Character Theory Broken and Tragic Characters

[Verdance]

I'm one of the types who really enjoys writing and playing characters who are emotionally banged up because I personally find it cathartic. It sticks in my craw something bad when people mangle up real life disorders to be edgy or make sure their character gets enough attention, or piles on the tragedy to the exclusion of anything good. Even if there are people out there with such a miserable life experience, I would rather not dwell on it. It's depressing. And in RP it's usually just for cheap angst anyway. I also try to avoid any kind of terminal illness plots for the same reason.

If I'm not basing a character on my own experiences or the experiences of a friend or loved one, I have a method for creating characters with issues while still being balanced and realistic. I usually start with a backstory and choose styles for parenting and home life to lay the groundwork for the character's base emotional state/ 'at rest' personality. The character's history has one to three pivotal segments in their life which is where their greatest flaws or strengths emerge based on whether or not they 'pass' or 'fail' the emotional tests they encounter. Occasionally I go into a character with a certain disorder in mind, in which case I do my due research beforehand. If I do give them a diagnosis, I rarely name drop the disorder or try to include every single symptom, because few people fit DSM criteria exactly for disorders they have.

Romanticizing is also something that drives me up the wall. One of my favorite pieces I ever wrote was about a severely toxic relationship and mental illness and all of that shit, and half the people who read it came away from it thinking it was a Tragically Beautiful Love Story. Like it's literally actually the opposite of that? Ugh.

 

[Cinder]

I'm joining this conversation just a little bit late, so I'm sorry if this has already been said, but if you want to roleplay a broken and oftentimes super edgy characters, at least give them a bit of humanity, something that we can hang on to and relate to. Because I'm sure most people haven't lost both parents to a car crash, lost a sibling to a tragic shooting accident, lost their house to fire, have crippling depression and ADHD and OCD and God knows what else, and on top of all that just want to be away from everyone and be super badass. Nope, nope, nope... If there is someone like that, sorry for being super insensitive, by the way. People just need to have a kinder, softer aspect to their characters if they want them to be as tragic as that.

That's all I wanted to say. Have a nice day. ^.^

 

[Whisker]

I write tragic characters with about as much frequency as I write perfectly normal characters or characters who experience some tragedy but doesn't let it define them. Very rarely does it become the focus of my roleplay unless it is out of necessity and/or it comes up somehow.

In general, I don't have a problem with people making characters with tragic pasts. Hell, 90% of all literary characters ever made seem to have one. Where I draw the line is it being used as a deliberate tool for attention-whoring and "boo hoo hooing" that disrupts the entire flow of the RP.

As for characters with mental disorders, I haven't actually been in too many roleplays on this site where that has been an issue. In the past, however, I've seen roleplays where everybody is this insane badass sociopathic dickwad with a thousand mental disorders that'll kill your characters soon as posting. It left quite a god-awful flavor in my mouth, so I tend to automatically associate 'mental disorder' types with these kinds of people and avoid it like the plague. My one exception was I once did a satire of myself in a roleplay (I have ADHD irl) and that has been it.

 

[Umbrie]

only a certain amount of Tragedy sounds truly feasible, and i don't mean make your character abused and underprivileged enough to make Oliver Twist look like a spoiled brat in comparison. not that there aren't real people that are that bad off, but they are extremely rare corner cases that most people disbelieve. when your character is enough of a corner case to be disbelieved by even corner cases, you know something is wrong.

i get it, most of us had a handful of persistent childhood problems. i will probably believe a character who was bullied in school and has a verbally abusive grandmother they can never satisfy. i won't believe the character whose family died when they were the last survivor of a village raid as a child, who got adopted by abusive foster parents who used her as a sex slave, was fed a diet of top ramen and kool aid to the point of malnourishment, sleeps in the broom closet, gets pimped out by her parents to family friends against her will, wears tattered slave rags with a collar, gets bullied by the family's real children, and is usually kept supplied with liquor to keep her from calling CPS. if you play a character like that, it better be a story about Cinderella's rescue and rehabilitation or that character will make absolutely no sense, because an extremely broken and tattered doll like that is literally so filled with suffering that she would hog the spotlight that is intended to be shared. Anti Sues are still a type of Mary Sue.

 

[sathanas]

It really just comes down to a matter of writing skill and research, in my opinion. Anything can be enjoyable if written well.

Mental illness, drugs, murder, abuse, and etc just happen to be what beginning writers flock to in order to make their character edgy. Maybe they've read or watched shows that actually had an interesting portrayal, or more likely something akin to Suicide Squad where the characters are ~CraZy~ or they read a YA novel where depression was sooo romantic.

Anything written badly is going to be annoying, but a lot of mentally ill people gotta put up with enough shit from other people in real life and have to "prove" they actually need help and aren't being lazy/difficult/etc on purpose, and are harmed by their mi (it's called an illness for a reason) so it's particularly annoying.

As someone with low empathy it's a big pet peeve of mine though when characters are written as "psychopaths" when the only articles they've read are from Psychology Today and if you'd asked them about ASPD or the PCL-R they wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about. Or "my character has no empathy and he's soooo evil omg!" when no emotional empathy =/= psychopathy and it's stigmatized enough already.

I will say though that sometimes people do get addicted to drugs or abused or have mental illness for "no reason" and there isn't necessarily anything to justify it. Trying something once might get you hooked for life, and some people have the perfect life and can still become mentally ill. Abuse doesn't have any special meaning or reason ever irl. It's just that the other person is abusive. There's no special reason why I have low emotional empathy, I wasn't horribly abused every day, I'm pretty sure it just runs in my family. So does anxiety and some other things.

