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

That's actually what I thought he was referring to in the first place - And This Is for... combined with Shapeshifter Guilt Trip.

Killed Meda's teacher and burnt her hands. Still feel a bit bad for that one.

I could do that. Sounds like a very interesting idea. What about mental pain, though?

Go ahead and use the Heroic Shape Shifter Guilt Trip. I'm not going to use the idea for a long time, and my version will probably differ widely from your's.

I let a girl burn to death while everyone else rushed to save the tables.

In all fairness, they were really nice tables.

Hmmm...where to start? I have a history of being evil to my characters.

Let's see...the main character Ria of my dragonrider-vampire-elf story saw her fellow young riders slaughtered in front of her by a horde of bloodthirsty vampires, including the boy she'd had a crush on and with whom she had her first kiss. She managed to escape, went home, and experienced the destruction of her house and the death of her parents before her eyes. She went on the run, repeatedly seeing the people around her die in the war, nearly lost her eye as a result of a rogue dragon, and discovered that her parents were in fact alive but traitors siding with the vampires.

I'm really surprised the girl hasn't had a fullblown nervous breakdown yet.

I agree quite heartily with the latter part of the statement, but I've honestly never felt trouble with permanently traumatising a character in some fashion, the reason being that, like any other sort of wound, a mental or emotional trauma not properly treated can easily become something far worse.

Well, looks like an interesting thread here. I've done some pretty bad things to characters. Should I start with the physical pain or the emotional pain?

I impaled one once. He got better but still...

That doesn't sound so horrible, only because it sounds like something out of Black Comedy.

It could be more unpleasant in context, but that comment certainly amuses me.

Well, in a particular scrapped story of mine that was basically Mystery of the Week : The Series, multiple characters have been, on separate occasions: thrown off a balcony, falling through three stories worth of industrialized sewing machines, looms, and Razor Floss ; accidentally given a Brain Washed And Crazy alter ego on top of two other alter egos that appears whenever its victim sees water, including such things as someone spitting on the sidewalk or condensation on a windowpane; sucked into a Dark World -esque Journey to the Center of the Mind resembling a run down psych ward and kept there for what feels like the period of several years over the span of few seconds in the real world; skewered by multiple swords raining down from above, after which all the swords disappear; devoured by a mechanical monster that is fueled by absorbing and incinerating souls; devoured by a plant monster that lures its victims into a huge, acid-filled pitcher via scent and floods their senses with painkilling chemicals so they don't realize what's going on until it's too late, after which, they still don't feel a thing; and witnessing a best friend being fatally mauled by a chimaera and dying in said character's arms.

Most of the cast was, in some way or another, messed up or scarred physically, mentally, or emotionally. The only one to walk away completely unharmed was cut with a sword, shot repeatedly at point-blank range, strangled, drowned, torn apart, blown up, crushed by the hull of a battleship, decapitated repeatedly, blown up some more, impaled similarly to the guy in the above paragraph, and shot again through the head. The only reason is because it's an Eldritch Abomination in the shape of a generically cute critter that is incapable of feeling pain or emotion, and every one of the cells in its body divide fast enough that anything short of destroying all of its cells simultaneously is pretty much a joke.

So yeah, I think that, as long as there's reason behind it, there's no reason for me not to be horrible to my characters.

edited 3rd Nov '11 10:50:44 PM by Winglerfish

I've killed Cure Pine anywhere between 6 and 8 times.

It depends on how you count the list in my profile.

Don't know who had it worse in this scenario. I had a lawyer's mentor/odd-father figure get savagely beaten, then framed for murder in a world where self-defense doesn't hold up in court for killing his attacker. The mentor goes mute after the attack, and the lawyer has to defend him in court, at one point having to choose between the life of his mentor and his assistant.

Ends pretty happily and it doesn't go well for the guy who planned the attack in the first place, but it does put probably the most stress the lawyer faces.

edited 9th Nov '11 5:37:57 PM by HeavyDDR

In a fanfiction I'm writing right now, a male character gets abducted by aliens, gets his anatomy rearranged, then manages to get pregnant by his boyfriend. Then, aliens take control of his mind when he tries to get an abortion. Also, he's growing apart from his younger brother, with whom he is very close, and it seems like the younger brother is favoring his other older brother (there are three brothers). M-Preg'd brother and possibly-favored other older brother do not get along, and the other older brother is trying to get M-Preg'd brother to keep the alien baby because they need an heir.

On top of all of that, his boyfriend thinks he might be unfaithful, even though he's clearly not the cheating type.

^ Out of curiosity, what this is fanfiction of? (I'm trying to determine whether this is a radical departure in tone from the source material, or par for the course.)

It's a Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic. And the M-Preg'd brother is Seto Kaiba (yeah, I wanted a challenge) and his boyfriend is Yugi (I really wanted a challenge).

I can certainly see that...

I made the main character late for work. I've only been writing for a short period of time and thats for a creative writing class so I can't have extremely horrifying stuff happen without it being criticized and receiving a poor grade but I have plans for other stories with horrible things.

A lot of these. I go ferociously at my characters.

