Where Did All The Parents Go?

Inerio · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Inerio** on Wed Jan 06, 2010 3:30 pm

Where did all the good parents go?

It's a question that's been wracking my brain for a while now. Why, Inerio, whatever do you mean? Well, let me explain the best way I can: Sarcastically.

Now, let's say you want to write a story or make a character for an RP. You've good the looks and personality down pat. You're character can speak two fluent languages and is a wizard in training ~~or something else cliche~~. Now, sure, you have what looks to be a good character ~~to you at least~~but you want to add more depth! What better way than to make both their parents dead?! Sure! It's ~~a lazy way of tying the character into the main plot and/or adding depth~~ a fun way to make your character more easy to relate to! What? Don't want to kill off the 'rents? Well, you could just make them horribly abusive! Because every hero has abusive bilge rats as parents(or foster parents if you want to kill two birds with one stone). Remember, parents are either absent or abusive. Always.

End satire.

What's your opinion on this guys? I personally have known orphans and friends with abusive parents. So, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. However, I am saying that I think it's being used much too much nowadays. My personal opinion is that it's just lazy writing. I mean, who wants to spend time working on extra character when you can just kill them LOL AMIRITE?! -__- Secondly, who do you think is to blame for this trend? There had to be a thing in the media that popularized this standard for parents. I'm inclined to say it's both DC and Marvel. Bruce Wayne's parents were shot and Peter was raised by his aunt and uncle. Though, being a geek it's only natural I'd point fingers at comic books first.

Miserable · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Miserable** on Wed Jan 06, 2010 3:51 pm

Yeah, it does bother me too when people will make characters that are either perfectly normal, being the most popular and happiest person in the world, or the most depressed character, slitting their wrists and crying all day, and then add in that the parents are abusive or have died. I mean, it does happen, like you said, but not everyone's father beats them every night and has a mother who is a crack addict. It's one thing when you're doing a roleplay, like I have done before, where all of the characters are homeless or in juvi or something. With a situation like that, you could see why the parents might be hard to live with, resulting in a bad life. It just gets ridiculous when you get these peppy characters that live in a normal town and go to highschool, and yet no one has ever noticed that they are horribly abused or something along those lines.

Yeah, that probably made no sense but I agree with you.

Traziel · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Traziel** on Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:00 pm

Acknowledging the overuse of the cliche' "muh parents are ded or abusive", would also mean acknowledging the repetition of character personalities, names, pictures (when allowed), etc.

While it can leave a bad taste in your mouth when you read it in someone's profile, it's just another one of those "natural" RP things that you may have to ignore, or simply avoid.

Irish Wolf · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Irish Wolf** on Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:11 pm

You know, I never much gave thought to the parents of my characters. Oh sure, I've had one or two die (never both parents) but they've mostly been a none-important person in the story. However, my Pirate character, Raff Kelly, his parents are a big part of the story and help to interconnect a few of the other main characters.

Patcharoo · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Patcharoo** on Wed Jan 06, 2010 9:41 pm

Is this avoided by having your character kill his abusive parents?

Anyway, yes it's a common thing. So what's your point? You want people to stop doing it?

Look, if you start picking at common themes and asking people to not do them, then there's a problem. Not everyone has dead parents, just a lot of people. But a lot of people are also human or vampire or whatever. A lot of people have come from hell/experienced hell/escaped hell. A lot of people have no soul/sold their soul etc.

You can't pick at one trait and expect it to change because you've seen it a few too many times. It doesn't work like that. And you can say it's a lazy way of adding depth, well that's not fair. Sometimes it really does add to their characters background and such, explains why they act the way they act.

One of my characters father was an alcoholic who abused his son. When his son grew up, he killed his father and is an alcoholic. Does that sound like lazy way of adding character depth? (I'll accept any answer if you give a reason.)

Counter Arguments against myself.
Yeah, if you have your parents dead just for the sake of having your parents dead and it adds nothing to your character, then I'll agree with you.

