Feral Heart
Game & Forum Discussion => Game Discussion => Topic started by: AlphaEclipse on August 12, 2013, 01:02:00 am
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Herow everyone! :-)
After sitting at my desk for awhile, trying to think of a good discussion, I thought of bios. Biographies on Feral Heart (the game, not the forums) seem very bland to me. Now I'm the kind of person who reads everyone's bios. -Is a bio stalker- But, I've noticed that most of them follow the same story. Parents died... Had to fend for it's self... Survived... Taught it's self to hunt, fight ( and kill...)... and (for some reason...) they always have something special about them. I've seen from invincibility to flight. O-o Now I'm not saying they're all like this, ( I've seem some really nice ones that I enjoyed reading) but why must they follow the same plot?
What are you opinions on this? :D
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I do agree with you it does sort of get on my nerves, I too am I bio stalker xD and it is really annoying when they either have no bio, or a boring one that follows the same as everyone elses.
I have seen some really nice ones, and I prefer those ones, I like the ones that admit they have a weakness.
Once I saw in a bio:
Strengths: Everything
Weaknesses: Nothing
I mean, c'mon! You cant be good at everything or have no weaknesses, thats' just not fair, boreing, and unrealistic.
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I do agree with you it does sort of get on my nerves, I too am I bio stalker xD and it is really annoying when they either have no bio, or a boring one that follows the same as everyone elses.
I have seen some really nice ones, and I prefer those ones, I like the ones that admit they have a weakness.
Once I saw in a bio:
Strengths: Everything
Weaknesses: Nothing
I mean, c'mon! You cant be good at everything or have no weaknesses, thats' just not fair, boreing, and unrealistic.
Well at least I know others agree with me! :3
It is unfair that they have no weakness. That's just unnatural, even in a unrealistic RP.
Bio stalkers unite!
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Ugh, I totally agree on both of your comments. And another thing (Has to do with this thread) is that in the RP they are like freaking invincible and I'm tired of it! I can't even RP without people begging for attention because their character is 'Scarred' from some sad event in their life. Then there's the characters that are angry all the time cause they had a traumatic childhood and hate life and blah blah. I just can't even deal.
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I do agree with you it does sort of get on my nerves, I too am I bio stalker xD and it is really annoying when they either have no bio, or a boring one that follows the same as everyone elses.
I have seen some really nice ones, and I prefer those ones, I like the ones that admit they have a weakness.
Once I saw in a bio:
Strengths: Everything
Weaknesses: Nothing
I mean, c'mon! You cant be good at everything or have no weaknesses, thats' just not fair, boreing, and unrealistic.
*Hacks up a hairball* That's what I think of bios like that. I understand. ._.
But yees, I'm a bio stalker appreciator, myself, and so I understand where you're coming from.
For one thing, I do know that often times the reason users say "Oh, my parents died" or "my whole clan/pack/pride was killed" is partly due to the fact that many users start off with a character that has no connections to any other characters they'll actually be roleplaying with.
And so, when someone in character comes up and asks, "So what's your past?" they'll have an answer, instead of "Oh, I don't know."
That much, I can understand.
However, that can also be changed up a lot with just a little perseverance and creativity, or even looking at some reasons why your character/species might end up on its own.
For example, one of my favorite characters, Allegra, might have had a wild past during RP, but before I started RPing her?
She lived in a pack with her family. She spent lots of time with her father, and learned to hunt alongside him quite well. Then, when she was 3, she struck off on her own to find her own way. Wolves do that, after all.
No sudden deaths, no unrealistic mass homicides of her pack by dark unknowns.. Just. Believable and honest. A character can learn one heck of a lot in life and be quite capable on their own without having a horrid past and having to cry themselves to sleep over something nobody else in the RP knows anything about.
And as for having invincible characters, I've always found that quite flat and uninteresting to RP.
After all, no one truly is perfect. Be it their bodies, their emotions, or mental state.
The one who'd been fighting all his life is bound to have painful wounds, aching joints and recovering injuries that may one day prevent him from fighting at all, the ones that are scarred for life or mentally pained are unlikely to be able to handle themselves in an unstable situation, or even know what to do when someone else is offering them a friendly paw-- even a potential mate.
However, it's those flaws that make a character unique, and so when I see the "perfect and all-powerful," it's almost always evident to me that they may not have roleplayed that character enough to realize the imperfections create the most heartfelt overcomings in the story.
