forum list your most messed up and tramutizing character backstory ever

Started January 18, 2018 by shootingstar5678

tune

go ahead and crush everyone's hopes and dreams! all are welcome.

well characters mom dies from cancer even though her dad is basically the most renowned scientist in the world with a lot of money and then her dad is basically just a shell of his former self bc hes depressed and so he basically just blows up a giant magical nuclear experiment maybe or maybe not on purpose and that's how the kind-of magical apocalypse started so yea she kinda feels like this is all her fault

and now, the weather

but then there is the guy whos estranged father killed his mother and he had to jump from a window to escape w/ his baby brother (who is the purest cinnamon roll ever) and so yea he basically hates himself bc he wasn't able to stop his father (he was 5) and bc his fathers abusive + explosive tendencies come out in him and he unknowingly hurts everybody he loves

to kick things off, i'll go ahead and tell mine. So i have a character named Wendy. Wendy had a great life, awesome friends, loving family, and terrific boyfriend. Her boyfriends name was Johnny. Johnny was everything a person could wish for. He was head of the football team, crazy clever, smart, handsome, and a trustworthy, kind, caring boyfriend. Despite him being so kind and humble, he had a good deal of enemies. So one day, one of his teammates asked for Johnny to join him on a camping trip. Wanting make amends with him, Johnny agreed. After several minutes of convincing Wendy, he was finally able to go. Wendy still feeling skeptical about the situation tried(in vain) to calm down. 2 days later, Wendy recieved a text from Johnny. The excited smile that had appeared on her face, vanished just as quickly. She froze. the following text demanded that Wendy brought 500 dollars to the Cedar Woods Campsite before sundown, or Johnny would die. She wasted no time, as she grabbed a fistful of money from her parents room, and raced to the campsite. At about a quarter to sunset, Wendy was arriving at Cedar Woods. No more than 2 miles into the forest, something caught her eye. Curious, Wendy diverged from the path and approached the thing. As she walked closer and closer, the sickening smell of rot and decay filled the air. While every bone in her body was screaming for her to turn back, she continued on until she reached the spot. What she saw still terrifies to this day. In front of her, was her beloved Johnny's rotting corpse. Wendy took a single step forward, and collapsed. She sat there and screamed in pure agony and despair. She screamed until she lost her voice, and then did the strangest thing imaginable. She got up, walked the over to Johnny, sat down on his lap, and cried herself to sleep. Fortunately, a construction worker happened to come across her, and immediately called the police. Wendy woke up to find herself in a hospital room. Her friends and family came in and told her what happened. They sat and cried for her and Johnny. But she heard nothing that they said. All she could see was Johnny's smiling face as he told her that he loved her, and that he'd be back soon. Wendy's closest friend Marilyn, had found Johnny's red plaid shirt, and gave it to her to keep. For the next week Wendy barely ate, spoke to no one, and stayed in her room. And if anyone tried to convince her to take off Johnny's shirt, she'd kick and scream until they left her alone. Finally after a month and half, she started acting normal again. 2 months later she was sent, sedated, to the hospital. She'd had a mental breakdown in Biology, when a classmate rolled a hanging skeleton sculpture in front of her. She was later diagnosed with Necrophobia and PTSD. After a while she returned to normal. However to this day she is never seen not wearing Johnny's red plaid shirt.

i mean all of my main characters have pretty traumatizing backstories, but i think sol's is the worst.

(i'll try to avoid spoilers.) she was taken from her family almost immediately after her birth, so she never knew her mother or her home. the people who took her had a different idea for the fate of faery (the realm where fairies live, where sol was born) and sol didn't fit into that idea, so they decided to torture the memories out of her. she didn't have many memories to begin with, but they were adamant that she never become who she was meant to be. she spent her entire life in a cell, being tortured both mentally and physically, and eve after she escaped them, those years (centuries) keep haunting her. at one point, one of her captors finds her and she tells him that she had wished she could have died in that cell.

