Everyone I knew is dead

Honestly, I try to stay away from dark histories unless I can do them justice. I see so many people have these dark and tragic history, but it never seems to affect their character as if it had never happened. Which is really odd to me, you'd think if all that stuff happened to their character there would at least be a single mention throughout the RP, but there's nothing, nada. Unless I can commit to a character that has that past and accurately reflect it in their character I won't make a character like that.

Backstories are purely for context, even in RPs that have significantly detailed histories behind them. Something brief should always be included, but if you want to delve into things more, there's no need to make things bad.

One mistake people always make is victmising the character when they're a child. Children make bad decisions, y'know, and sometimes they think things are bad when they're not. Just slapping together parental death and other tragic things shows inexperience and the inability to understand how the mind and backstories work. For simple things, listing or detailing events that defined key traits in the character, as mentioned prior, is what backstories are for. Tragedy for the sake of it (or no reason at all) is just a stupid waste of time.

As for myself, I have to admit I typically make characters who have had pretty rough upbringings or just a period in life when everything was going badly. Defining their character as something else then having some events in their backstory alter them into the person they are today (at the time of the application) is something I enjoy doing. Most of characters that are like this are much older, though. For younger characters I tend to make them more pure and directed, and aim them towards something that will make them question themselves, for the sake of character development and progression.