A difficult character question.

[Leigh]

I don't want to ask this. I've been trying to compose this post for the past two days, and I keep hesitating 'cause I really, really don't wanna do this. It just keeps popping into my head, so maybe I need to.

Anika, Ilyssia's creator, last put a post on the list on May 25th, 2015. After that, she announced she was treating something she said wasn't cancer, and then disappeared. All my e-mails to her went unanswered; my chosen sister did a Facebook search for her and found an account that looked like it'd been cleaned out. I adopted Ilyssia with the hope that Anika would come back.

Soon Anika will have been gone three years. Still no word. I'm really afraid she's dead.

The question is, what should I do with Ilyssia? I guess she's mine now, but I've no ideas how to build her up and make her truly mine. Anika didn't have time to tell me about her backstory, her biological family, what her mother was running from, her personal goals, or anything else; I don't think she'd had much time herself to think about it. I do what I can to keep Lys in character, but she's become an afterthought despite how much she means to A'kua. I don't want to screw her up, but I don't believe I can play her as well as Anika did. That makes it hard to help Ilyssia grow as a character, and make her relationships with her friends and A'kua naturally progress.

I'm stuck. I feel really stuck. So now what? Any ideas, anyone?

Anyone at all?

[Eimi]

In my experience, when your persona is attached to another and that persona's writer is gone and you don't think anyone else could write them like the original, the best thing is to write the attached persona out and archive them.  That may not be what you had originally hoped for them, but sometimes it leads to real growth for your persona.  Also, by writing them out (saying the relationship fizzled out and they transferred elsewhere for example) that doesn't mean that they can never come back.  Retired personas can be "reclaimed" in the future if you decide to do so.

[Paula]

You basically have two options:

A) truly make her your own. Make up her backstory, either following guidelines you already got or totally re-write it. It's not the first time things have gotten retconned here. I did that with Lenala, I tried to stay loayl to her established history but she did grew up to be her own person and different what was probably her original writer's intention.

B) retire her as Eimi says. I did that with Erassa, and look what happened: she's back.

[Leigh]

Thank you, you two. I feel a little less.... well, guilty for feeling stuck and asking what to do, I guess, hearing your opinions. I'll try some brainstorming first; hopefully I can think of something good. We'll see.

Thank you again for your perspectives.

[Yvonne]

*hugs* Whatever you do, will be the right choice. This happens a lot in PbEMs, I find. A writer can't stay, for whatever reason, and you're left with a meaningful relationship that needs to go.. somewhere.

The third option would be to put her up for adoption. It might be a different Illyssia than the character that you first fell in love with, but with a new writer behind her she might become a different person to be a foil for yours. Some of my favourite characters have been adopted. You never know what might happen!