Question Unlikely Roleplay Inspirations

[Alan]

I always wondered where some people get their inspirations from, their ideas, storylines. And sometimes I get it, from the movies, from books, from other movies, media, yadda yadda. But for me, I always like to hear about bursts of inspiration that writers can have from the smallest thing, or totally unconnected thing.

I can't remember exactly what it was, but for some reason the melody and the way she sung the actual song on Lady Gaga's Paparazzi really got to me and helped me write some things back in the day. I still listen to it today when I have writer's block.

So what're yours?

 

[Docha Dubhain]

Capture an emotion

Wrangle it down to its core feeling

Build a character around that core vibe, then let it evolve beyond the core emotion you put into it, and let their development flow over time to something you could never have planned.

Then rip off videogames and movies stuff too yeah.

 

[Vizion Trozky]

There's this collaborative project between Perturbator and Cult of Luna's Johannes Persson called 'Final Light'; that album came out in mid-2022, about two weeks before the GA/Empire Invasion of Ilum, and was the only thing I listened to for that entire invasion. A wonderfully bleak, post-metal/synthwave thing that really works, imo... and I was writing a Jedi whose playlist is usually 'japanese' lofi, with it.

I don't pair metal with my Jedi characters, particularly not since the metal I listen to is a lot of death, techdeath, and industrial metal. It just doesn't fit the lightside vibe for me, usually.

But this album has remained my main go-to for if I need bleak or other particularly dark/hopeless vibes for a thread, ever since.

 

[Amara Zambrano]

Capture an emotion

Wrangle it down to its core feeling

Build a character around that core vibe, then let it evolve beyond the core emotion you put into it, and let their development flow over time to something you could never have planned.

This is exactly how I approach every character I've ever written and probably ever will. The one emotion I'm feeling especially strong at the moment I come up with the character concept is the driving force for them.

 

[Annasari]

The news lmao. Current events, feelings provoked, and the personas of public figures I find very interesting and great fuel for RP. If I find someone I really am enamored by I’ll go read about them, take little pieces of them with me into writing. If I’m mad about something I see, I build up a similar situation to give my other writers a villain, or to figure how my own character would respond in a galaxy far, far away.

Also my fellow chaos writers. Many great stories told you can bounce off and go another direction, or just generally feeling inspired to rise to their levels, which in itself breeds creativity.

 

[Delila Castillon]

I can't remember exactly what it was, but for some reason the melody and the way she sung the actual song on Lady Gaga's Paparazzi really got to me and helped me write some things back in the day. I still listen to it today when I have writer's block.

Damn, now I gotta listen to Paparazzi.

 

[Kalen]

It was probably obvious to anyone reading my posts since I kept linking directly to their songs lol, but Kalen was almost entirely inspired by Type O Negative. I was listening to them constantly while writing in the Hapes Crisis. Especially “…A Dish Best Served Coldly” and “World Coming Down”.

Starlin Rand was partially based on Bob Dylan, my cousin, and myself. I opted to write a character who had played at being a Jedi as a kid (like I did) and whose discovery of his own Force sensitivity was like a fantasy brought to life. Where others would be confused or frightened or nervous, he was joyful. That is the essence of his character, he’s not just supposed to be goofy. Whenever I forget that, I shelve him and come back once I remember what it feels like when dreams come true.

I’m very interested in religions and what people believe about their world. When I do worldbuilding, I tend to focus on the planet’s religion more than other people do, sometimes even using it as a starting point and building everything else around spiritual beliefs. One of the most interesting religions in the world, IMO, is Haitian Voodoo. The religion of Necropolis is heavily inspired by voodoo, to the point where I was surprised my submission got approved lmao.

While we’re on the subject of Necropolis, a lot of the characters I’ve made for that planet were directly inspired by classic monster movies. Sycorax Laveaux is literally the Bride of Frankenstein, there was a Dracula NPC antagonist, then Dracula’s Daughter, etc. The most unique one was Lon Tull, a secret agent who specialized in disguises—he was directly inspired by Lon Chaney Sr.

I found a children’s graphic novel at the library called Brightly Woven. It had a character who was a wizard and wore a rainbow cloak. And thus Byron Devorak was born.

Kai Bamarri ‘s origins were strongly influenced by fairy tales. He’s named after a character from The Snow Queen, and his species, the Bamarri, were inspired by the sorcerers in The Two Princesses of Bamarre.

King Horace was based on two English kings, Henry II and Henry VIII.

 

[Kurayami Bloodborn]

Originally (so quite long ago in the Dark ages before Chaos), when I created Kurayami I was bored and recovering from an appendectomy amd secondary surgery. So, on a now defunct FB group, I created this character to riff on all the super-edgelords running around. He was supposed to last only until I got my stiches out. I pulled from games I played in my freetime and twisted the narratives to fit star wars. Locations in Ace Combat games got renamed and dropped onto a planet that matched the mission, with appropriate star wars ships. I'd describe a fight in KOTOR or KOTOR 2 as if Kurayami had been the exile or revan himself. And multiple one liners. All while sitting in a cantina, drunk as hell so was he an unreliable narrator? Or was the pickled Corellian really over 4000 years old?

No one could agree. And over those weeks of recovery, he morphed from just pure satire of the edgy sith, to someone else, all without me trying. So i ran with it. Started to flesh him out more and eventually updated his original bio. Fast forward about 8 years and I rewoked him for the fourth time for Chaos. This version I had a good idea of who he was and pulled from various historical ace pilots, but also there is a lot of his original characterization in there too, and more than a bit of my self-deprecating, sarcastic, monotone, and sometimes a bit dark humor.

 

[Revna Marr]

My main character (Revna) is actually Version 2 of a character I made for another SW based rp.

This Revna came together from a "vision" I had of her, and feeling a set of emotions that were connected to said vision. Then when I built her, I loosely based her past off of my own, interwove my own "darkness" into her. If she existed irl, she'd be my shadow.

Whenever I write with her, depending on the scene, I either listen to some form of heavy metal for inspiration for her aggression and ferocity, Gothic melodic songs for when she's going through trauma, or norse folk music for more uplifting and social interactions...or when I write her in her meditation moments.

I had no book or movie inspiration for her, and I have no face or voice claim for her due to that.


For Veradun Sharr , he was never supposed to be a pc, but I decided to flesh him out for the Jutrand academy. I had nothing except the name for inspiration (Veradun was the name of Darth Malgus from TOR before he became Malgus). Ver has some inspiration from the character I suppose but not a lot.

For Leshanna Dromar , uhh....I named her after my first D&D character. That was her inspiration lol. I'm still building her story but right now there is inspiration from Kai (big Spartan lady from the non canon Halo TV show) for what I want future Lesh to be like, roughly. We'll see how I pull that off lol.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

In Fire Emblem: Three Hopes, there’s a paralogue where three of the game’s most obnoxious aristocrats compete to see who is the noblest noble. It was goofy as hell and I thought it was hilarious, thus Cora’s character concept was born.

 

[Valery Noble]

I was vibing with music as usual and came across The Whistler - The White buffalo. A song about a soldier who struggles to make the switch from war to civilian live and feels like a killer.

Then Aiden Rennek was born as a shower thought from whistling the opening tune to myself and getting the idea to do something more with it.