Oh, for shame.

The first character I ever created was one I am now deeply ashamed of. But here I am, about to tell you all about it, internet. Don't you feel special?

You see, I had been an avid reader in my childhood but not, at the time, so much of an avid writer. I didn't really write fiction unless a homework assignment called for it. "Write a story using this week's vocabulary words" was a common assignment during my grade school years and the bane of my family's existence. Many long nights were spent at the kitchen table, arguing over those terrible, awful, ridiculously annoying to use words. It's a surprise I like to write at all, considering how much I hated those assignments. 

Anyway, when I was a teenager role-playing piqued my interest. AOL had a whole slew of chatrooms devoted to it, and a friend of mine and I thought it would be fun to try. She and I both made characters for the purpose; hers an ice-and-water-manipulating "mystic", and mine a blue-furred, purple-haired catgirl.

You can see how fun this is going to be already.

Now I would use the term "Mary Sue" to describe her; one of those powerful, special characters who are created solely to fulfill the wishes of their creator, to be all that they deem "cool". She wasn't beloved by all or sweet and gentle like most Sues, however. No, mine was an Angsty Sue. She had the requisite tragic background; orphaned at a young age by a rampaging army of Evil People who killed everyone she ever loved and a lot of people she probably didn't even know, and burned her entire village of peaceful catfolk to the ground for good measure. The lone survivor was, of course, my little blue-furred, purple-haired ragamuffin. How the Evil Army of Death and Hatred missed a child with sky-blue fur and deep purple hair is beyond me, but they did. They totally did because I was fourteen and didn't care about plausible backstories at the time.

Don't judge. This is even more painful for me than it is for you.

My newly-orphaned catgirl swore vengeance of course, and had the power of fire to help her achieve it. See, I picked fire because my friend always went with water. Also it was tragic and ironic in my little teenage mind that she should command the very element that destroyed her home. Sob sob, cry cry and all. Somehow, she ended up in the care of an ancient, powerful dragon. Since I was a rabid Final Fantasy fan at the time, that dragon was Bahamut. Go ahead and laugh.

Despite the fact that Bahamut is traditionally a non-elemental summoned beast and probably wouldn't have an interest in tiny blue catgirls beyond being a snack, he took her in and taught her how to master her fire magic. He also gave her a little red jewel which resembled a Summon Materia more than a little bit called the "Fire Stone". This was somehow magically unstealable. For some reason, this catgirl raised by an all-powerful dragon decided the next logical step was to become an assassin.

An assassin in a black leather dress and high heels. Carrying a broadsword with the requisite cool name, a bladed boomerang shamelessly cribbed from Rei-Ginsei of Vampire Hunter D, and a "three-bladed knife", which later on I realized was my own misinterpretation of a katar. The more I look back at this, the worse it gets.

My friend and I also thought it would be good to have her character be of the race that wiped out my character's home, and have them be friends anyway. Oh, and she was similarly trained and had a similar stone courtesy of Leviathan.

Sure we had fun with them at the time, but looking back on the character, I just cringe at how poorly developed she was. She was all anger, vengeance, typical "antisocial badass" behaviors and not much more. However, that first venture into creating characters is what got me to write. Since then, I've learned to produce better than that. Or so I hope, anyway.