OC/DC/Spinnoff Inspiration!

[Oleander]

So I'm curious, and I haven't seen a thread about it (or at least not one within the last 10 or so pages of Discussion.) What inspired YOUR character? This is primarily for Original Characters, or "Derived" characters (Can be set in a prefabricated universe IE an anime fiction.) If you've taken a Canon character in a COMPLETELY different direction though... I'd like to know why you changed them so much?

[13-Jzall]

I changed my character because all the source material for 13 was that he was sent to kill someone but failed, it's not a lot to work with.

[China]

China was inspired by the picture of him...
I was browsing DeviantArt for interesting character ideas, saw it, and thought that a monster with the durability of a teacup would be fun to write.
His backstory simply came from the thought that no one would want to intentionally summon a frail, broken minion.

Maximum effort.  tare:

[Kelly MacAryn]

Kelly wasn't inspired outright so much as grown. I've been writing and/or playing him in various incarnations for sixteen years, and he's unattached to any established canon except the one I've grown up around him.

That said, his personality has been heavily influenced by guile-heroes, anti-villain masterminds and benevolent tyrants in various media - in particular David Xanatos, Miles Vorkosigan and Havelock Vetinari (and maybe just a touch of Elijah Snow from Planetary).

[Summer]

Not really so much a "derived character" because he's not actually from the universe, but Summer was sorta inspired by Touhou Project's outlook on Youkai (using the supernatural to explain natural phenomena in the form of monsters/spirits + said monsters aren't very monster-looking), which ended up altered a lot over time as I wrote him more and more.
His personality has always had the duality to it, though Sonny used to be a grouchy, no-nonsense type, and Summer used to be simply energetic and whimsical. But neither of those really fit what they were supposed to be, a benevolent sun spirit, as bright, steady, and predictable as the sun in the sky, and a tumultuous storm spirit, as wrathful and temperamental as a, well, storm.
Also the two used to be different people, once upon a time, with Sonny being an ethereal being, as untouchable as the sun's light, and Summer being corporeal, because a tornado will fuck shit up.  That bit didn't last long :frog:

[Blink]

I just like to teleport.

[PepsiYuuka]

Why is Yuuka so different from canon? Ain't enough canon. That's all there is to it. I'm taking every bit of canon I have on Yuuka and trying my damnedest to marry it together even though there was never any intention for it to make total sense together after the partial continuity reboot. Hell I've even gone through and translated things no one else would myself to try to get a better picture of the character. Look at my speech notes in her roster. I'm a research freak. But there just ain't enough for my style of roleplay, which tends to mark heavy emphasis on the character's personal flaws and why they exist- with Yuuka, we see some of these flaws manifesting in canon like her compulsive lying and her tendency to chase people away, but we don't understand why or how she came to be that way. So I've made some guesses- theories, I suppose you could say- as to some interesting explanations of why she's like that. They ain't canon but I like 'em. And let's be real when do you think canon's gonna explain things for Yuuka, a character only relevant in one single windows game? Probably never.

As for my others...

Well Elly is basically an OC because she's a one-off boss with like 30 lines of dialogue ever and no character beyond "yuuka's gatekeeper, youkai, kinda sucks at her job but tries her best."

Renko... Haven't used her, can't say. I'm gonna try to do something interesting with her though.

Mima, again, not enough backstory. I have my own like 4k word backstory for her, of course, which in creation is a very similar story to Yuuka's. I still need to update it though because I wrote it before LoLK came out and we know more about Touhou Hell now oops. (I think I wrote her as being from Former, tho)

And Yuriko, though she's an OC... Uh, she started as basically Toki from SMTIV: Apocalypse but without all of the garbage lolicon shit. I think Toki had a lot of potential as an interesting, brainwashed emotionless assassin type character who finally learned to strike it out on her own and what the meaning of freedom is. And then Atlus decided it was more important to appeal to the market that wants sexy barely-pubescent girls in catsuits calling you "master." Ugh, thanks Atlus, I'd rather take my eyes out with icepicks.

[Trixie]

There are two versions of Trixie. The first iteration was formed in 2008, attached to Vad as his wife and the demon possessing his soul. She could manifest a corporeal form and exist outside of his person, but the true connection they shared was at the mental and spiritual level. Trixie's life force was eternally attached to Vad's. It was a dynamic duo that I really enjoyed writing and look forward to one day continuing. Vad was the main character for that and Trixie was the NPC. 

The iteration of Trixie that exists in the Omniverse is a dimensional sister version. The Trixie Zulenka who got pulled into the Omniverse existed in the Star Wars canon before and after the Great Hyperspace War with Naga Sadow. She is a Nightsister from Dathomir turned Sith Infantry turned Dark Lord. I fabricated her entire story up until to the point in her 30's where Omni grabbed her, right after the war ended. The Republic bounty on her was something stupid high just before she was sucked into the OV. (Entire back story is in my Roster). 

They're very much the same person personality wise, just with widely different abilities and personal agenda's. Some of my early writing in the Underverse had Trixie being haunted by the alternate version of herself.

My inspiration for Vad is an entirely different ball game.

[Desman Black]

Desman actually originally started of as a SAO prequel OC, after I relized that my prequel wouldn't fit into the cannon at all and would make no sense I just kept the core blaspects of his backstory and thus created his first incarnation in a differnt crossover RPG. After that died out he sort of fainted away but stuck in the back of my mind, after finding this site I found the perfect opportunity to play him, and his backstory added various odeas fro RPs i wanted to host at some point and of course A.N.N.A was made for someone to interact with during this new incarnations early days.

