Background bio for fan characters

[Zorathehedgehog]

In almost every neat character skeleton, you get at least this to fill in:

Name:
Age:
Species:
Biography:
Personality:
Abilities:
Appearance:

Those could be called the basic information for a fan character. I have seen very few roleplays where one of these are not required. For most part, you are forbidden to answer with "unknown", since even if your character doesn't know his or her age, you as creator certainly should.
Let's take a look at how the cannon characters can be fit into these.

Name: Sonic the Hedgehog
Age: 15
Species: Hedgehog
Biography: Has a long history of fighting against Robotnik, and found Tails when they were young. He more or less adopted Tails as a little brother.
Personality: A spitfire attitude, impatient but fun loving. He loves freedom and hates oppression more than anything else.
Abilities: Sonic speed
Appearance:


More can be written on personality, but that's beyond my point.
Point is, exactly how much can you put into his backstory, really? PRobably more than that. But not much. We never see a glimpse of his parents, except for in non-cannon universes such as Archie Comics. We never get to know why he decided to start saving the world, neither how he first met Eggman, we never get to hear how he came to be so fast...

My point is that the cannon characters do not have much of a backstory. I'm fine with it: Sonic is a character who is better off without explanations. What bothers me is that fan characters are thus expected to be more well-developed than cannon characters. I try to do good backstories, but it's hard to explain why the character never has parents saying "you can't do that, it's dangerous!" without involving orphaning, parental abuse, running away from home etc etc.
None of the Sonic characters save for Cream (I don't even know if that's cannon. I don't count Cosmo much, since she exists in one universe alone) have parents even mentioned anywhere. Why do fan characters need such, then?
Amy is twelve, she should have parents, but apparantly she doesn't.

A good fan character is one who would fit in the universe it is related to. Shouldn't that mean that backstories are not all that important?

This rant does not apply to those who want to know the biography for the sake of being able to stop those who have "Sonic's long lost brother, who was originally going to be the guardian of the master emerald, and also Tails' cousin". I understand those motives for wanting a backstory. I understand all motives for wanting to know a backstory for a character who is to be approved for a roleplay, since well backstories are a basic fact in most roleplays.

My question is: is it really necessary? If so, how much? Do parents need to be included with an explanation why they are absent? Do you need a motif for fighting evil? Do you need to list how your character makes a living? Sonic doesn't work, as far as I know.

Sorry, I probably made this tl;dr, but those who plowed through the whole post are very welcome to debate.  

[Scars-of-an-Undead]

You do make a very valid point in your rant! Now when I do think about it, I'm uncertain myself why some bios turn out to be fairly long. I know the bio for my characters are long considering they're not originally sonic characters (but just OCs turned into Sonic people). Through my point of view, I personally enjoy having a semi-long backstory since I want to know why someone's character would 'have the ability over fire and earth elements' or 'the power of telekinesis' or 'why they ended up in Sonic's world'.

I personally believe a decent backstory is necessary in order to develop a character. And lets face it - Sonic characters have no character development. Maybe that's why some people wish to have a longer, more complex backstory?  

[Zorathehedgehog]

Scars-of-an-Undead

You do make a very valid point in your rant! Now when I do think about it, I'm certain myself why some bios turn out to be fairly long. I know the bio for my characters is long considering they're not originally sonic characters (but just OCs turned into Sonic people). Through my point of view, I personally enjoy having a semi-long backstory since I want to know why someone's character would 'have the ability over fire and earth elements' or 'the power of telekinesis' or 'why they ended up in Sonic's world'.

I personally believe a decent backstory is necessary in order to develop a character. And lets face it - Sonic characters have no character development. Maybe that's why some people wish to have a longer, more complex backstory?

I could deal with having backstories explaining such powers, since it does look better than just "Maria-Susie is a necromancer", because a good justification is the foundation for being able to indulge yourself some special details to your character.
It could have something to do with it (you writing long backstories due to not having intended them for Sonic's world at first), I believe.  

[ice ethereal]

I agree with both Zora and Scars. Background is important for development, but Sonic characters have little to no development at all.

