So far, Tropers/RadioactiveZombie has three main projects that are ''incredibly'' guilty of this - only one or two characters are original, the rest are people he's played with or his characters from those games. For example, his ''Shadowrun'' story is composed of every person he's played with on two major ''Shadowrun'' [=MUDs=], and the only semi-original people are Jake Armitage, an SR character from the SNES game, and Kitsune, another character from said game.

The other one is a ZombieApocalypse story. Pretty much everyone from the [=MMOs=] ''Urban Dead'' and ''Dead Frontier'' he's worked with (hell, hasn't even played with). The only ones who aren't from those two games? The main character, another major character's half-brother (A Liquid Snake Expy), Michael Bay, his two best friends from Sophomore year, a guy who looks suspiciously similar to Drew Carey, and himself, who is the ButtMonkey.

The third is a {{deconstruction}} of [=JRPGs=]. People from Gaia and fantasy MUDs are involved.

In what I'm currently working on, there are three main characters, none of whom are me, although they all have a couple of aspects of myself in them. They all somehow got my snarkiness.

Weird, semi-prophetic example with this troper: I started writing a story a couple of years ago, before I met my now-best male friend. I tell the story from the [=POV=] of two characters: a girl and a guy. The girl is...well, not ''exactly'' a self-insert of me, but similar. The guy is dark-haired, friendly, funny, something of a prankster, and totally adores his best friend (the girl). Okay, now here's the weird part: my best friend is eerily similar to the male character, and I didn't even ''meet'' him until after I had a good chunk of the story written! Those similarities aren't really helping our reputation either, especially since I intended from day 1 to have the characters end up together.

Also, the main villain's name comes from combining syllable's of my brother's name and the names of two bullies from my childhood.

This troper made a story where the main female character is based on his brother's girlfriend; The fact that the main male character is seen as an author avatar makes this situation a little...Weird...

This troper has a two characters modeled after his brother. One is a more positive homage (even going so far as to use his name) while he would never admit to the other one being his brother to said brother's face because the character is kind of a pathetic agnstier version of my brother with some pretty bad character flaws.

This troper, for her first creative writing class, couldn't come up with a good idea for a story. So she came up with a dumb (but totally fictional) account of her and her best friend doing stupid college student things--with a few of our friends thrown in on the side, names changed. This didn't seem like such a big deal, and one of the characters--a blind guy, trapped in the middle of a blackout, was chucked in mostly for the sake of a joke. However, during the class comentary, one of the students in the class--who turned out to be someone this troper knew from middle school--said: "I think the secondary characters need more exposition. It's a bit disconcerting when 'Randy' is thrown in as a one-off joke, and yet I happen to know his hopes and dreams." Ouch. Owned.

That's not irony.

Similar story: my first novel was set in my old high school and featured my real friends and teachers (with names changed). The novel was rejected for having too many {{FlatCharacter}}s -- because ''I'' knew them, I wasn't working hard enough on making their personalities and individual voices come across to the reader who wouldn't know them already. Since then, I've ''never'' been able to put someone I know into a story -- contrary to what non-writers often assume, writing people you know (and I mean ''really'' writing them, not just sticking their names on characters) can actually be ''harder'' than inventing characters. At any rate, it is for me.

This troper's OldShame consists of a handful of FanFics with blatant MarySue protagonists (though the naming thing is inverted because she took her Internet handle from the Sues rather than naming them after hers, but troper digresses...). The Sue factor has since decreased (she hopes), but for some reason, she has kept the naming convention and pieces of her personality in the characters (including one that molded ''itself'' to fit her life; said character was angsting over her father's death and a few months later...you can guess.). Although...this, too, is declining... Okay, troper admits it. She only ''used'' to write who she knows, and does so in moderation. But "used to" still counts, doesn't it?

This troper is writing a story which contains a character with traits from her older sister and best friend (who are polar opposites, but the traits chosen work well together), and the comic relief is based on her brother. Her brother didn't ''know'' this, and suggested she kill the comic relief off and make it funny. He now knows the character is based on him, but ''doesn't'' know that the character is set to Take The Bullet for a guy caught in the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor. And it isn't funny. At least, this troper ''hopes'' not.

