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Post by Siren on Apr 13, 2014 11:40:52 GMT -8
I know we've all had those characters that you've made early in your role play career (or even fanfiction career) who you'd rather forget about. Whether it's their Mary Sue appearance (long rainbow locks that change color and angel AND demon wings, anyone?), ridiculously unrealistic history, or some other detail that made you cringe, they're a reminder of your less experienced rping days. While I know that some people would rather hide these characters in the back of their closet, I think it'd be fun to poke fun at them and see how much we've all improved since then.
For me, one of my worst characters came about when I was around eleven or twelve. I had a character for the Yugioh GX, Death Note, and Kingdom Heart fandoms named Raynne, which was supposed to be pronounced as 'Ray-anne'. Yeah, idk, I thought it was a neat name at the time, although I'm pretty sure it didn't mean anything. Her last name was... Leroy, I think? Something like that. Anyways, her name wasn't the worst part. She had light blonde hair and 'icy blue eyes'. BUT THIS STILL ISN'T THE WORSE PART. She had 'all the curves in the right places', and she was trained in the way of the katana despite being of European heritage??? Basically, her personality was that of a tsundere, and she was alllwayyyyssss right; everybody who disagreed with her basically got a sword up their- yeah, -cries-. She had so many boyfriends that she would've been called a floozy by everybody's mom and grandmother and great-grandmother, and she cheated on them jfc bc LOVE CIRCLES WHY NOT. But yeah, aside from that, she was a huge jerk and she thought every female was jealous of her and her beauty bc idk. But, that's not the worst part.
She was literally the offspring of Satan and some angel.
And then, I pulled a weird Final Fantasy X thing and made her marry the Demon Lord, but her 'twoo luvs' came in time and rescued her and then they lived happily ever after with her. Yeah, it was bad, and I think I posted the story up on Quizilla. I tried making her on a Yugioh site when I was 13, and I was promptly denied. lol. I should've expected it, but the pissy 13-year-old Siren got into a fit and angsted for a while.
Thankfully, I've improved since then, but that character still serves as a reminder of some of my darker rping and fanfiction days.
So, what characters do you regret making? Do you cringe at them and lock them away? Or, conversely, do you proudly display them as evidence of how far you've come? And, what about revamping your old characters? I've only recently begun to go back and improve some of my characters, but I'm curious about what the community has to say on the subject.
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Post by darth vader on Apr 13, 2014 13:24:07 GMT -8
thalia
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MOTHER OF THE MAGICAL GIRLS
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Post by SIFR on Apr 13, 2014 13:24:19 GMT -8
I don't regret characters as much as I regret names I've chosen. "Angelos Tudor", "Payton Silverwing" and "Mizuki Haruka" are some of my biggest regrets for names ever. The first because what was I thinking, throwing together Greek and English culture like that, the second because I only did that name due to liking the Silverwing series at the time, it had nothing to do with the character, and the third because I took two Japanese first names and smashed them together because I thought it sounded Japanese enough.
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Post by redox-kun on Apr 13, 2014 16:53:14 GMT -8
stefan
not the archetype. i still like the archetype a lot. it's just that i should have retired him immediately after taking him out of the "bioengineered killing tool" environment
i regret that i don't always have sound judgement on "does this character belong in this verse" lmao
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Post by LILO on Apr 14, 2014 13:17:04 GMT -8
i think mostly i just regret the names of my old characters because they didn't even make sense like here's this complex asian name i found on google and this cliche first name that no one would name their child except maybe celebrities because blue ivy is a thing or something from a book i liked
i was in that young faze where you wanted to be cute/ cool using a strange cluster of nationalities and lore for this childs name saying san-chan-kun-sama on the daily thinking it was okay
it isnt
ive never actually had a character say san-chan-kun-sama plz dont stone me rp community
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Post by chamomile on Apr 14, 2014 13:25:53 GMT -8
Hmm... so I had this really suuuuper bland character in a Harvest Moon/Rune Factory roleplay. Like... I don't know what I was thinking. She was cute and nice to everyone and super dedicated to her work and had no romantic interests... and just.. yeah. Really boring to play.
I also regretted my first version of my one character Laurel, who was a super bitchy racist elf girl. In her first version she was just a self righteous bitch. And while it was fun to play, I realized that it was hard for me to roleplay with other characters cause she'd just NEVER get along with them xD
Thankfully Laurel's gone through quite a few reboots and I know how to tone down the meanness and still have her be judgmental but not unpleasant. I also don't think she's just a straight up racist anymore, but probably has a bit of a fake superiority complex... to balance out her actual inferiority complex cause she's got family issues and feels the need to impress them at every turn and gives herself super high standards... She still needs some work though. But then again, all of my characters do.
