Life Embellished: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

'''Calvin''': Because in'' my ''book [[Incendiary Exponent|I have a flamethrower!]]|''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''}}

 

 

The result is that an author is often pretty laid back about where exactly the line between [[Real Life]] and [[The Verse]] lies. We're talking about things past [[Author Avatar]] here. Way, way, past [[Reality Subtext]]. We're talking a protagonist whose name is the same as the author's [[Screen Name]], and who has the same attitudes and interests (except that he also has [[Impossibly Cool Clothes|Impossibly Cool Hair]]). We're talking a supporting cast that strikingly resembles the author's friends, except that they're always funny and one of them is probably a talking animal or something. We're talking about how they attend a [[Wacky College]] that seems identical to the one the author attends, except that the unpopular teacher is some kind of Orc or Robot and there's a [[Weirdness Magnet|portal to another universe]] in the basement.

In [[Literature]] it is also known by the phrase "creative nonfiction."

{{examples}}

* The main premise of ''[http://damonk.com/ Framed!!!]'' was that a character which Damonk had created had gotten out of control and had trapped Damonk in his own comic along with several of his friends.

* Greg Dean has even ''called'' his comic ''[[Real Life Comics]]''.

** By his own admission, Dean has gotten a little out there (such as an early story where Tony and his then-current girlfriend's debate over Western vs Eastern mecha turns into an actual [[BattleTech]] versus [[Neon Genesis Evangelion]] fight), but he tries to keep things relatively normal. All bets are off when it comes to [[Evil Genius|Tony]], though.

* In newspaper comics, the original four main characters of ''[[For Better or For Worse]]'' were based on creator Lynn Johnston, her husband, her son and her daughter, and were all named after the middle names of their real-life counterparts. April, the last child, is the embellishment and possibly the third child Johnston wanted.

** It starts getting even more embellished when the eldest children gets married and has kids of his own (which Johnston was hoping her own children would do), and in recent days this is combined with [[Accentuate the Negative]] in the 'new-runs' to make John as unlikeable as possible in the wake of her real life husband cheating on and then divorcing her.

* TV example: [[Steven Moffat]] and Sue Vertue, the husband-and-wife team behind ''[[Coupling]]'', have [[Word of God|said]] that the relationship of Steve and Susan (ahem) in the show is loosely based on the early stages of their own relationship. Similarly, Moffat's earlier sitcom [[Joking Apart]] is based of the fallout of his first marriage. He has described ''Coupling'' as "my life as told by a drunk".

** Parts of ''Joking Apart'' were clearly recycled for ''[[Coupling]]'' (and Moffat's ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode ''The Doctor Dances'', oddly).

* Jhonen Vasquez did a three-page comic in which he described his life, and how it was unlike Johnny C's life. It was embellished because, as he confessed, the scene wherein he flies out of his castle to buy a slushie from the devil didn't actually happen during a full moon.

* ''[[Overcompensating]]'' calls itself "a 100% true journal comic about things that actually happen". According to his, the average day in Jeffrey Rowland's life involves meeting God, complaining about internet slang to "The [[G Ød]] of the Internets", fighting a T-Rex (or daring Jesus to do it for him) and chatting with fellow webcomic-author [[Scary Go Round|John Allison]], who is apparently a [[British Stuffiness|stuffy British]] superhero.

* ''[[Mac Hall]]'', named after the dorm Ian lived in at the time.

* In ''The Slacker Handbook'',a guide for the motivationally-challenged,a slacker's writing is inevitably described as "thinly-disguised autobiographical content littered with obscenities". Ooh,controversial.

* ''[[Flight of the Conchords]]'' is a television show starring the band Flight Of The Conchords. The main characters are pretty much what the guys are actually like. About the only really fantastic elements of the show are all in the music videos, and those are usually symbolic.

* The Van de Kamps on ''[[Desperate Housewives]]'' are based on creator Marc Cherry's family, with Cherry taking the comparison so far as to kill off Rex at the end of the first season despite him being one of the most popular characters, entirely because Cherry's father died at the same age. Another incident taken straight from real life are Bree's first words to Andrew (Cherry's own counterpart) upon his coming out of the closet: "I'd love you even if you were a murderer!" Though given some of the things that have happened since that first season, including Andrew becoming pretty much pure evil for a while, one would hope not everything is true to life.

* ''[[Comedity]]'' veers off into the wild blue yonder on occasion, but has a certain amount of grounding in its creator's life. One of the most notable changes? Alice, the [[Robot Girl]], is his ''computer'' in real life.

* ''[[Union of Heroes]]'' presents interludes between the end and the beginning of a new episode. The main character of most of these interludes is the photographed creator of the photocomic. Some interludes are only like a Journal Comic. But then there are interludes where he switches into a drawn version of himself and travels to the webcomic planet with a spaceship.

* ''[[Everyday Heroes]]'' is set in Indianapolis. Mr. Mighty drives down Keystone Avenue to his job in the "Vonnegut Building" (Regions Bank Building); his daughter attends "Washington Central" (North Central) High School, home of the "[[Wild CATS]]" (Panthers); the characters go to lunch at a deli suspiciously like Shapiro's, etc.

** Or [[Flat Character|one-dimensional]] love interests.

* The sideplots in [[Kit N Kay Boodle]] involve the artist and his girlfriend engaging in disturbing sexual activities with their parents. (No actual [[Parental Incest]] has happened as such, but the girlfriend's mother watched the couple have sex and then had cybersex with the artist's father in front of them and their friends.) A lot of critics sincerely hope that the emphasis is on the "Embellished".

* This is the setting of the "[[A Prairie Home Companion]]" segment "The News From Lake Wobegon" - the narrator Garrison Keillor making up exaggerated tales about his (fictional) hometown and the [[Eccentric Townsfolk]] that live there. There's no sci-fi or fantasy elements, but it has the same "not quite real" feeling.

* ''Lunar Park'' by [[Bret Easton Ellis]].

* ''[[Give My Regards to Broad Street]]'' has this [[In-Universe]] and may have had it absolutely.

* The comic ''[[Rocky (comics)|Rocky]]'' is autobiographical, but is often fictionalized for laughs.

* [[Eddsworld]] played straight, including animated shorts based off the comics featuring the main characters voiced by their real-life counterparts.

* [[Terrifying Monsters]] is mostly autobiographical, but the author and his friends are all represented as giant monsters.

* ''[[Don Quixote]]'': [[Author Avatar|Ruy Pérez de Viedma]] relates all his biography in ''“The story of the Captive Captain”''. He was a handsome captive captain who wanted to escape the Moors and was helped by a Zoraida, a beautiful moor princess who wanted to convert to Christianity, organized a successful evasion to Spain, was well received by his powerful and rich relatives and married Zoraida. Cervantes (the author) was a captive who failed all his evasion intents, his family paid his rescue and always was an [[Impoverished Patrician]].

* ''[[The Devil's Panties|The Devils Panties]]'': Mostly about the author's life, though her [[Author Avatar]] gets away with saying or doing things she couldn't in the real situation. [[Early Installment Weirdness|Early strips]] include her [[Pals with Jesus|talking to Jesus and the Devil]] and other bits of [[Magical Realism]].

[[Category:Webcomic Tropes]]

[[Category:Metafiction Demanded This Index]]