Inerio · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Inerio** on Thu Jan 07, 2010 12:32 pm

I'd say having you assume I'm saying "I don't like this change it" is a bit depricating to my character. I didn't specifically state that anywhere.

I happen to dislike those tans in a bottle that cause one to become orange and bumpits. Does that mean that I'm going to find a way to remove those from the face of the Earth? Pfft. No. That takes too much time, effort, and money. I am not the roleplayer Hitler incarnate, I don't want to commit a genocide against fictional orphans.

I'm saying that a lot of character's parents are dead just because the writer can't be arsed to think up a broader backstory with parents included. It's like making your own furniture versus buying it from IKEA.

Kronos · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Kronos** on Thu Jan 07, 2010 6:17 pm

What... my character's parents are like normal parents - strange as the character himself (I should note that I only play male characters.)

Lyon Erratum was emotionally distant from his parents, even though he had a decent upbringing. Anton Medevev was getting wasted with his dad ever New Years. His mother was divorced. Vomisa Caasi grow up with hardworking but piss-poor parents. BLAZING OCEAN assimilated the engineer who created him by accident.

MoonMan · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **MoonMan** on Fri Jan 22, 2010 4:43 pm

I don't think I've ever had to use the angsty "terrible parents are now dead" background for my characters. I like to give them humble beginnings with a normal, everday family. Maybe even nuclear to make it too perfect. A lot of my characters are evil or have twisted views of the world, and I like to have their average parents and previous life be a harsh contrast to the character. :) But thats just me.

LittleMissLuci · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **LittleMissLuci** on Tue Feb 02, 2010 6:00 pm

I would say that it is always a dead parent scenario because it inevitably adds angst. I mean, it could be good or bad, depending on the role play, and on the individual character. You raise a good point, though, I had never thought of it that way. And now that you mention it, the only thing I can point to is the angst that comes along with both of your parents being dead, especially if said character is young.

Marionette · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Marionette** on Fri Feb 05, 2010 12:24 am

Honestly, I see nothing wrong with dead parents or one dead parent or abusive parents or whatever as long as it's done well. There aren't a whole lot of ideas that are new. I don't think cliches are the enemy. There was this one character whose parents died... wait, wasn't that David Copperfield? Frodo Baggins? Mary Lennox? James Henry Trotter? Harry Potter? And those are just a few from off the top of my head, and just literary characters. I don't know about you, but I could hardly bring myself to call oodles of beloved authors outright lazy. Even if one did consider them lazy, it apparently worked well enough that their books sold like crazy. It's a pretty pervasive thing. That's because it's an archetype. The point I'm trying to make is that when you get down to it, it's all in how you use any given piece of your character. Do people use it as a crutch? Yes. Does that mean it never gives a character depth or is never interesting? Far from it.

Edit: Aaaand I forgot I was going to say other stuff. Go me!

While it is really common, I don't think it's quite that big an epidemic. I see plenty of characters with parents.

Personally, I have plenty of characters with and without. I have some characters with good parents. I have some characters with abusive parents. I have some characters whose parents' death didn't affect them at all because it happened when they were young and were adopted into a stable situation. I have some characters with dead parents who didn't make out so well. I have some characters who are older; the death of their parents did affect them, but not in any kind of, "B'awwww, so tragic!" kind of way because their parents were simply at that age. I have some characters who lost their parents in societies or conditions where it was reasonably common. I have some characters who lost one parent or the other through death or desertion, but the other parent was wonderful. Sometimes the other parent wasn't wonderful. Etc. Etc. Etc. And, again, a lot of them just came from regular, stable homes with one if not both parents and one if not both being decent, normal people. My characters have incredibly diverse backgrounds. It bores me if I'm doing the same thing every time for every character.