I have two little nekos who have a very deep past. Here's part of the "short story" I wrote to explain it. :

Annabell continues, Drop mimicking her movements. “I excel in the magic of storytelling and illusions. Most of the time I would just show a few tricks or tell a spooky story, but today is a special occasion. So, please don’t mess with the illusion and…” Her almost happy attitude while performing drops. “Prepare for a bumpy, emotional ride.” She glances at Drop and smiles slightly. “You ready, Drop?”
He nods, giving a small smirk. With that Annabell snaps her fingers, causing the whole room to disappear and before becoming a circus. Everyone looks around in surprise, taking it all in. In front of us is the entrance, the bright, lit up sign reading…
“The Toxic Circus.” I say out loud.
(Annabell’s PoV)
Obsidian crouches, looking at a flier laying on the ground. The Toxic Circus… In the center of the picture is a man dressed as the ringleader. He has toxic, neon, green eyes and short brown hair. To his left is a giant circus bucket, and on top is a child sized, gray hooded figure with rust colored hair coming from the hood, its eyes un-see-able, and holding green flames in its hands. This is me, only three years old. Down below it is a fortune teller booth with a Neko woman in it, with the same rust colored hair and brown eyes. There’s a few clowns in the background. To the man’s right is another Neko woman. This one is paler, has long black hair and blue eyes, a little book shaped locket standing out on her person. She’s holding a flaming hoop, and a tiger is caught, in the picture, midway jumping threw it. Hiding behind the mom is a very small, pale Neko girl with short black hair and neon green eyes. This is Obsidian, about two years old. They had taken the picture for this flier a few days beforehand and then printed it out so they could spread them around town. Us five were specifically on the flier, because we were the most popular.
“They still use them, you know? After we ran away, they picked everything back up, and continued on. They didn’t have anything else to do; they had nowhere to go. They continued to use that version of the flier, so that they could remember us.” I comment. “It’s a shame that he’s on it though.” I say, scrunching my nose.
She nods. “Come on.”
We enter the circus, leading Obsidian’s friends to where our past takes place. We go to the fortune teller’s booth. Next to it, a little me balances on a large bucket turned upside-down. She smiles giggling. I smile and a few tears fall down my face. I look at the fortune booth, and in it sits a Neko woman with rust colored hair and brown eyes. I put a hand over her mouth as tears pour down my face.
It’s just so difficult to see her…
Obsidian takes a deep breath. “This is Madam Morder, our fortune teller… Annabell’s mom…”
There’s a small roar, followed by, “Oy! Get back here!”
We all turn to see a baby tiger cup run out of a tent, a little Obsidian chasing after it. She pounces on it, rolling onto her back and hugging it as if it were a house cat. The Obsidian next to me closes her eyes and turns away, knowing this all too well.
“Nyo escape for you today!” Little Obsidian giggles. “Myom~! I caught ‘em!”
“Very good, Obsidian!” The pale Neko says as she leaves the tent, laughing at the sight of her daughter.
“Our tiger tamer, and Obsidian’s mom, is Treasure Tale…” I comment.
Treasure takes the tiger cub, help her daughter up.
“Obsidian and I learned fast. You kind of haft to when you grow up in a place ran by-“ I start.
“TREASURE!”
Treasure pulls her daughter behind her and hugs the cub protectively. Obsidian and I scrunch our noses, both glaring daggers in the direction of the yell. The man approaching has terribly kept, short, brown hair and toxic, acid green eyes. He wears a ringleader’s outfit and stomps as he walks, a scowl permanently set on his face at all time except when performing.
We hiss out his name in disgust. “Chris Morder!”
“Why my mom ever married him, I’ll never know!” I shout.
“Nasty cheater! Using my mom and cheating on poor Madam Morder! She only didn’t divorce him, because he wouldn’t let her!” Obsidian hisses.
“Our moms didn’t blame each other, because they knew it was his fault!” We both yell out, our voices drenched in venom.
“I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO CONTROL THESE CATS! THIS IS THE FOURTH TIME ONE HAS TRIED TO ESCAPE!” The wicked man yells at poor Treasure.
She looks up at him sternly, but her words come out scared. “S-sir, I-I’m dreadfully s-sorry…”
“YOU WOMEN ARE USELESS!” He screams.
Time seems to slow down as he goes to smack Treasure. Little Obsidian’s eyes widen and a toxic orange appears around the edges of her pupils. In one moment, little Annabell kicks the bucket she was playing on to little Obsidian, and the small Neko stops it with her foot and flips it upside-down. She jumps on it and then jumps up as high as she can… The smack hits little Obsidian full force, leaving a big bruise on her cheek. She falls to the ground not too far away, bouncing once on her side before stopping.
“YOU LITTLE INGRATE!” Chris yells, furious.
