Stagtown Inspo: the Characters

People have asked me if any of the characters in Stagtown are based on real people, or possibly based on me. That's honestly a question every writer gets: "Is such-and-such character basically you??" And the answer is almost always no, except for Edaniel from Bizenghast. That one was like 90% me. Even my dad read the books and called me out on the similarities. XD

As for Stagtown, and literary works in general, I think every author feels that each character is some small aspect of themselves, but not them entirely. I like being neat and tidy like Frankie and I have the same lockpicking hobby, for example. We both are entirely unconcerned with trespassing if it furthers our (hopefully altruistic) goals. I think Frankie feels less bad about it than I do though. :) Felix has sort of the same sense of humor I do, and also has the same obsession with buying little capsule toys out of the machines in front of grocery stores and the like. You can see in the background of his apartment that he has quite a few worm-on-a-string toys, some little yarn voodoo dolls, etc. And Jeremy and I have a sort of manic dedication to our work, at the expense of eating or sleeping.

But as to the actual inspirations for the characters...

FRANKIE

...is named after Frankie from Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends.

And yes, her first name also is Francis, just like Frankie from Foster's. Frankie's full name is Francis Sybil Parker. Early names for Frankie included Sam and Casey, since I liked the idea of her having a gender-neutral name.

Frankie was first intended to just be a blank stand-in for the audience, so she had little personality in the first five episodes. For those who don't know, Stagtown was originally created for a WEBTOON short-story contest in 2018. I drew the first five episodes in ten days, since I only found out about the contest ten days before the deadline. It didn't win anything, but did get a runner-up spot and some good feedback, so I eventually decided to continue it and make Frankie more into a person than just a reader stand-in. She's still a sort of mysterious and cold person, though. 

Unlike the main character from a lot of stories I've done, who are often open books about all their feelings, likes and dislikes, Frankie keeps her thoughts and her emotions very tightly under wraps. She's sort of emotionally numb to a lot of things and prior to the beginning of the story, she spends much of her time alone in her apartment, working from home and not interacting with many people. She's very serious and doesn't have a warm or outgoing sense of humor, nor does she have a lot of compassion for others, at least initially. So when Felix comes into her life and brings his silliness, kindeness and extroverted personality into her personal protective bubble, she keeps him at arm's length at first, like she does everyone. But I think we've seen recently that she is warming up to him and learning to accept new friends.

FELIX CONTRERAS

...is named after two people. His first name is from the villain Felix in the machina series Red Vs. Blue.

Felix in Red Vs. Blue is a charming, outgoing, friendly and likable guy...until he isn't. Unlike that Felix, the Felix in Stagtown is not a secret psychopath. He really is the playful, likable guy that villainous Felix pretended to be. He's just a goofy, caring himbo who loves to lift and work out, but also likes knitting, cute pajama pants, momming all his friends and stuff with honeybees on it. Bees are his favorite animal.

(Nobody tell him insects aren't animals.)

Felix's last name is Contreras because Felix is hispanic. He is named after Brett Contreras, a famous personal trainer whose workouts I looooooove XD. Brett Contreras is known as The Glute Guy for his singleminded devotion to understanding and improving gluteal exercises. He's got a great butt, is what I'm saying. So you know Felix does too.

I don't remember when I first thought of adding Felix to the story, but I remember the actual seed of creation was imagining the silly string moment, wherein he swaps Frankie's mace for a canister of silly string, then laughs when she sprays him with it. 

Felix knits as a hobby, as a part-time job (he does fiber and textile arts and sells stuff online) and as stress relief. His basket of knitting on his coffee table is the same one I have on my own coffee table. I just used it as reference. Unlike Felix, my knitting is so bad it's considered a hate crime against yarn and thus I rarely finish projects. I just knit to relax sometimes, and often pull it apart and rewind it at the end. I think I've knit and reknit the same ball of yarn about ten times by now.

And finally,

JEREMY OWENS

...is named after THE silliest thing possible. So originally, Jeremy was supposed to be a nameless one-off character who died in the short-story version of Stagtown. In the original script, he was just "Man On Fire." I think he was supposed to be the first person to try destroying the cameras in his house, only to have them come back more than ever, filling his house until he was forced to sleep in his garage. Eventually he tried violently destroying them all and through an electrical accident, was set on fire and ran out into the street, where his death was witnessed by Frankie and others.

Eventually he was moved to Frankie's apartment, then given a name. His name came about while I was on Twitch, where I sometimes do game and hobby streams. Some fellow streamers and friends of mine, a married couple who go by Kaddis and Lynx, told a funny story during one of their streams. They were drinking a lot one evening and decided to order a pizza using an online app, which confirmed that so-and-so put their pizza in the oven at such-and-such time, etc. The app then informed them that "Jeremy is now delivering your pizza." When the pizza man knocked on the door, Lynx flung the door open and drunkenly declared, "OH HEEEEEEY JEREMY!" in a silly voice. The man was bewildered and handed over the pizza.

Later on, Lynx, who works on a military base, was at work and passing by a line of soldiers. One soldier leaned over to him as he passed and said, "I hope you enjoyed your pizza, sir." Lynx did a double-take, recognized him and said, "OH HEEEEEY JEREMY!" in the same hilarious voice. For some reason we found that SUPER funny and OH HEY JEREMY became a meme on my channel.

As for his last name? Lynx's last name is Owens.

Jeremy dying early presented a unique opportunity for me when I decided to continue the series. In my first-ever series Bizenghast, much is made of the main character losing her best friend Vincent, someone she's known since childhood, to an untimely death, and how she copes with that fact.

Stagtown is sort of the reverse of that premise: instead of someone befriending a person and then losing them, they lose them first and then befriend them. Frankie knew next to nothing about Jeremy when he died, but slowly came to know him post-death through all of his research and by retracing his steps. She didn't think much of him at the beginning of the story, but has grown to have newfound respect for him, understands him a lot more and I think genuinely misses him now. The idea of befriending someone after their death, entirely through their writings and research, is interesting to me. It's like befriending a pen pal who only writes to you, and to whom you cannot write back.

LITTLE FRIEND  

...is named after Little Friend the cat, a former pet of my best friend Paul. We shared a large house with another roommate for awhile and Littles lived there with us. She was a very cute orange cat who was dumb as a rock. We're talking "trying to sharpen her nails on a metal folding chair" dumb. I think Little Friend in Stagtown is far smarter. They're both equally cute, though.

STAGTOWN

...was not the original name for the town. Before the WEBTOON contest, I had been kicking around a very early proto-version of the story and had tentatively sold it to my then-publisher, but ultimately decided not to do it through traditional comic printing. A lot of names were rejected for the town and comic, including Harrowgate (named after a neighborhood in Philadelphia...don't go there, it's very dangerous) and Parker Place. But I liked the two-syllable punchiness of Stagtown.

Minor characters in the series have more IRL counterparts. Frankie's landlord, for example, is just straight-up me. Like if I had a self-insert character, it would be the landlord. I didn't have much time to work on the first five episodes, so I just drew myself for the landlord. Other characters are just people I know or have met...I like to use old co-workers, friends or neighbors to inspire minor characters because it gives them more realness and personality.

Oh and

PUNKO

...is a name I originally picked for Twitch, based on my love of Daft Punk. I can't believe they broke up ;_;

I hope this was an interesting look into the characters of Stagtown! I'll have more posts (and a bonus mini-comic for $5-tier patrons) by the end of October! Thanks so much for reading!

-Punko