This might be a difficult question to answer so feel free to delete it but Iâm really curious about your stance on AUs and writing characters that are based off real people but also clearly arenât these people.
Your characters feel so different from the runners they âoriginateâ from and yet their vibe still feels like them, I guess? Itâs really hard to describe it because they feel incredibly in character but also not like the actual people, which makes sense because you know, fictional worlds and whatnot. And also, that's just how fanon works, especially with works as long running and impactful as yours. So, would you consider them âOcsâ at this point? Are there any lines you have that you wouldnât cross that perhaps wouldnât be an issue if you were writing about completely made up characters?
Also, on another, perhaps even more difficult note, how much do the actual people/their vibes and actions influence you? Like, for example, rewriting Dolorem after the stuff that happened was absolutely the right decision in my opinion but did it feelâŠwrong, weird?
I recently found some of my own old work that included a creator no longer in the community for what they did andâŠman. Because I still love those works but I also felt weird reading them again with the knowledge I now have. I never published any of them anywhere but I still thought about rewriting them butâŠIdk, that wouldnât feel right either because I wrote that character with concepts in mind that fanon attributed to them at the time. And they were one of my favorite creators and changing/rewriting those works would feel wrong, like I donât know, trying to put a piece into a puzzle it doesnât belong to/where it doesnât fit. But leaving them like they are also feels wrong.
Idk, Iâm just curious about how detached you feel the characters are to the actual people and how much their actions impact those characters/your writing both positively and negatively?
This is an awesome question!!
A lot of what I do is dictated by what I am personally comfortable with, which coincides with what the people I write about are comfortable with.
For example, I donât find romance compelling because I have a unique experience with it as an aroace person. I donât typically write about it. If I enjoyed writing romantic relationships, I still wouldnât do it unless the characters were entirely fictional, or their namesakes gave me explicit permission. I personally wouldnât be comfortable writing something about someone if that person doesnât want it to exist.
Plenty of people told me that I didnât have to rewrite Dolorem and Iterum, that the character can be independent from its inspiration, which I believe is true to some extent. I rewrote them anyway because I didnât feel comfortable including a character based on someone who inflicted severe harm onto multiple members of the community. I spent months reworking the story to match the original vision while avoiding a one-to-one replication of the same character, just under a different name.
I care deeply about expressing myself creatively, but my consideration for other people will never be pushed aside because it would make things easier for me.
This, expectedly, makes things difficult for me sometimes. Like I said, this is a personal boundary of mine. I donât think everyone should think like I do. I donât think itâs healthy to worry incessantly about whether my work, born from passion, is perceived as an affront.
But I still do. It has nothing to do with how well I know someone. I could be best friends with someone and still worry that my work is offensive to them. It is what it is.
I get around this fear by being explicitly clear that I do not psychoanalyze my friends (and their friends) to create one-to-one depictions of them. I make characters, who exist independently in their own fictional worlds, that are inspired by their namesake. I donât think real Fruitberries would kill people. I donât think Feinberg would be that charismatic. I donât think Couriway would as situationally aware as Icarus is.
The way I approach it is that they share a name and perhaps some traits, but they are not the same person. I donât want them to be.
That is the joy of the narrative to me. I can bring the people I care about into my favorite thing to do on this Earth (make up stories) and it allows me to communicate things I canât express in a conversation.
Each character I make is an extension of myself. They reflect me more than they reflect the people they are inspired by. By definition, they are my characters, but they do not belong solely to me. They are the parts of myself I see in others combined with the ingredients to make a good story, because I think being a part of a story, contributing to something bigger than yourself, is the ultimate joy.
I simply wish to share that joy. I wish to share other things, too, like the way I see the world and the way you may see it, if you find pieces of yourself in a character like I have. I share my experience of the human condition and invite everyone who engages with my story to share theirs.
Historically, storytelling has been collaborative. Itâs not something I enjoy doing alone. Stories always need a listener. Sometimes, if I really like somebody, I take it one step further and give them a part to play.
That way they can experience the story the same way I do: from within it, rather than outside of it.
I know that my work comes from a place of love and passionâthe only thing I can do is hope others can see that, too.
