OOOH I LIKE THIS QUESTION ALOT. I feel like I shoehorn in alot of facets of my identity into my oc's, to some extent or shape. I'd say abe encompasses alot of aspects of my childhood, esp with having alot of family in rural kansas + missouri. I knew abe's [and adjacent types] growing up, in and around church events, etc. same with shawn, especially when it comes to his childhood, that type of neglectful run-down neighborhood upbringing. they're all pretty intimate to me. but the one I'd say is like, 1 to 1 me, is xavier from our story knock 'em dead. He's pretty much a character I get to ragdoll around and use as a blank canvas for to type of man I want to embody, he looks Alot like me, he has the same interests as me, etc. while also sort of being a critical self-reflection of some of my more 'negative' traits.

HEHEHE THANK YOU !!! funnily enough, I actually Do have a veterinarian character in a seperate monster story; an early 80's zombie one I have with my bf & a bud called 'from the fields', his name is raymond and he plays around with zombie DNA testing and acts as the makeshift "doctor" of the survivalist group. "with my qualifications, how hard can it be!" type of guy, with shifty & questionable intentions the more the story goes on.

but not to get sidetracked by that: i'm so happy to hear someone is enjoying wolfsbane ;v; I feel like I put in alot of work into my characters but then I also worry I don't really have a lot to prove for it when I don't exactly have the motivation to draw, so I love getting to answer asks about it !!

i'd say alfie fits more of the "smart guy losing it" trope, even if alot of his intelligence lies in technology. both him & roadkill definitely help me be able to get into the mental degradation / defects & memory + skill loss that come with my own version of lycanthropy.

and don't worry, don't worry. richie may be "top dog" now, but he's absolutely gonna get what's coming to him in the end when everyone he's fucked up & tossed aside becomes aware of eachother >:] it'll be a grizzly ending / showdown, for sure, especially when the aspect of him Also being a werewolf is revealed.

i'd have to go with silver bullet, the beast must die, or the original wolf man. suuuper cliche, I know, but !!

ALSO YOU'RE GONNA FIND OUT SOMETHING EVIL.. while I do technically have a werewolf story in the making with javi [very much riffing on werewolves on wheels meets like. scanners + metalbeast, I guess, if you need a frame of reference] called 'wolfsbane', I havent had much time to develop them cuz my priorities lie elsewhere creatively most of the time </3 I'm not the best when it comes to developing side stories, I have to be kicked into it LOL.

but I suppose to do a basic rundown of the characters I own IN that story, you have:

• charlie halker, the main character, who's turned into a werewolf in the early 70's under the guise of "rabies testing" at a shady government facility as an "exchange to avoid the draft", basically. despite it sounding too good to be true, he falls for it, and is pretty much dumped off & left to his own devices after experimentation has subsided and he's been squeezed of his use. guideless and on the road he meets up with a lawless & off-the-grid biker gang [i.e. "pack"] who've also been turned by the same source and have goals of exterminating him & his entire facility for what he turned them into. mousy looking guy, on the shorter side, beard & glasses. think hooper from jaws or bob balaban in altered states.

• richard "richie" murphy, the head of said government operation who has plans of making it big & selling off his "solution" to higher-ups to be used for "population control" once it's been perfected. secretly a werewolf himself, and neurotically addicted to the test-serum. catty, sweaty, bug-eyed, and usually found in meetings swearing out the nearest office worker who even looks at him the wrong way. in terms of appearance, think brad douriff, mid-to-late 90s' in glasses.

• alfred "alfie" decker. your typical meek & lousy underpaid office-worker type. was accidentally infected from a werewolf bite after safety protocols failed downstairs in the medical facility. after he's fired & paid hush-money, he's pretty much dropped from the project. still struggling to settle into his werewolf identity, embittered, he joins up with the pack, despite their... obvious personality differences. about as close in physical proximity as you can get to an "80's nerd"; pocket calculator and all.

• roadkill. no recollection of his real name. actual ex-vet; has no real memories of 'nam except in snippets and flashbacks when he sleeps. failed experiment dumped off on the edge of the city in the middle of the night to cover up for mistakes during early test stages. the walking, barking definition of a mangy mutt. looks pretty much like rick giovinazzo in combat shock.

SORT OF! it's a little bit of a complicated situation, but he is moreso an "accomplice" to a serial killer more than anything. after he becomes entangled with vadim [javi's character], someone who is a genuine serial killer and whom has a trail of bodies spanning his time in russia and america, he slowly reveals his "proclivities" to him over a period of time. after he is hired at the same hospital vadim works at with a few falsifications here and there, shawn is then given the full reign to enact any and all violent impulses he's ever considered.

vadim is fully under the impression that shawn is capable of the exact same things he is, "testing" him and "fostering" this newfound outlet with more extreme and intense methods; encouraging him to start small with morgue visits for "exposure" to the dead, then comatose patients, braindead patients, and then conscious patients, inducing live-infections, surgery "slip-ups", IV & medication spikes, etc. for vadim, it's all part of the fun.

for shawn though, it does end up backfiring, as while he is obviously not exactly a good person, with a host of behavioral problems & questionable ethics, not to mention the parasite fetishization, there are alot of mental aspects of his character that are left unchecked / unattended to that stem from deeper childhood neglect, inferiority issues, lack of resources, spiralling into bad crowds, etc. because of this, he does still retain a majority of his conscience, and whether he realizes it at first or not, he'll soon find out he isn't entirely cut out for this life. and these consequences /will/ sneak up on both of them, no matter how untouchable they think they are.