Is your character you?

[hugo.4705]

Half of me. It is strange, but each of my 9 characters are a trait of my personality pushed to the extreme in adition of acting like how I would act. I deny all the story after lvl 40+ to be their. World bosses, dungeons, farms, their rps and events... that's their stories.

 

I also use them to escape the stupid real world, no restriction, you character can be the most toxic troll of the universe, the craziest scientist without ethics, a furry, a huge viking fighting for beers, whatever! Really.

[DaFishBob.6518]

I might be a couch potato these days but I'm most certainly not made of wood, bark, and leaves.

[Edge.8724]

One of my characters, I took inspiration of myself, but only really inspiration, not a copy pasted thing.

I like to picture my characters as a whole team doing their things together.

[Coeruleum.9164]

All of my characters are pretty much just alternate versions of myself so I can have different classes and play different stories within the scope of decisions I'd actually be OK with. All my characters have the same personality trait (Dignity) because I don't want to pretend to be someone I'm not, and all of my characters of the same race end up having a lot of the same decisions like all my Norn are chosen by Raven, and when I make some Asura I'll choose Synergetics as my college and when I make humans I'll pick Kormir to be blessed by.

[mezuzel.4987]

Several of my characters have aspects of my personality to some degree - as a writer that's kind of unavoidable, as someone on the first page said - but I've only ever made one character to actually represent myself in game. The goal was to explore whether it might help a little bit in banishing some of my personal demons, like defeating her doppleganger in Elon Riverlands to reflect on certain depressive thoughts, and so on. So far it's been sort of helpful in some ways, but not so helpful in other ways. Now she's mostly become my Drizzlewood meta commander and lab farm tagger. :P

 

At any rate, most of my characters are from my personal GW2 headcanon, plus a few more I made just for fun.

[Brandon Uzumaki.1524]

Yes, on every game, either online or single player/coop, it's always me, even this name i use, and if i can't use it, i make variations (BrandhonUzumaki, BrandonUzhumaki, etc), if you saw a "BrandonUzumaki" in a game there's a fair chance it was me lol (not anymore tou, not playing much online games nowadays, basically only GW2, rest is all single player), and i always go for the Paladin or the closest class to a Paladin in the game.

[Fenom.9457]

Yesn't. My main looks the way I wish I did physically. Obviously you can't control much of the storyline, so the Commander isn't "me", but who wouldn't want to be the protagonist awesome killer of elder dragons and gods? So again we can call it the me I wish I was

[EricRiot.9345]

Thank you for this thread it was very fun to read.

 

It's funny that some people think they are not connected to the character that they have created in some way. I mean did your Mom/dad/son/GF make the character for you and then you just decided to play that character?

 

If you created the character then in some way you are expressing a part of you to the rest of the world. Every decision that character makes is you making that decision. No one else is in your brain forcing your character to move this way or that. You decide everything that any of your characters do in game, everything is you.

 

And yet nothing is you. God I love MMO's I'm so glad what I was born in an area were "Avatars" exist. We have the beautiful avenue to immerse yourself in any world that you like, be it SWTOR, FFXIV, Star Trec.. what ever it may be... you have the privilege to play what ever you like with zero negative consequences (well toxic is toxic). I mean what a world we live in.

 

I would hate to be bone in the 1700's or 99% of all human history. A place were you can open your mind to any possibility and RP what ever you want a really free environment to be exactly who you want to be and not trapped by the "Physical" world.

 

As to is my characters me.. sure my main is always a tank in every MMO I have ever played. Lotro, Swtor, GW2, FFXIV he will never not be. That's just who he is. I have 9 alts in this MMO and each one is a fun representation of a part of my life. My Non fem is what my wife is in my eye's. I never play any class other then Human/Norn because I like to put myself "In" each environment. I want to be ME in the game that's how I immerse myself. Yes I have female characters mostly to play with the character creation option to see what I can create or what my wife can create it's fun to see what this game has to offer. But they are all a piece of me connected to it, I didn't press the "Random Character" button and then start to play.

 

Anyhow this is a fun topic thank you all for sharing.

 

P.S. To the person that got insulted due to the way they look. Don't put to much thought into it, like someone else said they are just "Projecting" their frustrations onto you. They probably had a bad day and "misery loves company". Just brush it off an move on. :)

 

Yours,

-Eric

[Danikat.8537]

> @"EricRiot.9345" said:

> Thank you for this thread it was very fun to read.

>

> It's funny that some people think they are not connected to the character that they have created in some way. I mean did your Mom/dad/son/GF make the character for you and then you just decided to play that character?

>

> If you created the character then in some way you are expressing a part of you to the rest of the world. Every decision that character makes is you making that decision. No one else is in your brain forcing your character to move this way or that. You decide everything that any of your characters do in game, everything is you.

 

To me it's like creating characters for a story I'm writing. I'm sure that who I am influences the kind of characters I create but only in the sense that it's my interpretation of that kind of person. I'm not trying to do a self-insertion story where I make a character who looks and acts how I see myself (either as I am or as I'd like to be) or even picking one aspect of my personality and making a character who reflects that. I'm trying to create an original character to fufil the role they're given in the story.

