Character Abuse

[Prime Spinosaur]

Am I the only one guilty of putting my characters through the most horrible things ever?

Or do you make your characters go through hard times as well?

[Wham Bam I Am! Jam]

May 22, 2011 13:07:00 GMT -8 Prime Spinosaur said:

Am I the only one guilty of putting my characters through the most horrible things ever?

Or do you make your characters go through hard times as well?

Torturing characters is half the fun. Or is that just me?

[Deleted]

Torturing characters makes for a good story; who wants to read about someone who's perfectly safe all the time?

[ladylillian]

My friends and I enjoy torturing one another's characters very, very, much:

i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd180/Lunamew/auditionsforthenutcracker1.png

I think this picture my friend drew sums it up pretty well. (My character's the one on the far left, hehe)

As for my own characters -most of my characters go through hell and back at some point. Incidentally, the one depicted in that picture has his vocal cords ripped out in-canon as he was imprisoned for seventy years. My Maxwell has the worst luck.

[Prime Spinosaur]

The protagonist even at birth, lived in poverty, and was neglected by his mother who made it no mistake that her husband left her because she was pregnant with him. Then one day, he witnesses the death of his mother as his mother's skull was crushed inward by a metal bat, before being taken by a Neo-Nazi group and put into a concentration camp for being a Transhuman. Where he's experimented on, and eventually molested a number of times, obtaining dissociative personality disorder and killing everyone at the concentration camp, but doesn't remember it. And that's just the backstory of one character in Lost Children.

EDIT: WOW. How did the "i" get there. Worst type of typo anyone could make. XD

[Graceful Lament]

I put my characters through Hell as a matter of course. What's the point of giving your characters a happy ending if they didn't earn it? (And earn it, and earn it...) It's much more satisfying that way.

[Chaotic Neutral]

Sure, what we do to our characters is abusive and cruel, but how else are they supposed to develop and mature into well-rounded halfway-decent people?

Otherwise they'd all be whiny and pretentious like Bella.

[neoeevee]

Hehehehehe... ahahahahah... AHAHAHAHAHAHA! *rapidly escalates into a psycho laugh*

Mmm... yes. I love it. I love it so much and I know that loving it that much probably isn't healthy... but there's something about seeing the adorable construction of my mind suffer and squirm that I can't get enough of...

Okay, so it's usually for character development or plot advancement, but there's something about it that I adore. Especially in fanfiction. Want me to list all the things I've done to Roxas from Kingdom Hearts? >w>

[Trueblade]

^ Yes plz.

I LOVE seeing my favorite characters in pain and being tortured. Like rape.

[Prime Spinosaur]

The character I've made suffer the most, is ironically the Big Bad of Lost Children.

With that, I wanted to show that, while Ulfr is an antagonist, he's still very much human(or rather, Transhuman), and has very human emotions and feels just as much pain as you and I do.

[~vola!]

I haven't done much writing recently (collaborative or otherwise--I'm more of a roleplayer than a fiction writer), so you could say I torture my characters just as a matter of course. I have one character that's been pregnant for years because my RP partner vanished. I believe she was last seen huddled in a lean-to shed in the middle of the woods, in winter, running from bandits and law enforcement and accompanied by a man even weaker than she is. And she doesn't know she's pregnant yet.

But yeah, having terrible things happen to characters is what drives the plot. If no misfortune befalls anyone, it's boring as shit. I had another plot going with the same RP partner that had someone getting hurt roughly every 15 minutes. Oh, and one of the characters was violently paranoid, always armed, and had a chip in his head that wiped his memory every 24 hours. He was usually the one getting hurt, so having him routinely flip shit and try to kill the two women tending his wounds was a great source of conflict for a while.

[Story Keeper]

You're not alone, mate. My stuff is actually quite unusually dark.

One one the extremely minor characters (who's Jewish) is seen by the protagonist at the beginning being ganged up on and being called "Lipski" constantly. Even one of the most good-natured and trusted characters calls synagogues and Jewish clubs "Lipski & Co." She also gets taunted by a gang of ruffians (which she joined in order to get them to stop hurting her physically) for being tall, clever and for refusing to take up prostitution, which is what most of the girls her age are doing for money.

Said trusted character (let's call her H) has scars on her arms and legs from being beaten by her alcoholic mother who eventually sent her out of the house to live with her uncle.

