexander's my ideal male half, the feisty punk with a touch of class that throws people off when they learn about it. Meliere's the ideal female half, a homely, sweet person who loves being a doting housewife. I adore the concept of both, and they do have traits of me in there. But they're so different from me as well, that I can't quite place myself in their shoes. Also, they're both gods. That separates them from me right from the get go.

So yeah, the one I play with the most (Creatia) is actually the most like me in terms of personality if I think about it. However, every single one of my characters (aside from one, but they don't have a profile here yet) have minds of their own and speak for themselves through my writing and RP. It's no wonder most, if not all of them, are not like me at all.

Nearly all of my characters are based off of parts of myself, save the Mistress of Storms and the Witch. I generally expand on an interest or trait of mine and craft a character with it for RPs. There are more than the five I listed, but these were the first ones to come to mind. I find it easier to RP as something you know, even if it is just a sliver of yourself.

Griffon Pardoner is my love of adventure and fondness of telling stories.

The Merchant of Possal is the shrewd businessman I can be and reflects my family's business background (though we have a happier background than his). He is can be as manipulative as I once knew how to be. Unlike the Merchant, however, my conscious has never allowed me to go to the dark places to earn a bit of coin... Except in Monopoly. I make mean deals in Monopoly.

Orryn Folkor is my love of knowledge combined with my wanderlust.

Hunter Archill is my sense of duty to protect those around me, especially friends and family.

The Charred Man (currently anonymous and incomplete) reflects my high aspirations. Though, like the Merchant, he is a more chaotic interpretation of that part of me.

Usually characters that I make have a little bit of me in them, but I completely avoid putting to much of me in them.

Matrihan, however, has a lot of me in him, physically and emotionally. He was kind of my attempt of getting over this weird aversion I have to making characters anything like me. So while he's his own person, he's also very similar to me.

Most my characters have a bit of me in them... I torture my OCs because it's therapeutic, and rather entertaining, so they usually get my faults if anything. Dante, holds a grudge when he wants to.
Lex is extremely socially awkward, and has no confidence or self esteem, and he's been used and thrown away so often by others he's wary (now that I think about it, I think I put more into lex)

Those are just a couple of examples...

I wonder if it would be possible to roleplay with a character who is the polar opposite of oneself,and have your partner(s) do the same. I predict that the characters will slowly evolve to accommodate the players' morals, personalities, preferences, etc; despite efforts to the contrary. And maybe it would serve as an exercise in empathy and self discovery. Even creating a character so unlike oneself seems like a task in itself. Would be interesting to see the results.

I tend to put a little bit of myself in each of my characters. Some are more like me than others. Then there are some who have parts of what I wish I was or could be. Generally speaking, I try to avoid putting avoid putting too much of myself or putting major parts of who I am into my characters. One great example is my character Takara. He's beautiful, sensual, and generally confident the way I wish I could be. However, he has moments where he can completely shut down like I've been known to. He and I also share one peculiar habit. We both tend to snap the fingers of our left hand when we're stressed, thinking about something, or trying to remember what we were supposed to be doing. Blaze, on the other hand, doesn't have much in common with me. I can see into his mind like I can all of my characters, but I don't think I'd ever be able to cross-play him and bring his personality to life properly.

Generally speaking, my characters are made with as much variety as I can manage. I don't tend to see myself as very variating or interesting or atypical, so they're pretty different from me, but as I've gone along, I've really begun to think that I tend to take little, tiny details about myself - that are all usually, from what I've found, what I consider to be my biggest personal flaws - and build other people around them, then give them different ideas and backgrounds and languages and even worlds.

As my first example, I'm going to use one of the characters I have that I'm most comfortable writing: Ferran. I think he's my initial tendency to (at least try to) go into every single situation completely opinionless and biasless, which isn't a flaw, but. I can also feel like I know everything and sometimes find myself thinking about horrible things that I've just dug myself into thinking about; he's really the culmination of all of that, with a few other traits that make him likely to be able to run and have founded a sometimes illegal not-crime syndicate that's taking over the world bit by bit and also run an insurance company and also a huge chunk of the vampiric world.

Selene is one of the most obviously related characters to me. She's my tendency to overthink, and a lot of how she interacts in a normal social scenario is drawn from how I do, since I was kind of short on inspiration when I made her. Her full character came to me during a particularly bad mental state. She wonders about things like why are we here, why didn't we get better circumstances to live in, isn't there a better way to do all of this that we're all just too stupid to think of? I wanted a fantasy character past that that wasn't just an elf or something, so I made a whole world and culture with her. She was really an inspired person.

Graham has the most of me in him, but not from my own personality traits. I made him last summer, how I normally create characters: they just come to me after I realize that I want another one. As I've developed him and really solidified him, though, I've realized that he's almost exactly like someone I know. Graham has completely different circumstances from them that are much more tragic, though. The person that I... guess he's based off of... really became close to me in a way that neither of us had expected to happen, and they're pretty much family now, regardless of all their pretty dang bad flaws. I've felt a bit weird about having him up ever since I figured that out, but if I do delete him... Well, I did create his backstory, and he actually does vary from that person quite a bit - the only thing that's similar is how they interact with people and their favorite pastimes. I'm still on the fence with him.

But yeah, like everyone else has said, most people are in their characters. When you write a story, you're never going to be able to write it objectively; what happens is going to be influenced by your mood, by your phrasing, by what time of day it is and how that affects you. Every single form of religion that says that their deity/ies created mankind says (or doesn't, but seriously greek mythology was as twisted and drama-filled as we are) that they were created in some way to/that mirror/s their creator. Just the fact that a character is human or has logic is a bit of you in them, I think.