Cliche

Sometimes an idea seems so good that it gets used many times; again, and again, writers include the idea in their work, until it becomes so commonplace that it is no longer good for anything! The idea has become a cliché, and is now the sworn enemy of roleplayers everywhere.



Character Clichés
These are some extremely typical character prototypes. They often indicate a lack of genuine interest or investment in the character on the part of the author, and are a well-recognized sign of amateur writing.

The "Woe Is Me" Character
This cliché is based on backgrounds that are steeped in tragedy - not for the sake of the story, but to make readers feel sorry for the character and allow him/her more leeway than they would other characters. Parental death, rape, abuse and other tragedies are used to give the character an excuse for antisocial, attention-seeking or otherwise unacceptable behavior. It also draws all focus to the woeful character in question, making other characters seem unsympathetic, selfish or mean if they don't lavish the character with attention.

Think of how you feel when someone tells you their life story and it's nothing but a series of horrible events. You're uncomfortable, right? Well, that's how you'd be making everyone else feel. A character that's written to be pitied will instead be ignored - or worse, elicit an eye-roll or two.

A good way to avoid this cliché while still giving your character an unhappy life is to balance it out with good events or adjust your character's perception of what has happened to him. Avoid giving your character a whiny or angsty personality; just because they've dealt with tragedy doesn't mean that they have to be constantly sad about it. Realistic characters learn to adjust and don't constantly brood about the tragic events in their past. On the other hand, don't ignore your character's past, either. Wounds take time to heal and a little brooding now and then is understandable. Tragedies, when put into use in a biography, should serve a purpose, and not just to make the reader feel bad for the character. They shouldn't disappear for all intents and purposes once you start roleplaying.

Be especially careful when talking about rape. Not only is it one of the most commonly abused story elements in speculative fiction, it's a very real and sensitive issue for most people. Rape is almost always devastating and has the potential to turn a life permanently upside down. Putting rape in your character's past as an easy way to explain her mistrust in the opposite sex is, frankly, exploitative and despicable. If you must tackle the subject, be sure to give it the respect, care and time it deserves.

The Tough Guy/Gal
A character who can take care of themselves is one thing, but an invincible character is another matter entirely. Other players will eventually avoid conflicts with your character entirely if it seems like their character has no chance of winning, and while this might seem ideal on the outset, it will result in boredom. Players who employ this cliché run the risk of god-modding and alienating those they interact with.

It's downright aggravating when tough characters are confrontational or violent 100% of the time. Even for totally aggressive people, there are situations where you have to back down or be polite to someone, and there are situations where you have to show pain. Refusing to let your character show any reaction when dealing with indescribable pain will only display to readers that your character is overly simplistic, and they will find it difficult to care about him.

The Perfect Woman/Man
The perfect woman is skilled in everything she does, often even combat (even if she's never lived a life where she would need to know how to fight). She's persuasive, kind, generous and intuitive; she would never do anything immoral (apart from the occasional bit of theft to feed her starving family), deviant or selfish. She is a paragon of virtue and the author makes no bones about her superiority to everyone. Despite all of this, she is always very modest. You've probably read the description before...it will have phrases like "curves in all the right places," "ample chest," "eyes like sapphire pools/smoldering orbs," "long, lustrous, flowing locks" or even "teeth like shining pearls."

This cliché also applies to men. Fantasy stories have no end of perfect men who never show fear, cowardice or selfishness; men who are sensitive, know instinctively what their lover wants without even having to ask, can pick up on her (or his) thoughts and desires, etc. Not to mention their rugged good looks! They will always win fights, especially if they're the underdog; they will never have a hair out of place afterward. And they always get the girl.

Remember, writing is all about sticking out from the crowd. A unbeatable, perfect hero with paint-by-numbers sex appeal is boring and unoriginal - and reading all that nauseating, masturbatory description is painful.

The "Interview Flaw"
A horribly ineffective way that people try to combat the perfect woman/perfect man cliché is by giving their character a superficial scar or defect that wouldn't actually detract from their beauty at all. They write something like "she would be drop-dead gorgeous if not for the scar next to their eye" or "his handsomeness was covered up by his shaggy mane of hair." This includes non-flaws, such as "everyone hates me because I'm too beautiful," "so smart I can't relate to anyone" and "I'm horrified at how dangerous a killing machine I am."

This cliché is related to the Ugly Pretty Girl - putting a totally gorgeous person in a getup that forces them to look unattractive, only to later "reveal" their beauty with a haircut and a day of shopping. It is also related to the technique of describing a character as "not beautiful," only to go on to describe them as having traits that are considered to be attractive (such as "too thin", "eyes too large" and "breasts too big"). Worse still is the "so beautiful it's a curse" flaw, which is just despicable!