The protagonist gets badly injured when he's captured by baddies.

Thankfully I have the sense to not make my characters whine about their pasts; instead they're bright, witty and able to take care of themselves.

[Graceful Lament]

I also have a tendency to write rather dark fiction. My characters go through Hell and back several times over in the course of one novel, only to have to go through it all over in the sequel. My stories tend to be deconstructive, however, so this is basically par for the course.

[Mikashi]

But teasing/torturing the characters is half the fun, if not more so!
I love putting my characters through complicated/problematic shit. /evil fucktard.

I do admit, I have a tendency of killing of my characters, but usually with a reason >.>...Oh well.../shot.

[dictatorofengland]

I love to torture my characters, I am so mean. It feels necessery to me, I don't just do it for the sake of it though, it fits with the story.

[PuzzleChick]

I love torturing my characters. =D I have a tendency to give stories hopeful (sometimes happy, but more often somewhat neutral and hopeful) endings, and I want the characters to earn it, so they have to go through hell and back before they get a reprieve. (Plus I have a bit of a thing for h/c, which just makes me want to torture them MORE.)

[Wham Bam I Am! Jam]

For me, torturing my characters allows for relationship development between them and shows relationships- especially family relationships- that had only been told and not shown.

[J.Day]

May 25, 2011 11:53:24 GMT -8 Wham Bam I Am! Jam said:

For me, torturing my characters allows for relationship development between them and shows relationships- especially family relationships- that had only been told and not shown.

^ Pretty much this.

If it's necessary to further character development, then torture away!

If that just sounded psychopathic, please forgive me and let me clarify:

It's not enough to just put your characters through extreme duress. You can't just have a list of "torture" scenes for the sake of having them. The torture -- whether it's of a physical nature, emotional nature, psychological, or a mix of all of these -- must serve a purpose to the story.

Of course, you also have to know your character's limits (and yours, too). Having knowledge of these is essential in order to portray a realistic survival of the "torture" that you put your character through.

[Lord Lovrina]

^ Pretty much that in a nutshell for why I must torture my characters.

Oddly enough, the more I torture my characters the more connected I feel to them. Sometimes I feel bad for it, but if I didn't do it there would be no story. Sometimes I don't give them happy endings, even if they did earn them.

[Deleted]

Oh, I torture my characters all the time. Some authors (*Cough* SMeyer *Cough*) hate to hurt or kill their characters... but I'm the opposite, I think torture and even death makes a character a stronger character (not to talk about memorable). What I'm writing right now involves a whole lot of torture, gore and death in general; there's even a kid getting fatally stabbed ("On-screen" if that term applies for books, as well).

[kendobunny]

I try not to write anything that I have no possible frame of reference for. I can imagine how my characters will feel being physically abused, because it's happened to me. I can imagine my characters being shot or stabbed, because it's happened to people that I know. I can imagine them having loved ones dying, because it's happened to me and people I know.

I think after a certain point, character abuse gets into the realm of ridiculous - the author obviously has no idea how their character would react to something mind-bendingly horrible, and then their characters come off as inhuman. Granted, I've read first-hand accounts of Holocaust survivors, so I've seen real humans trying to come to grips with some of the worst horror possible... but the dangers of character abuse always come crashing in with a story that someone wrote about the Holocaust. I include this as a cautionary tale for writing things that you have no frame of reference for:

I was in a creative writing class, and one classmate decided to write a story about the Holocaust. She wrote an extremely graphic description of the main character's mother getting brutally gang-raped in the mud. Her character (who was supposed to be 10, but that's another matter of glaring inaccuracy) reacted to his mother's torture by turning to the person next to him and saying, "I will never cease to be shocked by man's inhumanity to man". That's a facepalm so hard that you just might break your face.

So... be careful when torturing characters. It can add depth and strength, but if you don't know - really know - how an actual human would react to such a thing, avoid it. Avoid it so you won't look silly and naive, avoid it so your readers won't roll their eyes out of their heads, and avoid it because if you're trying to make a point, you need to make it cleanly and powerfully. For another example, look at the gorn genre: once they were trying to make a point, albeit in a sick, sadistic way. Now they're just looking to turn stomachs.