In an earlier draft of my story, two characters in a budding romantic relationship have a large number of their friends and classmates brutally murdered and partially eaten in front of them by the Big Bad, and try to make a desperate defense against him. The villain shrugs off any of their attacks, and decides to spare them, taunting them in a way to specifically induce survivor's guilt for the remainder of the story. These two characters were axed though.

The initial antagonist of my story, God, had to Shoot the Dog by killing or banishing nearly all of His divine friends and family, including His wife, sons, and brother, and creating The Empire in the Middle East to ensure that The End of the World as We Know It by way of an angry, immortal Eldritch Abomination (that happens to be His mother) does not happen. It turned out to not be a viable solution over the long run.

edited 15th Nov '11 3:29:23 PM by AcesoldierZero

I feel like rape and murder would pass as a lot more horrific if they weren't a dime a dozen.

edited 15th Nov '11 5:37:10 PM by kashchei

A girl once was brought and committed, knowing that her father was going to die very soon and would be abandoned for likely the rest of her natural life alone. The empathic girl stayed at the insane asylum due to the nature of her Power Incontinence and spent years among a girl who had attempted suicide and thought she was in hell, a young Scientologist, a boy who thought everyone was a doppleganger and a boy who might have seen his parents die in a car accident and thinks that it didn't happen and that he's a fae. They did and he is. Among others who all thought she was insane.

All the while, her Missing Mom is their psychologist, without either knowing-and the woman's trying to adopt her only to get Strangled by the Red Tape. She steadily loses more and more of herself and has to be drugged in order to sleep period. She spends half her usual day trying to snap out of the drugged stupor her medication puts her in. She hasn't also seen the outside world for almost half her life.

-and then she is hypnotized into giving up her best friend's escape plan and manipulated in other ways that aren't exactly but are quite close to molestation. Afterwards, she is made an Uncanny Valley Girl until her best friend snaps her out of it. She continues to have nightmares and reacts as if she had been raped.

Physically? Nothing happened. Emotionally? I am a monster.

As for the mother? Abandoned at birth by an Evil Matriarch after her round of cheating produced a "normal" human child. Who is largely immune to Mind Rape unless she trusts the fink who does it-said fink being the very angry consort, who got himself an heir that was stronger than the current queen. The story from here... The mother was told that her daughter had died and in some way, recognizes the girl somewhere and part of her agonizes not being able to be her mother.

Another fink basically gets into the mom's trust, cuts away her true companions and mind rapes her into a terrified Stepford Smiler who is only herself when she dreams. Her dreams are far from pleasant. He gets what he gave and then beheaded as a Mercy Kill.

Amazingly, this turns out to be an example of Earn Your Happy Ending.

Amen. Barely a fraction of these have even made me wince.

edited 15th Nov '11 5:51:40 PM by nrjxll

@Anthiens: That sounds like a good story to read while listening to Emilie Autumn. You'll have to let me know if it gets published so I can check it out.

@nrjxll: Challenge accepted.

• In the 5th Mythology 101 book, The Dragon up to that point is cooked and eaten — one body part at a time — by the title character. Thing is, he's a vampire. As long as his head remains attached to his body, no sunlight touches his flesh and no wood touches his heart, he stays alive. And feels everything that's happening to him. As for the protagonist who's eating him? She's not having much fun either. Especially considering her desire to make her own fate, and the fact that this scene is required by the prophecy.
• In Music City, The Mole — after he gets found out — is taken to a Back-Alley Doctor, who harvests his organs for sale on the black market. Without anesthesia. And taunts him throughout the procedure. Even after he dies, the doctor says, "I can't believe you died on me already, you fucking pussy."
• On my planned TV series, The Women In Black, there's an episode where a serial rapist is terrorizing joggers at a city park. The titular vigilante team sends an undercover operative — in Sensual Spandex, of course — to impersonate a poor, helpless jogger and entice him into attacking her. When he does, she gives him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, then drags his body off into the trees (he groans when she starts dragging him to let us know he's still alive for the next part). Then she grabs a bag that was placed in the park by her team beforehand, and opens it with one hand while she starts removing his clothing with the other. We see a couple of different-sized dildos and what appears to be a machete inside the bag, then there's a discretion cut to the medical examiner crouching over the man's body, which is now naked, face-down and barely recognizable as human. She says, "Interesting. It appears the machete followed the dildo in."
• On Honorable Hogwarts, I plan to have one of my characters survive being decapitated because of his Horcruxes, which are useless for protecting him from physical damage and only serve to keep him alive indefinitely. End result? He literally has no mouth, and must scream. His head — which is also still alive, just no longer attached to the rest of him — gets mounted over the fireplace of the man who removed it, and taunted on a daily basis. He also puts cigars out on the guy's face.
• In my most recent idea for a Literotica story, a coven of pagan girls summon a demon to violate a Christian girl who pisses them off. Naughty Tentacles meet Biggus Dickus, and O Ring Orifice is utterly averted. Boy, does this bitch suffer.

edited 16th Nov '11 8:04:44 AM by EnemyMayan

I think you're missing the point...