“Guess you were right about one thing…” Obsidian mumbles, holding the same cheek as little Obsidian.
Chris turns to a very surprised and worried Treasure. “You got lucky this time, Treasure.” He growls before ripping the locket from her throat and storming off with it.
Treasure hold her neck with one hand immediately, the harsh pain spreading and giving her a headache. Tears flood to her eyes, not just from pain but also sadness. Little Annabell runs to little Obsidian, her mom following soon after.
“Treasure, go put that cub back in their cage, ok? I’ll take care of Obsidian until you get back.” Madam says, earning a small nod from Treasure, who quickly rushes back into the tent she originally came from.
“We didn’t even know what we were doing when it happened.” I mumble. “Obsidian made eye contact with me…”
“Annabell nodded and kicked the bucket to me…” Obsidian adds.
“And, the next thing we knew…” We both say together.
“I had the bruise instead of my mom…” Obsidian says, still holding her cheek and staring at the scene blankly.
Little Obsidian sits up, tears running down her face. “Nyot myom’s locket…”
“Are you okay, step- sis?” Little Annabell asks, concerned.
“Y-yeah, but he took myom’s locket. He wouldny’t have took it I hadny’t jumped in the way.” Little Obsidian sobs.
“Mom’s locket was a gift from Annabell’s mom… It was really important to her…” Obsidian mumbles, her hand sliding from her cheek to the locket hanging from her neck.
I close my eyes, and Drop copies, glowing a bit brighter. Everything around us fast forwards. When it starts to go at normal speed again, Drop stops glowing so bright. I close one eye while the other stays open. I put a hand to my forehead, a splitting headache crashing down on me suddenly. I try not to let it show too much
My emotions are making this take more magic than it should.
I stop and turn to look back at the fortune teller’s booth. Everyone looks towards it as well.
Little Annabel is balancing on top of the upside-down bucket again. “So, what do you think we should do?”
“We nyeed to get myom’s locket back.” Little Obsidian says, holding ice to her bruised cheek.
“Kay~. How?” She asks, ready to listen.
“I don’t knyow…” She replies, looking down at the ground.
“Maybe it’ll help if we put our heads together and think. One of us always comes up with somethin’ when we do that.” Little Annabell says, hopping down from the bucket.
They move to sit next to each other, dropping their heads towards each other till they tap lightly. “Bonk~!” They giggle, before looking off in thought.
“I got it!” Little Obsidian shouts. “We snyeak in his tent and get it.”
Little Annabell smiles and nods. “Yeah~!”
The little girls stand up and head over to another tent, and I teleport everyone inside it. It’s set up sort of like a bedroom inside. The whole thing is lit up, old fashioned, with a lantern. Me and Obsidian unknowingly link hands, a few tears sliding down our cheeks. The tiny versions of us sneak into the tent cautiously and look around. Little Obsidian smiles and heads over to a large, wood crate. She holds up the locket in victory.
“Got it!” Little Obsidian chimes.
“WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING IN HERE?!” Chris screams, stomping into the tent.
Little Obsidian drops the locket startled, and little Annabell runs over and stands in front of her. They both stare at Chris, completely terrified. We watch, tears pouring down our faces, because we know what’s going to happen. Treasure and Madam burst into the tent, as Chris grabs little Obsidian by the arm.
Treasure runs over, prying Chris’ hand off her daughter’s arm. “Don’t touch her!”
“SHUT UP!” He smacks her into a few crates. “I’M DONE WITH YOU PEOPLE THINKING YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH WHATEVER YOU WANT! THIS IS MY CIRCUS!”
“Myommy?!” Little Obsidian screams.
The lantern falls. The glass shatters and the metal mangles as it hits the floor, a small, bright, fire starting. From there, everything seems to slow down. Madam and Treasure lock eyes, before they both rush and push Chris to the ground. Each takes one of his arms, using all the strength to keep him in place. He struggles, kicking, and the fire slowly spreads, picking up pace as it goes.
Madam looks up at the girls. “Run! Go!”
“What?! Nyo~!” They both yell, upset, scared, and panicked.
“Girls!” Both of the mothers yell, struggling to keep Chris trapped.
Little Obsidian and little Annabell, tears flooding down their faces, grab each other's hand and run out of the tent. I teleport everyone outside the tent, a good distance away. The tent we were in is up in flames. Lots of the circus staff are running to put the fire out. Obsidian and I watch the little versions of ourselves run away from the circus, hold each other’s hands tightly. Our faces expressionless.
“They gave up their lives to get rid of him… They died. We lived. … We wandered the streets for about four years before splitting up…” I explain.
“This was the first houman that did me wrong… Lot’s treated me and Annabell wrong when we were still together too. I began to hate them. And, that was that.” Obsidian says.

