What is your favorite way to torture your favorite character

i just like to milk the absolute shit out of past trauma

good old fashioned self loathing

Self-doubt, self-loathing, guilt, low self-esteem, massive imposter syndrome, the sincere belief that they don't deserve anything good happening to them.

Full angst torture: killing off their loved ones.

Romantic torture: the stoic character not interested in romance somehow falling for the flirty one

Guilt and/or PTSD. Getting into a coma is a second favourite.

Crippling self doubt with a healthy dose of self sabotage

He believes in God, so adding that sweet, sweet religious guilt is fantastic for angst lol

Make the person they love the most hurt them.

Scary prophetic dreams.

Some sort of abuser or perpetrator. Whether it's a canon character or something adjacent to the fandom. Like a particular version of a character or something. I just like the idea of feeling trapped with this person who only does bad to them.

I mean, there’s the sexual assault (it’s all projection) but there’s also them being totally convinced that they shouldn’t talk to anyone about it, whether that’s by external threats or just their own shame

They, a loved one, or even a hated one came back.

Not necessarily came back wrong, but came back worse. They're unrecognizable now, or perhaps only familiar in the worst of ways. Doesn't have to be from literal death; ego death can be just as devastating. Old wounds are reopened, new ones are made, neither seem to be healing. Everyone else is asking "What the fuck happened to you, I thought you got better?" while they're wondering "Did it matter?" or "Did I?" or maybe even "Didn't I?" And no. They did not. Not completely. Parts of them stayed dead, but not the parts that continue to hurt, be it themselves or everyone around them as they become even worse.

Goes great with other themes of (im)mortality!

I was gonna say caning, I didn’t realize we meant metaphorical torture. My bad

My favorite way to torture my favorite character is by somehow making him lose everything he loves. Whether or not he gets it back, well, sometimes, but not always.

For teenaged characters: embarass them with details about their parents' sex life.

Unhealthy coping mechanisms

It depends on which one. There's 4 horsemen of the apocalypse

One considers himself an idiot and hates himself for it

One feels unlovable and pushes people away, setting himself up to be a villain but secretly caring deeply for those around him

One just wants death

And I'm not even sure what the fuck the last one is up to.

Anyway, I just do one of these and ball

100% killing off their family members. I write for the Hunger Games fandom. This makes my life easy

I’m gonna be totally honest here and show myself up as being extremely unhinged but they’re not my fave unless I’ve written them being raped.

My much more mild favourite torture method is making them publicly humiliate themselves in some way, typically bodily fluids.

Actual torture 🥰🥰held hostage by an evil scientist and forced to participate in cruel experiments for the bettering of knowledge

I like to strip one fave of his power and dredge up ugly past traumas. He gets off easy.

Another I like to make a breeding slave, which goes against every fiber of his being and fills him with (even more) shame, bitterness, rage, and self-loathing.

I put my third "favorite" (not quite the right term) through the worst torture of all: I force him to face himself and who/what he is, and make him fall in deep, unrequited love with someone he once brutally raped.

MPreg /srs

Emotional trauma regarding family. The further I can dig back and show what absolute shitshows their parents were, the better.

My fandom lends itself to trauma conga. The different ways I can torture Talia... Just... 🤌🏻

The guilt of past bad decisions, actual physical torture, immense amounts of stress, self-loathing.

My favorite though was having A find what was presumably B's heart in a box left on the porch along with a taunting note, implying that she was killed by C, who is essentially A's twin and a psychopath. Then the chapter ends with A shutting down bc his stress levels got too high (he's an android).

Edit: fixed

Depression and anxiety, especially when it results from fairly recent events. Something triggering a traumatic memory out of the blue that sends them into their first full-fledged panic attack.

Turning their friends against them!! Could be a misunderstanding on their part or an actual betrayal, either works :))

My current favorite is so unabashedly in love with himself and thinks everyone else is too (he’s certainly a charmer). I like to tap into his (not-so) underlying insecurities about getting old or not being attractive. I’m also working on an amnesia fic where his favorite person forgets about him and of course it’s going to be centered about the amnesia but there’s so much insecurity that can come from that and it’s so delicious.

