[monday] idk about you guys i'm totally julius caesar.

[apostatised]

How much of your own life do you put into your characters' lives? Do they share major experiences with you or fulfill your secret ambitions to be a Pirate Queen of Mars? Or have they gone through the things you fear the most? How about their background characters? Are they based on people you know, or are they ways of striking back at that one really nasty teacher from middle school?

I've observed (and people have pointed out to me) that I have some common threads in the characters that I choose to write - themes including family, religion, psychology and unhealthy relationships. Or, to paraphrase someone(s) else, I write badass old men and women who are fucking insane, dude. They say you should write what you know; basically I know clever, bitterly angry crazy people and Catholicism (been known to go hand in hand).

I will use concepts in my writing that are ideas I've picked up in my own life (everyone has a story, nobody is normal) or things/places that I'm familiar with (a recent narrative for Ramirez that took place in a museum I used to visit regularly), and there are some things that I feel strongly about and I feel strongly about the portrayals of (mental illness, as an example, which is so often so poorly written). I don't like to directly draw on my personal experiences - I Know Stuff, and it'd be ridiculous not to take advantage of familiarity and understanding (particularly when something is just interesting to explore), but I'm not writing about me. One of the most fascinating things to me about roleplaying and prompt writing, the reasons I do this so much and have so much fun, is getting inside a character's mind and seeing what makes them tick, understanding their emotions and motivations and figuring out where to take them next. If there was too much of me in my characters it wouldn't be interesting any more, I'm pretty familiar with how my mind works.

I do tend to end up with characters who compartmentalize and internalize a lot (I was going to put a name here in accusing italics, but then I couldn't decide which one), aaaand that is a trait of mine I must cop to. I think characters and stories will always reflect their author in some way, though, and we can't really help that. People who are familiar with my personal style and habits can usually pick out who I'm writing.

(an aside:
[16:05] dele: ... :> kay has persuaded me to pick up a character
[16:05] dele: finally
[16:05] todd: o rly
[16:05] todd: ... lorna, i would guess
[16:05] todd: knowing you
[16:05] dele: :D
[16:05] dele: ...WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN "KNOWING YOU"
[16:05] todd: ffffffff
[16:05] todd: well
[16:05] todd: lorna is kind of cordelia chase cross with donna with a little enfys thrown in for taste.

As for background characters - I tend to have a cast of NPCs for any given character, and most of them will be as fleshed out and whole as a character that I'm actually playing (to the point where recently one of Martel's main NPCs got his own journal and is being played, why). If I base them on anything it's usually references ("subtle use of billboards") to other material. (Former Metropolitan sergeant John Samuel Keel, married to Rosemary.) The exception to this is probably an NPC/rarely played character that I based partially on my mother. (The character is a man, and at this point has very little in common with her as a person or the direction of his life, but there are some concepts that I cannibalized freely when I was creating him.)

That character is actually a good example of why I tend not to do that; I have a minor tendency put my characters through the wringer, so it would...probably be awkward. (My mother is an incredibly long-suffering woman.)

I apologize for likely incoherency here!