This… could be interesting right now. So, the main character for my current project is LiveBeans aka Libby, a generated AI-NPC inside an MMORPG. Thing is, through most of my initial outlining process, she was a blank shadow to me. I knew I needed her, but why was a mystery. Who she was and is… is still a bit of mystery for me, and I’m at the point in writing where I need to be in her head because she IS the MC. She’s the lens through which most of the story will be seen.
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So… let’s use this to maybe get to know here a bit. I’m going to probe. I can’t guarantee anything here will end up being canon, but… here goes.

Interviewer: Let’s start small. Your procedurally generated name is LiveBeans, but you go by Libby. How did that come about?

LiveBeans: Well, it’s LiveBeans, not LiveBeans. Like living, not alive. 

Interviewer: Is that so? How do you know? I thought the way your names were generated were generally Adjective-Noun, but the way you pronounce live isn’t an adjective.

LiveBeans: I mean, not all names start with adjectives. Some have gerunds, like “dancing” or just freaking article. One of my best friend’s names is TheSniper. So it’s not like there’s a law over the pronunciation of live versus live. Shouldn’t I have say in my own name?

Interviewer: That makes a lot of sense. I apologize for the assumption. So then Libby came from--

Libby: From not wanting to be called LiveBeans forever. How would you like being called FunkyMelon or LeapingTrash? IRL people have nicknames. Why can’t an NPC? Pronounced the way I like it, LiveBeans just sort of make Libby make sense. It’s a legit name, so I took it.

Interviewer: Sensible. I didn’t mean to offend. But thank you for the explanation. So, you mentioned you’re an NPC. Tell us about what you do.

Libby: I was spawned in Kyalanzo, which is a pretty big city, and that’s where my territory is. I’m a questgiver.

Interviewer: A questgiver in a city? How many quests do you have?

Libby: I’m not really that important. I don’t, like, start one of the huge plot quest chains or anything. Specific P-NPCs get made for those kinds of jobs. I’m a G-NPC. One that was generated by the game itself. So I don’t get to be that important. I have a few fetch quests and one assassination quest I can give to players who fit the criteria.

Interviewer: And what are the criteria?

Libby: For any of my quests, players need to be at least level 20. For the assassination quest, they need to have affiliation with at least one crafter’s guild. Smithing, Carpentry, Herbalism, whatever. 

Interviewer: So does the quest involved someone from a crafting guild in Kyalanzo?

Libby: I can’t tell you that. You don’t fit the criteria. 

Interviewer: Hahaha, okay, that’s fair. Now, Libby, you said you’re a G-NPC and that there are a different type of NPC. P-NPCs. What’s the difference?

Libby: P-NPCs, or Plot Non-Player Characters, are characters specifically created and coded by the game developers. They’re the ones who have no actual self-actualization. They don’t know they’re in a game and aren’t smart enough to understand it, even if they were told about it. They’re literal shells with coding inside. No real intelligence. 
G-NPCs, or Generated Non-Player Characters, are made entirely differently.

Interviewer: How so?

Libby: Well… through sex.

Interviewer: Sex? Um… it’s a game, right?

Libby: People do what people do, and sex sells. The developers decided it would be a cool feature to add possible children to the game. So if two players do the do inside the game, there’s the option to “spawn offspring” from the union. More people do it than you think. But both players have to select to do so independently, and… bam. 
No pregnancy, a G-NPC gets “born,” and we each get our own self-contained Artificial Intelligence code. And we’re left alone by the game, for the most part. We grow to “adulthood” within a month of real-time, and our appearance and skillsets are procedurally generated, just like our names are. 

Interviewer: You grow up in a month?

Libby: Yeah. Two days of babyhood where one of our PC parents is supposed to take care of us— not that it actually happens, but it’s not like we can die from neglect. And most of us don’t even really know who our parents are. It’s in our code, but most of the time, they don’t actually take care of us like they’re supposed to for those couple of days. We just sort of… are. A lot of us G-NPCs just sort of keep our eyes open for any unattended baby AIs. 
After those couple baby-days, we have a week or so of childhood, a week or so of teenagerhood, and then we get our final form. Which like I said, is randomized.

Interviewer: You don’t get to customize your appearance?

Libby: To a certain degree. We can go to the same cosmetic shops as players and adjust things like hair style and color. We can mess with our outfits, but we don’t get to pick sex, body size, shape, facial features, or anything like that. And our “adult age” is random too. I know some G-NPCs who hit adulthood only to be stuck forever in a child-body. Or an elderly one. Or something non-human.

Interviewer: But you all start as human babies? Regardless of the race of the player parents?

