What inspired your character?

[Geralt of Rivia]

Many, many years ago I posted a thread on the OV that asked the same question. Back then this question generated results that were insanely interesting to read, so I thought I'd also throw it up here.

What inspired your character? As in, what made you choose to write from their perspective, whether they come from the thousands of pop culture analogs or they're a treasured OC?

For Geralt - he combines two character tropes that I adore. At his core, he's the hard-boiled detective blended with a sword and sorcery action hero. I think a lot of people mistake him for an anti-hero when I don't think he could be classed as one at all. He's not a traditional fantasy hero by any means. In his own source material, he's not some prophesized hero. He's just an exceptionally skilled monster slayer trying to do what he believes is right in a shitty, dreary world. He's never destined to save the world - that's Ciri's role, his place in the grand scheme was always to just guide her. It's like if you watched the original Star Wars movies only from the perspective of Ben Kenobi rather than Luke Skywalker. And yet his own struggle is always with two things - his own morality and the nature of fate and predestination, both concepts that I really enjoy exploring in my writing.

I also find his character surprisingly complex. With his backstory, the expected result would be a raging edgelord but he's far from that. He's capable of being humourous and charming just as much as he's capable of being a massive asshole. He's capable of being distant as much as he's capable of loving people deeply. Even though the world he lives in considers him inhuman, he is a very human character at his core. It's those dichtomies that I want to explore and break apart in my own writing whilst staying true to what the character is.

 

[Lilith]

There are many things Lilith is inspired by, but what inspired me to write her?

Villains, villain-centered stories, and protagonists of questionable morality fascinate me, so Lilith is the natural choice for me. She has no grand ambitions for power or control, and on the surface she seems simple, killing indiscriminately to satisfy her bloodlust. While there is some component of that, she prefers targeted violence, though the complex emotions and motives behind her actions are comprehensible only to her. I don't have anything against sympathetic villains or those with noble goals in their eyes, but Lilith rejects the concept of a villain with redeeming qualities. She fully embraces her evilness and all the spectacle that entails. She's not exactly main villain material due to the limited scope of her destruction, she's more the type to form obsessive rivalries. Part of the fun in writing Lilith is how unrestrained she is in every sense of the word. Death is no deterrent to her and she has zero filter in social interactions. I especially like seeing how she conflicts with other characters, clashing with their logic and testing the limits of their heroic virtues. Are people born evil, or do their circumstances make them so? That is a question that often underpins my writing. Everyone has the capacity for cruelty, Lilith argues. It's only a matter of finding the thing that will take them over the edge. She enjoys when heroes try in vain to prove her wrong. She would tell you that everything she does is her choice, though she couldn't stop even if she wanted to. As much of a monster as she is, she can show a broad range of emotions. Pettiness, flirty teasing, joking around with her very subjective humor, even full-blown sobbing.

Lilith is character that's important to me on a personal level. She's not exactly a reflection of me, though she parallels myself in several ways. She's more intended to stand in sharp contrast to me, a remorseless person who lets their worst moments define them. I like to think the trauma I've experienced and witnessed has toughened me to grim reality of the world, leaving me with an overall optimistic view that people can change for the better. Lilith on the other hand is cynical. People don't change, they are fundamentally evil, and she delights in the awful things they do to each other. I often struggle with seeing myself as either a good person or a bad person. Lilith is perfectly happy with her status.

As for character inspirations...

For visual aesthetics:
Gardevoir
Jabami Yumeko (Kakegurui)
Phalia (OblivionFall)
This person


For personality:
Panty Anarchy and Stocking Anarchy
Genocide Jack (Danganronpa)
Midari Ikishima (Kakegurui)
Demencia (Villainous)
Power (Chainsaw Man)
Yoshikage Kira (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure)
Misa Amane (Death Note)
The Flagellant (Darkest Dungeon) SCP-106

Media:
Jujutsu Kaisen
Junji Ito
Slasher/horror films
Cosmic horror

 

[Gizmo Gear]

For a while, my imagination making up stories while playing with toys made me imagine my worlds and stories which led to me wanting to make video games to bring these ideas and stories to life. Inspired by the likes of childhood nostalgic classics for me like Banjo & Kazooie and Mario. Gizmo's design was inspired by a scrapped Klonoa redesign for the Wii remake while Gadget's design is based off of a pet dog of mine Oreo. Yet while I got the basics of their personality and what was not fleshed out I wanted to do more with them. So I decided to practice writing for them on Multerra and bring their stories here.