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For example, one of my favorite characters, Allegra, might have had a wild past during RP, but before I started RPing her?
She lived in a pack with her family. She spent lots of time with her father, and learned to hunt alongside him quite well. Then, when she was 3, she struck off on her own to find her own way. Wolves do that, after all.
No sudden deaths, no unrealistic mass homicides of her pack by dark unknowns.. Just. Believable and honest. A character can learn one heck of a lot in life and be quite capable on their own without having a horrid past and having to cry themselves to sleep over something nobody else in the RP knows anything about.
I wish there were more biographies like that. I have character named Aclipse like this. (Long story short) She had a great childhood and did everything a pup is suppose to do, and when she got older, she left her pack to look for a new one.
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Ahh, I see these bios sometimes. My characters I do put effort in even if they even a tiny bit show the "Unbeatable, parents died" past.
Havor SORT OF might be like that some how, but I take it to a whole new level in a way.
I have a entire story I can't even write entirely in Havor's bio. I wrote it on here and a couple other places, too.
Havor in fact does have weaknesses like most should, and the "parents died" part of his past isn't really like that.
He just separated himself from his mother heading for more of a cruel past.
Usually if my characters seem to have a lot of power they will obviously have weaknesses, depending on your strength comparing to them.
Does get boring playing as a high-level character though. Also, back to the Havor subject, there was something a part of him that was completely my own in him.
So he is unique rather than the boring bios. (I need to remake his bio.. o_o)
Other people's boring bios sometimes like that that are dramatic... I'd rather have it taken to a whole new level of creativity rather than read the old plot written there.
I never really tend to have the normal past for my characters sometimes, only because I want them completely unique rather than realistic entirely or have the same old background for them.
I'm not exactly a bio stalker, but when I'm confused with a certain detail or curious I will look at the bio.
Sometimes I will see nothing. Though if the character is just new and the bio is blank, if they were excited to get to Bonfire and roleplay too at first, they might've not had any time to write the bio.
Of course some might grab the time to write or complete their bios later on.
Though it's always best to think of the character's past in character creation before just throwing them in with no past whatsoever, you can just imagine them with a normal past if they are a species you recognize.
Eh, that's just my opinion. In other words, I do agree however, there is my opinion right there to add on.
Hope I made sense there, in case I didn't.
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I know what you mean, guys. It seems like many of us have seen the same-old same-old dramatic, tragic past of a character that has been written too many times by millions of others. I too have seen the Mary Sue and Gary Stue kind of bios as well. I especially don't like the oh so perfect Mary Sue kind of characters. A good character in any story would have flaws of some kind, because no one in the world is perfect.
My mythical magical creatures have flaws, too. Just because they are supernatural it doesn't mean they have to be invicible and have unlimited power. Nah! That ain't gonna fly with any of my characters. Even if they are unrealistic and magical, they will have flaws and weaknesses. My unicorn fox character has weaknesses and flaws. She may be immortal, but she can be injured and killed. She has limited amounts of magic. My manticore character, Melina, has no magical powers whatsoever. She too can be injured, captured, tamed, or even killed. She has fought a few battles, but didn't win them all. It doesn't mean she's weak, it just means that she is normal (no godly powers).
None of my characters have the dramatic past of "My parents died because they were murdered by (insert reason)". No way! Most of them led normal childhoods then moved out of their parents' den when they were old enough to take care of themselves. If any tragedies happened, it was due to whatever tragic roleplays that character was exposed to. Like if my character was part of an RP where her closest friend died in a tragic battle, or she lost her mate in a war, then that's when I include it in the bio.
One thing I don't like is when people don't play the character they described themselves as. What I mean is, I've seen some bio's where the character description said that their character personality was "kind, sweet, loving, helpfull, shy, curtious, ect." But then when I interact with this supposedly "gentle" character, I get something totally different. They start acting all hostile, rude, disrespectful, and sometimes resort to violence that esculates to powerplaying..... Wait a minute! What happened to Miss Sunshine-daisys-SmilesAlot? She's starting to act all rough and tough, with a terrible attitude. Did I miss something here? Are you only supposed to act kind to your close friends? If so, you should put that in the bio too. Or at least write "Personality may vary".
That's all I have to write about for now.
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I couldn't agree with you more! This is one thing that really has been getting on my nerves.
I mean sure your pack was killed by hunters and I guess that sucks for you, but I really can't feel sorry for you because I've heard the same story over and over again.
