Discussion Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi... My Character is Hot Trash

[KAR2]

This character is in serious need of something. She has been this gaping pit of unfinished business for years. I had all these ideas for her and throughout the years some worked but many fell through due mostly to my indecisiveness but also because she's had to move to so many communities all with their own timelines and cultures. It's been a mess. I've often thought of rebooting her, even tried a time or two but it never felt like "her" when I did this.

She feels unfinished, and a complicated mess of timelines, love interests that no longer write those characters, masters that aren't part of this community, villains that abandoned the character and ended up being written by me, etc etc. She started back when I was a pre-teen in 2007 and now 14 years latter I'm a different person than I was so its hard to figure her out now.


What do you even do with a character like that?

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

Katarine Ryiah

At this point, given how messy things have gotten based on your description, I'd say it's time to put the character to rest. You could try and start over with her at the beginning of her story, but I imagine that would be difficult given how much history and baggage she comes with.

You could shelve her and move on without further ado, or if you are very attached, write up an ending of some sort which wraps up as much of her story as possible. Ask yourself what her goals in life were, and decide if she ever accomplished them, or if not then what happened to her? The point is to come up with an ending which satisfies you as her writer.

Once you've wrapped her up, you can move on to other characters and telling their stories without feeling like Katarine's story is incomplete.

 

[KAR2]

Katarine Ryiah

At this point, given how messy things have gotten based on your description, I'd say it's time to put the character to rest. You could try and start over with her at the beginning of her story, but I imagine that would be difficult given how much history and baggage she comes with.

You could shelve her and move on without further ado, or if you are very attached, write up an ending of some sort which wraps up as much of her story as possible. Ask yourself what her goals in life were, and decide if she ever accomplished them, or if not then what happened to her? The point is to come up with an ending which satisfies you as her writer.

Once you've wrapped her up, you can move on to other characters and telling their stories without feeling like Katarine's story is incomplete.

I’ve considered just ending her. I actually did put her on a shelf for a year but that nagging unfinished voice kept piping in. So I decided to kill her off but even that didn’t finish her.

She started out as a woman who had a very complicated relationship with her family. The main antagonist of her story was her twin and they had a Force duo. It was meant to be this struggle between good and evil. Then the writer of her twin left the board and I got settled writing the twin. I tried many times to keep the story going but it turned into me writing with myself and at that point it was like just to write a book because that’s not Rp.

When I think about her it’s just a bunch of “should have done this” and “wow that sucked.” She’s a huge disappointment.

So I guess do I just give up and let it remain this disappointing story. Or do I keep trying?

 

[Junko Ike]

I went through this with a couple characters who I have been writing for years on other boards... it came down to just what I wanted to do. Junko went from a fairly generic soldier who was trained by witches to a jedi princess who has become much more of a Diva. Matsu has always been a scholar but now she is much more of a generalist and tackles the larger things in the galaxy preferring to face off against force entities that are off the scale. Syn has always been a traditional shadow of the jedi and when he isn't under orders just explores.

My adive would be to either shelve her, reboot her or find something that you can enjoy with writers you know are around and can help.

 

[Louise]

Definitely recommend starting something fresh.

I tried to carry on Steph Zenima here but it just didn't work out or feel right no matter what. It did feel a bit crap having things left rough and unfinished, or not feeling like you got where you intended on going but I ended up having more success with new ideas to suit the person I became rather than carrying on ones passed over from the person I used to be.

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

Katarine Ryiah

If you killed her off and brought her back because she felt unfinished, maybe that's an indication that she still has some life in her. I dunno lol, it's up to you.

Hm... for comparison, I once had a character whose main storyline collapsed for various reasons, many of them similar to what you described with Katarine. My solution was to fix all of her most pressing issues myself in a solo thread, then I turned her into an NPC. That way she still exists and can be brought in at any time if I want to use her for something, but I'm not actively writing her anymore.

 

[KAR2]

Definitely recommend starting something fresh.

I tried to carry on Steph Zenima here but it just didn't work out or feel right no matter what. It did feel a bit crap having things left rough and unfinished, or not feeling like you got where you intended on going but I ended up having more success with new ideas to suit the person I became rather than carrying on ones passed over from the person I used to be.

Oh my gosh I remember Steph! Wow it’s been a long time.

 

[Tiland Kortun]

So, what I'm reading is a desire to keep going, but a struggle with the way things are going, and a general dissatisfaction when you do keep going, is that apt? In situations like that, I've found it useful to shelve characters for a preset amount of time, usually measured in months. Maybe three months, maybe six months. Long enough to create some space and explore other avenues that can let me come back with a little more clarity.

 

[KAR2]

So, what I'm reading is a desire to keep going, but a struggle with the way things are going, and a general dissatisfaction when you do keep going, is that apt? In situations like that, I've found it useful to shelve characters for a preset amount of time, usually measured in months. Maybe three months, maybe six months. Long enough to create some space and explore other avenues that can let me come back with a little more clarity.

Sort of. It’s more like a nagging feeling of wishing to change the past and no idea what to do to make her better. Like a failed project where you regret how it turned out.

 

[Louise]

Oh my gosh I remember Steph! Wow it’s been a long time.

Yeah, I turned thirty this year, it's been a great tragedy, I used to be one of the young ones on the forums haha.

From what you've been experiencing I personally recommend something new. Never write off Kat completely but have a go at something different and see how you feel. Although never feel like what you did/didn't do with her is a failed project, play-by-post is just unpredictable like that.

 

[KAR2]

So far this is what I’m considering

Option A: Total reboot. Start from scratch.

Option B: Be done with her.



I am enjoying my other characters at least. It’s always just Kat that brings regret

 

[Louise]

Don't worry about it in such a final way, nothing is permanent, after all, and in this hobby of ours what you should do is whatever makes you happy.

So perhaps just time away from Kat to create some distance from the feelings of regret. You can say you're totally done with her but the great part is that there's nothing to stop you from coming back next week, next month, next year or beyond.

Then maybe you'll feel different, maybe you'll still have that regret, idk, I'm older but not wiser haha.

Also, nothing wrong with reboots, especially if you've lost pivotal writers when moving from forum to forum but fair warning she'll probably never feel the same. For me, writing here feels way different from writing back on TGC. I wouldn't say that one was better than the other, it's just different, but if you're chasing that exact vibe or way the character felt then I'd say be done with her.

Alternatively, make a choice on a dice roll, you'll find that you'll want one result more than the other and then pick that choice. TRICK YOUR BRAIN BY GAMBLING.

 

[Vesta]

Katarine Ryiah
I was in a similar position with this character (and another in the past), just writing the character from where I had left off felt pretty impossible.

Essentially I let them sit on a shelf for a while until something major happened on the site that I used to rope myself back into writing them, then came up with some reason for why they were gone for however long I wasn't writing them. I guess in my case it helps that someone else sort of forced my hand into needing to come up with that reason.

After bringing the character back I just changed whatever I wanted about them that I didn't want to or didn't feel like continuing, like a soft reboot just without the whole starting from the beginning or retconning stuff, whether it be personality or attitude or anything like that, and used what my reason for them being gone as the reason for their change in behavior and stuff.

On the other hand I ran into this issue with my first character on this site and I decided to just kill them and move on.

 

[KAR2]

Thanks for everybody who posted here. A few people sent me DMs and they are helping me work out how to restart Kat in this galaxy but keep the special qualities that make her Kat