Yaoi Dreams Roleplay Forum

Uhm...it doesn't?

I'm not sure if it's a community thing, or a psychological thing that yaoi roleplayers seem to be prone to. But a lot of people here like to have melodramatic elements in their stories. And nothing says drama like a sob story. I think people need to focus less on backstory, and more on the character's personality.

Backstory is important as long as it has a link to the characters personality as they are now. Like if they were abused it could be why they are shy of attention but you can't just add it. To make a character more interesting I tend to add quirks

The problem here is pretty simple.
Tragedy is a shitty way to make a character interesting.
Tragedy is effective when there's a bond between the audience and the character. Introducing the character as a rape-victim doesn't make them interesting or endearing. It's just tacky.

If backstory is being used as a link to personality... then people either have an obsession playing miserable wrecks, or are just really uncreative.

Hmm...I see both ends. I've read great novels were tragedy is key to the character, how they overcome themselves and beat whatever demons they face. It's how you write it. If they carp on about it constantly it's tacky. But if it has made them what they are it's pretty human. Past is a big deal to a professional writer, without it they are pretty dull but in RP...well depends on you. An interesting character to me, to play with and create has a past, present and future.

That's were scaffolding comes into play though.
No decent protagonist is going to start off their story by outlining the details of their tragic past. If they're a rape-victim, that's something that should need to be teased out of them.

Unless the story is based on the issue of rape, a character shouldn't be eagerly telling people about their past. And good writers know to capitalize and introduce dramatic elements of their character's past when it has the most meaning and impact.... 5 minutes after meeting is not one such time.

I think that is actually one of the issues. People are taking things from novels, written by professionals thinking; "Oh yes, this makes the characters so interesting and cool." The way I see the rape back story being played on roleplay forums, is generally the same way. If you don't like the character, it means you either just don't understand him/her, or you are just an heartless bastard who doesn't understand the struggles they (the fictional character) is going through.

I've never seen a player managing to actually make something out of the thing, aside from just adding something to the character that makes the reader feel sorry for them. Which means, they, for some reason, might be more worthy of love. Cause, after all, the whole story of a broken human being fixed because of 'love'. Or in this case, sex, is the cherry to the roleplay.

There's nothing really appealing about a roleplay, where you as a player has to constantly be on the tip of their toes and run around saving a self destructive character, cause it's more ''realistic and interesting".

Indeed. They don't just come out with things. I tend to give a brief background to start to set up the character and if more needs to be found out they reveal it along the way. No real rape victim will reveal it in a snap, nor anything dark in general. All about build up and development of plot
(What irks me is if people this a rape element is 'cool'. It isn't!)

I'm pretty sure people don't think of rape as being 'cool.'
But unfortunately I do think there's a great deal of people out there who think adding the 'element of rape' makes their characters more interesting. Though they'll usually default to terms like "adds more depth."

It's not exclusive to rape though, drugs, physical abuse, depression & suicide, etcetc.
It's just poor character building, and people expecting a quickfix that'll make everything interesting.

I feel this, I get not telling for development but when they are just one dimensional I get bored