Want to know what's even worse? When characters with the same old cliche tragic backstory like to whine about their backstory in roleplay.
I was roleplaying with this one character once, and every single line she brought up how she was abused. She would then snap at other characters that tried to help her complaining about how they "don't know the pain she's been through!"
Finally she decided her character was gonna try and commit suicide. It was really annoying...
Not to mention she was a total Mary Sue. Now onto that topic! Mary Sues are the absolute worst to roleplay with. So I made a joke character named Ruby Magic to parody them.
Ruby Magic is a wolf/dragon/alicorn hybrid. She is the daughter of Princess Celestia and a wolf named Alpha Shadowfang. She never knew her mother and was raised in her father's pack. When she was still a pup hunters came and killed her dad and her entire pack. She was then captured by humans and taken to a laboratory. There they mixed her with dragon DNA. She managed to escape and taught herself how to hunt and fight. She is a super good fighter and nobody can beat her. She is super pretty and everyone wants her to be their mate. She is also super nice to everyone she meets, except hunters. She is really depressed all the time because her pack was killed and she was tested on and she doesn't have a mate (even though all the guys want to be her mate, they are just to shy to ask cause she's super pretty!)
Yeah...that's Ruby Magic for you...sums up a great deal of characters I think...
But back to the tragic backstories, yeah, I think it's just fine to have a tragic backstory. Quite a lot of my characters have bad backstories. However I make sure they are not cliche, and my characters certainly don't whine about them all the time.
For example, one of my characters I've been roleplaying quite a lot recently was raised on a factory farm. So her parents may or may not be dead (she never even knew them), and her life was awful growing up (even though she is not quite full grown yet you get the point).
However she's also scared of anything that moves, and has no idea how to defend herself.
I think I did her backstory well, although I may be wrong, I'm no character making-expert. But I think her past could be considered be an example of a non-cliched sad backstory.
You'll also never catch her whining about it (she can't even really talk, anyways...)
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I agree with every floof that posted. Almost every single bio I have read was this "mom and dad got killed by super evil demons, ___ has to fend for herself now." I mean, really? Show some creativeness! I keep thinking of Feral Heart as "The Land of the Tragic Pasts" nowadays. None of my characters have any tragic pasts, or any super abilities. It ticks me off when I read bios like that.
Meh, short. c:
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I try to avoid these types of backgrounds where I can. If anything, sometimes I put them in there as "stand-ins" until I can come up with something better, at which point I rewrite it. Some of the background stories I've come up with are a little "out there" I admit.
For example, my character Allison comes from a village that was abandoned by humans for reasons unknown for a long time. Many many years later, what appeared to be a deadly "disease" epidemic struck the animals living in and around the remains of the village. Some of them thought it was a curse, some blamed the new travelers coming through. You know what it was? A severe allergic reaction caused by the pollen of a flower that exists only in that area and only reproduces every several hundred years. Yeah. A flower.
Is it a sad back story? Well I suppose from some perspectives, she lost her brother but she doesn't go around moping about it. Like most people who don't know their parents, siblings, grandparents who die when they are really young don't really give it much thought or really care, and she doesn't either. Not everyone died anyway. She's moved on and its an interesting perspective to have a "traveler from another land" that had a sort of culture all of its own whereas before, she probably would have never got the chance [or in this case excuse as everyone wanted to leave the village] to leave and live out her dreams.She'd still be stuck in the village doing every-day Joe type stuff which is not what she wanted.
Another I've made is for Fate and Spelunker who are an imaginary evolved subspecies of a maned wolf that lived inside of a sealed off mountain range. None of the canines had wings and none of them could get past the mountains surrounding them. The pass that let their ancestors through was supposedly closed and forbidden to enter. Most didn't bother to question this due to the number of earth quakes and rock slides around there so it wasn't safe to go up there. The problem for Fate was [who is the older of the two siblings] that as the amount of resources began to decline one year, by her leader's order they were being forced to cut back on their food intake, she was finding it harder and harder to feed Spelunker, often shorting herself of food just to ensure he got enough.
Going against her leader's order, she went up to investigate the mountain pass hoping they might find a way through to a better place where they could find food/water/shelter. When she and Spelunker went through it, part of the cave collapsed, separating the two siblings, Spelunker being the one closest to the inside of the mountains while Fate was on the other side. Neither one of them knew if Fate was trapped but ordered Spelunker to go back before it collapsed again and continued to wander the cave where she did find a way out. Is that tragic? Well I guess to some it might but that's only looking at the glass half empty. I don't consider it very tragic at all because Fate did find what she needed/was looking for after she got out of the tunnel and was happy about it even if it means there is some small part of it that kind of sucks and can't be changed.
