I disagree with the implicit assumption that humans and characters are mutually exclusive.
Consider biographies - are the subjects humans, characters, or both?
The thing for me is that characters exist in the vaccum of a story hemce why I call em mutually exclusive.
Now each biography tells a story and the person os turned into a character. I mean I have used real life people as inspiration for characters myself.
So in biographies, consider someone like Churchill, Gandhi etc. They've had many biographies written about em and each creates a different character.
Hell just look at the recent Musk biography which paints him in a much better light than most of us see. The writer is still creating a compelling character based story, as Walter Isaacson basically uses musks childhood to explain his actions for eg. He's just a writer creating a story.
Then what would you consider to be a human, given all we hear about others are stories, or snippets thereof?
The full essence of a person goes beyond the narratives constructed around them, like the richness of personal experiences, thoughts, and emotions that are beyond the scope of any story or snippet.
Having said that, I like your point and perhaps capturing a snipett of a person is all we can do anyways (Outside of ourselves). Which is exactly what stories do too
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