UnderINK · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **UnderINK** on Sat Feb 06, 2010 10:44 am

Almost all of my characters have parents intact, unless they're dead for reasons relevant to historical background, like one's parents were in an arranged marriage, mother killed the father, and in turn the Chinese government executed her so the character was moved across the border and over the water from China to Japan, where she was raised by a nice, non-dysfunctional older couple. But that method of parental death was inspired by books I'd read from Chinese people themselves and I made sure it was historically accurate.

Uhm, another's father died during Persia's war with Greece, and the mother became a concubine.

Another, the parents are divorced and the character stays in contact with his father.

I don't know, killing off the parents needlessly to have a tragic story is a cliche that bothers me. But it's also unrealistic that in the plethora of character I have, that every set of parents will be intact, and so I keep it balanced and believable.

LordSaladin · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **LordSaladin** on Sat Feb 06, 2010 11:14 am

I actually don't often even think about my characters' parents. But, that could be partly because I tend not to play young characters. However, there are three of my characters who have either one or both parents dead:

Arania: Her parents died, probably through a mugging or robbery. Considering that they lived in one of the roughest crime-riddled cities in the roleplay setting, this is totally plausible. She was then taken in by an older man, a paedophile, which gives the historical background for her living on the streets after killing the man to escape. This in turn made her a survivor and her combat skill with small knives - she had to learn to survive.

Saladin: Both of his parents died. But, this is normal, seeing as in Kelante people don't often have kids until their middle years. Saladin himself is in his middle years, so the math makes this normal. The only reason his parents are even considered is that he comes from an infamous family.

Zerel: Saladin's son. His mother is dead. This was an OOC decision from the person who played Miyumi (Saladin's wife), and the IC reasoning is related to Saladin's death (from which he was resurrected).

But, overall, I must agree that having dead or abusive parents is an overused cliche that doesn't have any purpose beyond giving characters a reason to be emo. I'm sure that there are a fair few characters out there where the death of parents, or their abuse, is an integral part of the character. I just think it's a pointless thing to include if it doesn't bear any real relevance.

Marionette · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Marionette** on Sat Feb 06, 2010 5:10 pm

I try to give it some thought because that's just how I am. I don't always, but often enough figuring that out is part of my background work. I don't always play young characters, but even when I don't, I still try to think about whether the parents are still alive (if plausible), what their relationship is with the character, etc. It's useful during play sometimes, but more often it's simply a part of knowing my character better.

Another reason I'm not so annoyed about non-perfect parent situations is that, in my experience, almost nobody has perfect, normal parents. Often enough, I run into people who lost their parents or were removed from them (both those who were adopted and those who struggled through the system until emancipation). More often than that, I run into people who did have an abusive parent or step-parent. More often than even that, I run into people who come from a divorced or one-parent home.

It could just be my experiences, but I don't view lack of parents or parent or a less-than-happy parent situation as something everybody implements purely because it's OMGANGST. It's something that actually happens, and fairly commonly. I'd probably be hard-pressed to name ten people I knew with a normal parent situation. I wouldn't call most of them full of incredible angst because of it; it's just something that's a part of their life. At the same time, I don't blame anyone who plays a character that happens to have problems because of a situation like that. Honestly, there's plenty of angst in "normal" two parent homes. Having lost parents is not magically going to make a person any more or less well-adjusted, but depending upon the situation, yeah, it could really affect them. The key to everything is playing a round, interesting character. Parental background should not be the thing that makes you applaud or roll your eyes.

TL;DR I think the problem is bad characterization.

Absenthia · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Absenthia** on Thu Feb 11, 2010 12:43 am

I probably don't give enough attention to character's parents. Not until recently did I begin to think of family interactions and how it would influence my character. My Aschen character (the Chairman), her parents divorced and her mother remarried a complete nut job. The only reason I believe I have them listed as deceased maybe is due to the fact she got shoved in "cold storage" or cryogenically frozen and rather forgotten about.

Depending on the person playing or creating said character, yes I agree it can be a complete cop out and yep, excuse for angst like two people have said. Then again I have seen angsty characters with semi-normal family backgrounds much to my dismay, that I want a explanation for.

Where Did All The Parents Go?

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