Everyone I knew is dead

What kind of histories do you prefer for your characters? Do you enjoy the darker more painful ones, or the ones that are more filled with hope towards the future?

I mean, it 100% depends on the RP/story for me to make that decision. There are times where I join RPs and almost every character is an orphan or had seen hideous things as a child that still affect them throughout the RP. Its even worse when the RP doesn't require anything special in terms of history. Your character could be a completely normal person before the RP start. I understand this can happen, of course, but sometimes I find it too much. A good example is Atlantis Awakening. A character could have lived a completely normal life until they found out that they were an Atlantean, which is where the RP starts.

I suppose I am guilty of this though, as one of my most recent characters (Mikara from Star Wars) didn't exactly live a good life.

Nonetheless, I guess that makes me a person who prefers characters whose history is rather normal.

I think my characters generally lean towards the "my life sucked" side of things, however I don't have a preference towards that. MY characters just pop into my head more or less fully formed, sometimes they had bad lives and sometimes good.

History-wise, I don't think I wrote a lot of characters with too much drama and darkness in their history. I made some characters with a little darkness in them, a touch of rebelliousness here and there, but not something with a mentor or a parent dead. I just don't feel comfortable writing about sad characters. Solitary ones are okay, but sad is just... sad.

I think I've often made very bright characters with easy pasts, to counter all the sad dark pasts of other people's characters haha. I seldom make them orphans - most often I give them proper families, usually with two parents and some siblings.

Notable exceptions are Aberdeen from Crossroads, whose sister died (but that was crucial for his personality) and Ash from Astra Story who had grown up with only one "parent" and a pretty weird one at that. But to Ash's defense, it's a Homestuck RP and things are always weird there.

I tend to have something tragic in backstories simply to allow for some fears, scars(both physical and mental), and/or bad habits to emerge. Plus, it allows for a nice ark of getting over the past if you want to go that route on a character.

Quest said:

I mean, it 100% depends on the RP/story for me to make that decision. There are times where I join RPs and almost every character is an orphan or had seen hideous things as a child that still affect them throughout the RP. Its even worse when the RP doesn't require anything special in terms of history. Your character could be a completely normal person before the RP start. I understand this can happen, of course, but sometimes I find it too much. A good example is Atlantis Awakening. A character could have lived a completely normal life until they found out that they were an Atlantean, which is where the RP starts.

I suppose I am guilty of this though, as one of my most recent characters (Mikara from Star Wars) didn't exactly live a good life.

Nonetheless, I guess that makes me a person who prefers characters whose history is rather normal.

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I'll also add that in situations where I do make my characters more traumatized or have a less-than-normal background, I try to point to one or a couple of key points in their life which influenced them to be the way they are.

Depends, I find that conflict is alot easier to write about than butterflies and rainbows, but it really does matter 100% on the RP.

But most of my new characters have had conflict driven pasts, although I kind of cheated and made Gosu an amnesiac so I wouldn't have to spoil too much history. Its gonna be REALLY good. :3

Mm I definitely used to always make my character's pasts really dark and such, but then I began to think that was cliche and started making normal pasts.

Now like Kirky said it's all depends on the RP itself as to how I make my character's history

Looking at certain RP characters I have created, I noticed that they have had a bad experience in their past. (eg: loss of a family member, or unable to use a certain body part)

My preference in writing my character's histories is usually something neutral or typical. Unless my character takes on a "darker" role, I will include some dark elements, but I don't often get so dramatic with it. Some people have their characters suffer through anything and everything awful under the sun, with pedophilia, rape, inheriting or depreciating into severe mental illness or PTSD, natural or biochemical disaster that took nearly everyone they loved, brutal and overly-bloody murder, torture and dismemberment, and even death itself. I wouldn't mind it if they actually wrote and continued to portray how their characters suffered from things so wretched, but it's easy to list tragedies--not so to reflect on them. I opt not to bother with all that mess and flanderize my character so terribly.

Likewise, I don't attempt to write backgrounds about perfect lives. Uneventful maybe, sure, but I don't try to write characters that had the best of everything. It's so painfully boring to me to try and cram all those societal positives in, I honestly wouldn't know how to even go about it.

I instead like to focus on some quirks or oddities. I think it's the little details that can flavor a character uniquely. As for whether or not I like to write characters with hope for the future, it depends. My characters range from nihilistic to bounding for an event-filled tomorrow in the short-term.

I would like to think that I'm not too depressing when I write my SUs for characters, but now that I actually saw this post I realized how many of my characters have really sad backgrounds. I suppose that's something I'll need to work on, but often I think that the background of my characters is something that makes sense within the roleplay. I put up an SU recently about a person who found an ad online about fighting monsters. Who in their right mind would answer an ad like that? Probably someone who is not thinking straight, aka traumatized.

But I do think I need more variety with my characters. Or at the very least I need to stop killing their parents with cancer.

At least the only character I've made here doesn't have such a tragic backstory hahaha.

But I will admit that I like really fucked up backstories, even though I try to find a good balance between depressing backstories and regular backstories. It tends to tip over the tragic ones more.

Unless the setting is some sort of daily life setting. If that's the case, I tend to make a normal character without some sort of "MY PARENTS ARE DEAD" situation.

I tend to go the happy route 80% of the time. I like having a traditional family that raises my character well and is well-meaning. I also like to essentially orphan my characters, the other 20%, but not because of a tragic past. I like to give my character hope that they will find their parents, siblings, friends, whoever is missing from their life. I find it to be more interesting to write when y character has hope for a better future or continuation of a good life.

Looking back, I actually think almost everyone has a shitty backstory (thought not everyone has death in it). Nerites lost her sisters, Elliott his dad, and Jairo & Sahn have lost a lot too (which will be revealed in due time). The only exceptions I can think of are Boog who didn't really have any family (being the boogeyman and all) and Sophia who had a pretty badass life but fucked it up when she murdered someone. (dammit soph)

It honestly depends. I like to be a bit vague in my backstories. There doesn't tend to be a certain shaping event that molded their lives, as I want their experiences in the RP to be that. The tone of the backstory heavily depends on the character. It's what the character needs. If they're happy/positive, they probably have a fairly uneventful growing up, although it was a positive backstory. For darker characters, maybe they have less pleasant events in their past, or one that doesn't fit with their personality.

Dark.

Just look at my latest SU, for MD: The Grand Expedition.

Even if I try to go light and less negative or depressing, there's always a shadow lurking somewhere.

I tend to write more on the everything sucks, everyone is dead, oh woe is me side of things. I've only made two SUs with happy pasts. I think its easier to have more fun and grow as a character with a darker history.

I'm a sucker for a metaphorical story that ties up and goes full circle. I don't really care which end of the darkness spectrum it falls on, but it should always foreshadow what's going to happen in future as subtly, but clearly as possible.