Are any of your characters inspired by pre-existing ones?

I've had some characters that are loosely inspired by pre-existing characters and some that are not, and I personally have found that the characters that are inspired by another can be kind of constricting if they're too well fleshed out. It's interesting to see how different people fele about this though, as it seems like some people have a lot of success with those characters!

 

I think I've only ever had loosely inspired ones. And by that, I mean personality and face claim. I've tried to make each character unique and original for each site and that helps. Making their backgrounds and motives vastly different from each other and blending it with that specific RP's lore is always fun. Otherwise, I've never had a directly inspired character.

 

I came from years of playing canon characters when I finally found a foothold in original characters, there was a lot of inspiration to be had to charm them up. For example, I joined this supernatural (the creatures, not the show) site and Stiles heavily influenced the first character I made in Teen Wolf (using the face claim plus binge-watching the show does that). However, the more I got to writing him and making connections, he grew away from the inspiration and formed his own person with quirks that his inspiration would never have. It's been a journey, but fun to see developing as the threads/time goes by

 

I feel like I must have when I was starting out, but I've generally preferred original characters to ones that are strongly based on pre-existing popular media ones. I don't even like using real-life or anime face claims because I feel like they create too much of a sense of expectation around people familiar with the actor's work.

Eventually I assume most characters grow beyond their initial constraints as they're exposed to new characters and situations in different settings, but starting out with one that's so heavily inspired seems like it could be rough.

 

One of my characters was 100% a reaction to some problematic story choices in Doctor Who and how frustrated I felt by them. (Much love to the series, and in my opinion they course-corrected.) But I gave the inspired character a lot of the different Doctors' personality traits, though she wasn't a Timelord. She jumped around between universes, not points in time. Big difference, you see. >:D

 

Usually yes, I often find myself with new character ideas if I've watched or read something with a character in that I really connected with. Then I try to figure out what it was about that character or their story/arc that I liked, and write that into my new character.