This Troper ''isn't'' doing this, but is currently working out how to convince everyone of this fact, seeing some qualities of the protagonist character of his creative writing assignment...

This troper is sometimes quilty of this. Most notably a large number of the cast in a comic he's planning are based on people he knows or has known. Out of the three main chacarters, one is essentially this troper himself, another is a combination of two of his friends. The last one started out as two different characters, one of which was based on another friend, which he later combined to one character.

Two instances that I can recall. One is a story I made wherein the main character is an AuthorStandIn and his {{Nakama}} are several people I know in real life. Sad to say, my stand in character was a serious MartyStu at first, though some character development and a conveniently inconvenient ''death'' served to rescue him from the Stu heap. The other is a deliciously metafictional variation wherein the ''main character'' does this, with his own AuthorStandIn for a story that he created. However, his own stand in is not even remotely a Stu, though his flawed character is the very least of his worries.

This troper once purposely, and with full understanding of how dorky it is, once wrote a 'EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory' story. The downer ending (not everyone in Purgatory goes up) messed with his head for a LOOONG time.

In writing some of his fanfiction, this troper changed a few small but essential elements of one of the main characters to make him easier to writer for and relate to-namely, changing him from a Film student to an English major. This troper doesn't know anything about filmmaking and doesn't care to, and so he altered it to something he was more comfortable with. More particularly, he's noticed that his protagonists share some of his own psychological hang-ups, most notably over the mixed-up reasons that motivate them on their chosen paths in life, and alternately feeling better on a certain subject, before they end up falling back to their old doubts and worries again once something sets them off.

This troper certainly hopes people don't think she's writing what/who she knows, as she seems to include a worrying amount of incest.

This troper plans on doing it for a MindScrew comic he has planned for another time.

This troper is partly guilty of this, in that just about all of the characters I've made are asexuals, just like me.

This troper and her middle-school {{nakama}} used to do this for hours on MSN in little mini [=RPG=]s. My {{rival}} and I used to try to out-god-mode each other (is it possible for ''both'' rivals to be the Red Oni?) while our far more sensible colleagues looked on, wondering no doubt how they managed to wind up hanging out with these two idiots. I've ended up origi-ficcing our adventures in more than one form over the years; the current version in the works has my fourteen-year-old self learning an {{aesop}} about acting like a TsundereSue and coasting on magic all the damn time. My current self gets cameos as the plot allows.

In a strange twist on this, this troper once wrote her best friend's personal Harvey into a story. She's also written in a few friends and one of her younger brothers. And her early main characters, she will admit, were horrible Mary Sues.

Both played straight and averted in this troper's younger sister's unpublished novel (she has yet to send it for publication...unfortunately). While there were clear parallels between some of the characters and the surrounding area (this troper appears as a pretty much {{Flanderized}} version of himself), it's actually surprisingly good at avoiding this.

This troper was working on developing a character for a story set in a theatre. He was the typical flamboyant gay in the theatre, but he was bisexual. I ended up meeting the real life version of him and sitting net to him in class for a full semester. The scary part was that they had the same exact quirks. (She has since re-drawn him to have similar facial features to the real one, proving this trope correct.)

Barely noticeable version: One of the vampires in my WIP-novel is an Episcopalian.

This troper wrote an OC character for a fanfic... and met a person with nearly the exact same personality two months later. Actually, I'm dating him now... hm.

When this troper writes a character that is a young girl, she almost always ends up as a fictionalized version of her younger sister. No matter how I try to make the character different, she always ends up being my sister, though I've done it on purpose a couple of times.

This troper's crazy made up universe involves a team of 5 superheroes. All of whom are based on my friends.

The Finnish murder mystery writer Eeva Tenhunen used to use really thinly disguised real people in her books. Many of which were from this troper's mother's family. Many were not amused (as in "How dares someone who barely knows us cast my aunt as the murderer and myself as a complete idiot?"), but bought the books exactly because of that.

