Rants: Boring Bios

[Silhouette]

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.

[JGree]

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.

[F a t a l]

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.

[AlphaEclipse]

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. :/

[Silhouette]

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.

[AlphaEclipse]

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-

[nubeees]

[]

[Raxoremys]

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.

[unnbrellas]

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.

[Killian]

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.