So while the parents are missing/dead in all three of these character's backgrounds, is it a relevant piece of information? Not really, and its hardly the first detail I would want to include. One revolves around the blindness and power of nature of in action and the other two's backgrounds revolves around questioning authority and finding a means to provide for one's self and managing to find it. You don't /have/ to explain what happened to mom and dad or the entire pack.What happened to the rest of Fate's pack? I don't know. Maybe they did die, maybe they struck gold and are thriving now. Maybe they found a way out too, who knows? And quite honestly /who cares?/
Both good and bad things happen, not usually just one or the other. The background figures/characters don't necessarily make your character who they are and you don't have to come up for an excuse as to why and how they vanished from the picture. You would probably be a lot better off you didn't. If you're going for a semi-problematic background, don't have your character openly mope about it or better yet, make something good come out of it to offset it. Most people's lives are not so horrible that at least one good thing did not happen to them.
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I'm not really a bio stalker, but yes, I see this trend all the time and have the same view as all who posted here. A character doesn't have to have a tragic past to be interesting. Not everyone can be tough, deadly in battle, or a good survivor. Those kind of bios come across as kind of generic. As stated by Silhouette, a mixture of good and bad things will happen in life, not all good or all bad. Not only is the tragic past all too common, but is also unrealistic, to some extent.
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I have to agree with what others have posted here. It definitely does get tiring to constantly see bios talking about how terrible the character's life was, how their pack/pride/group was killed and they were the sole survivor and are scarred for life, how their parents tried to kill them and they had to run away, how they have people out to kill them - the list goes on and on, but it's really all just repetitive. Most people do not enjoy roleplaying with someone who hogs attention and incites drama.
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One thing I don't like is when people don't play the character they described themselves as. What I mean is, I've seen some bio's where the character description said that their character personality was "kind, sweet, loving, helpfull, shy, curtious, ect." But then when I interact with this supposedly "gentle" character, I get something totally different. They start acting all hostile, rude, disrespectful, and sometimes resort to violence that esculates to powerplaying..... Wait a minute! What happened to Miss Sunshine-daisys-SmilesAlot? She's starting to act all rough and tough, with a terrible attitude. Did I miss something here? Are you only supposed to act kind to your close friends? If so, you should put that in the bio too. Or at least write "Personality may vary"
This also annoys me greatly. When the characters biography says that you are nice,
witty, etc, and in the RP you act aggressively towards others, then your whole bio is wrong. Just live up to what you wrote and stick with that. That's what I think. :/
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One thing I don't like is when people don't play the character they described themselves as. What I mean is, I've seen some bio's where the character description said that their character personality was "kind, sweet, loving, helpfull, shy, curtious, ect." But then when I interact with this supposedly "gentle" character, I get something totally different. They start acting all hostile, rude, disrespectful, and sometimes resort to violence that esculates to powerplaying..... Wait a minute! What happened to Miss Sunshine-daisys-SmilesAlot? She's starting to act all rough and tough, with a terrible attitude. Did I miss something here? Are you only supposed to act kind to your close friends? If so, you should put that in the bio too. Or at least write "Personality may vary"
This also annoys me greatly. When the characters biography says that you are nice,
witty, etc, and in the RP you act aggressively towards others, then your whole bio is wrong. Just live up to what you wrote and stick with that. That's what I think. :/
I think a part of the problem with this is a lot of people let their own personalities bleed through when they get bored or think they won't be as involved if they stick to their character. They stop caring what their character would "normally do" and end up doing what they as a player would do [or fantasize themselves doing] instead.
I have seen people roleplaying mute characters then "magically having them talk" because they grow bored of being unable to participate as closely as they want to. I think a LOT of character's whether their bio says so or not have that "personality may vary" (as Lady Alizarin put it) trait and it makes characters both unpredictable and terribly bland which sounds a little strange at first but it is not far from the truth. I think a lot of people do this unintentionally as a sort of "attention seeking" because when they have a personality that encompasses EVERYTHING, even when it makes absolutely no sense at all, they can squirm into the spotlight. If no one is paying attention to them, they're suddenly a whiny needy emotional ball of putty. When someone threatens them, they're suddenly the "most ferocious thing ever" and the emotional mush vanishes only to return five minutes later when their "threat's" player has to go or leave to do something else, all because they want attention. Now I'm not saying they all do this, and some people just can't stick to a personality to save their lives but I think a good chunk of them do and I think that's in part where some of these epic-sob-story backgrounds come from.