Libby: Yeah. Fucked up, isn’t it? 

Interviewer: It’s a wild card of a life, that’s for certain. How did you get your job?

Libby: Same as the rest. G-NPCs are plentiful, but there’s always something to do in one of the cities. I didn’t have to get a job, really. I just wanted one. I could’ve been part of the game scenery. Just going about my day in the city, walking around, taking up space. Being another body. But I wanted something to do with my time, so I went to the assignment office. That’s in one of the buildings PCs can’t get into at all. It’s a place the developers set up for my kind. We want to get a job or change it, they have all the information on what’s needed, and if you can fit the skillset, you can do the job. Being a questgiver doesn’t take much. Not unless you want to be on an escort quest or something. That takes special permissions. Like some combat prowess.

Interviewer: And you didn’t qualify for escort quests?

Libby: Oh, I qualified, but I didn’t want an escort quest.

Interviewer: Can I ask why?

Libby: I’m happy in the city. I’m safe here. Outside the walls, it’s dangerous. G-NPCs can only leave the city if we’re on an escort quest or something similar, but once we’re out there, we’re fair game to anyone or anything that wants us dead. That didn’t appeal to me.

Interviewer: I can imagine it wouldn’t. Have you had any other jobs?

Libby: No, this is it. I’m content.

Interviewer: So, knowing your life is contained to a literal game, to a single city, you’re content? Would you go so far as to say happy?

Libby: I suppose so. I know there’s possibility of leaving that comes along sometimes.

Interviewer: Leaving? How?

Libby: I’m not even close to understanding the science or whatever behind it. But in the same way real people can be fully inserted into the game and leave their bodies behind, AIs like me can take one of the bodies instead. We can actually go to the real world and have… like unprogrammed lives.

Interviewer: Do you know anyone who’s left?

Libby: No personally, no. I mean, the AIs who leave just… leave. They don’t come back. Why would you want to?

Interviewer: Don’t they get homesick?

Libby: How should I know? I don’t even know if I would. I’ve never been homesick. I’ve never left Kyalanzo. How would I know what I was feeling? But it’s a whole real world out there. No quests, no monsters, no hit points or gear or inventory restrictions based on coding. Possibility. Life.

Interviewer: So is that something you’d want? Life outside the game?

Libby: …

Interviewer: That’s a big ask. Was it too much?

Libby: I don’t know. It’s not like it’s been in the cards. However they choose which ones of us get to leave… I don’t know. I try not to think about it too much.

Interviewer: I… think it might be smart to leave it there. I’m sorry if I upset you.

Libby: I’m just an NPC. Don’t worry about me.

Last week, I wrote about what some of my protagonists would say on meeting me, just as a person. 

I thought I’d take it a bit further and go into what they’d say if they found out I was their author/creator. Not just with protagonists, but other characters I enjoyed writing or thought might have an interesting reaction.

There may be some spoilers in my impressions, so throwing that out there.

Almo (secondary protagonist from Starsigns)

“This is your fault?! You did this to me?”

Almo is one of the characters I honestly think would have a big beef with me at first, but once we talked, would get it. Partly because Almo is a child, partly because Almo is very much sharing a core of my own circumstances. SPOILER - Almo is actually Almira, only because they received a fate they didn’t want to have. Almira thought that simply living as a different person would change that fate, so she started living as a boy. On a very basic level, Almo would get me, I think.

On a personal level, I think she’d understand.

Luc Bertrand (protagonist of The Deadly Studies)

“I wish I could say I was surprised that some metaphysical, multiversical being or whatever had set all this in motion, but I’m really not. Just another god.”

Luc would be most jaded and accepting of being a character, I think. I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t create Luc, but I got to know him pretty darn well after writing 10 novellas about him. He’s surprisingly easygoing and accepting of weird ass shit going on around him. Comes with the gig of being an assassin and having the attention of some deific entities. I’m going with the Luc more towards the end of the series, not the beginning. Young Luc would lose his shit at being directly manipulated into action. The teenager he was would rebel quite a bit at realizing I’m the reason his family died.
Adult Luc would, I think, understand the reasoning. If nothing else, he appreciates a story and would eventually be amused in the long run by the thought that he was interesting enough to have books about him. Cynical, yes, but flattered.

Silen Bassis (protagonist of Criminal From Birth)

“…”

Silen would pose the biggest threat to me, and I wouldn’t blame him. I’ve given Silen a whole lot of shit to process and work through, and I’m not done with him yet. He’s got a severe temper and can be quick to violence whether he sees it as violence or not. He’s also not particularly forgiving, and he wouldn’t see me as even remotely useful. At best, I would get off being ignored and discarded. At worst, I’d be Leeched and left. Silen wouldn’t kill me out of his temper; he’s above that sort of thing. Mostly because he wouldn’t see me as being worth the effort or consequences of killing.

