Do you know what, I’m gonna say something because I was inspired by that post and it’s probably gonna ruffle some feathers but like. I don’t care?
BEING SAD DOES NOT MAKE A CHARACTER DEEP.
TRAUMA DOES NOT MAKE A CHARACTER DEEP.
AND KEEPING THEM IN A STAGNANT ‘THEY NEVER GET HELP’ IS DULL.
It isn’t enough– for me, anyway– to just say a character is deep and multi-faceted and ‘has been through so much’ if you never intend on having them grow from the things they’ve dealt with. A character having mental health problems or undergoing some traumatic event is also not necessarily character development, it’s the aftermath that counts; it’s the way your character REACTS to trauma that makes it good development.
Personally, I’m just really starting to dislike the STAGNATION in the RPC. By all means, write what you want to and how you want to– if you want to write an eternally depressed muse that never learns to cope or grows or changes or takes steps to improve their life then go for it, but I just personally can’t do that and I can’t withhold interest in it either. I get that RP can often be an escape, it is to me too, but with that in mind, GRATUITOUS angst just makes everything worse.
TL;DR: Angst ain’t innately deep and trauma often feels exploitative and crass on this website, and I encourage growth/recovery/movement. Maybe it never goes away, maybe it never gets completely better, maybe your characters relapse– and that’s okay, because to relapse, there has to have been some movement in the first place, and that should be celebrated.
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