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What about your character's parents?


Grimscythe
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Have you ever considered whether they're alive or dead? How detailed have you made their stories?

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A lot of my characters still have their parents and some of them I actually play. Most of them have playbys even.

 

(So a few of these actually overlap as I play multiple characters in the same families so you'll see repeat names and that's because they are the same character)

Alice, Damian and Derek (all three I play) - Parents are Debra and David Gregory. Ex-rockstars now farm owners.

Tonka & Richard (Richie) - Parents are Red and Violet Redford. Ex-rockstars (with the above two) that own a ranch.

Violet & Nico - Parents are Elisa & Frances Selvaggio. Mom is a little overbearing dad is laid back almost doormat like.

Debra - Parents Clover and Maximus Lightstone. Mom is a 1960s weed smoking hippy woman that doesn't like to be called mom or grandma but loves to be called by her name. Dad is a horny happy old man that drinks too much.

David & Vital - Parents Edna and William Gregory. Mom is an uptight socialite with high expectations for her children. Father is strict and also a socialite.

 

Mordria - Parents are Cindy and Mordrid Nemes. Big family of travelers and odd jobs.

Charlotte - Parents are Daniel and Heather Daniels. Not a lot of story for this one other than the fact that her sister's name is Danielle and both her dad and sister go by Danny.

Josephine - Mother dead, father is Joseph Sousa. Joseph is a survivalist badass.

 

Some images to boot:

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This also reminds me that I have a few other family trees I need to work out as I have Playbys but haven't put them together. >_<

 

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I have recently noticed a trend in my character creation, in which my characters have poor or nonexistent relationships with their parents. Yikes, me. Otherwise, I find I don't pay character parents a lot of mind! They can be so useful for shaping a character's backstory, though.

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I usually don't write much about my characters' parents, just a few sentences somewhere in their app. Mention their names, jobs, how well my character got along with them, which character was which species/ethnicity if there was a difference. Sometimes in the course of a thread, they'll come up and I'll mention a headcanon or two, but I've never really gone out of my way to develop my characters' parents. They never see play even when I have a request up for them so I stopped focusing on them. 

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I usually only give a vague sort of thought to the status of the parents - mostly whether or not they're alive, how the relationship was, any siblings. But in play it doesn't get mentioned much at all unless it's relevant? I notice that when I did sci-fi RP, they usually had bad relationships with their parents or they were long dead. That same RP had a habit of... having a super short life expectancy for any parental-like figure across the board - it was a little bit shocking when we realised no one really had a parental relationship. So there I mentioned whether or not the parents were alive in the profile, but they never had much impact on the writing beyond that.

 

But I've found that I go in the opposite direction when it comes to more earth-based RP. Parents get throwaway mentions, a little small observance on whether or not their mum would be ashamed of them or if they need to call and check in, stuff like that. It comes more naturally for me to describe positive parental relationships though and I do like flavouring my characters with mentions of something beyond their immediate existence. Our parents shape us, in good and bad ways, so I feel like it's only natural to lean on that in a more "realistic" setting.

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With my current characters none of their parents are super relevant in the present, although they obviously helped shape up their pasts. It also depends on the character itself - for some it's natural that they mention their parents every now and then, whereas other characters with a very different upbringing may act like they don't have any parents at all.

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Many of the RPs I am involved in are feudal themed fantasies, so in a lot of cases, parents are quite significant in my character histories. Largely depends on what kind of character I am going for when it comes to whether or not the parents are alive.

Unfortunately, my current characters' parents are currently in character creation limbo until I find the time to write them up...

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Julio’s mother passed away when he was 17. After that he moved with his uncle to the United States. His mother may be dead but she is an important part of his life. He loves and misses her everyday. 
 

Jack’s mother tried to get rid of him before he was born. The big A word. Not sure I can say it here. But it failed and he was born. His mother never wanted him and it shows a lot in the way Jack acts and presents himself. He came from a poor and unloving home with abusive stepfathers and a neglectful mother. So he worked to go to Harvard and to become a very flashy person who holds people at arms length emotionally but is physically quite flirty. But deep down for a very long time he dealt with some heavy demons that his boyfriend helped him to deal with. 
 

oddly both of these characters didn’t really have their fathers in their lives. 
 