The Antisocial Outsider
The outsider hangs around the fringes of society, hating everyone, and whenever he is involved in roleplay he is constantly trying to screw everyone else over. His character is aggressively angry and rude at all times, regardless of the situation. Some outsiders treat every roleplay like an opportunity to express how emotionally detached they are.

This cliché is a problem because the outsider makes roleplay very unpleasant for everyone. It is just as annoying to deal with a character who is constantly rude and abusive in roleplay as it is in real life. No one puts up with that sort of thing for long. The end result of this kind of character is twofold: some people will ignore him, and some will react strongly, provoking the outsider into even more bouts of aggression.

The Instant Expert/Prodigy
Learning to become an expert at something takes time. Prodigies do exist, but they are abused back and forth in RP. Saying your character was naturally gifted is often an excuse to make him young and hot while still several steps above the skill level of other characters. Make an older character if you want them to be a master at something; there's no shame in it!

The Genius Child
While it's true that some children are prodigies, and learn at a rate substantially faster than other children, this type of individual is incredibly rare in real life, and makes for a flimsy and unbelievable character in fiction. You can bet, because of the popularity of this conceit in RPGs, there have been more than a couple of these genius children on Thorns already.

A big problem with this cliché is the type of intelligence authors tend to give the child - namely, he will speak in an adult fashion with large words, and have an advanced knowledge of certain subjects (sometimes unrelated) to show off how intelligent he is. The issue here is his limited time on the earth. A young child of 6 or 7 would not have the same knowledge as someone who has studied forty years, no matter how intelligent they are. Biological realities limit the capacity for understanding and memory in young children's brains; books can only be devoured so quickly, and a child barely out of the language acquisition stage would simply not have had time to read an entire library's worth of knowledge, let alone commit it to memory. And true knowledge of a field of study cannot be learned entirely from books or tutors; experience is necessary for true mastery.

Steeped in Tragedy
The tragic backstory has several variations, but they usually come to the same end - the loss of everything, the utter annihilation of everything the character loves and relies on, and the subsequent disillusionment they suffer. While in theory this kind of story would have benefits, amateur writers tend to fall back on tragedy as a quick and lazy means of building interest in a character.

Tragic backstories often involve the death of loved ones - parents or guardians, romantic partners, siblings or even entire tribes or villages. Usually the protagonist is the sole survivor of a tragedy and feels the need to avenge his fallen friends. Sometimes they escape only with a disfiguring scar, a physical mark of the event that is specifically tailored to cause other characters to inquire about it.

Other stories involve abuse, which is almost always horrific, ongoing and traumatic. The protagonist is portrayed as a powerless victim and almost everyone in the backstory is a villain intent on causing him pain. Often there will be a single individual who shows pity, and in order to make the backstory more tragic, that person is taken away in a cruel twist of fate.

These backstories, for reasons enumerated above, are aggravating to read and often result more in distaste for the author's writing than sympathy for the character. Despite obvious drawbacks, tragic backstories are probably the most common and prolific cliché in roleplaying.

Shrouded in Mystery
A backstory mystery is an unexplained occurrence that your character is searching to find an explanation for, such as the mysterious murder or disappearance of a loved one. Often this mystery is meant to be the source of an internal conflict and provides a large portion of the context for the character. Sometimes linked to the tragic backstory, the mystery is all-consuming and the character will not rest until the matter is resolved.

The problem with this method of backstory writing, among other things, is that it ultimately has an expiration date. When your character finds the answer to the mystery that hounds him, it ends the conflict that was the driving force behind his character. If he doesn't ever solve the mystery, the reader remains unfulfilled. The reader also has problems identifying with the drive to solve the mystery, not having actively experienced the unexplained event during roleplay; this makes it very difficult for them to sympathize with the character, and can lead to alienation.

In addition to these problems, backstory mysteries cause characters to remain insular and focused only on themselves. In contrast, characters without a pressing need to find answers from their past are free to form a new focus in the present, a focus that could be relevant to the plots of others and lead to more cooperative roleplay. It generally pays to have a character that's looking to the future rather than into the past.

Therefore, if you absolutely must have a mystery in your character's past, we suggest that you do not make unraveling it the focal goal of your character.

Bathed in Blandness
This cliché is not based on an aggravating or outlandish trait meant to garner attention, but rather a complete lack of interest in one's own character. The bland backstory is a generic, cookie-cutter story, generally pulled directly from the wiki article about the race or culture in question. There are instances where someone wants to play a certain type of character but can't be bothered to think about why that character is that way; the bland backstory is often the answer.

The result is, of course, that the character has a number of unexplained character traits that have nothing whatsoever to do with the backstory. The bland backstory character had typical parents or a typical family setting, an uneventful childhood with no problems whatsoever, a vague interest in a trade...but then, sudddenly, they became a pickpocket, a roving medicine woman or a powerful sorcerer, just in time for present-day roleplay.

The issue here is believability.