And anyway, most Sonic characters DO have a little history, at least, like where they came from and what caused the conflict in order for them to be involved in the story in the first place. Then again, I do not require such a profile to be filled out for canon characters because everyone who's participating in the RP should already know how the character is, thus a profile is not needed. That's just me though.

The whole parents thing, I think it is perfectly alright for a fan character to have parents or even to not have parents. There are a million ways to associate or disassociate a mother or father from a fan character: death, emancipation, disappearance, separation by family feuds/drama, or they could just be alive and kicking somewhere. One parent could be dead, the other could be alive. Those are just examples; The list is pretty much endless on what you can do for parents, lol.

What I hate are stupid cliche histories, or ones that make no sense at all, or ones that just have the character suddenly come upon something that makes them OMG UBER POWAH-FULL just out of nowhere and for no reason at all. Pisses me off. neutral

But yes, it would be nice to know how Blaze got to control fire, or how Sonic got to be so fast. ^^;  

[Zorathehedgehog]

Most cannon "backstories", however, are those who happen in-game. Amy gets saved by Sonic, that's something which is shown and not a backstory. When there are stories about something occuring before what takes place, they are awfully short.
About the parents: problem is, any time you go "parents abandoned, parents dead, or parents abused and made them run away from home" etc, someone is shouting "MARY SUE!!!" at you. So I figured: is it not best to leave such things to imagination?  

[ice ethereal]

Then those people are stupid. Just because a character has no parents doesn't mean they're a Mary-Sue. Sure, most of those things are overdone, but at least it's something that's adding to their development.  

[Zorathehedgehog]

So you'd rather see someone with dead parents or parents who abused them into running away than see someone who mentions no parents whatsoever?  

[ice ethereal]

Indeed. Sure, it's overdone, but hey, at least it's something. The creator of the character can always find a way to change it later if it bothers them.  

[Zorathehedgehog]

Tails Kaiba

Indeed. Sure, it's overdone, but hey, at least it's something. The creator of the character can always find a way to change it later if it bothers them.

Interesting. I'll keep that in mind for future reference, since you seem experienced enough to know what you're talking about =)  

[ice ethereal]

Zorathehedgehog

Tails Kaiba

Indeed. Sure, it's overdone, but hey, at least it's something. The creator of the character can always find a way to change it later if it bothers them.

Interesting. I'll keep that in mind for future reference, since you seem experienced enough to know what you're talking about =)

Well thank you, lol. I love creating characters, whether its for art or theater, which is where I basically learned about character development. 3nodding  

[Zorathehedgehog]

I love characters and development too, I just get so put off when people fire their Suehunting rifle for things that are generally handled well. I don't get flamed, but I see others, and that is for the most part enough to scare me away from it XD  

[FireCat of Hell2000]

Name: Satoshi
Age: 17
Species: Tirger
Biography: When he was 5 his mother left him and his father. So Satoshi lived with his father until he moved out at age 17. Currently he lives in a High Tech 3 story mansion.
Personality: Friendly, Air headed at times,Happy, optimistic
Abilities: Can hack into a computer and take down a firewall in mere seconds
Appearance:  

[Zorathehedgehog]

*face palm* always read the first post before submitting something, ok? This is a discussion, not a thread for sending in your fan characters  

[Theif of Stars]

Understand your point on having a fan character fully well developed but also not to the point where they're gary/mary-sues. Also most people prefer original designed characters over recolors, but my fan character began as a recolor, she's not anymore, but her being a recolor was starting grounds for me to develop her.

Lately though i hate it when people bash others for having fan characters, namely sonic ones at that. They claim that there is virtually no originality and are all generally over-rated fans ruining the fandom even more. Its gotten really disappointing to see people actually say "I HATE SONIC OC'S" and its quite an oxymoron considering sonic fan characters are ACTUALLY fan characters, not oc's (original characters).

All i'm saying is, do what you like, be proud of what you like, and don't let anyone rain down on your sunshine. Only recently though i've seen alot of people (on DA) claim they hate sonic fc's only due to the fact that a vast majority are over-powered/god-mod/poorly designed and made characters. Unfortunately they view EVERY sonic fan this way, and of course i disagree. So this is why i've spent many periods reducing parts of her, while making a few changes. Just to prove to sonic haters, and sonic fan character haters are wrong.

(excuse me for rant ^ ^ wink