I have others. Lots and lots of others. But these are the two I’m currently writing. 

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Most of my characters come from pretty well established families... at least insofar as being built and fleshed out. They are not always in-tact families. 

 

Red's parents are Clarissa and Robert Redford. Red is the oldest of a total of 9 children. 

 

Seth's family situation has evolved since he was first created, but I love the currently existing dynamic. His parents are Red and Violet Redford, retired rock stars with a tumultuous history behind them. 

 

Asche was raised by a single father, Urs. She never knew her mother, and has led most of her life believing that her mother abandoned the family to run off with another man. Said runaway-mother and lover may or may not be in a shallow grave somewhere. 

 

Mykola was a product of rape. His mother committed suicide when he was a child and left him orphaned. Mykola doesn't know she killed herself. 

 

Alexei's parents are Sasha and Olga. He doesn't have a particularly good or bad relationship with either of them. They treated him well growing up and he cares for them, but after he left home to make a career in the military they sort of naturally estranged from one another and only speak on birthdays and major holidays. He secretly wishes he had a large, close family. 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

A few years back, parental angst was my favourite. My main OC, Jack, had an abusive dad and a mum who was suffering from early onset Alzheimer's as his background, then as the rp progressed, his mum died, the dad basically denied Jack's existence and the relationship was a huge influence on my OC's personality. In fact, this probably also led to the incredibly co-dependent relationship he developed with his best friend.

 

On the other side of it, I'm playing another OC, Elaina, who has two dads whom she loves dearly. She's based on a starship in deep space, so rarely gets to visit them physically, but I do mention vid chats with them and how proud they are of her. They went through with a planned adoption when her mother was still pregnant with her. This relationship informed her decision to have her own baby adopted out when she had an unplanned pregnancy at a young age, and really eased her mind about bringing the baby into the universe even though she knew she wasn't able to cope with being a mother herself.

 

And for other characters the parents are pretty much non-entities, although I do think I like the parental emotional hook, especially for younger (say, under 30) characters.

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  • 1 year later...

I don't think I've ever written a character with parents that are either good or still playing an active role in that character's life...I wonder if that says something about me.

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The characters I tend to create are usually in fantasy settings where either the parent role is important or none at all. I do have to say, that I enjoy the dysfunctional family dynamic  when it comes to building a character and what 'shaped' them. Typically I have my character either have a good relationship with their parent, with some flaws to balance it out. 

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Almost all of my characters:

  1. Know who their parents are (or at least one of their parents).
  2. Know if they are alive or dead.
  3. Know at least the basics about them and how they met.

There are some variations to this, of course, but this is generally true. They don't always have a good relationship with their parents, but they generally know these things.

 

Now, that being said: whether a parent is developed or not depends on whether it is necessary to my character's story and/or if they have been played before. Llew, for example, has pretty developed parents because they were always important even if they are just NPCs. The same can be said for Hermione, Kalina, Sirena (father only), Cole, and Aj to name a few. There are some others like Annalesia, Lexi, and Ieza whose parents are a concept and nothing more, however.

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  • 1 month later...

I loooove family stories... it starts with the parents.

 

An oyabun, and his fabulous wife. I've played the oyabun many times over the course of 7 years. Different variations but all kind of similar. They are one of my favorite characters. He's cruel, street smart, determined, and dealt with a lot in his life. And he fathered three children with his wife and he absolutely adores them. On another note, if it wasn't for his wife, he'd totally be all into only men XD

 

Their kids are great to play too. I play the son, Tyler, and he has a lot of issues in his life. Being raised as a mafia boss' son and a killer does wild things to someone. So I love the mix of all the drama and angst. I live for it. I love playing this family above most other characters. I love making family trees for my characters too...

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  • 1 month later...

A lot of the time a character's story, for me, starts with the parents. The parents' story effects how the character was brought up, after all. Depending on the character, I might have to start the app with at least part of the parents' background in order to give context to the character's situation and environment. I don't think there's a single character I've ever written that I haven't given at least some thought to their family, including parents and siblings. Even if it ends up not being entirely relevant, the information usually at least exists in my head and in my understanding of why my characters are the way they are. 

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