[dictatorofengland]

Which is why I do my research, I read about tragedies and their survivors, about serial killers and the stories of their victims, and about mental illness experiences (although I have mild personal knowledge of that too) and anything else relevant. I feel if I were limited to writing only about what I have personally experienced I would have some very dull content, my life has been very comfortable. Something I really try is to make my characters seem real, and react like real people to whatever I have them face. Even though I haven't lived such things myself I can learn from those who have.

[Pinkemon]

I don't think I'd be able to do many bad things to my character.

For example, one of my OCs has an adorable pet, and the worst I could do with that is putting her pet in a situation where it gets injured, causing her to go into a bloodthirsty rage/ roaring rampage of revenge.

I'm a sappy wimp, after all.

[Wham Bam I Am! Jam]

^

I can't harm animals. Fuck, when I'm riding, I feel guilty about tapping the horse with a whip! None of my stories have animals being injured unless they're human shapeshifters; I note that humans tend to be fixed more easily than animals.

When it comes to actually writing said character abuse though, it's handy that I have a slightly...macabre hobby; I regularly read books about serial killers, Nazis, the USSR, North Korea and once borrowed a library book entitled "A History of Torture." So, for me, it's not really research; it's a hobby.

[kendobunny]

Research is vital to any writing, but before getting into too much torture and abuse, make sure you're varying your sources. I know I can't just draw on my own experiences, since my reaction to abuse is definitely not normal for everyone. I guess the point I'm making is that torture and abuse just for their own sake get old really fast, and nothing will throw readers out of your story faster than a character reacting in an inhuman way, or a load of tragedy that looks like a contest entry.

Definitely not making out that some people don't get an unfair load of tragedy, but when your main has murdered parents, and was raped, and was tortured by their government, and had their best friend run off with their lover, and was raped again, and had their parents dug up and killed again, and was experimented on by sadistic scientists who then raped them, and had their only child kidnapped and raped and experimented on... eventually it's like the author is throwing darts at the Big Wheel of Horrible Things. Moderation and believability are key.

[neoeevee]

May 25, 2011 9:25:44 GMT -8 PuzzleChick said:

I love torturing my characters. =D I have a tendency to give stories hopeful (sometimes happy, but more often somewhat neutral and hopeful) endings, and I want the characters to earn it, so they have to go through hell and back before they get a reprieve. (Plus I have a bit of a thing for h/c, which just makes me want to torture them MORE.)

OHEY, you too Puzzle?

Anyway, late reply is late...

May 22, 2011 17:05:35 GMT -8 Trueblade said:

^ Yes plz.

I LOVE seeing my favorite characters in pain and being tortured. Like rape.

Yay.

OKAY, so I'll start with the very beginning...

• Angst from the KH canon, used as a springboard for more or less every horrible thing that happens to him.
  
• Mind Raped into rejoining the Org by a psychotic Namine clone.
  
• Spends a lot of... quality time with Namine, only for her to vanish and be declared dead by his superiors (she's not. Axel knows this. Roxas does not).
  
• Roxas goes into a serious Heroic Blue Screen of Death.
  
• Axel tells Roxas where Namine's gone. If you remember what happened the last time Axel told Roxas the truth about one of his friends, you can probably hazard a guess at Roxas's reaction.
  
• Another series of Awful Truths (His true identity, remembering Xion, Ventus...) drives him deeper into his own angst.
  
• Since he perceives that the people he was closest to were all lying to him, Roxas has a falling out with… pretty much everyone.
  
• Eventually tries to apologize, starting with Axel, only to have Axel die right in front of him (protecting him and Xion, no less). Roxas has his first crossing of the Despair Event Horizon at this point.
  Though Axel eventually comes back and all is well for a while… fast forward to when Madoka Magica starts getting in on things.
  
• Xion nearly dies (again) and is irreversibly altered. This sends Roxas into “Incredibly Overprotective Older Brother Mode”, which leads pretty directly to…
  
• Making a contract with Kyubey from Madoka Magica, being tasked with fighting witches in exchange for a wish, which Roxas uses to protect the ones he loves. This backfires, though, when, for reasons I won’t go into to avoid spoiling Madoka Magica, Sora seems to be acting strangely, and Ventus falls into a coma (again). Also, Xion, because of said wish, is also being torn apart from the DNA out. So now three out of his four siblings are dying slowly and the one that isn’t is incredibly pissed at him. Nice job breaking it, Roxas.
  