This Troper based one of the villains in a short story of his off of someone he knew. Said person wasn't actually a bad person, just had some radical ideas. They were AffablyEvil.

This Troper works in customer service. She also writes/runs RPG scenarios at gaming conventions for fun. She will admit to casting moronic or jerky customers as minor bad guys in her games. Mature? Probably not. Enjoyable? You bet!

I once saw this to the extent that it became narm. In a play put on by some people in our drama group, all their names were the same as the actor's. The personalities were slightly similar, but everytime they said each other's names we all just started laughing.

@/SteelKomodo is currently writing a story called ''Ninjas VS Knights'', which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin and stars characters based on his brother and friends. His ninja character is named Hornbuckle, of all things, his best friend is a knight who gets drunk every five minutes, and going to be an evil reptillian sorcerer called Sauros [[XanatosGambit manipulating everything behind the scenes]]. Needless to say, I'm writing this very carefully.

Approximately seventy-five percent of this troper's characters directly mirror some aspect of herself.

This troper has recently started a webcomic featuring herself and her best friend as the two main characters. She's renamed herself and her friend, but they both look exactly the same. The entire comic is made up of the two of us talking and making references to things such as Doctor Who, LOST, and Pokemon. Did I mention that we're obsessed fangirly geeks who met over the internet? I'm even taking most of the jokes/conversations from the actual messages we send to each other.

Every work I write has a CompleteMonster or JerkAssWithAHeartOfGold character based on my best friend, a (usually) gay (always) moron based on myself (a hetero with 153 IQ. Just saying, it's not a perfect author insert), and a female character who absolutely hates the first guy and has no patience for the second, usually serving some sort of near MarySue purpose, except that she is always uptight and panicky, and leads by herself to the downer endings I write, where if she just did what the first two did, the ending would be happy. I also kill off the me character usually. Time to plug my Animorphs self insert (please review).

This troper has included several friends from high school as physical templates for a webcomic concept he's working on, with their permission.

This troper's guilty of this. In her current project, two characters are based off of friends of hers, one is based off of her boyfriend, and one has similar complexes as this troper (although they play out in different ways).

This troper's characters tend to take cues from her family, friends, and others (a lot of mutual internet pals, mostly).

Despite writing a number of wildly different settings, apparently all my first person pieces sound the same.

I'm sorta guilty of this. When I began writing my story I used people I knew as the basic models of each character (the main character is '''VERY''' loosly based on me, and the other main characters are based off 3 of my friends). But by this point they are starting to only vaguely resemble them in looks (plus, I added several characters who are nothing like anyone I've ever met).

Inadvertantly, one of my created commanding officers for his piece of Advance Wars fanfiction has become this, with a little thought his characteristics match mine. He's all about getting things done quickly, efficiently and with as much violence as possible; I sometimes have pleasant daydreams about finding people who walk slowly on the streets and block my way and shooting them in the back of the head. He has problems with money management; my savings burn a hole in my pocket. He likes hard rock; I like hard rock. When I was coming up with the profile, I didn't consciously realise I was writing myself. Strangely, the image I have in my head for how he looks is nothing like me.

@/JillBug's unpublished novel basically features her sister as the heroine and troper herself as heroine's sister. The protagonist of her other unpublished novel is a combination of two of her cousins.

During a writing assignment at school, this troper had writers block. She wrote a story about having writer's block.

I did the same thing once. In-story, my narrator considered doing a story about being in an exam writing a story (sorry, overusing That Word so much in that sentence) but decided against it, on the basis that it wasn't what you were Supposed To Write and she'd get yelled at. My English teacher marked it. I got yelled at.

I have self-esteem issues; namely, I'm very critical of anything I deem embarrassing or a mistake. When I was thinking of a flaw for a character in a story I'm writing, I pondered it for a while before I realized: why not give her the same issues that I have?

The problem is that if I tried to write a character who is not as sarcastic, (half-way) clever and not heroic-good as me, I would outright hate them and kill them off soon.

