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

Well one character Leias is subjected to years of psychological trauma as he basically loses control of his body and goes on a century long killing spree. Eventually he is killed and as he's dying he is suddenly denied the death he wanted so badly by his own brother. His brother also did this knowingly not under any sort of misguided understanding. (His brother is a bit of a jerkass elemental deity.)

Another one is probably the death of a character who pisses off a reality warper and as a result gets himself ripped apart on a molecular level. The reality warper however, keeps his nervous system intact as a sort of wireless system. Essentially committing him to eternal agony as a cloud of molecules. The reality warper is a good guy by the way.

And by "good guy", you mean Designated Hero, right? Because I doubt the readers will agree with that assessment if the reality warper does something like that.

edited 4th Dec '11 9:12:23 PM by Enthryn

I mean his moral alignment is good. He's not a hero. He's just pretty much a good version of ax crazy. At least when he's angry. The situation is also a little bit more complicated then what I gave there.

What sort of moral alignment are you talking about? Someone who willingly commits such a horrific act of torture should be deemed at best amoral, and more likely outright evil, by any sensible system of morality. ("Good version of ax crazy"? What's that even mean?)

I'm hard pressed to think of circumstances that would justify his actions, even if the situation is more complicated.

If he's doing it to a villain, I'd stand up and cheer. But that's just me I guess.

Well this was a berserk button moment and the reality warper is a child. The victim is an omnicidal maniac and had killed the reality warper's friend.

Yep, sounds like justice is served.

Richard, an arrogant bastard, is one of the first people The Hero defeats in a straight, mage vs mage fight.

He then gets beaten up three times in a row by Decium "Dex" Anthem, then once more by his boss, then another three times by Dex. All the "fights" with Dex involve a Megaton Punch smashing Richard into his car and then compacting the car around him to hold him down.

Richard is a Jerk Jock and "High School Evil", but Dex is the Token Evil Team Mate who has powers so strong he rarely takes a hit.

Can't say I done the most worst thing as everyone else has.

The worst I've done is kind of damaged the hero's 'mental status'? Standing next to the Tokenloli as a fatherlike figure, having the said girl be torn into pieces and eaten by the undefeatablevillain. All this happens within about 10-25 seconds, hero had watched the entire thing in that slow-mo view.

And this was suppose to be the best & happiest day the hero gives to the girl.

I haven't been mean to my recent characters for Na No Wri Mo, am I being too nice?

The worst things that happen are...

- The Dragon Who's really a Punch-Clock Villain and maybe even a Well-Intentioned Extremist loses his arm in a fair fight against The Smart Guy of my protagonist group, but he doesn't die. He's taken care of by his healer wife, but I'm guessing he'd suffer a whole lot of pain.

- The Chessmaster that's in charge of The Dragon doesn't get physically injured, but his pride is sure hurt after being defeated soundly by The Hero and his squad. And he's almost lost all hope that his goal will be accomplished. I pretty much crush his resolve, but there are a lot of plot reasons why he can't succeed, as well as why it's such a blow for him to fail.

- My protagonist eventually finds out that he's the key to a ritual that will supposedly save the world by purifying it (but no one knows for sure if it will even work because it's never been done before.) Regardless, his Knight Templar enemies capture him anyway.

- My secondary protagonist gets immortality, tries to give it to his family and friends, but finds his source all gone when he does so. He throws a fit and rages against the heavens, gets defeated, and imprisoned in isolation for messing up the Higher Power's world. He gets a chance at redemption, but he has to wait a very long time for it.

edited 7th Dec '11 4:45:39 PM by Misuki

THUMP!

edited 26th Jul '12 6:04:22 AM by RagnaTheSaviour

I made one character get mind raped repeatedly for days on end, while in a coma, all while being forced to relive all the times he's been raped and then he has to feel all the pain and despair he's ever felt.

And another character was tortured and raped for at least three weeks and was mind raped into believing that he deserved being raped and that his struggles are worthless.