• The truth about Kyubey’s Puellae Magi is revealed, and… well, it’s not pretty. Roxas crosses the Despair Event Horizon again, except this time, because of his contract, there are monstrous consequences…

(pssst. Don’t open this spoiler tag unless you’ve watched Puella Magi Madoka Magica up to at least episode 9… >3>)

SPOILER: Click to show

Yeah, I turned Roxas into a witch. And the kicker? Because they’re all connected, his “siblings” all go through the exact same thing, except they’re completely aware what happened. NICE JOB BREAKING IT, ROXAS.

He’ll get better (It is a part-Disney crossover, after all), but he’s going to go through hell in the meantime. - w -

Also, I can elaborate on any of these if anyone asks. I just didn’t want to have a massive wall of text explaining why every plot point happens and how they’re all interrelated, etc…

OH, and I came up with a new one the other day... it's about how a certain Artificial Intelligence decided she can ignore her character development by deleting memories and what-not. Now I'm going to stick her in an android body and weld the physical embodiment of a particular human's soul and memories to her neck. Did I mention said android body feels pain? *devolves into evil giggling*

[dictatorofengland]

May 30, 2011 20:08:55 GMT -8 kendobunny said:

Research is vital to any writing, but before getting into too much torture and abuse, make sure you're varying your sources. I know I can't just draw on my own experiences, since my reaction to abuse is definitely not normal for everyone. I guess the point I'm making is that torture and abuse just for their own sake get old really fast, and nothing will throw readers out of your story faster than a character reacting in an inhuman way, or a load of tragedy that looks like a contest entry.

Definitely not making out that some people don't get an unfair load of tragedy, but when your main has murdered parents, and was raped, and was tortured by their government, and had their best friend run off with their lover, and was raped again, and had their parents dug up and killed again, and was experimented on by sadistic scientists who then raped them, and had their only child kidnapped and raped and experimented on... eventually it's like the author is throwing darts at the Big Wheel of Horrible Things. Moderation and believability are key.

I agree with you when it comes to overdoing torture, as I said even though I tend to write supernatural horror I try to keep an element of realism. I include character abuse because it's part of the story, it doesn't mean that I have to throw gore and tragedy in at every single moment.

And yes, I do vary my resources, I find it interesting to research for my writing and often find inspiration in people' real experiences. People all react differently to dire situations and I don't want all my characters to act the same.

[Mikashi]

May 30, 2011 23:49:48 GMT -8 neoeevee said:

OH, and I came up with a new one the other day... it's about how a certain Artificial Intelligence decided she can ignore her character development by deleting memories and what-not. Now I'm going to stick her in an android body and weld the physical embodiment of a particular human's soul and memories to her neck. Did I mention said android body feels pain? *devolves into evil giggling*

That sounds interesting .
Kind of reminds me of my story, DROID, but in a different way, as it also deals with artificial intelligence.
Except it deals with how Androids start to develop their own personalities/conscienceness, and therefore, end up going insane, becoming a "droid" which will attack anything and everything because it "cannot compute" with certain developments XD.
But I will refrain from spoiling even further.


I suppose that my biggest tortured character would be Lucy, from Bite Me Dead.
She has a similar quirk like Karin from Chibi Vampire/Karin, she creates too much blood, but she is not a vampire, but rather a "cursed human being".

SPOILER: Click to show

It starts with a scientist who was working on developing a certain formula--ends up getting attacked by a vampire and turning into one.
At first when he wakes up, he is unaware of the change, and starts to go home, like usual, but as he is walking past the playground where a younger Lucy is currently, he finds her irresistible, and realizes why when his fangs grow. He then looks down at his formula--and uses it on her.
The formula multiples blood cells at an accelerated rate, he did this so that when she grows older, she'll be ripe enough to drink from forever [because her cells are always regenerating and replicating, she looks fairly young, and besides the "blood explosions" and being considered a bio hazard, she is rather healthy].
Of course, the narration doesn't provide this information because vampires have the ability to hypnotize people, and make them forget certain memories, but she learns it later on.
...Of course, most of this is unwritten [because I am rewriting the story for the third time] as of now, and remains only in my head XD.

[Deleted]

Oh, I love putting my characters through any and every kind of hell possible (except those of a sexual nature... personal reasons). The way I see it, if they are going to get a happy (or semi-happy) ending, they are damn well going to earn it.

[Deleted]

I think that it's pretty common among writers to put their characters through terrible stuff to further the story.

...That, or we're a bunch of psychopaths.