Main character: Happy, rich, loving family. Sees her two brothers and one of her brother's fiancee murdered in front of her, then the guy who killed them wants to kill her two, so this other girl goes and faces him instead. She dies, and our main character blames herself for her death. She has to go and tell the girl who died for her's father, who gets angry and drunk and sells her into slavery. A little while later, after she escapes, she gets stung by a jellyfish that gives her serious nerve damage for the rest of her life.

So, I thought I had characters with messed up backstories. Everyone here proved me wrong.

My one character in my story her name is Katja and when she was 8 years old she and her 1-year-old sister both witnessed their parent's death. Her parents were both shot. Her father was in a gang and his gangs rival had some "beef" with Katja's father and to get revenge the rival killed both Katja's parents. After the news of her parents' death, her fathers' close friend (also part of his gang) took Katja and Catalina in and protected them. Katja was taught how to fight by this man, whose name is Damon. When Katja finally turned 13 she was told that she had to take her fathers place in his gang and when she turned 16 she would be the new leader. When Katja was 15 she was kidnapped by a stranger and was tortured (stabbed multiple times shot many times, long slits down her legs etc) because she happened to kill this strangers brother while doing work for the gang. She was obviously was scarred for life both physically and mentally and has reoccurring nightmares. Once she turned 16 she became the leader she had to move to a new town and new school and had to start street fighting in order to have enough money to pay for rent and groceries and other necessities. Now she has to handle her little sister, the gang, and high school drama.

My character's name is Allie Larue her brother died because she couldn't lie to his murder. Her parents dissowned her because of it, all her friends have boyfriends, and she is the only single one in her group. She often cries herself to sleep and wishes to die. Her bestdfriend Sallie Rue maks sure she wont, and asks her to get a boyfriend. Everything always goes wrong and she kills her family and ex-boyfriends, causing herself to run away. She meets a new boy and continues murdering people. He was about to propose to her when she comes out and says it she's murdered a lot of people. Her boyfriend calls the police and he tells her criminals cant love. The police take her to prision.

(you guys made so many better tragic backstories it makes me feel mine aren't that tragic)

I traumatized 4 of my characters at once with one of my scenes haha. So some background first. The characters are all siblings ages 13, 11, 10, and 6 at the time of the event and they're also aliens. They were found on earth by this scientist and his company who captured them, and did experiments on them for years.

Well in one of the most traumatizing instances of being in the lab, the view point is from Isaac who is 11 at the time, and he and his other 2 siblings are having to watch while Jericho (main antagonist and head scientist) is experimenting on their youngest sister who's 6. He's doing something and trying to alter/mess with her DNA. Something goes terribly wrong, her body rejects whatever he inserted into her, and ultimately she dies an agonizing and painful death that lasts for like 8 minutes, but feels like an infinity. While this is happening Isaac, his older brother Jason, and his other sister Normity are in separate containment cells with a thick glass wall so they can see what's happening.