This troper likes to write fanfics (Or, in most cases, {{CrackFic}}) of her group of friends. She even once managed to write a crack fic of a crack fic by writing an alternate ending to one where instead of the two characters dying, the blood of the narrator fell onto the (seemingly dead) love interest's lips, reviving her as a vampire.

This troper's stoner acquaintances provide her with a ''never-ending'' supply of material. Try this one on for size: #QUOTE# '''Stoner Acquaintance:''' ''(very high, holding a frightened-looking pet chihuahua named Pancho)'' Fly to me, Pancho! FLY TO ME! Show me your teeth of righteousness! You may look itty-bitty, but you are so POWERFUL!! Let me EAT you so that I may gain your WISDOM and STREEEEENNNNNNGTH!!

This Troper both inverts and plays this straight in the same fanfic. The main character is the direct ''opposite'' of this troper, while a minor-but-still-relatively-important character is This Troper, but a bit more BrilliantButLazy. Also, the two female leads are based on two girls I've had a crush on.

This troper played this horribly straight with her first book, which contained characters all based off herself and her close friends (which made things rather odd since that meant only about three people in a cast of 12 were boys...). She is trying very hard to avert this with her other stories, but it's...difficult to shake her own persistent dry sarcasm and bookishness. She's sort of resolved this by having characters containing maybe one or two elements of her personality while at the same time still being very different. Even so, it's harder than she thought.

This troper often casts friends and acquaintances in minor roles if it seems likely they'd be in the area, and occasionally writes herself into the background of a scene.

This troper has created characters for his stories based on people he knew in real life. One of the earliest examples was one of the villains in a story that never got off the ground; who was actually friends with me at one time (However, everything changed when his dad became the leader of our Boy Scout group; suddenly, he could get away with anything he wanted to, and everybody who once paid no attention to him wanted to be his friend in hopes he can bail them out when they cause trouble). The character, whom I'll refer to as "Bob" from here on it, was much the same; he and the protagonist of the story began as a good friends, but one day Bob went missing. When he finally turned back up, he had become an evil mastermind; betraying his old friends and wrecking havoc on the city. However, the story was set to end with the discovery that he didn't just have a FaceHeelTurn on his own, but was instead under a mind control spell cast on him by a greater foe (Who they'd face in a later story in the series).

I slightly avert this. Of my 3 original stories only one of them has characters based on me or people I know (5 if you count custom characters from video games as me since 2 fan fics I'm writing have my character either as the lead role or as a side character).

Guilty as charged. Most of my stories have female protagonists who are nerdy, tactless, starved for excitement, or a combination. If the protagonist is male, he'll have a younger brother who frustrates him, but whom he protects and brings on crazy adventures anyway. (Some of the female protagonists also have younger siblings. If the protagonist doesn't, someone close to her/him will.) Anyone who has tried to hurt us or our friends is liable to be represented as some sort of monster.

Yep, I'm guilty. In a video game I'm making, there's a GenkiGirl based off of a close friend, a HookerWithAHeartOfGold BrokenBird loosely based off of my own mother (although said mother was never a hooker), and the main character is based a little off of both me and my boyfriend (although I'm trying hard to avoid making her a MarySue for that very reason).

This troper's best developed protagonists will usually be an introverted snarky/misanthropic teenager, have dark hair and green eyes, self-esteem issues and ongoing mental conflicts (usually addiction or misogyny). Bonus points if his name begins with D. Double-bonus if his longtime unrequited love begins with A.

This troper is so F'ing guilty of this. While I do put myself in the vast majority of my works, how I am written varies story from story. Either it is an embellished version of me (depending on the universe my Author Avatar lives in) or it's me in all my socially-awkward nerdy glory. And I'm usually either the main or one of the main characters. (Terrible, I know :P) My friends make up the Five Man Band to a T so they usually get added in as the supporting cast. (However, very, very rarely are ALL of them in the same story) Beyond that, a good majority of the characters I make are original, usually villains and side characters, which I will admit are more fun to play around with.

