Using expies in a story

[Zireael]

What is Expy? The answer is here: Expy - Television Tropes & Idioms

Do you think using Expies is a good idea? Or not? What about importing only select features, not all?

Discuss ;P

 

[Gurkhal]

Edited for good of the thread

 

[Leif Notae]

If you do it once to parody something, that's fine. If you do it multiple times, you are running out of ideas (SETH MacFARLANE) and need to go back to the drawing board/stop using central casting.

For writing purposes, you'd be called out on it as soon as they said the first words that came to them. You can get away with it for settings, but not characters.

 

[MadMadys]

I have something similar to that in my stories with a character that is based off an old friend of mine. The character always has the same first name (last name changes), same appearance, and similar attributes. They exist in all my different books though they do not all share the same universe. I do it to give recognition to the one who inspired me to get back into writing. The role she plays in each story varies from main to secondary but always there. If anyone ever had a problem with it, I wouldn't care what they thought.

 

[Zireael]

MadMadys - I did a similar thing, although I changed the name and appearance of my main characters from my old fanfic.

If I used Expies of other characters, they would similarly be changed. I.e., an expy of Harry Potter would probably have dark hair, but no scar or anything, and would be a mageling abused by his relatives. End of story. An expy of Tyrion Lannister would be a dwarf (in terms of disability, not fantasy race) who is a genius with a quick tongue, cast out from his original family. An expy of Khalid from Baldur's Gate would be a stuttering half-elf. End of story.

When I said 'using Expies', I meant borrowing only some characteristics, not all of them. Most personality and appearance would be created by me.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

To a certain extent I don't think you can get completely away from expies. I mean there's probably only half a dozen really different types of say wizard or cop. Everything else is a blend. So you'd always run the risk of your character, say boy wizard, of being compared to Harry Potter.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[tlbodine]

I never consciously try to riff off of other characters, but I do notice certain recurring qualities. This is especially noticeable to me in my roleplaying, probably because I have 103 characters and it's kind of inevitable that there'd be some archetype overlaps there.

 

[Zireael]

What if I want to borrow certain characteristics? Would it be good?

 

[Saigonnus]

If you "borrow" a character from somewhere else and change the way the character behaves, even if they look the same, doesn't that change the character to something different anyway? They'd react differently to stimuli, perhaps speak differently, wear different clothes even if they look exactly the same as the "original". If you change the fundamental aspects behind the character is it truly an expy?

I personally try to make my characters different and not consciously a rip-off from someone else's work, but I also know that with all the works of fiction/ non-fiction etc... that all characters have been made before, all the character traits established so there is little point in worrying overmuch about something like that, just put the character in and keep writing.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I sometimes expy characters who I really liked in the source material, but who only survived a few chapters before dying horribly. I view it as a way to put them to better use than the original author did.

 

[Ireth]

I've borrowed traits from characters I like here and there to use with my own characters. Vincent Hawk, in his original RP version, was based partly on the Phantom of the Opera and partly on V from V for Vendetta; from the former he got great musical talent (and a love for that musical), from the latter he got martial arts skill. Some details I added just for fun, like having his first wife's name be Christine, and his birthday being Nov. 5th. Character-wise Vincent isn't much like either Erik or V at all. He's not a murderer or a vigilante, for one thing. His brother Dom is also partly an expy, as his looks were influenced greatly by Boromir in the LOTR movies (though not entirely intentionally). I've also gone one step further and created expies of my own characters for various RPing plots involving crossovers between worlds -- Vincent and his family all have lookalikes in Middle-earth, whose names are Sindarin translations of the Hawks' names (except Ariel, which looks like a real elvish name as it is).

 

[Zireael]

That sounds exactly what I'm going to do.