I only don't regret making my super fab super flirty bartender dude yeah he was the best xDDD
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the greatest general under the heavens
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Post by Egao, Egao Everywhere on Apr 14, 2014 17:13:51 GMT -8
tell us more I don't regret characters as much as I regret names I've chosen. "Angelos Tudor", "Payton Silverwing" and "Mizuki Haruka" are some of my biggest regrets for names ever. I had a character named Silverwind c8;;;; I WAS 14. I tried making her on a Yugioh site when I was 13, and I was promptly denied. lol. I should've expected it, but the pissy 13-year-old Siren got into a fit and angsted for a while.
I have a story like this, though it was more on the writing department than character. I AM STILL PISSED OFF ABOUT IT THOUGH. /grudge I don't completely regret making him but I guess it would be Shamees. Kind of embarrassing because now tsun and I make a pair. Shamees was a learning experience and I actually love his character. But I didn't like the way I wrote him. Not really much of regret since I expect to work better about it next time around. There did come a point where I was so frustrated writing him I cried. They were the tears of a frustrated artist.
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Post by KOI KOI on Apr 14, 2014 17:29:14 GMT -8
lt. surge
before a few months ago, lt. surge was the only character i could make that would break away from the standard archetype of characters i play. there's nothing wrong with him, rather, he's absolutely perfect. i was too in-synced with him. i knew how to play him, how he functioned, why he did things, and what he'd do. the only problem was that he's a minor character. he's a good guy too caught up in his own world to be a hero. role-playing him was fun, delightful, but absurdly hard. i couldn't put him in any topics without them staling over and turning into a dead end or bore fest. basically, i made someone who was incredibly fun but impossible to play with.
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Post by DARKEE on Apr 16, 2014 10:42:31 GMT -8
me
i had a self-insert called darkee and darkee caused me to start roleplaying
roleplaying has ruined my life
jk it hasn't roleplaying is da bes
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Post by darth vader on Apr 17, 2014 16:46:50 GMT -8
it used to be that she was the only character i could write consistently and not worry about bullshit like "muse" or whatever and although this has changed, it's still true that she's the easiest character for me to write and so it makes it easy to lapse back into re-using her on sites instead of branching out and making new characters or exploring underused ones. sometimes this works out: pre was the first time i'd played her in maybe a year and it really re-invented her and breathed new life in, but then sometimes i'll try to squeeze her into a site for no reason other than she's easy to play even though it doesn't really fit. and when i catch myself doing that it annoys me. secondly she's probably the character most people associate with me (haha i sound conceited) or it used to be people would know her without even knowing who i was and that's fine, i'm glad so many people like her (or know of her at least--haters r fuel) but it gets frustrating to see all my other chars defined by other people to only how alike to thalia they are, or how dislike her they are. she wasn't my first rp character and she certainly wasn't my last, and aside from zahir, none of my others chars have shit to do with her and are chars in their own right. so that gets tiring. also the fact that i've played her SO much makes it seem like people...not feel like they know her, but i'll people get like proprietary of her? acting like they've read so much of her that they could write her? they'll say shit like "thalia would think x" or "thalia would do x" wrt to their character/a situation/something/etc to my face and that grates on me. (i know that's vague and i mean it in something different than when people post in plot pages like "what if x and y happened and char did this while other char did" and so on and so on.) just because i write a lot of my char and you've seen her do a lot on the site that doesn't mean you know shit about what makes her tick or can say you know what she'll do anymore than i could say that about your character. for all i've written her, there's even more i've never even put on her app or breathed a word of ooc, much less put in ic threads for people to read, even though it goes into consideration every time i write her and informs everything she does or says or thinks, so it aggravates me when people get handsy about my character. hahaha. that went on. forever. lmao.
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A seadog looking for crewmates
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Post by Elena on Apr 23, 2014 21:57:31 GMT -8
I don't regret any character. Each of them had a purpose in the story.
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Post by pascaline on Apr 27, 2014 20:24:57 GMT -8
Oh god, many characters. Much regret. All the wrongs.
I don't know I'm trying doge speak.
Anyway, I'm not quite sure if I've had characters I've regretted playing so much as characters I've regretted plotting and developing a certain way. There are some characters where I regretted how they behaved in a situation or relationship because it was either not true to the character or not interesting at all or good for their development. But also I regret character names the most, especially for my horse characters on equine rpgs.
Seriously. Silver Lining. Desert Stormer. Searchlight. Forgotten. All the god awful names ever. Like, why would mothers ever name their kids these things?
My characters Bedlam and Bethlehem used to be incesty twins but I realized how awful that was, made Beth older than Bedlam, and took away the incest plot because it all sucked.