 

Do you think every single person in Game of Thrones is George R. R. Martin? He created them all and decided what they'd do, but that doesn't mean they are all like him or do what he thinks he would do in the same situation. Same idea here, although much less creative in my case.

 

It often doesn't even feel like it's me making the decisions, I just know what they would do like I know how my friends and family would react to certain things even if that exact situation hasn't come up before. For example I convinced my husband's friend _not_ to throw him a surprise party because I know he'd hate it. As far as I know he's never had one before but I know he doesn't like surprises, or suddenly having to deal with a lot of people, so even though he's not me and I don't control how he thinks I was able to know how he would feel and how he might react in that situation. It's the same with characters in stories and games. I know what kind of person they are and what they've done in the past so I know what choice they would make and that's the one I pick, even if I'm sure it's the wrong choice and I'd do something different.

 

Trying to force them to do something which is out of character feels wrong in a way I can't really describe, except that it makes the whole experience feel even more false than it already is and then I don't enjoy it. I've actually created brand new characters before because there's things I wanted to do in a game which I knew none of my existing characters would choose, so if I wanted to play it I had to make one who would.

[hugo.4705]

> @"EricRiot.9345" said:

> If you created the character then in some way you are expressing a part of you to the rest of the world. Every decision that character makes is you making that decision. No one else is in your brain forcing your character to move this way or that. You decide everything that any of your characters do in game, everything is you.

 

Not at all. I think what the players are refering to, is that you follow a premade story: killing zhaithan- mordry- balthy- kralky- jormy..... and all the filling between them. But when you are playing those stories, you play them because you have to, not because you or your character (if extension of you) want to or because it is you decision. It isn't my choice to do the stories, I just do them because I want the sweet ap. And because I want to be up to date with ANET commander character.

 

So no, the only thing that is me is if I decide to events or rp or fractals. But not the story. If it was, I would have a golemancer lab in a volcano and flying over Tyria with my asura on the deck of a personnal airship madlaughing.

 

You can create a character for the sake of creating or for key farm. (In this point, your argument is moot, because it is created for key and sent to cemetery: would you suicide yourself for a key in real life? To earn shiny boots?)

 

Either you follow the game indicating what to do, and it's not you, or you do what you want and it's you.

 

Do you really think all the death note characters, or fairy tail or whatever are all the author? Non sense. I see my characters (that i draw outside of gw2) as unique personalities like real different persons, no link with me. Would you say that characters created with inspirations from several are in fact several authors mixed in one? Again, imho hard to believe.

 

This was a very interesting comment.

 

[Kolsyrad.2807]

When I was a teenager I always RP:ed as myself in RPG's and MMO's.

I am 27 now tho and I've preferred to play as the opposite of myself for a long time now, and my taste in fictional characters have just fundamentally changed in general.

Before I used to play as more masculine and typical male characters, but now I prefer to play as very overtly feminine female characters.

I am not very confident irl either I have a lot of social anxiety issues and have dealt with other mental health issues so in video games I tend to prefer to play very confident female characters in particular.

 

Some people think that big muscular dudes with big axes yelling at the top of their lungs being angry is cool, but I just don't anymore.

Bayonetta and Ivy in Soul Calibur to me for example are just five hundred times cooler than Conan or the guys in Gears of War or whatever imo.

There's definitely exceptions to this, I love Berserk ( the Manga ) for example. But it also kinda speaks to a lot of the issues I've dealt with too and clicks with me.

 

 

 

 

Now the more I think about this, I think that maybe I do prefer the female characters that I do because they're kind of a representation of what I want to be.

I don't mean that I want to be a woman lol, but what I mean is that they sorta represent a more content sort of confidence and belief in oneself in how they carry themselves.

When men typically express confidence especially in media it often tends to come across as lacking in confidence imo, like they're trying to prove things through brawn or with fancy watches and cars etc. It comes across more like an inferiority complex.

 

Characters like Bayonetta and Ivy and that kind of confidence is more like '' I am who I am, and I am not ashamed. I got nothing to prove and imma do what I want. ''.

Especially when it's expressed in a more femme fatale aggressive sexual kind of way and considering how negatively that's often perceived in society, I think that's something people have VERY mixed thoughts on tho.

This also goes for people irl too, I have a lot of respect for people in general who just live their lives as they want to and don't care about how others perceive them. I just have that particular preference but just in general I respect it.

And it always kinda irritates me when people just reduce it down to '' it's just fap material '', I think that's just one very stereotypically '' dudebro '' way of looking at it ( and kinda immature imho ) but I don't believe that there is one way to feel about and look at these things.

It's sorta like saying that women just wear makeup to attract guys, I think that's kind of a narrow-minded way of looking at it.

It's like saying that men only lift weights to attract girls.

Sure, some do. But there's so many different reasons why different people do.

And in both cases it can be about fun or just because it makes you feel good about yourself.

 

I dunno if that makes sense to anyone and it's a bit rambly, it's a bit personal I guess and hard to explain.

I guess that the answer is both yes and no.

It's complicated.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

I've been making my D&D character in every game I've ever played that has character creation. I however don't play it exclusively. GW2 is another one of those games I am allowed to make lots of character concepts in.