In my first stories (aged about 8-10 years old) were always about me and my friends/family, with exactly the same names. Then I made some original characters, and if I added a character who was based on someone I knew, they would have a name that began with the same letter, although I did often write about people I know in this way, saying things about them that I wouldnt say in real life. Then I stopped making it so obvious who I was writing about. I still sometimes write about me and my friends, under our own names, imagining what it would really be like to do things that I write about. My latest story is a comic about my life...although some of it is not real, like several times Ive drawn people I dont like becoming zombies or getting killed.

The main characters in this story I'm working on are all based on my group of friends and I. It's easier to put people you know into a fictional setting, I think...

This troper has described himself as "one of the most boring people on the planet", what with regularly talking to about 10 people each week, so when he was in the process of creating the protagonists of his short story series, what he did was split his own psyche into different stages of what he considers his CharacterDevelopment and created a character (four total) based on each.

This troper's friend was once bemoaning how her villain didn't have much of a personality. On a whim, this troper suggested that her friend make this troper the villain. To her surprise, her friend took her suggestion. Now her friend's novel has a Brilliant but Lazy Genki Girl Cloudcuckoolander for a villain. I'm waiting to see what "my" motivation is.

I flat-out refuse to write who I know, although I might take a small quirk or character trait.

ThisTroper often creates a protagonist for a fiction piece by starting with himself, and gradually tweaking elements, adding, subtracting, melding, liquifying, sublimating, vaporizing, extruding, amplifying, and revising, until the final product only barely resembles the base.

This troper is writing a story with several characters based off of himself at different periods of his childhood. So far he has two happy, care free characters, one a Genre Savvy TV junkie, the other out of touch with reality, two extremely shy characters, one who always seems to be on the verge of tears with attachment issues, the other a quiet mama's boy, and two more characters, one who emotionally manipulates who cares for no one, the other a aggressive bitch with anger issues. Yes, some of the character traits are exagerated.

In comics I draw, most of the characters are OCs of my friends who request to be in there. And one of my favorite OCs is based off myself when I was 10.

This Troper is currently making a small yaoi visual novel version of Red Riding Hood with his whole school as characters. And his 60 year old principal as the wolf. May I also mention that this troper is Red Riding Hood in the story? And that the "wolf" isn't going to wear a shirt the whole time?Yes, I know it's disturbing but hey, it's what I like.

Most characters I create are based off my friends, classmates, etc. And most main characters are intelligent brown-haired girls with gray or blue eyes and psychological problems that arouse from their parent's lack of attention.

This troper, in a H P Lovecraft collection of stories he is writing, has one where he is the narrator. Of course, I've not really been locked in a madhouse and been tormented by a daemonic voice while searching said madhouse, which is completely empty except for minor evidence of horrific murders committed by inhuman creatures, but the character version of me has. Ironically, this story was inspired by a dream I had, which is what the character tries to explain it away as being, despite the person making notes on what happened knowing from one of the other tales that it did actually happen.

After nearly three years, I can finally get back to work on the novel I started in my sophomore year of college. Nearly all of the people who are in the novel in some form or another have already graduated. However I will still have to censor or heavily edit some incidents and shenanigans for the sake of my friends' professional lives.

Ever since I joined my high school's theatre group, most of my stories have been about high school theatre kids, or at least had some random character just happen to be in theatre. In many cases, the characters are loosely, or occasionally not so loosely, based on me and my theatre friends. The worst example is about a girl who goes through almost the exact same bad experience I had with student directing, plus some random subplots that didn't actually happen to me. Another has one character who was supposed to be based on me but then developed her own personality, and another who was supposed to be more original but ended up more based on me.

This troper has a somewhat-unusual case. She has multiple (unfinished) stories, but all of the early ones have almost completely original characters. Recently, however, she has begun to play with this trope for (1) a story refined from a goofy self-insert daydream accidentally paralleling a few of my life experiences, (2) an AfterTheEnd tale cast near-entirely with people I know for the heck of it, and (3) a few random girls becoming murder victims with barely three lines if they're lucky.

This troper's mother runs a professional theater troupe for people with disabilities. Therefore, it's generally practical that she writes parts specifically for her actors, who are such colorful characters themselves.