Character Inspirations

[Arthur Morgan]

Just curious about the various inspirations people have for their characters. I’m a bit busy at the moment so I won’t go into detail on mine just yet, but I defs will later.

For those of you who write OCs especially, I’m curious what inspired the creation/design of your character, maybe what media influenced their behavior/abilities or what other fictional characters you might’ve used as a basis for them. Why are they… the way they are? How’d they start out in your brain?

For canon characters, what influences your depiction of the character? What research do you do, if any? What about your experiences and the media you consume has made this preexisting character uniquely “yours”? Do you deliberately deviate from canon in a lot of ways? (I know I do!)

 

[Lilith]

Characters:
For inspiring the visual aesthetics, Gardevoir is the most obvious one. There's also Motoko Kusanagi (outfit pending). Phalia
Also this unnamed person.

Yoshikage Kira, mostly in the sense of being a perverted psychopath.
SCP-106
The Flagellant. Sadomasochist. Twisted worship of divinity. Blood abilities.

The Ironclad. Ramping up power throughout a fight. Blood abilities.

In some ways she is the culmination of several past iterations of characters I used to roleplay as.

Media:
Darkest Dungeon.
Jujutsu Kaisen.
Junji Ito.
Slasher/horror films in general.

Why is she like this? Good question.

 

[Bridget Remington]

Bridget’s initial inspiration was the water benders from Avatar: The Last Airbender. She was created for a Fate RP and I really wanted her focus to be on healing and water manipulation, so that’s how I decided on her abilities.

As that RP progressed, I began expanding Bridget more, giving her a stronger backstory. Her family history became tied up with the Selkie mythology, since I was very interested in building a more powerful ‘symbolism’ for her magic. In addition, I again took inspiration from ATLA by giving her blood bending abilities, with her grandmother (and magic teacher) greatly resembling Hama from “The Puppetmaster” episode. I wanted to give her an unstable side, since her personality was already veering into a more aggressive direction due to the RP. She also became more focused on ice magic as things wore on, kind of reflecting her increasingly brittle and cold mentality.

In general, the most powerful media influences on Bridget would have to be ATLA and the animated film Song of the Sea. There’s a little bit of a Bloodborne influence in there but not much. For her personality, I’ve taken inspiration from Hama/Azula (ATLA) and Asuka (Neon Genesis Evangelion), but mostly just let her develop on her own.

 

[Jeremy]

When I first made Jeremy, his main inspiration was, as stupid as this sounds, the streamer Jerma (hence them sharing a name). He was initially going to wear a number of costumes and play different characters throughout the course of the RP, but his knight persona stuck so hard that these other characters never came to light. His hardcore comedian persona also wavered throughout the grail war, turning into more of a goofy nice guy who also happens to make jokes pretty often. Jeremy’s (almost) complete lack of magic despite being a mage also feeds into this more mundane aspect of his personality.

Sigmund, on the other hand, comes from me wanting to take the stereotypical creepy cultist and give them a genuinely cheerful, charismatic personality. A decent chunk of inspiration comes from Henry from Fire Emblem, though Sigmund is not quite so murderous. Additionally, he serves as a contrast to his predecessor, the quiet, somewhat emotionless Erik. Though it was somewhat experimental at first, I find Sigmund’s personality a lot more fun and engaging.

 

[Ridley]

As far as Ridley goes, I try to let the entirety of the canon influence the character, but also try to balance a lot of it to work together, and use a couple ancillary sources. I also work a lot with what just made biological sense for the character, along with my interest in playing a properly 'evil' character.

I work with quite a bit of research on Birds and reptiles for Ridley but try to avoid lizards, and looked up some theories regarding how heat and fire would work in a real creature, though I still keep it sort of 'magic-y' for the most part. I also did the more simplistic research of finding the few locations that secondary Metroid materials existed in to actually write it a bit more properly - since many of them have only been compiled in one obscure location on the web.

I also use a lot of things I already know about modern piracy and functional criminal empires, which is something I already spend time researching as a hobby.

The one thing that deviates is that I take his very chatty, talkative self from the manga, the silent, angry determinator from the games, and tend to split the difference to make him grumpy, quiet, but also proud and arrogant as a way to reconcile those appearances.

 

[Anders Nazret]

Strazio- - I'm a big sucker for determinator characters and Strazio allows me to indulge in that over the top self-destructive character writing. Dude cut his own arm off to use as a bomb for christ's sake. Anyways, he definingly takes inspiration from Shonen anime and though I don't have any specific references he takes after characters like early Naruto who don't ever give up and have some evil shit lurking inside of them. I have to thank Elise and their previous character Tearen for really helping me push Strazio into a direction that isn't just pure hate-rage.

Pecan - Pecan was an experiment. I was very happy with how Kuzuru turned out at the last website. I was very tempted with rolling with Kuzuru again, but he didn't really fit well inside the Multerra ruleset. So I thought I'd double down on the reckless sociopath that Kuzuru was, but stray away from the fantastical elements of the character and lean more into a human-like character. My goal was to make the most unlikeable bastard likeable. I think he's succeeded fairly well, despite the block I've hit with him.

Anders - Anders was kind of on a whim. I saw the character art I currently use and thought the idea of a chad wizard was funny. This was also when that meme of shirtless buff merlin was circulating so I wanted to make the beefiest of cakes into a wizard. The #FuckArcadia aspect was added after the initial idea. I love playing the bad guy and thought it'd be fun to attack the "paragon" of Multerra under the guise of righteousness.

Amalia - I had been toying around with a "summoner" character idea for a while. Necromancer is my second favorite fantasy archetype and originally was gonna make a necromancer dude. But I saw Amalia's character art and fell in love. I like sad-cat characters and so it was natural to make her into a haunted troubled person. So far she's been a ton of fun.

 

[Ganondorf]

Orion - he started out as a Vegeta clone on Chubbs, but as time went on I built onto him. He gave me an opportunity to explore the Saiyan culture and being a huge DBZ fan this was great fun and still is. His personality was initially built on me and the general angst of being a teenager/young adult but he grew into something more. He became more like Geralt or any number of gruff anti-hero characters, though these days it feels like he's starting to mellow. I'll be changing that soon. >=D

TMNT - I was toying with the idea of a character who is multiple characters. I thought it would be fun to have that built in as one of the main features of the character, and one day I happened upon the old TMNT 2003 cartoon which I hadn't watched to completion before. I felt inspired and gave it a watch and fell in love with it again. I decided that the unique personalities of each of the turtles would give me heaps of opportunity to write with more conflict and so far still loving them.

Two more characters are on their way, but I gotta make sure I want them first.