While my own is total invention, he does derive a certain inspiration from Sir Richard Francis Burton, swordsman, scholar, linguist, and explorer, who had a rather scandalous career back in Vicky’s time. (best modern biographies are by Fawn Brodie and Byron Farwell; for lovers of speculative fiction, he appears as a main protagonist in Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series)
This is the gentleman who, among other accomplishments, made unexpurgated translations of The Thousand Nights and a Night and The Kama Sutra, almost discovered the Nile (a tragic story indeed), and completed the Hajj to both Medina and Mecca (in disguise, which may have had consequences both painful – briefly – and fatal, had he been discovered). The gentleman was, in short, a badass.
Hubris is heavily influenced by Grimseby Roylott, the swaggering villain of the Sherlock Holmes story The Speckled Band, though still more cunning and brutal - he’s verging being on a Moriarty and a Colonel Moran in one at this point. Juniper began as something of an homage to the film Hugo, though she went in quite a different direction in the end.
Carlotta Valdis from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo! But I don’t think Sestina-the-character resembles Carlotta-the-character very much, except in name. As Mal and Zareen Bakara have pointed out, the sestina is also a poetic form (that, ironically, I dislike writing in because I can never quite get things right), which is where I got the first name from…
To be honest, she’s basically a female version of me who is a lot more… unrestrained. Call her a kind of ideal-I who is also emphatically a non-ideal-I. I don’t want to use the word ‘fantasy’… Rather I think she’s a bit of a ‘thought experiment’ in how my life might turn out if I were born in an underground version of London and gave myself over to hedonism. Our writing styles are quite identical (which is hardly surprising, is it? I’m guessing that all our characters’ ‘works’ are written by us, just as our characters are. The poems that Sestina wrote are certainly mine, for better or worse… But I am not British).
TL;DR: I am a bit of an egotist, I guess. edited by Sestina Valdis on 10/29/2015
My main Krawald started out based on the French eponymous character Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief, but ended up going in a much more scholarly direction which might be influenced by my own inclinations.
Originally patterned after a background mary-sue in my original fiction, which i abandoned/ put on the back burner. you know the type. dumbledore, panacea, contessa, squirrel girl… totally overpowered, but not often story relevant, only against the worst enemies out there. never the one who saves the world, but maybe the one that lines up the shot.
Specifically, in a setting with 3 or 10 types of magic (‘elemental’ being), she can use any magic from the most powerful and restricted one- and normally, the magic was balanced in power vs. flexibility. edited by Grenem on 11/1/2015
Despite the Mary-Sue-suggestive name, Speethling is actually a pretty successful–or so I think–“chymical ménage à trois” of:
Breq from the Imperial Radch trilogy (by Ann Leckie)
Varys from ASoIaF
Fassin from The Algebraist (by Iain M. Banks)
Anyone familiar with all three sources will recognize that the characters all share certain fragments of personality and ideology, but what’s fun about Speethling, given FL’s capacity for dynamic (read–wildly inconsistent) characterization, is that I can decide on a case-by-case basis which piece of the triptych, and which variations of which traits, would win out in any given scenario.
Yes, sort-of-but-not-really. I set out to create a character who was as unlike me as possible, so apart from being female, fond of reading and cats, and almost painfully English, we are nothing alike.
Eris is measured, calm, unemotional - often to the point of coldness - and extremely ladylike. She is obsessed with clothes and matters of dress. She is tall, and has dark hair and eyes. She cannot cook to save herself. She comes from a large, deeply dysfunctional family and had a miserable childhood. Her embroidery is exceptionally neat.
None of these apply to me in the slightest. I find her great fun to write.
Not patterned after anyone in particular, but I did come up with my character’s concept after playing a quest in TES5: Skyrim, called The Taste of Death. Basically, it ended with a lot of higher-ups turning out to be demon-worshipping cannibals. Add a little homicidal insanity, and there you have Mr Kolanowski.
As for the name, it’s natively Polish. “Kazimierz” is a popular name in the country, roughly means “one who punishes”. And “Kolanowski” I borrowed from Edmund Kolanowski, a Polish necrophiliac serial killer from the 1980s.
When you wanna design a psycho character, you go big or go home :P
Nope. My main character makes, as best as I can manage, the choice I personally would make if I were spirited to the Neath and awoke in New Newgate Prison. My alt is more of an experiment. She is more opportunistic than I or my main character, more venal, and more willing to act immorally or unethically for personal gain.
I am not very perceptive, and that reflects my playing experience - most lore just flew over my head. I didn’t even know the identity of Mr Chimes until several years in. I still can’t read between the lines, and my character is also getting duped at every turn.
[quote=Estelle Knoht]My character is, of course, patterned after me!
I am not very perceptive, and that reflects my playing experience - most lore just flew over my head. I didn’t even know the identity of Mr Chimes until several years in. I still can’t read between the lines, and my character is also getting duped at every turn.[/quote]
I’m relieved to know I’m not the only person who struggles with the lore! I wish dearly to be able to piece things together so easily.
My character Agatha was created to be as different from me as possible, but in a rather surprising twist she ended up resembling (physically and otherwise) the early 1880s activist Dorothea Dix, who reformed the prison system. And I had made Agatha before I’d ever heard of Dorothea!
Earlier characters of mine, stupid as that sounds. I used to write of one particular self-indulgent intellect who I had the vocabulary to render but nowhere near enough self-awareness to make interesting. I eventually reduced him to a sort of bitter parody of himself, and then begat him a soft-hearted romantic who withered under his roof and tutelage. I try to make him unlike me, and I’d like to think I succeed, but we have our similarities. Inspirationally speaking, he draws from very uncomfortable and unpleasant parts of my real life.
My beautiful monster is actually roughly based on an old (very old)family “hero”.
A scholar and a rogue, who did many bad things for worthy and noble causes.
Honestly… I am using a name that I have been working with in several incarnations (the name is actually stolen from A Brave New World)… but since I am so new to FL, having come over from Sunless Sea, I am feeling out the lndscape, as it were. As such, I used only a vague background to start, and am allowing my character to waft through the town, associating with all sorts… just to see what seems to stick…
for example… I planned to focus on Shadowy first… but quickly found my Dangerous climbing to lofty heights… then I caught a GREAT Watchful run… so Shadowy is now my 3rd highest stat…
My plan at this point is to continue to let the story take me… and see where I end up…
At creation it was the amazing Alexandra David-Néel - but as I’ve got further into the setting, and especial after finding the forums, I’m definitely channeling Aimée Crocker. Come at me in K+C and you’ll get Elizabeth Bathory ;-p