forum What is the worst thing you've done to your characters?

Started November 24, 2018 by Deleted user

tune

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damn, there's a lot of death and abuse in here. So dark lol

So true. These backstories… Makes me think my characters have it well.

My character is from Greek mythology so technically I haven't done anything to them but he was attacked by two snakes as a child, Driven crazy enough to accidentally murder his own wife and children, Screwed out of his birthright to be king, had his boyfriend killed by nymphs sending him into a rage which caused his friends to abandon him on a remote island, Poisoned with his own venom by his wife which should have killed him but he was too powerful so he instead had to burn himself to death (because the poison caused incredible pain) on a funeral pyre lit by his own ex-boyfriend.

My character is from Greek mythology so technically I haven't done anything to them but he was attacked by two snakes as a child, Driven crazy enough to accidentally murder his own wife and children, Screwed out of his birthright to be king, had his boyfriend killed by nymphs sending him into a rage which caused his friends to abandon him on a remote island, Poisoned with his own venom by his wife which should have killed him but he was too powerful so he instead had to burn himself to death (because the poison caused incredible pain) on a funeral pyre lit by his own ex-boyfriend.

this sounds like Hercules all over tbh :0

One of my characters lived a long time ago (still alive in the story) with a bunch of her species, but fell asleep for several million years, and woke back up to to the modern world. Obviously it was confusing for her, maybe even annoying when she was eventually shot a few times, and even a little bit upset that she was forced to work with humans (which so far, her opinion of them was not good, since waking up she was surrounded by trash. She sort of assumed first glance.)

She went through many battles before eventually coming across another non-human, though humanoid, unlike her, and they fought, before eventually the dude was like (well the actual conversation was a lot longer) “your kind is dead, we killed them all long ago” and at first she was calm before betraying the humans and walking towards the humanoid, before mauling him.

She then ran out of the forest and jumped off a cliff into the ocean, before getting shot by a sub later on and presumably ‘dying.’

this isnt all too bad bUT
basically the main character of something im making (her name is valentine- she's a cutie) had her parents murdered (when she was seven) and heard her younger brother scream repeatedly as he was killed, yet she didn't do anything since she thought it was one of her "visions" (she hallucinates.) when told this-
it wasnt great !
she has a unknown mental disorder, with the main "symptom" being psychosis. she hallucinates vividly and will shrink back to her own little world most of the time. after attacking her uncle in one of her "visions" she was sent to a asylum!
oh! fun fact, this is the 1920s
she was electrocuted repeatedly, tied down for days on end, put in a straitjacket and locked in her room. oh and her psychiatrist sexually, physically and mentally abused her and attempted to "destroy" her safe place through hypnotism and emotional manipulation.
and she's eleven.
so yeah!! she's doin great

…kill them? Like "majority" (almost all save for one) of them?

oooh boy you summoned me??

let's see so kelly was a senior in high school studying for his college acceptance exams and so stayed home the night his family went out to eat. there was a shooting and his dad and sis died, and his mom committed suicide after a month. few years later a demon knocks on his door possessing his sister's body and claiming to be an angel, and he accidentally sells his soul for revenge that he didn't even really want, so fast forwards now he's thirty and hates everybody and kills every supernatural he sees.

wyatt's dad had anger issues and would emotionally abuse him and his mom, until one night wyatt crept down the stairs to a particularly bad fight and ended up watching his dad "accidentally" murder his mom, and was almost beaten to death himself (thrown down the stairs, hit with broken bottles, standard stuff) before the cops showed up. he spent a few months in the hospital and was then thrown into foster care, where the family only took him in for the money and didn't particularly care about him. people bullied him for being behind a year (since he took a year off for valid reasons) and whatnot, then he was late getting home one day (thanks to kids locking him in a closet at school), heard a scream and long story short was bitten and nearly killed (again) by a werewolf. so then he ran away to a different state and was forced to come to terms with the fact that he's now a werewolf.

and dorian is probably the worst off, tbh. he was born with anxiety and is prone to sickness. his parents were killed in a car crash when they left him home to get him medicine on their way back from church, and so he was informed by police and handed over to his closest relative, his uncle that he'd never met. things were cool for a while, but then he started developing his powers (physical and emotional empath) around the same time his uncle, who was dirt poor, decided to start pimping him out for cash. which lasted about five months. so now this fourteen (at the time, though now he's nineteen) year old has ptsd and pre-existing anxiety and can't speak without stuttering.