I bet you wouldn't have guessed Simon and Kamina from Gurren Lagann being one of their inspirations. Gurren Lagann is one of my favorite animes I have ever seen and despite being not related by blood their brotherly relationship is how I imagine Gizmo and Gadget's being. Including Gadget's admiration and encouragement from his brash brother Gizmo. Gadget's cowardly persona takes some parts of my anxiety and paranoia and also Luigi. Some aspects of their characters come from me. And I imagine just like me both are autistic as well.

 

[King Ghidorah]

I love monsters. More specifically, I love the Godzilla franchise: for the depths of complexity and pathos it can explore, the exuberant embrace of spectacle it frequently embodies, and the heights of silliness it sometimes reaches. Ghidorah is *the* villain of the piece, having appeared more frequently than any other single Godzilla foe, and as such even before the Monsterverse portrayal infused him with a fully developed personality he had a more complete character than almost any other kaiju: the laughing destroyer. The joyful, cunning and eminently cruel ruiner of worlds who just can't stop getting mind-controlled by douchebags marginally less evil than himself. Frequently a bully, frequently a victim, - proud, lethal, and often exploited for his strength. He has always been one of my favorites.

I like villains in general, so once I decided I didn't think I could do a proper Godzilla it was fun to have a place to explore all the worst outcomes of a creature accustomed to possessing functionally infinite power who nonetheless keeps getting punk'd. It got me thinking about *why* people like breaking things, and after I chanced up the aesthetic angle the whole project kind of developed a mind of its own. But that was back on the OV, and the relative lack of narrative freedom stunted things somewhat.

This second go-around, I was able to lean into the cosmic horror angle, and that, I think, is what really makes it work. Because Ghidorah's raison d'etre is, on the face of it, fundamentally very hollow - an elaborate nihilistic intellectual justification for a very viscerally childish impulse to destroy. But if he's cosmic, if he's as old as the universe and the only one of his kind, if he's the only thing that even remembers more than half the people and planets he's destroyed, his attention to detail and fond recollection the only thing saving them from total oblivion, then the sheer scale of it changes things. He can both be both vapid and a little bit right. He can be both a delusional psychopath and exactly what he says he is: the wrathful, discerning eye of the Universe. And that contradiction is terrifying: tremendous fun to play out, and to explore.

He also let's me pit evil against evil, which is probably one of my favorite tropes of all time. There is something very viscerally satisfying about a villain encountering an outside-context problem moment because they were all set to deal with a hero and then something worse than them showed up.

Lastly, his whole *thing* also provides me with a lens to explore the relationship between loss and nemesis. I enjoy the idea that the worst evil creates the things which will eventually destroy it - Hence, Jewels, and her journey.

 

[Beatrix III]

I am going to focus on Beatrix III for the purpose of this thread.

Beatrix is the third iteration of a character named Trixie Zulenka who I invented in 2008 to be the wife of my DBZ OC Vad Zulenka. I wrote on a site name Chubbs DBZ RPG. Vad was a ruthless assassin character. He had zero ethics and morals and killed anyone who got in his way. I decided I needed a way to temper this chaotic character so I introduced a demon by the name of Trixie. She possessed Vad and inhabited his mind and could take corporeal form at will. They eventually married. Trixie was the brains and the compassion to the chaotic and ruthless Vad. They were very much in love and they became a power duo. Trixie provided the healthy aspects of life to Vad. While she supported her husband, she was the one with the conscience and the one who could be reasoned with. I would always say, "If you can't get through to Vad, at least attempt to reason with Trixie because she could pull the leash on her husbands more aggressive nature." This led to Vad becoming one of the good guys and fighting to defend Earth instead of killing people on it.

The year is 2015 and Chubbs is long dead. The second iteration of Trixie was Trixie Zulenka on the Omniverse. Here I stole her name and her appearance and created my own custom Star Wars OC. She was a badass soldier and a skilled Sith warrior. I often made her dream about Vad. About this man whom she was in love with in her dreams. I spent a year in the Underverse which eventually helped me mold her into the character she was around the time of the OV failing. By the time of the OV Cataclysm she was in a relationship with Nova Terra from Starcraft. Trixie suffered from PTSD due to her traumatic past and I was going into depth about her force powers and her connection to Diablo and the Emperor on Coruscant.