While the experiment is going on, Jason is yelling and trying to break the glass so he can get to her, Normity is crying hysterically, and Isaac is just silently staring in shock and watching everything go down. As the scene goes on it just feels like a nightmare or a sick joke and eventually the screaming, sobbing, and all the other sounds Isaac hears are just slowly fading out and replaced with ringing (like the kind of ringing you can get in your ears) as he watches his youngest sister die over what seemed to be a lifetime.
(tho spoiler, the little sister ends up getting revived a little later on, tho because of this event her dna got permanently screwed up and it causes her a lot of difficulties amongst other things. The event still lives in all of their minds and is a trauma that never leaves them).

Well…. Okay so when Lance Andrews was eight years old his mother died and left him alone in the world with his two year old baby sister. He had no (known) relatives left and lived on the streets for years selling his own body to feed the two, all until a kind army officer saw him fighting and offered him a place in the army along with free food, shelter and an education. When Lance's sister (Madeline) became of age she also joined with her brother. She got a boyfriend who was on the opposing side of the war and he was meant to meet Lance, Madeline and the rest of the squad to guide them through enemy ground. Madeline went alone but when she did not return Lance got worried and found her lying dead on the ground with a bullet in her head and no sign of anyone else. When he returned to his camp the entire squad was dead apart from one girl who suffered from serious scarring to her face after the tents were burnt down.
Lance leaves the front line due to PTSD and has self harming tendencies, blaming himself for everyone's death.
Spoilers - he dies at the end of the book.
THE END

Saturn was abused by his father until he was ten and still has the scars from it. He then ran away to an orphanage.
Cal's best friend moved away when she was eleven without ever telling her. Her little sister died just a year later. To add onto this tragedy, her parents never accepted her for being transgender.
Zoë has lived alone in the forest since she was about six, stealing from people in the town. Her parents abandoned her there because they were scared of her powers. All they gave her before they left was a silver dagger.

One of my characters lost all six of her siblings(including her twin sister) her parents, and several friends at the hand of an evil organization. Then later she was tortured(emotionally, mentally, and physically) for two months by the very uncle who sang her to sleep every night when she was a baby.And of course, she blames herself for all of it.

Umm Mine aren't as bad as all your's lol but i'm gonna tell them anyway.

So Lilly's life had been fine, she and her parents were pretty poor but they dealt with it, until she was about 2-3 and her dad lost his job. Everything went downhill from there. Her dad went to drinking and started abusing her and her mother and still does. Her mom is too afraid of him to do anything about it and Lilly suspects that her father might possibly does worse than just hit her mom. Her mom has to work multiple jobs a day from 7 in the morning to midnight or later every day so Lilly is often home by herself. It is still this way and she is currently around 16-17. She is also pretty small, like very thin and short. And because of this, kids at school often bully her and sometimes even physically hurt her.

Trinity was about 7 when her older brother died. He had left with a friend of his and his friends parents to go somewhere for the day. When they didn't get back she and her parents thought he had just slept over at his friends out and not told them, he was 11 after all and that is something he did often. When they went to pick him up no one was at the house so they called their parents, no one answered. After a while, they called the police and sent out a small search team to go looking for them. They eventually found them crashed off the side of the road from trying to dodge another car. Her brother, his friend, and his mom had died while his dad happened to live. She still has to live with the memory of her brothers death and it ruins her. She is also very kind and pretty, so many people pretend to be her friend, be in love with her, etc, just to get popular and take advantage of her. She had actually been raped by one of her very close friends she had trusted well and she still hasn't told anyone about it.
Those are just a few of mine.

I´ve got a character who is the daughter of two cult leaders and was abused from a very young age both physically and sexually. She spent most of her child participating in cult activities which included grisly murders, kidnappings, and sacrifices which worsened her already frail mental health. She´s escaped from her parents by living and attending school at a prestigious academy but is now an alcoholic, drug addicted, and severely mentally ill. I love making my characters suffer.