I had a character named Sun Crystal Rose on Neopets and yes, she was as much of a mary sue as her name suggests. I can't say I regret playing her, she was fun at the time but I cringe a bit when I try to think why I named her that to begin with.
Then I have a digimon character named Kaia that was pretty, a genius, rich, and just so sweet. Can you hear me gagging?
I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones that come to mind.
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Post by MASQUE on May 4, 2014 3:30:00 GMT -8
I can't regret anything.. some of them I wish I wasn't told to make.
Rainbow loli named jesus christ, born out of her mother swallowing the father's (actual) holy rainbow sword, and then throwing it up, and then by him setting it on fire. There's crack and then there's Jesus Christ. ;.;
idk I love all of my characters in their own ways despite some of my more ridonkulus ones (like Scythera, my all clow+sakura card, 12 bijuu weilding first character ever in life okay, daughter to Seth. Yes that Egyptian Deity. It was a demi-god site. In french. and then there's Koko, better known as super long named gal. Her name? Kokoronosokoseijitsukonsetsusoshitemikomi Iumademonakumujaki. Yeah. I still make her, simply because the name itself is ridiculous, but I can't help myself. It's too funny to /not/ use. But still a horrible name because I decided to try and stick my -limited- knowledge of japanese together. I was.. what. 15, 16? And I had just discovered japanese. I went a bit far. '.')
Oups I started ranting, but I got a few more stories of pretty awful characters if you guys want some.. let's just say I like making ridiculous characters because ideas are too hard to resist sometimes.
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Post by PHARAOH LEAP on May 5, 2014 19:31:28 GMT -8
I think the only character I actually regret making was my first roleplaying character, Whitewind, on a Warrior Cats RP back when I was twelve. She was kind of a Mary Sue, but overall, I think she was more bland than perfect. I tried to freshen up her character a little later, but it wasn't much better and she's sense been a stain on my roleplaying experience. Aside from that, I can't really... regret any of my characters. Even the ones I made shortly after that first one. And, if they started off badly, they actually got better through roleplay. I have a couple really fleshed out characters. From when I was twelve. Kudos, past me, you're not a complete failure.
I think, if anything, I regret some of the directions I've taken certain characters. A couple in particular were one of those Warrior Cats characters who started as a character I really enjoyed playing, and would probably enjoy playing a lot now, but turned into a total angst fountain after romance plot dramas. Like. Arg. Probably my worst mistake was with my favorite RPing character, Lorelei Ackermann, who was never meant to be the bad guy, but kind of got stuck there and tried too hard to fit the role. A once strong, developed character was swapped with a mentally unstable piece of trash with the same name and face. *sighs* I miss when she was the sass master and everyone feared her more out of respect than out of, "oh no, she's going to kill me and and everyone I love in our sleep".
If we're counting, like, story characters and not RP characters, though, uh - I think I have too many characters to list. I had a tendency to make really good plots, but slap awful pacing and the absolute worst characters onto them. It was a disaster.
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Post by Starry Neko on May 5, 2014 23:08:51 GMT -8
Besides my first characters ever before I realized what godmodding was? Well...I can't say I regret any character...but I certainly regret putting them in a place where they weren't capable of growing. Many people tried to ship them for the heck of it, never delving into a actual relationship where it was pretty much abusive in some cases. All of those characters have found new life as I only have evolved these characters past these little shells. They have their own thoughts, opinions, and aren't limited to making other people happy.
Some of my characters are just plain egocentric jerks. But I don't limit myself because someone might not be able to handle this. I warn them of the problems going into thread, and if they don't like it, they can drop the thread. Since making my character more true and not some ship for one of my friends or a background character for a site, each person is as screwed up as everyone else and no one apologizes. (Or at least I don't, some of them do. Profusely.)
I've been able to grow as a rper and person through these awkward and terrible interactions with other people because I can't ever rp a character I don't have a way of thinking about. I don't just hide all these long and detailed fundamentals in the shadows. They're out there, they're expanding, and I'm glad that I can expand with them. They might be long and terribly annoying in some cases, but some people are like that too. Even those I have those collaborative characters I throw endless amounts of detail at them until they balk. If they can handle it, I make the character, if they can't, I don't.
....Though I can fully say some of my Warrior Cat characters for backgrounds had to be something that mated with the fourth wall and just wanted to crap rainbows cause I just completely broke all laws of physics. I was aware of it...just didn't care and enjoyed being that person anyways. We did get to have a "Kill the Sue" event was actually kind of fun. We made the most perfect of characters and let our flawed characters push them into horrible deaths. ...I actually had fun.
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