Clone (glossary term)

For other uses of this term, see Clone.

Synonyms:	Expy (TVTropes)
See also:	Fan Casting, Clone, Coded
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Cloning is an older fannish term which refers to basing one's original characters upon existing characters.

Some fans use the words "avatar" and "shadow."

For example, Vas & Dex are characters which were inspired by Starsky & Hutch.

Cloning differs from coded in that cloning is on someone else's established characters, and coding is basing one's characters on real people.

"Clone" and "cloning" is also an older fannish term for photocopying.

Examples of Use

• "Quite a few of the established writers in this fandom use "clones" regularly - I know Jean always has a face in mind when she creates a new character. My own much-loved Mark and Judson are based on Brian May and Judson Scott (not in personality or talents, particularly, just physically)."

• "...it's a helluva lot more fun, more creative, more mind-stretching, to invent characters of your own, clones or not. I will admit that my favourite pair started out as clones -- for about three paragraphs. Then they became separate entities, who don't even look like their progenitors apart from one blond and one dark... Let's hear it for the 'clones', and ghod how I hate that term.

• "Now I do like Dayfdd Kildragon in Hellhound, but he doesn't come across as Ray Doyle clone either, at least not to me. Lew Brody, on the other hand, is very like Bodie — and not always with Bodie"s good qualities. Cloning the actor and cloning the character are two very different things: I often do the former, but try never to do the latter. (And I don't believe anyone ever caught onto my "casting" Lewis Collins as a character in a DW story! — probably because he wasn't the least like Bodie. That was "The Eldritch Horror," appearing in BANZINE #2.) The closest I've come to that is in a ROBIN HOOD story, "On The Cold Hill's Side" (in TURN OF THE WHEEL #1), where I did come up with two characters who are a lot like Blake and Avon; hopefully that hasn't annoyed anyone."

Some Clones/Avatars

• Teri White's Starsky & Hutch clones: see Andy Jones and Tyler Monroe
• Blake's 7 Avatars in Pro Books
• many of Jane of Australia's fanworks
• Point of Hopes, a 1995 book by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
• Many supporting characters in Vathara's fic, especially Embers

According to Vathara, her method of OC creation is to not do so. Instead, she uses expies of characters from other series. Of course, most of her other fics are crossovers.

• Professor Wen: Professor Henry Jones Sr.
• Min Wen & Jia are Xander and Cordelia: there's some speculation that Suyin is based on Willow, or that she and Jinhai are Kaoru and Yahiko.
• Huojin: Commissioner Gordon
• Dai Li agent Shirong: Michael Archangel from Airwolf, a series Vathara has written extensively for. And there's speculation that Donghai is based on Dominic Santini from the same series.
• Amaya: Jedi Healer T'raa Saa. And a potential alternate for Donghai is Han Solo.
• Langxue and Suoluan: Toushirou Hitsugaya and Rangiku Matsumoto
• Sgt. Kyo, a Marine with the ability to smack the back of offenders' heads before they even see it coming, complete with the rest of his squad.
• Shih and Gyate, a fire nation ex-assassin and his airbending nun lover seem to be Kenshin Himura and Kaoru Kamiya.
• Even species get in on the act; the "rattle vipers" are suspiciously similar to Pern's tunnelsnakes, complete with "you know it's not a snake, I know it's not a snake, try telling that to the locals."

Jean Lorrah wrote an essay in 1995 that described her use of other fans' characters:

Some of you may know that I am a professional as well as a fannish writer. It is exactly as Kay says: my best writing has the fannish feel. (This article, for example, which utilizes the same skills as analyzing Chaucer or Shakespeare, but is much more fun.) Like Aoike, I constantly use influences from my current interests in my fiction. Were I ever to become famous enough to be analyzed by scholars, they would surely recognize my Star Trek period, my Blake’s 7 period, and possibly my Eroica period.

This sort of inspiration is normal I’m convinced that every artist does the same thing, consciously or unconsciously; it's just more fun to do it consciously. You base a character or two on people or characters you admire or respect — or even people who annoy you. If you are writing either a fannish or a pro story in someone else's universe (I've written Trek, B7, and Alien Nation fan stories, and four pro Trek novels for Pocket Books), obviously you want to get your characters as close to the originals as you possibly can. However, usually a professional writer is creating her own universe, so she starts by twisting the borrowed characters considerably more than Aoike does, so they are not immediately recognizable. Nevertheless, you begin with copycat characters.

Then a magical transformation takes place. The characters leave their models behind and take on a life of their own, with their own backstories, problems, talents, quirks, and challenges. The more important the character, the more he or she changes from the model; only cameo characters retain many characteristics of their originals.

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.