Angelica Lauss. Her cultist parents attempt to sacrifice her sister to their god, she kills them with her telekinetic power before cradling her baby sister in her arms as she bleeds out. Naturally she goes on the run (the police force on Utopia, despite being the most generous across the galaxy is still very quick to judge a situation and quite "trigger happy") wracked with traumatic nightmares she spends the next several years of her life on the streets living off nearly nothing, haunted by demons of her own production. She considers suicide, constantly, the idea of death becomes a form of ecstasy for her but she never does the deed every time she comes close to jumping out in front of that car or slitting her wrists with a shard of glass she sees a boy, a skinny boy, clothes torn, eyes hollow. The boy always sits a certain distance away always watches as if he has nothing better to do. She looks back at the boy and hates him, she hates his condescending look she hates his privilege, he had a family he had a mother and a father he had a home, why wouldn't he leave her alone? But every time she saw the boy, she felt a familiar pang of guilt, as if she owed him. Either way she didn't end her life and she would sleep. This went on for almost a year, every night she would consider taking her life, every night she would see the boy, every night she would hate herself even more for the unwelcome guilt and shame every night she would close her eyes and fall asleep and awaken into the hellish nightmares. Finally the cold Utopian winter began, Angelica knew she would not be able to survive the winter, she knew the boy would not be able to keep her alive anymore. As the temperatures began to drop she curled up in the snow and closed her eyes awaiting death. No nightmares came. There was no cold. There was more death. Angelica awoke to the boy cradling her in a very familiar way, the same way she had cradled her dying sister. He had kept her warm throughout the night and he continued to every single night. They never spoke Angelica had nearly forgotten her voice. The two continued to stay together even after the winter had passed. It took a few weeks for him to finally start to speak. It took her even longer, almost a year. It was when she realized the truth of him, the truth of those moments before the winter. He had been following her; stealing food and water for her and feeding her as she slept. "Thank you" The first words she spoke since the death of her sister.

Angelica and Jackson are my favorite couple lol

John Michael Osbourne (named after Ozzy Osbourne), lived his life as a drug-dealer, liar, cheater, and thief, deep in West LA. He'd spent some time away from his wife, and as these things happen, she took up having an affair, coincidentally with his best friend, one night, after an especially vicious fight upon Osbourne's return, they had had it with each other. But, before a divorce could be settled, his wife unknown to him, had said best friend kill him, during a camping trip that the two took to supposedly bond over due to the divorce. He was buried on the roadside.

Upon his death, Osbourne was catapulted straight to Hell for his doings in life. He was tortured cruelly, up until the point, where a Hell-Prince, Beelzebub, made a deal with him. The deal was that Osbourne would be risen from the dead so that he could take his revenge, and in return, the Hell-Prince would get a spot of entertainment, and a personal test subject after Osbourne's revenge was exacted. But of course, there was a catch. Osbourne was risen, in his old corpse, which over the course of this first saga, would begin to decay into a rotting, maggot-infested mess. He achieves his goal, and is again sent to Hell, and personally tortured not by a normal demon, but by a sadistic, powerful Prince of Hell.

Until his escape.

One of my characters witnessed her abusive mother stab her father multiple times after carving his face and arms. Then she came after her, but she ran away and locked herself in a bathroom and called 911, later she found out when she ran away her mother went after her younger sister and killed her by stabbing her no less than forty times. She never got to see the body. She went through a phase where she didn't talk to anyone and just stayed in her room all day every day with only bathroom breaks and didn't eat for weeks on end, unless it was ice-cream, candy or strawberries. In her room she was planning ways to kill her mother in the most gruesome way possible for what she did, and she taught herself how to create energy and gadgets with the help of Nonni (her aunt's maid, she went to live with her aunt after the incident) who was the only person she would see. That's how she became a weapons specialist, and it was all so that she could get back at her mother. She was sent to an RTC for 'risky behavior' after the first year of living with her aunt, and was there for a little over a year (which is a really long stay for a children's RTC) and when she was released she ran away to find her mother (which is really stupid, even though her aunt is rich and gave her a crap ton of money in compensation for sending her to an RTC) and discovered her mother had died of heroin overdose. The rest is irrelevant, but she went back to her aunt and was sent to an acute psychiatric unit for five days, then went back home, but continued therapy towards recovery.

Oh man I love a good tragic backstory. I'm having a hard time deciding which of my characters has it the worst, but I've narrowed it down to two.