BUT IT'S OKAY I'M TRYING TO MAKE THEIR LIVES BETTER

even though kelly was just stabbed in the library by a supernatural

wyatt's being targeted by a member of the werewolf pack in ny

and dorian was just betrayed by a friend and nearly kidnapped by the leader of the hunter organization………………

..why am i like this

I feel really mean but-
I killed Carmen's husband, Adonis, and her two sons. they were 3 and 4 years old.
I feel terrible

Why did you?

because I'm a writer and it's what I do?
also because it pushed the plot forward but-

Alright so I'm kind of a dick to my character Jake.
I think that Jake is the one that's gotten most of my wrath lmaoo so I may or may not have had his parents force him to join street fights for money. The street fights usually end up with someone dead and that's usually the one who ends up losing so Jake basically has to kill his other opponent to live. He was still in elementary school when he started with the while fight shabang but since he was home schooled no one really found out. His parents kept him locked in the basement because he tried escaping one day. Also, Jake isn't your 'born in the hospital kid'. He was born without being registered into the system so that's already a plus lol. He doesn't really get "abused" by his parents because they don't really care about Jake enough to be doing that 24/7. His father later on makes Jake kill his little sister (the only person who showed him any love and that he loved back) and since Jake comes from a really dark line of sadists, his other family members were just as twisted as everyone else, for example, his brothers sexually abuse him all the way up until he gets to meet his team. So Jake just grows up to be this sick twisted person until be meets the group he's going to work with on jobs for the rest of his life. For some reason Jake ends up keeping it together all this time (probably because he has the strong will to kill all of his family, which he does end up accomplishing in my book) and although he is a bit on the sadistic insane side he can be pretty smart and calculative when he really needs to. Other then that he's pretty reckless and could care less if he died trying to do something. Despite having gone through all of this he's easily one of my most badass character's I've got. And don't worry, he's not a character that gets killed off, I actually make him have a decent life at the end of my book along with coughs Lighter/Marcus coughs again

I made a bad guy kill everyone except 1 person then told that one person that if he left him alive he may as well be dead. So the bad guy didnt kill that one person, so the whole time the character is hunting the bad guy and in the end the character died knowing that the bad guy will get away.

I've had my character Bridget lose her parents and a sibling to gunshots, one sibling to drowning/freezing, another to suicide, another to blood loss from being sliced on the cheekbones, arms, and legs and being left to bleed out, two siblings from disease, and later her last sibling being killed by one of her friends (it's kind of hard to explain. If you have seen Detroit: Become Human, it's pretty much like when Connor is taken over at the end of the game). Not to mention Bridget has been shot in the right leg and has been starved.
Needless to say, I feel like a horrible person

Giana's sister gets kidnapped, and when she asks Lucas to take her with him to rescue her, he refuses on the basis that since she has a horrible limp (from a broken foot that never healed right). She's basically stuck in the Spring Court and even though Iam is kind to her, she can't be happy knowing that Ophelia is gone. When Lucas fails to return, she sets off on her own after having a huge fight with Vivian (her other sister) and both say some horrible things they regret.

An update on Lucas, since his story has changed!
He sets off after Ophelia the moment he arrives in the Spring Court, and is rude to Giana, insisting that her limp will slow him down and he's wasted enough time already. He catches up to Ophelia and Oleander and tries to get Ophelia back, but Oleander magically blinds him. He stumbles through the forests until ending up in the Autumn Court, where he finds out that his father is the King of the Autumn Court, and he is forced to stay there until he can be healed.

And then there's Maia, a mortal girl kidnapped by Oleander and enchanted to be his bride. When the enchantment is broken she is made immortal but left mute so she cannot expose what he had done.

Oooh good stuff!

Iam: Thinks he's a faery, but is in reality a mortal boy taken at birth by his mother, Queen Juniper of the Spring Court, and raised to be her successor. As king he tries his best to do a good job but is looked down upon by Queen Poplar, Queen Alys, and King Aspen (of Summer, Winter, and Autumn, respectively) for being so young and inexperienced. He falls in love with Vivian when she and Giana arrive in his court, and they form a political power couple (her firey spirit and emotional personality intrigue the other rulers) until during an important meeting, an assassin sent by Oleander shoots him with an iron-tipped arrow. Luckily he dodged and it lodges in his thigh and not his stomach, but it reveals that he isn't Fae, since he would have had an intense reaction to it and quite possibly died (in this universe, Fae are immortal unless killed by ash and/or iron weapons, mortals are killed by anything, and immortals are, well, immortal unless killed but it doesn't need to be by ash or iron weapons.)

