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I'm trying to put together a background story for my MMC, Leo. I had one idea to begin with, but it utilizes that overused orphan concept which I've already used for the FMC who's parents are both dead due to different reasons; custody of her was given to her uncle and his side of the family.
Although I would hate to use the orphan concept again, I suppose it depends on a number of things.
This here was my original idea:
The first one, unfortunately, applies the overused orphan concept. Leo’s parents never had any intentions to have children due to a busy schedule that consumed their time with travel and an inexperienced, confound nature that wouldn’t know what to do if one was there, and Leo was no exception. The mother was actually raped; the convict was never found, and Leo was conceived (I really hope I'm using the word "conceived" correct). And yes, I’m subtly hinting that Don Juanism is genetic, therefore suggesting that the culprit suffered it as well (giving reason for why he would attack this woman) and passed it on to Leo.
Leo was kept merely out of pity as his deformity brought up the concern that he’d never be adopted. Somewhere between a few weeks to months old, his parents disappeared without a trace and were never found. Their abandoned home was eventually entered by police who found the baby, Leo by himself. An ugly rumor began that his parents actually fled the country, feeling they were too incompetent to raise a child, yet too mentally impaired to figure out what to do with him. Leo then went through years of foster families until he made the decision to live on his own in his late teens, mainly due to the development of his Don Juanism which was growing increasingly difficult to hide and control, especially in the presence of female foster family members. He currently lives in a small home by himself; he is still highly financed by foster care and a care taker visits on a regular basis to check on him.
The second idea is a lot like the first except his parents do exist, at least, to a degree. Everything up to the conceiving of Leo is the same; however, his parents don’t disappear into the blue. They remain with him, but their busy schedules and confound natures keep them away from home most of the time. They tend to be gone for three to six months, sometimes longer. It is very evident that they know little about his situation at home, that he’s failing literally everything in school and suffers from Don Juanism.
So which idea is better?
I personally like my original idea, but the orphan concept is just so OVERUSED. I suppose what I should be looking at is the effect it has on the characters. Normally when I think of parents who are rarely around, I get the sense that the child becomes resentful of the parents. This is why I chose to have the FMC's parents dead. Her mother died shortly after her birth due to physical illness, and only a few years later, her father committed suicide due to mental illness. These "impairments" and their grave effects on the parents gave the FMC a subconscious guilt, like it was somehow her fault that they both died; she subconsciously feels like she overwhelmed them both in some way that lead to their deaths. There's no evidence that proves she had any connection to their deaths; still, it's a subconscious guilt that she represses. Thus she developed at a young age a co-dependency towards those with "conditions" or "impairments". When she sees or encounters someone who portrays one or both of these, it causes her to reflect on her parents; that subconscious guilt rises, and she then feels a need to sympathize with him/her. If her parents were not dead due to some sort of "impairment" and were simply never around due to work, she would instead develop a sense of resentment towards her parents; she could still develop co-dependency, but not on the same level. She would not be as likely to sympathize with impaired people, and if she did not have it in herself to do that, the whole plot would have fallen on its face.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, the difference between dead or alive parents really effects this story.
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