The year is 2018 and Multerra is being born. Beatrix Zulenka is born. Trix-three. Third times the charm. (As it says in my signature). Beatrix was inspired by the original Trixie and Vad. Beatrix III started out as a soldier for Arcadia and developed into an assassin just like her husband from the first iteration. She met a man named Vladimir Zulenka II and fell in love. Vladimir died of plague and she was left broken. That's when she met Jaina Proudmoore and they started their relationship which would go through some very troubled times before they eventually went on to marry each other. Beatrix III was designed to be a continuation of the original Trixie but also more. I've always loved blood magic. I got my love for blood magic from the game series Dragon Age. I loved how forbidden it was. I loved the power it brought to the table. In Beatrix's early days she was a drunkard and she could barely control her blood magic. She would get seizures (and still does) from the immense power that had been gifted to her while on one of her assassin contracts. The seizure part was inspired by Julius Caesar who also got them. The Romans believed that those who suffered from seizures had been touched by the gods. So this felt fitting for only a god of blood magic could have given her such powers. More recently, now that I've been writing again, I've developed who actually gave her the blood magic and I chose to use the blood god Hakkar from the World of Warcraft setting. He granted her a piece of his soul in exchange for her own and exponentially grew her power. Beatrix and Jaina are my escape. I write them to escape and to explore personal relationships and to experience the closeness one gets when with a partner they truly love. I now called her a Priestess of Hakkar in my writing. Beatrix and all of her iterations are very dear to me and I hope to continue writing Beatrix III for years to come. I even still write Trixie and Vad still with Alex, because we never got to finish anything we did with them. If Vad was my first OC, Trixie was my second and I created them over the course of a year in 2008.

Other OC's to note are Tia and Lucien Lockwood. Both of whom are children of Multerra.

 

[John Connor]

Well I can get into my motivations for my characters:

Jak:
I started on the site Omniverse with 10 years to Jak's name and all the stories that go along with it. Jak started out a young 17 year old with anger issues but over time he developed into a smarter and more calm version of himself as he aged through the 10 years I've had him. He's gained new eco powers, eco prowess and more control over his Light and Dark form. The fuel and open world that Jak has helps me discover the line between good and evil where you can toe.

John Connor/Marcus Wright:

Combining these two because same series, different Character:

John Connor and Marcus Wright are two sides of one coin and I've spent at least 6 years writing one or both. Meet Terminator, my favorite series since I was growing up. Then 2009 came and Terminator Salvation came around. It became one of my favorite movies to write from and rp from. These are two characters I love to write as. John and Marcus provide me the bro aspect with occasional butting heads.

Maximus Decimus Atticus
Ah, Gladiator, the 2000 movie I enjoyed for a long time. The Roman solider turned gladiator was a big influence in what i started to like for a long time.

 

[Izaneus Phortea]

For me, Iza started as a character from the book I plan to write one day. I thought really hard on what I wanted out of said book and realized how much I love all things Magical in the process. Back in the very early stages of planning. I didn't know what kind of story it would be. I merely knew that I loved Wizards, and the process of learning skills. Growing in power, and wisdom as you did so. I admired the steps in which one could grow with pain and strife, as well as how inspiring it could be to see someone still stand after everything they've been through.

So Iza started as a very early fantasy wizard, with a theme on medieval europe. With all the mythology tied to it. But I wanted to blaze my own path. So I stepped away from those ideas to start.

From there. Iza's inspirations lie in a lot of things that I've encountered since I decided I wanted to write a book. Makoto Yuki from P3, Rean Schwarzer from Trails of Cold Steel, Merlin, Harry Potter... and several more that aren't coming to mind quite yet.

So, I started thinking to myself, imagining the scenarios in which Iza, a boy who could see magic. Began manipulating it slowly at a young age. Growing in skill from his passions and love. I started pouring a lot of myself into it too, that I didn't realize until I started looking back. Hence why Iza's mother becomes exploitive upon realizing his talents, and Iza's father leaves multiple times to do something. (No spoilers!).

From there, I started taking more and more inspiration from my own life, and the other media that I've consumed. I started playing around with the ideas of the gods from Iza's world being just as flawed in their own ways, and creating issues that Iza and his companions have to solve.

Trails of Cold Steel had a really great aristocracy that it played around with in its games, and I started playing with it, eventually deciding that Iza was from a line of disgraced nobles. For something his ancestors did.

and slowly I started coming up with a world. That reminds me! Final Fantasy 14 was an inspiration, at one point. As I decided there would be three main continents.

Everything started coming together so slowly, and I just became more and more inspired to write it all, so more started coming. Shikiria, Tatio, Minala, Kia.. All of the characters I've shown off started coming together, and as they did, my inspirations became more and more clear.

But I had nowhere to write him, and I didn't want to mess things up as I am wont to do. So I came to multerra to flesh him out more, and in the process I found out so much more, and I'm really excited to find out even more about him and his journey. There's a million things to Iza that I just don't have the capability of writing out in any cohesive manner XD. But I'm glad to have him here, and I'm glad people are enjoying me raving about him every so often.

 

[Dr. McNinja]

‘Cause Deadpool was taken (at the time).

Nah, but the real reason is I was interested in a physician who treats monsters and magical diseases.

