Author notes

Character Sheet 9/9: Paul Eberhardt

PaulEberhardt

on July 21, 2014

See introduction to the character sheets for further details and for the mandatory rant about the resurrection of this comic:
http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Master_the_Tiger/5462050/

Beware of confusing the comic me with the real me, but if you know the one really well, you'll automatically know the other… Oh well, sod that - it's me! Hi there!

In literary studies it has long been a dogma that an author can never ever appear in his/her own works; you can insert a character that looks like you, talks like you, has the same name, etc, but it'll be no more than a constructed image that is under no circumstances to be identified as you. In recent years they started to abandon this line of thinking, as they realised that it was fashionable in the 60s/70s, when suddenly everything came to be called a "construction based on mankind's limited perception", but not necessarily today. The way I see it, this is a good example of why I've never taken literary studies too seriously (and am really good at them because of that very fact).
Long before this shift in thinking, I've often made a point of inserting myself into my stories, just to defy them. It turned out that I was basically following a fashion of my own time without knowing it.

I had a pleasant chat about self portraits the other day, where we talked about how much we dislike looking at pictures of ourselves or into the mirror. This is not a matter of being extremely self-critical, but just a human trait we all have to some greater or lesser degree (except perhaps for the likes of Paris Hilton, who don't have it at all). I'm one of those who have it to such a great degree that I often draw my comic me from memory instead of using reference photos. Still I somehow end up looking like myself. You see, I might sometimes prefer a good story to a completely true one, but I'd like to think I'm not generally one for deluding myself. Not more than necessary, at any rate.

The good thing in comic alter egos is that you're allowed to exaggerate a bit. However let me state just for the record that I really own all those clothes and wear some of them quite often (it's a legacy of my Forestry days, can't help it).
Fun fact: when my Grandma first saw an earlier self portrait of mine, first thing she said was verbatim: "Do you really have to wear that shirt on the internet, too? I must have ironed it for you hundreds of times, and I'd rather you let me cut it up for cleaning rags or you burn it in the garden or something!" She didn't of course, knowing that I was rather fond of it because it's as comfy as only a lot of wear can make it. Still got it, too. :)