If it comes to this, I will be a retired professor of philosophy who has turned to hate everything theoretical... and who will slip from his role at the first instant.
There was a nice game where everyone where required to post in-character all the game, in RPG-style, just a month ago or something. It was fun and it worked. But that requires pre-game planning and consent of all the players. Here we have not such a thing and so I think it's just best we go the way we wish...
So maybe we do not need any characters? In most of the games they have been a sham anyway...