MD and guilt.

[debbie downer]

i have completely made up some of my characters, but others are based on real-life people.

most characters that i have are based on several real-life people. their appearance might be based on one person, while their personality is based on of two or three different people, and how they dress is based on another person, too. i don't have any characters that are exact copies of people in real life. even the characters that are only based on one person, i make some changes to.

i always wonder how the real people that i use as inspirations for my characters would feel if they knew that i had used their looks, personality, etc for characters that i obsessively think about 50% of the time that i'm awake. it makes me feel awful about how creeped out they would probably be. sometimes i'll forget that my characters are based on real people, and then i'll remember and the guilt will keep me up at night. they would be so freaked out.

some of these people i know in real life, and others are celebrities (and by celebrities, i mean nobody too famous... more like people in bands that i listen to). when i see the people i know in real life that i have used for my characters' looks, i get a little weirded out. i'm not close with any of them, but i'll see them walking down the hallway at school and think "there's (character's name)..." and i think that if i talked to any of them and found out how different their personalities are from my character's, it'll be weird.

do you ever feel guilty for basing your characters on real-life people?

[Stacy]

i use mostly celebrities and totally made up people but sometimes i do use real people that i actually know. actually my alter-egos little sister is based on my real little sister. she has a different name and she has a more exaggerated version of her bratty personality and different fashion sense but still. most of the other real life people i use are people that i don't actually know but have only seen a few times. i usually use the actual person with their real name and everything. it does make me feel weird when i actually see them. i feel like they can tell that i daydream about them although they obviously can't. its especially weird when your character is dating a person you've based on a real life person. then you see them in person and its kind of embarrassing. 

[Jennifer]

Oh, absolutely. This is so ironic that you posted this because just a couple of hours ago, I was thinking about how I took some girl's FULL NAME and used it as my own character's name. My own character as in me in my daydreams. I was thinking about how she would react if she ever found out I had been using her whole name for 5 years and daydreaming about it all of the time. She would have to think I am some kind of psychopath.

[Sophie Bee]

I have the same thing.. I use people I know from school as kind of spectators in my DDs (which mainly focus on my ideal self or my alter ego), maybe because on some level I want their approval..

Anyways, when I really think about what I'm doing, I feel like a total freak, as if they ever knew that I was spending so much time thinking about them (well not properly thinking about them, but they are there in my DDs) they'd think I'm some weird obsessive stalker... So yeah, basically exactly the same as you! I hate it :S