Just injury, whump stuff mostly I love having a character separated from their group and then hurt, and the group is looking for them and the injured one can't do anything

Physical, mental everything

Although the best way is is to torture them give them a miserable life then give them hope that things will become better and return them to their misery

Basically let them have a good time before the bad time

After all, you can only fall you up and the higher you are the more painful the fall will be

MY HAPPY ENDING EARNED !!

Every kind actually. Putting him through light marriage arguments, shoving him through a forced omegaverse marriage, body slamming him into 'my bestie don't love me back.' story and etc. Even so, I give my baby boy all the fluff he deserves as well 😵‍💫🤧 

Mine is so mild compared to some here. I mostly just deal with emotional torture of forcing them to publicly reveal embarrassing secrets. Usually, some kind of plot device is involved that the only way to save everyone is for the secret to be revealed

Self-sabotage, especially if they're aware of it for some extra spice 🤌 Characters that know that they're not reacting "right", that their normal is somehow wrong. That are aware their actions actively eat away at their relationships but are either too lost to find a different way, or are paralyzed with fear- their fear of ruining everything if they change their ways vs continuing to eat away at themselves to keep everything the same way it's always been.

Making character B know the trauma of character A (even better if B somehow contributed to that) and they start treating A in a pitting manner or an infantilising manner which A hates

I have done very terrible mean things to my favourite character

The main kind of emotional torture I write about is usually alienation/loneliness + dehumanization combo.

I mean……..I usually just resort to straight up torture. But self hatred is also a favorite of mine.

This is what a true love triangle is to me

Knife.

love triangles hurt so good

Unplanned mpreg.

Make him feel 😏

Make them fight a battle they’ll never win, but never get out of by losing

I use physical injuries and Situations. I just love to put her in Situations.

Reciprocated attraction but both parties are too stupid to notice its reciprocated

Disembowelment.

And massive emotional damage.

I looooove that messy love triangle dynamic you mentioned, and I feel like I rarely see it! It hurts so good.

I like to subject them to the mundane daily trials of modern life.  

Especially if they were previously rich and/or a time traveller.

Self doubt, self loathing, mmmm religious guilt, make them hurt the person that they love the most and well… non-con

I’m a big fan of character A is head over heels for character B but is in a relationship with C and character B is in love with A but they’re just too oblivious to see it, until they aren’t, and so they realize that they too have feelings for B and break things off with C- only for B to decide to move on and develop feelings for someone else and sort of forget about A for a while. A would just languish in regret and heartbreak (very karmic).

No rest for the wicked.

You just solved a problem? Here are two more, and now there is a timer and oh look the old problem's solution comes with consequences.

Forcing them to lie to each other to protect each other, only to have everything come crashing down when a sadistic outside force comes in to destroy their relationships. :]

What you said but with B and C ending up together-ish and A being in grave injury/having a near death experience/dying I general and B getting destroyed because they realised it was too long. Most fics I read usually don't have the last part but I sort of love the whole 'world forgets the broken person' theme. Idk if it's just plain masochism on my part, but it feels strangely healing. One such fic that cane to my mind was an amnesia fic which tuned B into a whole prick (it was a drarry fic) and oof, it hurt so good.

There doesn't even need to be in a relationship. This stuff coming from parents/siblings (just take the Cass of Jiang cheng from mdzs) is lethal.

Vore fan here. I like to make my favorite boy cum and die; usually in that order :)

Oh I’m writing something like this! Character A and Character B were casual FWB, Character B had no intentions of progressing the relationship and wanted to be purely platonic with character A to not lead them on. Now Character B and Character C have become very committed but unconventional in their relationship. But characters A and B are about to get kidnapped together, a lil trauma bonded, and chaos will ensue (potential OT3 situation because B/C will never break up on my watch, but A/B was also solid and I love them). Added info: While B/C are falling in love, A and B are living together as roommates

…. I have found my people… 😭😭…. You’re all awesome… Oh, and making the person they love extremely pissed at them for whatever story reason, and/or them watching said crush get with someone else who hates the character.

I mostly don't because my fave's life in source is nothing but suffering, but I have had them die in childbirth and be murdered by an enemy.

Giving that bitch anxiety.