Sounds even more like a court of thorns and roses

Basically, I have a character (the main character)
A. find out her lover is the bad guy who traded places with her lover
B. have to kill him
C. Make her watch her other lover die
D. Watch her sister be nearly killed
E. Watch her robotic son die because
F. She cannot have children but she wants children really bad
G. Most of her friends die
H. She has to keep doing her job
I. Depression
J. a whole slew of emotional disorders because
K. Her homeworld was completely erased and
L. She tried to warn everyone and
M. Her parents died and
N. Her friends died
O. Find out her real lover (from A.) is dead.

Oof.

Samuel grew up in a super strict perfectionist household and was an only child, and when he turned 16 his parents realized how compelling of a writer he was and forced him to work for the Duchess. She then abused him for 4 years and made him the public's scapegoat for everything they dislike about her reign, and when he was confronted in public by a rebel and panicked enough not to 'defend her honor', she badly breaks his ankle and forces him into the rebellion as her spy. He finally finds a friend in Joan and the other rebels and betrays the Duchess by giving her incorrect information but then the rebels change their plans and he accidentally leads them right to the rebels. He himself is sent into the palace with Joan and gets stabbed for his efforts. Then he gets sent on a high-stress mission for resources in a chaotic country he's totally unprepared for.

Whistle Intense.

Meg started off as an energetic and happy young woman raised in the upper class of the dystopia she lives in. She's in a stable relationship with Ilona Tobit and has a close relationship with her sister and good-as sister in law. However, as the Duchess's rule gets worse and worse, Ilona leaves to become an actor in Creston instead. Meg is devastated by this but refuses to show it, and strikes up a relationship with Darius (I say 'relationship' but it was just 'friends with benefits'. Minus the 'friends' part) because both were pining after someone who left. They eventually breaks it off and Meg goes back to being alone. During this time, she and her sister have grown apart do to her sister's place in the Duchess's military and she's more or less left with a bunch of friends, but no one to talk to. This changes when she meets Jon at a party and they get to know each other, but he's a rebel and she has ties to the Duchess so they break up. Later on, her sister is killed in action and Jon is captured, and when it's revealed that her sister's death may not have been by rebels or 'friendly fire', she breaks Jon out and they run off. He gets injured and they barely make it to the rebel base, where she finally finds some people who'll listen to her.
And then Jon gets stabbed by her sister's killer he lives but still

Okay, I have like a billion characters that I've written in my time, and a lot of them have similar backstories, so I'll just pick a few. Some aren't THAT horrible but are still unthinkable to live through. I'm a sucker for romance, so a lot of them have 'happy' endings with their love interest (happy, as in Marius and Cosette at the end of Les Mis. Like, we're together, but all of our friends were murdered.)

John Harrison, Jr. (Jack)-
Jack was five years old when his mother died giving birth to his younger sister, Olivia (she goes by Livvy). His father, who was already a little too free with the alcohol, went pretty crazy. He became a drunkard, he started smoking even more than he already did, and all he could see in his little children was his dead wife. He started abusing them, and he never cared for them. Jack had to basically raise his sister, taking the brunt of everything. His father would hit, kick, bite, punch, and he would even come at them with knives. At school, Jack had no friends, because he knew that if he accidentally let even one thing slip, his father would kill him and his sister (that was what his dad threatened. Jack knew that if he was drunk enough, it could actually happen). Not to mention, they lived in a crime-ridden city, so the police never noticed anything, because people would get shot on the streets daily, and they were a little preoccupied. Since Jack never told anyone, no one noticed. Until Jack was twelve, and Livvy was seven, when a social security worker came to their house. She had been contacted by Jack's teacher, who had noticed his scars and bruises when his shirt sleeve accidentally rolled up for a moment. They took the two away and sent their father to prison. The two (who were incredibly close) were in foster care for a few months, when an older couple came. They wanted to take both but could only financially afford one. They lived near a good school and were kind people, and Jack insisted they take Livvy. Four years later, Jack's father was let out of jail after being 'completely reformed'. He swore he had recovered, and the authorities couldn't find any reason why he shouldn't get his son back, after watching him for a month. So Jack went back to his father. And discovered that he was exactly the same. He had become an incredible actor in prison, and he kept the house spotless. He rarely hit Jack hard enough to bruise, so he had no evidence against him. They end up moving to another state (so that Jack's only form of communication with Livvy and her adoptive family was letters, and he tore up anything Jack tried to send). Meanwhile, without Livvy to protect, Jack has become very closed-off. He gets into a lot of legal trouble, stealing things and whatnot, and he comes to a new high school. This town is very close, so a new kid who's also a jerk is insane. They all hate him, but he falls in love with the smartest person in class (tied with him, actually). Her name is Lena, and she's the main character of the story. (They end up together, but that's not part of his tragic story). He actually nearly commits suicide, and Lena stops him. That's when she finds his sketchbook of drawings (he's an incredible artist, and captured his mother, Livvy, and father with picture-like accuracy, all with just pencil), and it takes off from there.