 

[Mewtwo]

Between OV and MT I think I'm one of the more (most?) frequent character switchers, because of my love for exploring the "new" and "different". It comes with the territory that once a character loses their sense of "new" I begin losing my interest. I've had a few experimental characters (looking at you, Karil the NPC on OV) on top of that, and a load of character considerations that never were committed. Amaterasu, back on Omniverse, was by far my most played character, and a very fun one at that!

That said, Mewtwo might very well have been an OV character as well, if Mewtwo didn't already exist as an NPC. "Mewtwo strikes back", the first Pokémon movie is one of my favourite movies of all time solely because of Mewtwo's character. It is a villain, absolutely, but it's villainous for a reason. I like portraying evil characters (despite being a total softie myself, haha) but if their reasons are flimsy or nonexistent they fall apart. For Mewtwo it's simple: it's villainous because it's enraged. Its first experiences after waking up are finding out that it's "an experiment" made by humans (the scientists), or "a tool" to be used by them (Giovanni). Neither considers it an individual. That kind of experience fucks you up. So it's not a villain with self-serving reasons like greed, pride or envy, it's a much more existential thing, instinct of survival. I've toned Mewtwo down for Multerra, but I had plans to perhaps return it to villainy. That kind of story is fun to explore.
On the writing side, Mewtwo is powerful and destructive but also a planner and thinker, and psychic powers are a very versatile power, so there was a lot of room for variety in playstyle.


Tony Stark was a way less planned choice, and the result of me wanting to use MT's Master Skills to the logical extreme: "What if I spent all my Essence on Master Skills?" I almost went with a Runescape character actually, but ultimately decided that MCU's Tony Stark is a more established and interesting character, which makes this concept much easier to explain. If I say "Hey, what if Tony Stark devoted himself entirely to inventing stuff?" people will probably have a mental image pretty quickly, and know what to expect. Seren, the goddess of the elves in Runescape, would have been a lot harder to explain!
The reason for why one of the more prolific MCU superheroes would suddenly hang up the nail was also easy: during Avengers: Endgame, he had infinite power for a brief time and used it to eliminate the opposing force with a mere snap of his fingers. It's a 'where do you go from here?' deal afterwards: no superpower measures up, and humans aren't meant to wield this kind of omnipotence. So Stark would simply have 'exhausted' all his will to battle in that moment, and being given a second chance at life in Multerra would have him explore a different world.


Also, I wanted two characters that do different things, one for more fighting and events, and one for people interaction and whatnot. I made Stark around the time that Darkseid first came in and the Siege of Markov happened, intending to have him arrive and lend a hand with the rebuilding efforts. But then my energy kind of ran dry, and here we are now.
(My third characters are always more experimental 'weird' things to explore weird stuff. I found other outlets for those whimsies, haha)

 

[Victor Wolfe]

So I started writing wrestling back in the day and found that I had a natural talent for being a heel, I love being able to piss people off and have never been able to write heroic characters. When I sit down and try to write heroes I always find that heroes do nothing, stories exist because of the villains for the most part so rather than create a hero, then need to make a villain who is just going to be the more fun character anyways why not skip that and just be the villain.

Victor as a concept was kind of a mishmash of stuff and has changed over time as I got better at actually portraying him in a way I was happy with but the core idea has always just been "take a lot of my toxic and negative traits, and turn them up to 11 to the point they are no longer weaknesses". My need for control, my sadistic streak, a love to push everyone else's buttons just to prove that I can. All of those turned up to the max ended up as a character that walks into every situation with a plan to manipulate, mutilate or humiliate anyone that gets in his way and it works.

As for backstory, I have always loved the fantasy aesthetic and kinda of wanted to play with the idea of "what if rather than the usual story of a hero who goes through all the tropes lost parents, homeland conquered, experimented on to gain near superpowers who then rises against the corrupt forces to change the system for the better!" that I feel like I have read so many times, what if they acted like a normal person and instead just went with "well this is my life now, I have something that I am good at so let's play the system to my advantage"

One of the other things that I really wanted to try with Victor was the idea of a pragmatic villain, So my thought on how to do that was for the most part just take morality out of the question. Victor as a character doesn't often think about things in terms of good or evil, he thinks about everything in "what gets me or the people I am working for closest to my goals." If that is to build a hospital and donate to charity, he will do it, he isn't thinking about it out of goodwill but more progress towards a grander goal. By the same logic if the quickest way to gut an innocent woman with her partner's knife to frame them for murder and get them out of the way without raising suspicions. That is also fine. He views everything he does as just another part of the job, and he is very good at his job and takes pride in his work.

This is also why Victor can sometimes end up on the "good guy" side in certain situations because his extreme pragmatism gives him a severe allergy to stupid evil characters, evil should always have a point.