Views of characters

[Gothic 307]

I'm a bit confused about what board this thread should go on. 

 

Do you have any characters that you have played when you were younger that you thought were amazing and were flawed because of other people? But when you either play them or look back at them. Your entire outlook on them is different? 

 

I had a human ranger character who essentially had a heap of affairs, multiple illegitimate children, caused a lover of his to be held in a temple, and caused issues within his family causing him to be exiled. ( I made him when I was 13ish and I still cringe to this day.) Recently I tried to rp with him again. And I just... I can't.... unless it is to make him leap into a volcano or something. 

 

Has anyone ever had something like this before? 

[Huskerdust 625]

Actually I’m the other way around. I feel like the characters I made when I was younger were much more creative than the ones I make now. I think I got so jaded and so exposed to other media that my creativity is drawing thin. 

[Sanghelios 12]

Ooof.... one of my very first characters when I committed to RP was this Mass Effect OC in a space pirate RP, who was a Quarian space pirate but entirely out of survival and was small and cute and didnt like fighting, and everyone adored her for being the heart of the RP, I got a lot of praise for her, but now that I'm older just the entire concept of her grates on me a bit.  Maybe I'm just not as into being the "heart" character anymore, because I have no interest in writing characters like her anymore. Or maybe I just realize now she wasn't particularly well written, who knows. XD

[CovertSphinx 710]

Most of my characters I've slowly revamped over time as I got better (Well, I THINK I got better) at writing and character creation. Their original versions were definitely some Cringeworthy reading, but I think I was able to develop most of them into normal functioning PCs. 

[Rune 1,099]

My first characters were an absolute clusterfuck.

 

One of my current ones could be turned into one of my old ones or vise versa. Just... So much more developed instead of HUR HUR BAD STUFF K DONE

[CovertSphinx 710]

20 hours ago, Rune said:

One of my current ones could be turned into one of my old ones or vise versa. Just... So much more developed instead of HUR HUR BAD STUFF K DONE

 

Wait, I thought that's how we're supposed to do it!!!

[Rhindeer 217]

Oh, my first ever character when I was 11 or 12 was this EEEEEVIL BLACK WOLF. And he was just SO EVIL. He KILLED OTHER WOLVES! And had a TRAGIC BACKSTORY OF EVIL. And oh god he was just so damned edgy and 2D evil. I cringe with embarrassment looking back on his shenanigans, and how smol child me thought he was just so amazing and badass, lmfao. My goal was to make him the best villain.

 

>_> Ugh.

 

That said, I play him on SotE and have for years. 8D He always held a special place in my heart, since he was my first and favorite and as I grew up, he grew up with me. As I got older and grew as a writer and creator, I tweaked him as I went and managed to turn him into a three-dimensional character with depth and development. The site he as on eventually died, and several years later I decided I missed him and imported him to SotE because NOSTALGIA!

 

These days, he's a shapeshifter that takes the form of a wolf, and he's more of a trolly trickster sort. I still love him. 8D But his past incarnations were totally cringey.

[Penny 27]

Oh god. So my first ever OC was actually a self-insert otaku senshi. Mary Sue, etc. all that--- but I actually don't feel too embarrassed now.. mostly because, like so many other people here, I ended up recycling her! A few years back my friends and I launched a magical girl RP and put my girl at the helm with her own stuff and renamed her Cupid. She was still relatively self inserty but also took WAY more from Sailor Moon.... Abridged. (And Steven Universe.) She was the silliest and I'd still love to get back in the swing of writing her bc it was fun as hell!

[Guest LOVE ME AND DESPAIR]

I've had a similar experience when it comes to re-visiting really old characters. Generally they were more the ones I had made earlier. What I tend to notice when I tried to create them again for a setting is a lot of them lacked something(in some cases, it was substance) I couldn't put my finger on. It is a rare few that I've ever been able to successfully pull into present use and even then they still come with changes 'cause using them as is just. . . isn't possible. I still try to keep the core of who they are, of course, but for them to be viable characters for me to play now they need more than what I used to give in terms of creation. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's not a good thing either as I notice that it's harder for me to create on-the-fly characters like I used to and that makes me a little sad.

[Bishop 172]

For me personally, I do recycle characters or play the same ones really as a more...evolved version? So when I look back I never ever ever find flaws. They were just stepping stones to the next amazing change.

 

Now, what I have super struggled with was trying to recreate that magic of like...ships. Every time I've tried to re-create the magic of a ship again in a new setting, it has failed. Truly. Every time. Like I love love love the ship and want to always remember it fondly but like it just never really works out. Maybe it is because I have grown as a writer and player and that like in life, if we look backwards longly we can never move forward? 

 

IDK, when you figure it out let me know!

[Byrn 102]

I tend to have a few characters that have evolved and taken different forms over time. But their overall personality and history remains pretty true. 

 

Where I started was on horse rpgs so I don't have a lot to look back on cause then I didn't save a lot of my stuff. I do recall a lot of melancholy and teenage drama though... A lot of stuff that sort of make me face palm. I have to give myself some slack though... I started out when I was 12... I was doing pretty good to call a hoof a thousand different other things aside from what it was... a hoof...

[Jones 177]

I cringe, but not in a super hard way. Most of my earliest characters were in the HP setting. So I was a kid writing kids, it didn't matter that they were flat personalities. They were still growing. From there I got into the fad of Alt Rock/Punk band RPs where we all played emo kids with guitars- or the mary sue band groupies that moaned their names in the crowd. So yeah, not a wealth of personality there either. 😂

 

When I look back, I look back fondly. I can definitely laugh at myself and the characters 11/12 year old me wrote without any actual regrets.

 

I have never recycled a character. Except for the odd minor canon here and there. But the base concepts of those characters still live on, so I could totally see myself reviving any of my past characters if the urge struck me.