Male him or her pay for mistakes they made a very long time ago. It’s like opening a can of worms

My current trend for my blorbos seems to be religious trauma.

trauma of own death experienced by time travel

Love me some physical torture. Absolutely love a good amputation

body horror and existential horror are SO fun tbh

Tragedy. Like, Shakespearean levels. My boy will cry and so will my readers.

Tell Her that Her ex-husband is unambiguously stronger than She is and She's never taking down Arvandor, MISTRESS I WAS ONLY ANSWERING THE QUESTION PLEASE HAVE MERCY

• Make them think their love interest is in love with somebody else.

• Make them dream about something they think they can’t have, a happiness they think they don’t deserve, and then make them wake up.

Horrific injuries

1) reminding them of bad stuff that’s happened to them in canon

2) giving them something Tragic in their past

3) making them think they’re not good enough/unlovable/not worth anything

4) profit

I like to focus on physical pain and/or physical "context struggles" (ex: they live in a boat and there's constant storms, so they have to fight tooth and nail to survive and get hurt a lot). I love crushing my OCs, but I always give them happy endings and delicious comfort to balance things out.

Okay, let me get specific for a moment, yeah?

I like to make them feel lonely even when they're surrounded by people who love them (especially if they're surrounded by people who love them). Maybe it's because everyone is busy with other stuff and Favorite Character doesn't want to be a burden by telling them about their problems, or maybe things are weird between them and their loves ones for some reason (if that reason is that they used to date one of them or something like that, even better). I'm particularly fond of when Favorite Character's own personality is what's causing them to be alienated from everyone else; like, they know everyone would drop everything in a second to help them if they just asked for help, but they just won't, they prefer to suffer in silence like the emotionally stunted bitch they are (bonus points if the character is like that because of parental trauma).

And then when Favorite Character's problems inevitably blow up in everyone's faces and everyone finds out about how much Favorite Character has been struggling lately, they feel really guilty for not being there for them even though most of the time it is absolutely Favorite Character's fault for expecting everyone else to read their mind (that's how I torture the rest of the characters; there's not enough angst if Favorite Character is the only one suffering, of course).

Also, I just realized some things about myself while writing this, but since I'm an emotionally stunted bitch, I'm gonna ignore them.

All my favorite characters are incredibly hot headed, and I love when they make a rash decision out of anger and just absolutely fuck their lives up for no discernible reason. That "Oh shit what am I doing/what have I done?" moment is just...ugh, perfection.

Whump

Unrequited love, nightmarish quasi-dream sequences thats hazy and confusing, or just... violently hurting them with no comfort/resolution.

The person who feels like didn’t deserve love and pushed everyone away watching the first person they fell in love with dying in a way they could have easily prevented

Anxiety

They just care so much but it doesn't ever feel like anyone seems to care about them 😌👌 It's such a good hurt, especially because there's many ways to USE that. It could be that no one gives them the time of day, maybe something comes up and hurts them emotionally yet they don't get comfort, maybe they're physically hurt and no one helps them while they're trying to heal.

THE APPLICATIONS ARE ENDLESS.

Being in denial: ‘No no no way I don’t like insert love interest, I just insert lame excuse as coping mechanism, that’s all!!”

I kill random characters in my fics. 

Usually i just shove them into their leaat preferred situations though

ups, I guess I take the "torture" a bit more literal 🙈

Simply, I make him accountable and wrong. Tommy Shelby hates both accountability and being wrong. :) And I have everyone call him out...constantly. Muwahaha

I usually go more physical torture. Especially tied somewhere alone.

They feel worthless, or all of the almost. Almost saved their relationship. Almost saved their loved ones. Almost made it big. Almost had it all 😈

Give them hope- then take it, again and again.

Recently I *checks notes* had his throat torn out by a skeletal ghost tiger, had him poisoned and trapped in a well, and sent him back to the place where his brother was murdered. But other than that, I'm nice.

mental instability and self-loathing. I wrote one fic where A was traumatised as a child and became a very inhibited adult with really strict code of conduct and moral compass. Then A saw B, his beloved, the only thing good in his life, commit murder but still stayed silent about it. WHAZAM mental breakdown :DD

My favourite way to torture them is by literally torturing them. Having them placed in a torture chamber and beaten mercilessly

honestly anything and everything except major character death because I will be depressed for the next 2 weeks. Assaults, trauma, mental illnesses, nearly terminal diseases, a cold, etc etc as long as there is comfort at last.