Gerard's requires a little bit of context- he lives in a fantasy world where some people have powers and some don't. In the past there was a lot of witch hunt like stuff going on, but in the current setting the story the group in charge of these witch hunts disbanded and ended up living in an isolated village but still operating in secret. Gerard is the youngest son of the current leader of this group. He was kind of the weakest out of his five older brothers, and spent a lot of time with his mother who he was really close with. She died when he was only seven, leaving him with his father and brothers.
At around 11 Gerard discovered he had aerokinetic abilities, which was kind of a problem because his father, who already hates him, is also really anti-powers. He was able to keep it a secret, but when he turned 14 his father wanted him initiated into the group. The initiation ceremony involves killing one of the prisoners, but Gerard couldn't do it so his father did it for him, hoping that he could at least lie about it to everyone else in the village. Except for then his father found out about his powers and basically just locked Gerard in his room while he figured out a way that he could kill him and make it look like an accident (He didn't want to the rest of the village to know about this because it would draw suspicion towards him and the rest of his sons, who didn't have powers). Gerard eventually managed to escape before his father could kill him, but he nearly drowned and almost died anyways. He was rescued by some of his father's escaped prisoners who didn't know who he was. They brought him to a safe place, and he's been happier ever since but he's really messed up because of everything that happened to him. He ended up working as a healer because he felt like it was a way to make up for all the stuff that his father was doing.

__

My other one is one of my newer characters, Jaire. He was born into a really poor family, and his mother also died when he was fairly young. Jaire is selectively mute, which means that he was able to speak with his father no problem but not really with anyone else. It really only became an issue when he started school and couldn't speak with his teachers or classmates. His father eventually became aware of the issue, but didn't really understand why Jaire wasn't talking, and kind of just assumed that he was just doing it for attention. This was kind of the start of a lot of miscommunications and not really seeing eye to eye with Jaire and his father.
Things only got worse for him as he got older. His father became increasingly abusive towards him and people started to notice. When Jaire was 12, he was taken away by his universe's equivalent of the Child Protection Services. He didn't have any other friends or relatives who could take him in, so he was placed in a group home. He wasn't any happier here than back at home with his father; he was bullied by the other kids, and not really understood by the adults assigned to take care of him. After about about a year he ran away, but he had nowhere to go and ended up living on the streets.
Jaire was able to do the bare minimum to survive on the streets. He often had to resort to stealing, but he hated doing it. One day he got caught stealing from someone. The person who tried to steal from got super pissed at him and basically just started beating the crap out of him. By the time the fight was broken up, Jaire was badly injured. He went to go hide in a quiet alley to try and clean himself up. He was eventually found by a circus ringmaster who felt bad for him and brought him in to a doctor so that he could recover. She also offered him a position with her circus to help him get off the streets (she felt really bad for him). Jaire didn't really feel like it was work he was cut out for, but he was so desperate to get off the streets that he accepted anyways. Turns out he actually was cut out for it, and things worked out for him more or less.

three words: CURSE of immortality

Every single one of my characters has horribly messed up backstories, but I suppose that the worst has to be…I actually don't know. Well. Hell. I guess you might want to hear about Tari. This is more poetic than I thought it would be, feedback is appreciated.

Tari wasn't always called Tari, but that doesn't matter. She was the Night Huntress, the Stalker, the Constant, Ghost, Markam, and others she doesn't care to name, others she doesn't want to remember.
Believing that the world could be kind, she was trusting. She was young. She was a fool. Her brother couldn't save her from herself. With light heart and mind she set off to learn about humanity, to experience it. She hoped that her previous dealings with humanity were wrong.

Tari was kind.
The first city was loud, chaotic.
She first tasted Fear.
She hated it. She hated that this place invoked fear in her. So she tore it apart. Brick by brick. Human by human. Bit by bit she razed it to the ground.
The second city was quiet. They'd heard of her here, whispered of the blue eyed one. That she felt no fear.
She first saw Anger.
She hated that this place could control her like this. So she tore it apart. Starting with the humans, and ending with the very foundations.
The third city stood against her, they feared for their lives, their pointless lives. They fought back.
She first heard Indifference.
She tore only the people apart for the crime of living, leaving the skeleton of a city behind her.
The fourth city was dark, and she could feel their hatred. Calling her a devil, a harbinger, the incarnation of all their fears. These people begged her to spare them.
She first smelled Pain.
In the last city, they waited for her. They had accepted what was to come.
She first felt Nothing.

She moved on.