[Amaterasu]

Amaterasu and Undyne are pretty close to their canon, though for Undyne I chose to put greater emphasis on her love for anime and for Amaterasu I chose to make her a humanoid because this increases the amount of interaction she can have (in the original game she's a wolf and can't communicate verbally)

As for Malon, she was a character I was hugely interested in ever since I played Ocarina of Time despite having very little screentime. She's only really "that girl who teaches Link the Epona song and gives him his horse". I guess that the huge amounts of fanfic that I read involving Link and the four OoT-girls (Zelda, Salia, Ruto, Malon) helped, though - for instance one fanfic had Malon aid Link in his journey, wielding dual sickles. I filled out the rest to round Malon off to what she is now.

[Revan Noctis]

Well growing up I always played as the hooded sword wielding magic casting battle mage type, that and I enjoyed being able to stretch a games character choices. I saved marines in halo, I didn’t kill the giant in Skyrim. I basically decided that Revan Noctis would be a culmination of style and character traits I personally appreciate. It also means I highly value freedom of storytelling.

[Sarah Kerrigan]

So I'm curious, and I haven't seen a thread about it (or at least not one within the last 10 or so pages of Discussion.) What inspired YOUR character? This is primarily for Original Characters, or "Derived" characters (Can be set in a prefabricated universe IE an anime fiction.) If you've taken a Canon character in a COMPLETELY different direction though... I'd like to know why you changed them so much?

Weiss is built mostly off of her canon story, but a good amount of what she is could also be stated to come from the very popular AU manga "henceforward", which has tended to be a good inspiration for both me and a certain red-hooded girl. Part of it comes from my own experiences, as well. make of that what you will.

[Tearen Wover]

Tearen/Nealaphh was similar to Kelly in terms of being an extremely long-term character that has shifted and changed over the years. Obviously he's heavily influenced by Lovecraft's portrayal's of Nyarlathotep, but it wasn't until he went through the Underverse that I started to shift him towards a more benevolent character. Otherwise he's usually just been a way for me to experiment with very complex concepts in a justifiable manner.

Kopaka is pretty much unchanged from his source material, though I did make his morality a little more grey to accomodate the Omniverse.

[Alex]

Proto Man was originally supposed to be heavily influenced via my love for a defunct indy band called 'the Megas.' Pulled from shortly after MM3 (with some slight changes to his history because the Mega Man history is dumb and nonsensical), he was going to be this morally gray character, wandering the expanses of the Omniverse doing morally gray things. Maybe he'd help people. Maybe he'd go into business for himself. You know, kind of like Randy Orton, for those who know what WWE is.

Somewhere along the line -- can probably blame Samus or Nanoha or Mickey -- he turned into like, this person who, despite having a nearly human level of understand/sentience, is incapable of seeing the gray. He became a do gooder who would go out of his way to sacrifice himself for the greater good and strike down those who he perceives as evil, with the key notion being 'perceive.' He's still a young kid, so he doesn't understand the moral complexities. He never understood how someone as seemingly vile and self-absorbed as Gilgamesh was inadvertently helping a lot of people by tyrannically keeping order out in the wastes.

Essentially, he became John Cena.

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Shang Tsung, I think, started pretty similar to Shang Tsung, at least in the earliest iterations (like the MM story, the MK story just becomes nonsense after a few games). Originally, I was gonna have a slow burn. Had some ideas to make him a Jack the Ripper type in Darkshire. Then I found Atelos, and our story shifted and we got caught up in the politics of Darkshire. Now Shang's a bureaucrat and an orange lantern. As my third character would say "...fucking Omniverse."

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Seventeen has nothing in common with his canon, because I based him off a version of the character I played on a dbz rpg as a teenager. So he's probably my most egregious/sinful use of a canon character for what is essentially a custom character. I wrote the character before Dragon Ball Super felt like giving him more backstory/story at all, but even then, a fucking park ranger (or whatever he is) is lame as shit. Here in the Omniverse, he is essentially my character to experiment and have fun and to explore just how out there the Omniverse can be, when you look at it from a more objective stand-point (like, shit, imagine if you, the person, woke up in a magical land where you can will shit into existence out of rainbows? I think you'd probably not be all grit and girmdark about it).

[The Vision]

This is a complicated one with many factors. When I picked Optimus Prime, I mostly wanted to play the straight good guy (my main at the time was Dr. McNinja who is batshit crazy). Since he’s a robot I tried out writing code to convey the story or advancing the plot. I switched soon though. Didn’t like the paragon thing.

At about the same time I was reading some Avengers comics, as well as playing Marvel Heroes, which is a stupid game but I was hooked. And all that time I was thinking how easy it’d be to take moves from the game and to put it in the Omniverse. I was gonna go Iron Man but decided that’d be too predictable and he doesn’t think in code anywho. I just kinda randomly picked a robot I could think of from the game/comics.

It’s funny, I never really liked the Vision before I actually took a close look at him. Now he’s easily one of my favorite Marvel characters who’s completely underrepreSENTED DAMMIT MARVEL WRITE MOAT VISION STUFF LIKE THE ONE THATS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW