Like Creator, Like Character.

[POOHEAD189]

Hello friends,

Seeing as many of us are stuck in quarantine, or wish to distract ourselves, I thought I would add a thread on roleplay discussion. This one is about confessions. Which character(s) have you made that, if you step back, are the most like yourself in reality, and why? Granted, I'm no fan of the eponymous or what might be called "Author Avatars" which are essentially self insert characters. This thread is not for those.

Roleplaying is generally about creating people whom you are not, so you may experience things you don't have the time, money, or energy to do in the normal world (or you're just a coward). And in doing so, we tend to make many different characters for many different situations. But if you were to step back and look at the characters you've created, which do you think you can see the most of yourself in? List the character(s) and give your reasoning!

After thinking on it, is it a character you didn't expect? Is it perhaps one of your darker characters? Does it make you think on what that means for yourself?

[Ruby]

Hello friends,

Seeing as many of us are stuck in quarantine, or wish to distract ourselves, I thought I would add a thread on roleplay discussion. This one is about confessions. Which character(s) have you made that, if you step back, are the most like yourself in reality, and why? Granted, I'm no fan of the eponymous or what might be called "Author Avatars" which are essentially self insert characters. This thread is not for those.

Roleplaying is generally about creating people whom you are not, so you may experience things you don't have the time, money, or energy to do in the normal world (or you're just a coward). And in doing so, we tend to make many different characters for many different situations. But if you were to step back and look at the characters you've created, which do you think you can see the most of yourself in? List the character(s) and give your reasoning!

After thinking on it, is it a character you didn't expect? Is it perhaps one of your darker characters? Does it make you think on what that means for yourself?

@POOHEAD189

A 5th Generation Toreador that goes by the name of Eva.

[Hellion]

A 5th Generation Toreador that goes by the name of Eva.

@Ruby

I know that Toreador...

As for me, every character I've created share a few of my traits, but I think one of the closest would have to be a character I made for a high school slice-of-life. They were quite introverted and generally absorbed in their creative endeavors, and picky about a lot of things, especially those they associated with.

[AlteredTundra]

Hello friends,

Seeing as many of us are stuck in quarantine, or wish to distract ourselves, I thought I would add a thread on roleplay discussion. This one is about confessions. Which character(s) have you made that, if you step back, are the most like yourself in reality, and why? Granted, I'm no fan of the eponymous or what might be called "Author Avatars" which are essentially self insert characters. This thread is not for those.

Roleplaying is generally about creating people whom you are not, so you may experience things you don't have the time, money, or energy to do in the normal world (or you're just a coward). And in doing so, we tend to make many different characters for many different situations. But if you were to step back and look at the characters you've created, which do you think you can see the most of yourself in? List the character(s) and give your reasoning!

After thinking on it, is it a character you didn't expect? Is it perhaps one of your darker characters? Does it make you think on what that means for yourself?

@POOHEAD189

There's a method to the madness that is my character creation process. Sometimes, I will take bits and pieces of myself and apply them to stereotypes/tropes that I find interesting. Maybe I have someone who fits the bill of a wild child but want to connect to them more, so I'll add a splash of my personality to spice them up.

But there was one case where I self-inserted myself into the character. And his name is Brent Walsh. I drew from my insecurities growing up, the torment of being overweight and how that made me a target for harassment. I drew upon my personality and how there were certain people I refused to give a second chance. I drew upon how I would have lived my life differently and how I would probably be in a better place mentally had I done certain things.

This is the one character of mine that is the closest version of myself in one singular character I've made. The others, though there were traces of Brent in them (at least in spirit), have never been so condensed of myself like Brent is.

Now that I think back on him, he wasn't a failure of a character. I just...whenever criticisms or debates came up with him being at or near the center of it, I took a lot of it personally. Even if I didn't intend for this to happen, I felt, in a way, triggered by certain topics and I reacted to them horribly.

[Ammokkx]

The boring answer is that all my characters are both nothing like me, and yet all are me.

The thing is, I don't really directly play any characters with my specific personality. It's kind of hard to emulate the whole "crippling anxiety around people in public" turned to "will not stop quipping for 5 seconds" to begin with, but also the fact I'm extremely insufferable to even my friends generally doesn't make for a character archetype anyone'd be willing to put up with. Besides that, I've seen said archetype played wrong enough times to not try my hand.

Yet still, that doesn't mean I am not my characters. The way they shine through most is in their dialogue. I don't speak like normal people do, and I find it hard to emulate normal people speech. Therefor, you'll find my general lack of coherent sentence structure in my characters' spoken lines as well. Further, my mind must operate on some 7th dimensional plane, since I manage to always think of the most unorthodox and awkward things.

To add to it, you'd be hard pressed to not find one of my personality traits inside any single one character I make. Whether or not that personality trait is positive or negative, however, is dependant on the character in question. Just my most recent example, Danganronpa Alternate: Apologies to Hope, has me playing three characters: Taka/Taya, Ayu and Momoe. Taka is a rage goblin like I am, Ayu doesn't like to share what she's thinking under any circumstance and Momoe must love the sound of her own voice since she doesn't stop hammering on people for even a second. The only one that doesn't reflect me well at all in the moment, the Taya personality of the first character, is only as such because I've barely gotten a chance to play them.

The fact you can recognize and author in their characters is simply a byproduct of the inherent biases any particular writer carries with them. Anyone can write a shy character, but no one person will write them the exact same way as another. In some small and insignificant way, the author's personality will always shine through and be reflected in that character.

Despite that, there's one character that's pretty much me in a nutshell... unfortunately, it's also the one type of character this thread bans. My old Self-Insert. Dude was a smarmy, self-righteous mischief maker that thought he was a whole lot smarter than he actually is, but still with an awkward caring side to him. Was it me playing an idealized version of me? Yes. But that's also the only time a character ever mirrored me in full. No other character is "like me" in real life. All of them are still me, equally, in their own way.

[POOHEAD189]

I'll go ahead and answer my own question, in a bump.

I'm happy to say I don't use any "self insert" characters, though I'd like to think all of my characters have bits of me in them. Even extremely morally ambiguous characters like Alim/Amal, who'd cut you as soon as shake your hand. In a lot of ways, they're very much like me if I lost much of my inhibitions and my higher moral standards.

It's easier to see myself in characters like Cyrdic from my Warhammer Fantasy roleplays. As a martial artist and military historian, I'm pretty obsessed with combat and warfare, despite my better judgement, much like him. I'd also say I'm very much like my character Markus, being a bit aloof and introverted, and very self sufficient, but able to pull off a leadership role when needed.

Probably the character I'm like most is my mecha pilot Neil (unfortunately). Initially I made him around 9 years ago in another forum a long long time ago, far far away. He was meant to pilot his mechs in the same charming manner that I play Xbox live. I.E. I shit talk a lot, and while I'm good, I take a lot of unnecessary risk. He's got a big heart deep down, even if he hides it with bullshit and jokes, and we look a bit similar as well though I'm slightly stronger than he is as I'm more of a fitness nut than he is. Not to mention he turned out to have a very similar backstory to myself as well. Grew up on the streets, was always up to mischief, but worked a lot of jobs and became fairly well read, and he's only ever loved one woman (until now for Neil in his latest roleplay).

[PaulHaynek]

All my original characters are self-inserts.

I just put up a lot of smoke and mirrors on them to not make them appear blatant self-inserts.

[spicykvnt]

I've mentioned this a number of times, but my character Raelynn was definitely at one point an outlet for the darker side of myself. She's very unlike me in that she's selfish, cruel, and closed minded; but her positive traits we definitely do share. She has a love of knowledge, is ambitious, and can be incredibly compassionate but what surprised me most was being able to write her when I was having depressive episodes and it felt like a healthy release as opposed to doing something toxic. Her inner thoughts and fears very much mirrored mine and that actually surprised me a lot.

[Vordak]

My characters like punching stuff. I like punching stuff too.

The closest character to myself was probably this swordcaster mage, descendant of a gypsy clan. Always brooding, stoic to the death; due to his pessimistic view of the world and a severely lacking inner drive, he overall remained a complete amateur in his area of specialty, his spell arsenal consisting of a single complex and incredibly nasty conjuration on the backdrop of a slew of weak and low-effort tricks. Obsessive care and maintenance for his tools of trade and a complete disregard for everything else material in his life - clothing, appearances, household and personal health.

So basically he was a hikkimori barely keeping his head above the water thanks to being lukewarm successful in his only field of self-realization. Pretty apt description of what i was like at the time of writing the character - what makes it funny to me is that none of the similarities were intentional and it's only in retrospect that i saw them, way, way later.

[PrinceAlexus]

Elwments and little things, not heavily based but a few little things like having a sweet tooth or such il crossover into the RP world.

Small stuff sure, not always the big stuff.

[Zyshi]

My characters have to share some trait of mine that allows me to connect with them when writing, but I don't tend to create a Mary Sue. Could be as simply as our taste in music, an icy but formidable temper when roused, or nonchalant attitude toward violence. Just... something which acts as a starting point in allowing me to inhabit the character.

I also don't have one that is closest to my actual personality or physical description.

[Rosebudxo]

I always thought role-playing is about creating people you want to be, not people you are. I put a little bit of myself into my characters. But that's common. People like something they can relate to or want to relate to. Otherwise, I usually create them if they're the opposite of me. I can't really recall any specifics, though.

[stevita]

Right now one of my NPCs in an ongoing RP who makes occasional cameos as a point of view character shares a lot of traits with me.

-We're both Vietnamese by descent (although I'm only half; her parents are both Vietnamese)
-We have the same body type (short n thick)
-We both hate sexism even if we are guilty of the double standard of being boy-crazy and objectifying men a lil bit
-We both are markedly unambiguous and happy to work a blue collar job and make ends meet despite a history of parental pressure to do better

I didn't intend to make her a self insert, but the more scenes I write for her the more she turns into someone I'd like to have a beer with.

[Lady Absinthia]

I think all characters have a facet or two of their creators in them. Not fully the Rper but similarities here and there. Especially when someone is just starting out in the RP world. Think one of the reasons people have a hard time staying true to character concept is because they make them too much like themselves or start shifting from what they wanted the character to be to themselves since over time it is easier to just type your initial gut reaction instead of thinking within a characters own mind. One the flip side having one or two traits in common with your character can make it easier to stay in character for the traits that aren't in line, an anchor point if you will.

Now, onto the actual question. Yes, I have one that is me. Fully me. Even named Jenn. Why? A friend of mind hosted an Rp and wanted to do a Self-Insert RP. The group went along. We had to draw up our stats based our actual selves. From intellect, to strength, reflexes, etc. Your character could only have skills you actually possessed. Then we were thrown into an Rp setting and had to face the various scenarios he threw at us. That had to be the most challenging Rp for me to do. You had to look at yourself, really. Not what you wanted to be, or what people told you to be nice. It was a tough introspective. Even tougher to Rp. One might think rping yourself is easy but when you are limited by yourself, by true stats, by not what you want your character to do but by what you would really do it makes you take a hard look at yourself.