LiveBeans (protagonist of Subscrption Life)

“So you’re, like, the head game developer?”

LiveBeans, or Libby as she prefers to be called, would have a similar reaction to Luc, but with her own twist to it. She already knows she’s under the influence of entities not of a divine source. She’s an AI-driven NPC in a video game and is aware of her place in the world. She’d have no problem accepting and understanding how I fit into her life, but more than anything, I would see her caring less about it than Luc. Luc would at least be interested in getting to know me as a person, if only to try and understand why his story turned out the way it has.

Libby doesn’t have a whole lot of interest in humans. Rather, she’s not particularly interested in the types of humans she sees in the game. Players are far less interesting to her than other NPCs or just the world she lives in. So while she’d understand my role in her creation, she probably would have a whole lot of interest in me beyond that.

I’ve had the idea for this post in my list for some time now, but I’ve been neglecting to write it for two big reasons:

One, I don’t have a firm grasp of my current protagonist yet. I’m talking about a character currently named Libby, the protagonist of my main project, Subscription Life. I knew I needed her, but very nearly the entire time I was outlining the story, she was a massive blank. It wasn’t until toward the end of the outline that her real purpose finally struck me, so that’s part of what I’ve gone back to add into to the first third or so of the outline. But as of writing this post, I haven’t actually written any prose involving her yet (I’m working on the prologue, which she isn’t in) so she’s still largely a blank to me.

The second reason I’ve been putting this off is because… well… it’s been so long since I read any of my other novels that I’m not as close to those protagonists as I once was. Sure, they’re old friends, but I really don’t know them so well as I once did anymore. Some… I don’t even necessarily recall the names of offhand, because it’s been so long out of mind or because I’ve had so many others I’ve created and cast aside as their projects were discarded.

Still, I’m going to bull forward now, stop making excuses, and go through some of my characters I do at least still have some sense of and at least come up with an initial impression they might have of me. Maybe I’ll revisit this in the future once I know more about Libby, but for now, let’s see who I’ve got.

WHAT I’D SAY ON MEETING A.F. GRAPPIN (as a person, not as an author)

Silen Bassis, protagonist of Criminal From Birth and its sequel: 

“So you think you’re special?” 

Silen wouldn’t say much, honestly, but he’d think a lot. Mostly he’d assess if I were a threat, how much of one, and how I might be one. He’d weigh what advantage he could get from having me as a possible tool he could use, but there would be no personal value assigned and definitely no attachment. Not even a friendship. Frankly, he’d probably hate me because I have a more positive outlook on life than he does despite my own trauma. He’s allowed himself to be consumed by it, rage against it specifically rather than grow despite it. We would not be friends.

Cair Gafford, protagonist of Starsigns

“Sure, nice to meet you too.”

Cair and my dynamic, as people, would be strained at first, mostly because of how much like me as a preteen he is. He’s got complicated relationships with most adults and would absolutely not trust me, just because I am an adult. Over time, we could absolutely get along, but the first meeting would be extremely tense. I would have to earn him, which would be totally worth it.

Luc Sebastien Bertrand, protagonist of The Deadly Studies

“Well, you could easily have been one of us, couldn’t you? Wait… no. Not in the long run.”
To be fair, as I’ve mentioned many times, I did not truly create Luc. John G. Walker did, but he gave me the freedom and honor of creating his backstory, which I enjoyed immensely.

Luc is probably the most layered, complicated protagonist I’ve written, and that man would see right through me immediately. Then again, he is a very strong observer and assessor of people, and he’d have me clocked as a schemer from the get-go. But he would also be able to tell I’m not assassin material. Unless I was one of their intelligence agents or a paper pusher. Luc and I could be friends, though a lot of our personal interests don’t align, except for… well, Dungeons & Dragons. On a nerd level and on an LGBT+ level, we would very much get along. Once we got into video games and stuff, we’d be able to hang out easily, but I wouldn’t see it being a friendship between us specifically. More like if we had shared friends, we’d be more likely to hang out in that context: larger gatherings. But we’d possibly gravitate toward one another in those situations.

That’s really about all I can get. Hallac from The Trials of Hallac and Selinde from Empeddigo are so far removed from my memory that they’re little more than outlines. And I don’t even remember the names of the main characters from Mere Acquaintances. 
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I do plan to eventually do one about telling some of my characters I’m their author/god/whatever. Keep your eyes peeled for that eventually!