Sometimes if my characters, particularly the unsympathetic ones, run across multiple characters with the same sob-story backgrounds/reasoning and act like they're the only ones in the world to "have their parents killed in front of them" or "were abused by their humans", I have my character tell them they're not the only ones that they've met with a "story" like that and they have already met umpteen billion others in the exact same position. Usually this is followed by telling them they need to grow a thick skin and get over themselves. Its all done in character but some of the reactions I've gotten are hilarious.
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I think a part of the problem with this is a lot of people let their own personalities bleed through when they get bored or think they won't be as involved if they stick to their character. They stop caring what their character would "normally do" and end up doing what they as a player would do [or fantasize themselves doing] instead.
I have seen people roleplaying mute characters then "magically having them talk" because they grow bored of being unable to participate as closely as they want to. I think a LOT of character's whether their bio says so or not have that "personality may vary" (as Lady Alizarin put it) trait and it makes characters both unpredictable and terribly bland which sounds a little strange at first but it is not far from the truth. I think a lot of people do this unintentionally as a sort of "attention seeking" because when they have a personality that encompasses EVERYTHING, even when it makes absolutely no sense at all, they can squirm into the spotlight. If no one is paying attention to them, they're suddenly a whiny needy emotional ball of putty. When someone threatens them, they're suddenly the "most ferocious thing ever" and the emotional mush vanishes only to return five minutes later when their "threat's" player has to go or leave to do something else, all because they want attention. Now I'm not saying they all do this, and some people just can't stick to a personality to save their lives but I think a good chunk of them do and I think that's in part where some of these epic-sob-story backgrounds come from.
Sometimes if my characters, particularly the unsympathetic ones, run across multiple characters with the same sob-story backgrounds/reasoning and act like they're the only ones in the world to "have their parents killed in front of them" or "were abused by their humans", I have my character tell them they're not the only ones that they've met with a "story" like that and they have already met umpteen billion others in the exact same position. Usually this is followed by telling them they need to grow a thick skin and get over themselves. Its all done in character but some of the reactions I've gotten are hilarious.
You couldn't have put this in a better way. -Claps-
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Totally agree with everyone here.
Most of my characters are realistic animals(or I suppose semi-realistic, since I let them talk out loud), and I've had very few demon or godlike characters at all on FH. One example that comes to mind however is my character Kingotsu. Now mind you, I wrote this backstory when I was eleven.
He was born an ordinary domestic cat, living in ancient Japan. One day on his normal rounds about the fields and forests, he was interrupted by a demon in canine form. This demon turned him somehow(I originally said that Kingotsu was bitten, but now I'd like to come up with something better), and he also became a demon. Now, since the demon that turned him was in canine form, Kingotsu now also looks more canine than feline. However, despite his fearsome appearance he is still afraid of water, and can't resist the sound of food being opened. In terms of powers, all he inherited was above-average speed, strength, and a general awareness of the paranormal. That's it. No world-ending powers, unrealistically amazing fighting abilities, or immortality. He is very much able to be killed or defeated.
Although obviously, overpowered bios do annoy me, I try to just stay out of those characters' way and hope that their creators' skills will improve over time.
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Your all right, alot of bio's nowadays are rather unoriginal. Its more of a story character (Bad start - succes).
I personally think my characters have good backrounds.
For some of my characters just don't have a significant past - a good example would be RoseWind, an elder WC. But RoseWind is still really intersting because she has lots of tales for when she was a warrior.
My only character with a sad backround is Asha. Ashas father killed her mate, and her brother attempted to kill her and her pups (he was loyal to his father who told him to) so she fled with her pups, and sadly her pups died. So now she is an old loner who is wise but dosent share her wisdom and is very mean.
As for invincible characters, its unrealistic in so many ways.
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I understand this, I always try to avoid making my background at all tragic since it's so over used. I don't always even put my past in my bio.
I also hate the mary sue type.
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It is obvious that people do this so that they can get attention, as simple as that. That's how it works. And indeed, the bios are boring.
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It is obvious that people do this so that they can get attention, as simple as that. That's how it works. And indeed, the bios are boring.
I never actually considered that... You're right. Attention seekers be seeking attention!