I'm a simple person with simple tastes... unrequited feelings for the win

This is fascinating to me because I’m the opposite—I want fics building up to A and B being head over heels hopelessly codependently in love with each other and pining, but one of them sleeps with someone else or, if they’re dating, cheats in some way, due to them being messy and self-sabotaging and anxious or self loathing or whatever, but is still in love with their main person and then has to make amends somehow. Really gotta have some wallowing in self loathing in there to make it juicy. Like a fake marriage story with similar setup to yours (A and B are the preferred pairing, B and C are forced into fake relationship), but it’s about A being hurt by it while B has to reconcile their feelings for A with maintaining the relationship with C for appearances. But also B still fucks up and gets physical with C in some sad moment of weakness.

I also really dig an addiction storyline, a “beat up/attacked, but found and saved”, a sad sex work story, a closeted but torn up about it story, or all of the above. Give me a messy af broken uwu baby trying to figure out how to deal with big feelings and big trauma while being scared of love.

Gotta be that H/C though. Last time I read a fic without the comfort part, it was so emotionally devastating that it imprinted and still pops up in my brain to spook me randomly years later.

I feel like a psychologist would go crazy with this whole thread lol

Have the other half of the OTP be with someone else. But I'm all for the cheating. Then A just feels used because "he can fuck me on the side but he'll never leave his boyfriend."

But I give them a happy ending lol. Yes, A, B does in fact leave his bf!!! He's just an idiot. And since this is fiction, it's not "once a cheater, always a cheater" because A/B will live happily (faithfully) ever after lol.

Also A has canonical trauma. I exploit that and explore that a lot because he hides a lot of the shame he feels.

Kidnapping/torture where one has to find and rescue the other. Also I just wrote one where one was seriously injured and the other just had to wait for him to recover, so emotions torture, I guess, lol. Fortunately the one who wasn’t injured had a ton of friends around him to help him through, and there was a happy ending (because I can’t bring myself to do sad endings). The hurt must ultimately have comfort in my fics :)

Neglectful family and self doubt coupled with a lil whispering from her shit relatives.

I look at what they have to offer in canon speaking in terms of trauma, and then make it so so much worse

I have found my people

Their loved one either cheats or never loved them back. That or their loved one dies. Tragically.

For reference, these will both be centered on the same character.

One of my two most recent fics (one shot) has lots of self-loathing, low self-esteem, the belief that all of his friends (but one in particular) hate him, lots of angsty goodness

The other most recent fic (multi chap wip) has him getting kidnapped, drugged against his will, beaten with a crowbar, whipped, humiliation (via bodily fluids and non-consensual pet-play) and rape

“What is your favorite way to torture your favorite character?” Why, aftermath of torture, of course!

Kidding, it actually varies from character to character. What hits the hardest with A will not necessarily have the same effect with B, and what I like to see happen to B might be unenjoyably bad to see happen to C.

Mine went up to the mesosphere to control a disaster but didn’t get altitude sickness like the main character did. So I’m writing an alternate version where he doesn’t get the plot armor and suffers instead :)

I like killing or transforming them in such traumatizing that it leaves the reader scarred and thinking about my story for the next couple hours

I’ve made people cry with multiple different fics and made someone originally not in the fandom get super sad

Literal torture.

No, seriously. I have a weird love for writing torture scenes. Maybe it's something about figuring out what the character thinks about when every defense they had is stripped away, and they're gruesomely tortured. It lets you really get into their heads. I try to come up with torture scenes that feel impactful. It's definitely not in all of my works, but it's made it into at least 3 of them, though I guess 'maiming' would probably be more accurate for some of those.

I spend a surprising amount of time thinking about how to make torture scenes interesting and how to give them a proper impact when juxtaposed with the rest of the story.

In terms of emotionally torturing my characters though, my favorite is good old rejection, that awful feeling of seeing character A love character B, only for B to abandom them. Bonus points if A is still devoted to B while B continues to take advantage of their feelings for personal benefit.

Still working through all the possible ways to torment Mr. Darcy. I'll let you know in a few decades...