Oh, and another character was mind raped for months and had to hurt his own friends and was fully aware of their pain and was basically killing them with his own hands. And whenever the Eldritch Abomination was damaged, he had to feel all the pain and was told that he's a terrible person and because of him, the entire human race deserves to be wiped off. Then he nearly kills his best friend and kills his other friend trying to protect him. He tries to commit suicide but can't. Sure, they save him, but he's still considerably broken.

In an earlier draft of my story I had the Anti-Hero protagonist, a Chaotic Neutral sellsword, kill a dangerous murderer on the roof of a brothel, where the murderer was hosting a party. Trouble is, vigilantism is illegal in the city in which it occurred, so when the king found out about the mysterious vigilante, not knowing it was the protagonist, his own great-grandson (not that they get along), he had his men question the brothel employees.

When witnesses proved useless or, in some cases, uncooperative, the king ordered the protagonist to burn down the brothel to "punish them." When the protagonist refused, the king used mind control to force him to burn it down with his own pyrokinetic powers.

Of course, there are other moments, like when another character went through a Mind Rape that made her remember seeing her mother burned alive and eaten by a dragon. This happened when she was five years old; when they were trying to hide among the many wrecked carriages, she cried out when she saw a dead body, which alerted the dragon to their presence, at which point it killed and ate her mother before flying off.

In general, the worst thing I do to my characters is keep them alive.

edited 17th Dec '11 7:44:36 PM by Lennik

In a naruto dark fic fan fic; I had Sasuke get a sword through his stomach by his Zombie brother , and then his brother did some "things" to him with the hole using his other sword, and then broke both eyes and One of his nuts.

edited 18th Dec '11 2:50:18 AM by Vyctorian

New character.

His parents were apathetic, his brother got engaged to the girl he'd been in love with for his entire life, the zombie apocalypse started, his brother and the girl die to protect him and his best friend, his best friend dies and he has to jump back in time to save him, every time he jumps back in time it creates a doomed alternate of himself, he eventually gets bitten, he avoids the zombie virus but ends up with a textbook infection, help is found and instead of helping him they experiment on him because of his immunity to the zombie virus, he dies slowly over the course of days and days from his infection.

edited 19th Dec '11 4:02:19 PM by MechaJesus

Guess what I'm back with something I forgot. There's a somewhat twisted plotline about one of the protagonist being in love with the person who killed her brother despite knowing he did it. (She's not a psychopath and it does make sense in context) However this later comes back in a big way when the god of truth uses this fact to mind rape her. Bringing her to believe that she may have always in fact hated her brother and does not love her brother's killer but merely tells herself she does in order to repay him for killing her brother. The mind rape then drives her to try and kill the an she loves but she can't and so she recoils into herself and let's loose all her elemental abilities in the hope that she'll either kill the man (or herself) by accident.

So why is this all comically exaggerated rape and violence?

I hope this thread is just sampling bias, and the not-Grimdark people just aren't posting.

edited 18th Dec '11 4:45:20 PM by melloncollie

Quite possibly. It is bolstered by a total lack of appropriate context, though.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that the worst thing that I have ever done to a character probably outperforms most of the posters here on the Authorial Cruelty Meter. I'm not proud of it, though, but nor do I intend to batter myself over my own sadism. It is what it is.

edited 18th Dec '11 5:15:56 PM by JHM

[oops, wrong thread]

edited 18th Dec '11 5:10:07 PM by StolenByFaeries

Now I'm curious.

Well, are we using physical violence as the meterstick or effects on the character's development?

I gave an evil character a sympathetic backstory. That has to be one of the top few I've done.

edited 18th Dec '11 6:12:34 PM by INUH

Well the thread is what's the worst thing you've done to a character (in anything you've written ever). Presumably everyone here has written all kinds of things that didn't have much at all dark in them, but this thread is filtering all that out and literally encouraging the mention of the most grim dark stuff people have written.

Back in my angst-driven middle school years, I once made a character watch her best friend die in a car crash. Which is odd as my more recent standards involve Everybody Lives and Camp.