When your character loses everything they care about?

[King of tentacle]

how many times have you had a character lose their one and only because the story said they had to die  ?

 

what did your character do about it ?

 

mine burn the world usually not to bring anyone back or to cause suffering but because nothing else mattered anymore?

 

btw i play a lot of cyoa books and choice books and visual novels  and thats happened enough times with different characters and it never gets easier specially if you get invested

 

interested to hear your answers and experiences

[Resdayn]

Depends what character of my ?

[goaway]

I think a character actually trying to make the world in general suffer for the pain they feel from a loss would be pretty rare, since there is never any tangible payoff to reinforce the cycle of rage.  People don't tend to do things that take a lot of effort forever unless there is some kind of payoff.  It would take someone who is already ego-centric and believes their needs/wants are more important than those of others or someone who may have a little bit of psychopathic tendencies. 

 

Now, this sort of response in a non-psychopath might be more likely if there is some kind of perceived injustice, or the character feels like an outsider and thus not "part of the world," but it's not going to be the response of a normally stable person.  

 

So the easiest answer is that there is a kind of macabre self-destructive freedom in loss.  When someone loses what really matters most, they are able to do things they normally wouldn't be willing or capable of doing because they no longer have anything to protect or hold on to.  Substance abuse to numb the pain, engaging in reckless behavior because the consequences no longer matter, these are the sorts of responses I can imagine from most characters.

 

While it may be more romantic to think that this will permanently change someone, the truth is that eventually they will get it over it.  Unless there is someone that the character can psychologically hold responsible for their loss (someone or something to blame), and thus seek revenge on, eventually life goes on. 

 

That being said, this sort of thing always struck me as melodrama and a little overused as a storytelling convention.  I might go a little farther and say it's a mark of bad writing, too.  Taking a normal character the audience can relate to and forcing them through some trauma to become a larger than life villain/hero is kind of taking the easy way out.  It's like having your cake and eating it too.  How often does this ACTUALLY happen in real life?  

[Mr. Otaku]

5 minutes ago, goaway said:

I think a character actually trying to make the world in general suffer for the pain they feel from a loss would be pretty rare

You're basically describing Six Paths Of Pain. Wanting to destroy the world because of how the world pillaged his life. Just got reminded of it reading that line in your post.

[King of tentacle]

32 minutes ago, goaway said:

While it may be more romantic to think that this will permanently change someone, the truth is that eventually they will get it over it.  Unless there is someone that the character can psychologically hold responsible for their loss (someone or something to blame), and thus seek revenge on, eventually life goes on. 

 

a tangible target is better i agree but when the responsible party is not so much some one but some thing  like fate itself or destiny for example there are three choice books that i had read this year champion of the gods and its sequel exile of the gods as well as samurai of hyuga book 4 in these your character has a destiny that they struggle with more so in cog than soh but in either case my characters experienced such loss at the literal hands of fate now i don't know about the authors but if  fate is my enemy then burning it all down seems like the way to go if only to buck at the celestial system out of spite