I said this at the beginning but it just boils down to writing skill and nuance. Give a 12 year old and a 26 year old professional writer the same character with the same tragic background and mental illnesses, tell them to write a story, and one of them will be significantly more enjoyable and realistic.

Technically batman and superman are mary sues, but people can still enjoy and love their stories because they're well-written. I'm sure most people here trying to write the Joker would wind up with the same grievances we all have about their psychopath ocs.

 

[m i l k]

Intent is important for me. If someone is genuinely trying to write mental illness in a respectful or accurate manner but still fall short, that's ok. With the age demographics on this site I don't expect most users to get it perfectly and I'll try to gently correct them.

If someone's doing it just to be edgy it usually ends up being pretty unintentionally funny and I have a good laugh with my friends. It's the "so bad it's good" effect.

 

[Umbrie]

it isn't edgy characters i have an issue with when the edginess is kept to a reasonable level. the issue comes when the edginess is cranked up to eleven and the character does nothing productive throughout the story but whine about their dead parents and the abuse their foster parents gave them,

 

[LaDouxTromperie]

If I ever found someone on this site who could accurately RP Hannibal Lecter I would invite them to all of my roleplays. Unfortunately everyone who tries is frankly shit at it.

I do RP Hannibal Lecter often (and perhaps decently well, I believe), though not yet on this site. (I RP on Twitter, mainly. My Hannibal RP can be viewed at @LaDouxTromperie) Haven't been here for some time, and only recently trying to return. If that offer is still on the table, I would love to write with you.

 

[LaDouxTromperie]

At least they're not Hannibal Lecter level of random and weird.

Hannibal Lecter is arguably not a character with a strictly DSM-defined mental illness. ...And neither are most people, statistically. Mental illness is a spectrum: even within specific categories/diagnoses, phenotypes vary drastically. I've studied neuropsychiatry, and it's always less shocking to me to interact with patients and understand the many variations and subtleties of mental illness in individuals, than it is to come to terms with how gloriously misinterpreted and stereotypical fictional characters are built around mental illnesses.

Hannibal Lecter is most definitely not what mass media likes to fetishize as a "psychopath" or "insane." (Though, canonically, he did pull a clever trick in abusing this mass misinformation and misconception of mental illness in the media, in order to plead "insanity" in court and avoid the death penalty for his crimes.) He's one of the rare crime/thriller "serial killer" characters who is not defined by mental illness (though he is/was a psychiatrist), nor is he defined by his tragic past. He's very weird, I'll drink to that. But what a total breath of fresh air.

Bottom line, in full agreement with the OP: research is always important, most especially when a lack of it can cause stereotyping and dangerous real-life stigmatization of individuals.

 

[Newson]

I think one of the reason roleplayers make characters with tragic backstories and mental disorders is that they are too afraid to make a powerful and all-around perfect character, so they make someone with baggage and problems so they have some cons outweighing their pros. Like, if someone is outstandingly beautiful, the roleplayer will make their personality damaged. Or vice versa.

 

[BunnyBoiVeena]

Honestly, I want to make a character that is mentally broken, or at least, suffering from a tragic past as the OP describes it as. It is very hard to do correctly and make it not a sob story character. Most of the time, we can't help but feel bad for those people who end up worse off than we do, no matter how bad we as individuals get. From my perspective, there is a fine line between parodying a tragic past or broken mind and progressively roleplaying as one. To differentiate the two, a parody of a tragic past would only define the character. Progressively roleplaying the tragic past should not only have the tragic past define the character but also develop the character in some way.

I'll use one of my own characters in the making as an example. For reference, this character is suited for a roleplay set in a fantasy school setting with magic classes. He is a magic-using soldier who is suffering from PTSD. His friends try to help him overcome the PTSD by providing mental support and aid in his recovery while letting him teach in a university to finance himself. In theory, his trauma is so severe that it actually impairs his ability to use magic effectively, so rather than teach practical magic classes, he teaches magic theory.

I'd imagine in the worst case scenario the PTSD could actually make him believe that he was back in a war zone at the sound of an explosion, magic or otherwise. . Lighter effects would be that he flinches, has violent reflexes, even suffering from perceiving that he thinks he sees a familiar face friend or foe and reacts accordingly to which face.

Now, in theory the PTSD would develop the character in these ways so far. I thought of him having a distaste for teaching classes that are meant for refining killing techniques of magic. He becomes protective of students who want to use their magic for the wrong reasons. Since he first-hand knows just how lethal and how dangerous magic can be in a war scenario, magic could become feared and looked down upon. Thus, to prevent people from looking down or isolating themselves from mage, he wants to find ways for magic to be used in better, humane ways rather than tools of war.

So the question now if this is good enough to meet subpar standards. To me, there is always improvements that are to be had, even on characters that one has already made and deemed as good as they could make it.

 

[Sunbather]

I sorta semi-regularly use them, although I rarely spell it out and make it a huge part of the character in and of itself. I heavily enjoy playing around with elements of it though. I don't really like going for depression, for example, because it feels more limiting than anything, but some conditions can really add a layer to the character. I am very cautious though, and I've scrapped some sheets completely because I felt I messed up with how I utilize it. Similarly, I almost always deny characters that feel like they're just one big edgenest.