Terrible things

[tau]

Here is a place to discuss the horrible things that Alicorn has done to her poor, poor characters. I'll start us off with the obvious one. What do you guys think the most terrible thing she's done is? My opinion is Shell Bell's experience in downside is probably the worst. But Chealsea's machinations in most of her incarnations probably come in at a close second.

[Rubices]

Joker childhoods don't even get a mention? Though I guess that one's on Kappa. If Kappa-sourced things are excluded, the Shell Bell thing is out too, since Downside did it.

[Alicorn]

Oh, come now, I claim credit for the Shell Bell thing. Downside was preexisting in other kappa products and I plotted out the trajectory of Shell's time there. If I can't have credit for that I can't have credit for any fanfic.

[Kappa]

If we were going to enter me into this competition, though - or a separate one - I would actually be hard pressed to come up with a single Most Terrible Thing I had ever done to a character. Things that spring to mind include: the origin of Minus; several Joker backstories, including Aianon, Brilliance, and the entire B cluster (Corona, Felicity, and Trouble, that you've seen), but possibly the worst one there is one you haven't seen yet; and the Joker's-younger-brother template as a whole, particularly Voice. Voice is a tragedy. I mean, he's horrible, but he's also doomed to eternal psychological suffering. Unless someone figures out how to help him, which would be a tough job to say the least.

[Alicorn]

I think shrens might be the worst thing I ever did.

[Kappa]

In terms of sheer scale, yeah, I'd have to agree with you there. In which case the worst thing I ever did is definitely Downside, and I probably have you beat, just because there are so many more Downsiders than shrens. XD

[MartinB]

I think shrens might be the worst thing I ever did.

I would think the existence of the goldmages and of redmages is much worse than the shrens. Might be scaling bias. But it feels much worse to me.
Shrens hurt a lot, and are shunned. But they can life their life with some degree of quality.

Martin

[cbhacking]

Yeah... worst thing to a *specific character* has gotta be the breaking of Shell Bell, I think, although that's largely just due to the duration and thoroughness of breaking. The actual individual torture events are probably surpassed by any individual shren, but at least they only live in agony for ~20 years and are typically sane afterward (if likely to have more psychological issues than the average Elcenian dragon, or average sapient anywhere for that matter). Shrens overall are pretty damn awful though, yeah.

[Kappa]

I'd just like to note for the record that I've forgotten which Joker I was thinking of when I said you haven't seen the worst one yet. If it's the one I think I remember, then he wins the Joker contest of "longest time spent in personal hell before escaping" by a wide, wide margin, and keep in mind that Aianon was tortured by the other Endarkened for ballpark of one or two thousand years.

[cbhacking]

... aiiiiee. That sounds all sorts of awful.

I wonder now which amongst the mages (of Goldmage-verse) are worst off. Whites die young and sick, which is probably even worse than Golds dying young and unpredictably although both are awful. Greens only die young if they become too dwindled, but are otherwise able to carry on a somewhat normal life given careful minders. Blues seem to do fine for themselves aside from losing the entire social aspect of being human; I can't say whether or not they miss it though, so my first-guess estimate places them in the general ballpark of greens and much better off than golds or whites. Reds technically live out their natural spans, but their power seems in many ways the worst; it is involuntary, and it can remove their entire *history* rather than merely a piece of themselves like blues face. On the other hand, it can be mitigated by sufficient notebooking, it can be mitigated (without limiting the ability to do magic in general) by maintaining a small client list, and the power itself sounds wonderful. I'd need to think for a while to weight those properly. In any case, I think I'd prefer to be any of them except a white rather than be a pre-cure shren.