What's the worst thing you've ever done to a character?

Heh, for Anhelia, death is the start of her character development. Of course, this only works if you have some method of death not just being an end in your world.

You could also have them die, not come back, then use flashbacks or something else that shows parts of their past that weren't portrayed before.

I used a death of a character to put a romantic interest on a bus. Not because it is the easy way out, but so I have more room for a sub-plot in the next book. I don't need two active romantic arcs. One active one and one passive one is enough.

Oh, and I have to bring up Mind Rape again. Mind control can be traumatizing.

edited 27th Oct '11 6:23:15 PM by chihuahua0

I'll admit that, while I can and have killed off characters, I don't enjoy doing it; it (almost) hurts me as much as it hurts them. That said, The Hero Dies. Twice.

But that's far from the worst I've done to him. The simplest, most general answer I can give is a chain of events that gives that smartass know-it-all a bad case of Break the Haughty. When you base your very right to exist on your ability to meet your own high standards, failing to meet them — and seeing just how much you really suck — is pretty brutal. And then he dies.

There's also a few miscellaneous events here and there. Such as (blows into tuning whistle for a pitch-perfect A-note)

getting slashed by an undead swordsman, beat up in a fight, has his mind slowly peel apart as the embodiment of death tries to break free from his seal, gets manhandled and impaled by said embodiment of death, wakes up in an abyss of endless darkness only to have an evil doppelganger dissect his very essence, faces a maniacal version of himself, and starts chanting a Madness Mantra while hanging in the darkness by a chain-link noose, forever stuck in the limbo between life and death. And that's just in the first third of the story.

I could go on, but I suspect the person who posts after me will regale you all with far greater tales of character abuse.

I don't know, that's pretty horrific. Especially if the character was a protagonist... I usually reserve that kind of repetitive extreme trauma for villains, so although I've done equally bad or arguably worse things to characters, I think you're more sadistic than me for doing it to the hero.

This is pretty tame compared to other posts, but you know how in Fighting Series the hero always goes through extremely rigorous training that borders on homicide? In my fic, the mentor puts him into a chamber that is adjusted so that it would reset whenever the hero dies, but only physical matters. When they begin the training, the mentor tells the hero to try not to die. Then he begins. He cuts the hero in half vertically. Reset. Decapitation. Reset. Incineration. Reset. Injected with loads of extremely quickly acting fresh eating viruses. Reset. Limbs torn off and subsequent blood loss. Reset. Disembowerment. Reset. Bad poetry reading. Reset. And on...and on…

This thread has now officially crossed the line from food for thought to downright creepy.

Not that it's breaking any rules or anything - I just think that this is now officially "gush about hideous fates you've inflicted on your characters".

Has it ever been anything else?

I felt it started out as just another one of those "talk about your work" threads. Now it seems to have definitely moved into the realm of "Trauma Conga Line one-upsmanship".

Again, not complaining, just observing.

If you thought it wouldn't turn out this way, you are obviously Thread Blind.

edited 28th Oct '11 5:26:50 AM by dRoy

Double compound fracture, self-cauterization, conscious amputation.

I just read a story where that happened to a guy. But it was a Stephen King story, so he ate the foot after he cut it off.

Autocannibalism? Alright Mr. King, now I don't want to read your stuff anymore. Not that I'm any better.

Let's see... The mole is discovered and captured. He is beaten by his former friends before being fed to a pack of Velociraptors (sort of, they're the kind from Jurassic Park 1. The woman who made them didn't think they looked cool enough with feathers). He is suspended over the pit by a harness and slowly lowered into the pit. Once he is low enough, one of the raptors jumps at him and plants its rear legs into his gut and chomps down on his shoulder. This goes on for a few seconds until the harness breaks and both the man and the raptor fall several meters, except the raptor use his still live body to break its fall. Once on the ground the other raptors join in.

Now, this is pretty standard. What makes it terrible is that the scene is funny.

So, am I the only one who brought up a minor character?

Well, the character I brought up isn't exactly major—she only appears in one chapter. She does have a history with a more important character, though.

No. Mine was also pretty minor; she was named and died in the same chapter.

Are we counting faceless mooks? If so, the ones crippled by previously mentioned explosion have a chance. Minor characters, well, one just died fairly excruciatingly painfully, but that doesn't really compare.

I've previous argued we should count faceless mooks - if any of them actually met a worse fate then a named character, it would seem rather unusual. Who wastes that much time coming up on a nasty way to dispatch a mook?

People in love with their "heroes", obviously.

My point is that a mook, by definition, exists to be quickly dispatched, so it would seem rather odd to put a lot of effort into doing so in a fashion that would qualify for this thread.

The worst things I've done were actually done to my most beloved character, Mark.

In the second book, he loses his powers and gets horribly tortured, being pierced by thousands of needles that come from the ground, summoned by the villain. He loses an arm, gets one blind eye and gets his brain directly manipulated to feel as much pain as possible. In the meantime, his body is kept from dying. He gets better.

In the third book, which I haven't written yet, his mind is almost entirely destroyed. All his memories and everything he knows and loves becomes corrupted and horrible. I'm not going into details right now.

Eh, I judge based not on the number and magnitude of horrible things done to a character, but how much psychological trauma the character suffers.

^ Let's be friends.

Yup.

Denmark sticks out to me because oh god that poor dude. ;—;

Actually, come to think of it, Jack Clive has got to be one of my most legitimately tortured protagonists, even though the worst physical trauma he's suffered was being shot to death, which is pretty tame compared to the stuff people bring up. Nah, the trauma he suffers is emotional and psychological—he had a lot of people die meaningless and heroic deaths on his behalf, he grew up in an orwellian environment (after he escaped, it was a long time before he was comfortable speaking in any way besides in response), shortly before his death he was locked up in a small cranny with no light for a long time, and then had to struggle to remain sane strapped into the worst form of operant conditioning, which was designed to change the way he thought by punishing him and rewarding him through direct brain stimulation based on what he said. In the end, the campaign proved not worth it and he was killed off.

Denmark's suffering was more acute, while Jack's suffering was more drawn out and ended with mercy. Jack died more or less satisfied that he won out in the end, while Denmark just died scared, tortured and violated.

edited 28th Oct '11 7:11:04 PM by annebeeche

Oh, and for the worst thing I did to an antagonist (or might): A Shapeshifter pins him to the ground, shifts through several forms, and stab the man over twenty times in various places, one for each person he killed, letting him live through the pain.

edited 28th Oct '11 7:28:41 PM by chihuahua0