Retiring Your Characters/Muses

[Squirrelly Merriweather 13]

The site my co-admin and I opened is approaching the One Year mark relatively soon and it's got me thinking. We all accumulate a lot of characters over our RP careers. Sometimes, those muses become staples, iconic in our roster. And sometimes, a muse may only be for a specific few threads or a very specific plot line. Sometimes, their stories just... play themselves out and it's time. 

 

What I want to know is you, the RPer, know that it's time to retire a character that you play from your current game? Do you ever retire characters? Would you ever? Why or why not?

[Juls 8]

I'm struggling with this internal debate with myself right now.  My main gal is on a path that may very well take her out of play.  If not forever, then at least for an extended period of time.  So I'm torn between staying true to her character vs bending it with a "moment of growth" to keep her active in the game.  Decisions, decisions!  

 

I've killed off a couple characters, but haven't worked up the courage to do so with the ones I consider my mains, fearing I will regret it terribly!

I have a few in a semi-retired state.  They don't have any active stories going on and may or may not ever come up again.  But I'd pull any of them off the shelf again in a heartbeat to be NPCs if a story called for their presence.  

 

[clipsed 231]

To quote Florence + The Machine:

 

And it's hard to write about being happy
'Cause, the older I get
I find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject
And there will be no grand choirs to sing
No chorus could come in
About two people sitting doing nothing

 

Look, there comes a point when my characters have been through enough drama. Odira, for example, finished her schooling, fell in love, got married, had her brother-in-law get murdered on her wedding night, became guardian to his children, got pregnant, got abducted and lost her memory (including the fact that witches exist and she is one), rediscovered she's a witch, delivered her baby in a cemetery, had to reintegrate into her old life, had her husband die mid-coitus, mourned, fell in love with the guy who delivered cemetery baby, got married to him, and had his baby.

HOMEGIRL DESERVES SOME CHILL. She is now exclusively a secondary character in the lives of her family and friends, occasionally mentioned in posts. She will be brought out of retirement temporarily to thread when needed, but only in a supporting role. 

[DivineRabbit 64]

Over years I have retired and even resurrected characters that I had put on the shelf. I think we all know when that time comes, you run out of tales or perhaps your threads no longer have value with it. I think of it as evolution and enjoy what they were and look forwards to new ones

[Elena 546]

When their role in the story ended, I retired them. They could epically die during a battle or in a duel, and be remembered by everybody else, or be redeployed elsewhere, sent with a mission, run away (with or without a lover), etc.

[Dun 68]

I don't have any real hesitation around it. I might retire a character for any mumber of reasons, though I tend to be pretty wise about adding a character to the mix, so it's not often necessary.

 

Sometimes it's time to pull a character because:

• Their story has played out! I'm fine with wrapping up a character's part in the game if I've gotten them to a good stopping point. Alternatively: Killing them off or otherwise removing them becomes super helpful to the broader story.
• They don't interest me anymore or fit into the game well-- Sometimes you try an idea and it doesn't work out. No big deal! If there are too few opportunities or I've lost interest, I know there's no reason to force it, and I won't. At times that has meant taking some details that I like and using them in a different character concept that may work better.
• They were too tied up in another players' character, and that character got pulled-- This is the worst, and I generally avoid the risk, but I have writing partners I really enjoy who let me down sometimes (like mid-critical-thread). I'll rework my character/adjust if I can, but sometimes it's best to cut my losses.

Honestly, though, I tend to lose characters because games die so quickly. People are so flaky that it's hard to play a character out. I transfer characters I really love and want to continue writing to new games now and then, but they can go through multiple games and still hardly get anywhere. It helps to stay flexible. 

 

Remaining open to scrapping or reworking characters as needed helps me make it through the cycle of games starting and dying or players leaving left and right. It also keeps me from beating a dead horse with characters I've loved. I'm fine with ending on a high note!

Edited November 14, 2021 by Dun

[spu 2]

i typically play my characters until their deaths. sometimes i write their deaths into the story when i find myself struggling with inspiration or plots. sometimes i fall out of the roleplay for out of character reasons and feel like i've been gone so long and missed so much ( on wildly active sites ) that i have to find a way to write out a character. 

 

i also never re-use them? it's always too hard for me to re-use characters from one site to another when there's such a huge difference between their development and the events influencing them. i've always envied people who could do that, however! i often miss my old characters. 

[RazzleDazzle 4]

I wouldn't say I've ever completely retired a character. I've been doing this since 2007. Many of them have come and gone. Some I only played on one board. Others have been adapted and reworked numerous times, it took me years to be able to do that, but I'm very glad I did because even if the core of the character is the same they become different people in a different setting with different characters to interact with. There are a few who retired from the board because their stories were done, others just got dropped due to lack of interest. 

 

I wouldn't say any of them are 100% gone for good though. There are some that I really doubt I'd use again, just like there are some I know will show back up eventually, but never say never. 

[outskrt 0]

I stop playing characters when I get bored, but sometimes I have ideas and then bring them back

[Image 2]

I usually retire a character once they have either. A. Become bored with and have zero muse for to write. B. Have no connection with the character throughout the RP. If I do bring back a character. I normally tweak it so I can have more of a connection with the character.

[Matsumota 5]

On 10/26/2021 at 2:26 PM, Squirrelly Merriweather said:

The site my co-admin and I opened is approaching the One Year mark relatively soon and it's got me thinking. We all accumulate a lot of characters over our RP careers. Sometimes, those muses become staples, iconic in our roster. And sometimes, a muse may only be for a specific few threads or a very specific plot line. Sometimes, their stories just... play themselves out and it's time. 

 

What I want to know is you, the RPer, know that it's time to retire a character that you play from your current game? Do you ever retire characters? Would you ever? Why or why not?

They retire when they die. The story never ends outside of that. There is always something to grow. Always something to do. Not every story needs to be humping the dragon and T-posing to assert your dominance. And not every story needs to be about lovers. A plot to improve the setting alone is its own reward. The only limiting factor when it comes to narratives are the following.

Your imagination
Your interests
And that of your partner. 

[aithne 1]

I've never really retired any characters except one. Most times, I let them just fade away to the background cause I may want to either play them again, or they could become a character in a book. 

The only character I've retired was a table-top DnD gave and we played through a God war. The character was retired when she became part of the deities for future games.