Daniel Ember was the first character I roleplayed seriously - I was 16 and in a forum based on Final Fantasy VIII. I played him for years, the role still feels really comfy, so whenever I want to make a quick character for a videogame I often recycle him.
The funny thing is, every time he starts roughly as the same character, but thanks to different settings, traumatic events and acquaintances he ends up as a radically different person.
(I even have a Daniel in a futuristic setting that knows about parallel dimensions, and wants to kill all his other selfves to acquire their powers. My own lazyness has become a plot point!)
That’s actually kind of cool!
(Does that other selves include you in person as well)
[quote=Morkan Kassington]That’s actually kind of cool![/quote]Thanks!
If you like this kind of plot, I discovered a flashy film called the One that basically stole my idea and added kung-fu. I haven’t seen it yet, but it seems funny.
[quote=Morkan Kassington](Does that other selves include you in person as well)[/quote]Oh gosh no, me and my character actually haven’t much in common. Though I think not being his copy won’t stop him from killing me.
Eichlos isn’t the character’s name. It is a title. The original was a man or prophet that became something else. Now it is passed on to its descendants.
Roughly translated Eichlos is Oakless, which is the sir name of a group of characters I use. Usually I’m playing the offspring of the original. In that regard the character has a lot in common with Arthur Jermyn from the H.P. Lovecraft story that bears his name. The character’s path in the Neath has been similar to that of Richard Upton Pickman and Randolph Carter (also from Lovecraft).
Its [sex: female; gender: male; species: not exactly human anymore] draws its personality mostly from C. G. B. Spender (the Cigarette Smoking Man). And actually these forums formed that personality. Some clever individual on these boards asked what our characters would be like in the next city. I never got around to actually responding in that thread but thinking about it, but the nom de guerre that came to mind was the Smoking Ambassador. The lingual association that followed is what has shaped the personality of the character.
Elias Lowe was originally based off some sort of weird mixture between Hannibal Lecter and Niko Bellic of The Grand Theft Auto IV… But I started to empathize with him more and now he is truly his own person… The choices I made before are still part of his canon too. He just grew up along the way, I guess. The person he is now is who eventually inspired The Unnamed Protagonist in my book, now that I think of it. Or maybe the other way around.
I’m not exactly sure if I was directly inspired by anything for Ezekiel, it just suddenly came to me. The parasite known as Ophiocodryceps Unilateralis, which is often just called cordyceps, was the inspiration for his condition… But his personality and character aren’t patterned after any one person…
edited by The Absurd Rogue on 6/17/2016
If you google my username you immediately see what she was supposedly based on. I didn’t try very hard so Zoe does not resemble the source material at all.
Soran is basically just me, except agender, ten years older, more dignified (as in, dignified at all), and way cooler.
Zero is a character I end up making in pretty much every RPG (though he was born in the Fallout games). There’s been variations between games, but in general he’s always been charismatic, irreverent, and super gay (where possible), usually with some sort of tragic backstory.
Kasha Cairn is based on the conniving antagonist of the same name from a short story I wrote way back (who was a literal magpie there because the short story in question is a talking animal story).
And Thysania isn’t based on anything in particular, but her name comes from a genus of moths.
An amalgam of several influences
Dorian Gray from ‘The picture of Dorian Gray’
Prince Jerome from ‘Les Eaux de Mortelune’
My own darker sides and imagination.
Beau isn’t based on a particular person. He is based on the early Christian idea of human existence in which human beings are creatures of animal instinct and passions crossed with spiritual freedom and and rationality. These two parts of Beau’s personality are unhappily at war with each other, and his only hope for happiness is learning to to turn both to their proper ends in love of truth and virtue. As St. Augustine wrote, "Grant me chastity and continence—but not yet!"
edited by Beau Mercy on 6/23/2016
@Beau: To splice metaphors a bit, he might find that the Great Chain of Being is something that will bind him unless he learns to cast it off.
– Mal
That would be the Gnostic solution—happiness is freeing the “upper soul” of freedom and reason from irrational animal instinct.