My character is becoming an edgelord. Help!

I recently joined a campaign where everyone in the party grows up in the same small, woodland village. I decided I would be playing a rogue character I had already created, but needed to modify his backstory a bit to better fit his quaint rural upbringing.

Originally: he grew up as an orphan, unwanted, took to stealing to survive and hardened by life on the streets in his decently big city

Bio:

I was a common street urchin who made a living by lightening the purses of folks traveling through my turf of the city until the day I robbed this dandy wearing a pith helmet. He told me not to, saying something about curses, but his words were too similar to those spoken by a thousand other marks, so I ignored his warning not to don the fancy cloak I stole from him, and now.... No matter how sneaky you are, it’s really freaking hard to get away with crimes when you’re the only person in a thousand miles who looks like a walking corpse, so I had to hit the road and become a wandering thief as I try to figure this mess out. My name is Lucky F Boone and I'm shadow-cursed. 

Now he's just.....

**New Bio so far:**

Mum's the town whore, Da's the town drunk, and I'm a bastard in every sense of the word. Growing up, some of my neighbors never even bothered to learn my name, instead calling me "Junior Disgrace" or "The Future Village Embarassment" because with parents like mine, I could never become anything else.

Mum died when I was so young that I can barely remember her face, but Da made sure I grew up knowing that I killed her, since her health was never the same after she bore me.

I started stealing because my stomach was always empty and I got blamed whenever anything in the village went missing anyway, so I might as well get some benefit from my "crimes".

I grew up with two lessons mocked, taunted, or beaten into me daily:

* No one will look out for me except me.
* If the world's only going to see me as shifty and untrustworthy, there's no point in trying to be anything else.

How do I fix this while remaining as true to my original concept of him as possible? Help!

I liked the first one more than the second one. They are both a little cliché, but that is almost impossible to get around. 

The shadow-cursed idea would be my personal end goal. While I could use the "I grew up with two lessons mocked, taunted, or beaten into me daily:" quote to get me there. If you want to go the street urchin approach, both parents could have left our young hero and he grew up on the fringe, living off of anything he can find or steal. They would find friends, who ended up abandoning him every time. Then one day he tries to rob an outsider, who curses him and for reparations to remove the curse he has to help a group of adventurers the outsider supports or even sends on a quest. He could even switch his expertise due to the curse from pick pocketing, to trap making & problem solving.

One of the most overlooked things for a lot of new players is how does your story integrate you into the group you somehow care about. Too many players think the cliché of the lone wolf or the "I don't get along with others" characters are a good idea, until they see how it clashes with playing at a table (BTW, I was terrible about this in high school). If you could come up with a way to force your character to adhere to a group and to risk their safety for others makes for a more compelling game.  

Try playing up the fact that your character is immature and maybe more than a little bratty.  Show that they think they're really deep and hardcore, but it's actually the actions of someone who's just a kid playing at being mature.  Nothing defuses the annoyance of an edgelord quite so quickly as being a self-aware parody of an edgelord.

Though be sure not to go too far- you don't want to be disruptive with it.

Just to reskin your orignal bio to make it a little less edgy:

"I was a common street urchin who made a living by lightening the purses of folks traveling through my turf of the city until the day I robbed this dandy wearing a pith helmet.  I lifted his purse but just as I turned away I felt his hand on my shoulder, "tsk, tsk" he said "almost, but not quite, maybe you have the nack, if not you could be trained", he handed me the flambouant claok he had been wearing and said "wear this and see if you can pick a few pockets. if you can, come and find me in (insert city). So now I'm of two minds; do I don the fancy cloak and try my luck becoming a thief or do I just sell the cloak and move on?. My name is Lucky F Boone and this might be my only chance to get out of this town and become someting more than an urchin."

That should give you a reason to want to leave the starting village and if there is another group of people looking to leave then you have a reason to tag along with them and it doesn;t matter if you are thinking of looking for the individual that gave you the cloak or just transforming yourself from an urchin to something more.

Definitely go with this one- wording is everything in writing no matter what it is

The thing that makes edgelords a bit hard to make work (in my opinion) is their propensity for:

• having a backstory that leaves nothing behind. There are no plothooks in your second story, and not that many in your first, though I do prefer the first!
• Having a backstory that makes them lone wolves. "I only rely on me, and no-one else" is a cliche which makes them hard to integrate into a group.
• Having a cliche backstory which inevitably goes unused. The first backstory has a single hook - to get free of the curse from the cloak. The second has no hooks at all!

Things you can do to remedy this are:

• Make some enemies and some friends. You can still be the street urchin who lightened pockets for a living, but perhaps you got caught one day stealing from the wrong people, and made an enemy of a crime lord. Then, perhaps you were broken out by the Thieves guild, who saw your potential and gave you an opportunity to join, and relocation to a new place - in this group of adventurers, who took some coin to take you on as their Rogue.
• Be less a lone wolf, more a mother hen. You rely solely on yourself to keep yourself alive, but you also rely on yourself to keep your friends alive as well. You wil ltry to carry the team even if it's too heavy, because whilst you don't ask for help, you gladly offer it.
• Leave some marks behind you! Steal the cloak from a mysterious manor house on the outskirts of town that they say is haunted, leaving someone behind to chase you for it - perhaps stealing it from the pith-helmeted man as he leaves, because he just stole it, leaving 2 parties (the owner and the first thief) trying to get it back. Make an enemy of the crime lord, an ally of the thieves guild. Perhaps have been caught enough times that there're no strikes left for you here, leaving your ears notched from the marks they used to brand you as a thief.

The best remedy for the edgelord is to remove the cliche stuff - the dead parents, the "only rely on yourself" attitude. The cool original stuff with the cape and the curse is awesome and should definitely be expanded upon. Ultimately, they are becoming an edgelord because that's what you're making them!

And most importantly - why are they in the party?