Ben Lockwood-
Ben has a sort of curse (not a real curse, because there's no magic in this world). First, I should give some background. The series I place Ben in is called Throne of Lies, and it takes place in a world where America lost the Revolution, and now, 250 years later, they're trying again, this time with bombs, planes, and advanced technology. He is an American soldier, but no one likes him. He's cold, rude, and avoids everyone. However, this because of his 'curse'. The villain of the story has sworn that everyone Ben loves will die. When he was ten, he watched his parents, brother, and sisters get murdered right before his eyes. They had been an incredibly close family. When he was eleven, his grandmother, who had taken him in, was killed. Then, a man who had taught Ben for years was slaughtered. (All of these deaths are horribly gruesome; the villain has a habit of slicing off limbs/facial features one by one until you bleed to death). When he was fourteen, he met his best friend, Erik. The two become closer than the closest brothers. Then Erik was killed when Ben was sixteen. This was when the villain finally tells him that he will murder everyone Ben loves. And Ben swears he will never love anyone in any way, ever again. Fast forward two years, and Lady Avery Braxen (she's British, but her mother is American, and the two spy for America), granddaughter of the leaders of the special branch of the military (they are highly skilled, specially chosen soldiers who spy and assassinate and do the shadow work), comes. And he breaks his promise to himself. They just have to hope they can kill the villain before he kills her. But don't worry! Until the end of the first book, Avery's in love with a man who seems perfect, and who seems to love her back, but who is actually the son of the villain, and who is planning to kill them all.

Tom and Alyce Hart-
Tom and Alyce are twins in Victorian Era England who were abused, starved, and treated awfully by their father. Their stepmother, Elisabeth, is kind and loving to them, and hates the way her husband treats them. However, he will often treat her the same way when she speaks out, and the twins begged her to stop, insisting that she wouldn't help them if she was stuck with them. When they were sixteen, their father arranged a marriage for Alyce with a wealthy, abusive forty-year-old (sixteen was young for marriage even back then). With Elisabeth's help, two ran away, finally willing to risk death. I forgot to mention, but these two are the sweetest, most helpful, loyalist, kindest people ever. They are like Newt Scamander in the fact that if you look up 'cinnamon roll' in the dictionary, you find their pictures. After they run away, they nearly starve/freeze about a million times, and because Alyce is so young and beautiful, men frequently try to assault her, attacks which she and Tom can barely fend off. Tom is nearly arrested multiple times, just for being near a rich man's daughter (it's the same rich man each time, and Tom and his daughter eventually fall in love), and for looking so poor. Shop owners would see him outside, and assume he was going to steal something. Even through their hardships, they refused to take so much as a single apple from anyone without paying in full, because they kept up the strong moral standards that Elisabeth instilled in them. They end up reuniting with Elisabeth, who came with Clara (Tom's girlfriend) and Clara's eight-year-old brother, Robert. Of course, Elisabeth was killed right in front of them, so there's that. (Robert wasn't there when she died. He's not the victim here). Eventually, Tom and Alyce are killed by their own father, together. It is the only (small) mercy I could offer them: death at the same time, so neither had to live without the other.

I'll probably have more later. Maybe I'll come back!

Ooh okay I have a list but I'm gonna go with my favorite one:
Jade, went on a trip to London with her best friend to find out what the hell was happening and why a bunch of priceless artifacts were missing. She came back and her mom (who was an alcoholic) died on the same day she got home. The next week, she finds out one of her friends is a fairy and she's a half-elf. The day after that, her best friend gets taken captive by the very brutal and merciless antagonists. She then has to go save him, almost dies, and somehow escapes. She meets a few other people with the same powers as her. And finally, at the end, one of her closest friends is killed by her own brother.

THEN THERE'S BOOK TWO