Ever noticed that your character is a pretty crappy person? / What if worldbuilding leads to moral issues?

I don't mean them being intended as one.
I've got more of a flexible writing style, where I'm somewhat open about what happens.
What's important to me is that the characters make sense in their actions, and act realistically, according to their upbringing, situation, circumstances.

For example, right now, one of my MCs got a heavy blow to her family. She's about to go on a warpath and make things right. I intend her to become quite a bit more ruthless than she's usually. That's realistic for me, given the circumstances. I'm a bit afraid that might take her a bit away from her usual characterization. There is the chance that readers won't like her acting lower than her usual principles, as principles should hold meaning for a character, in my opinion, or you risk losing what makes the character what they are. Not every change makes for good character development, in my opinion. That being said, she's not the problem character I had in mind. Rather, more of an example regarding how characterization can become problematic in the process of a proceeding story.

The one that's problematic, would be the MC of a newer story (medieval fantasy setting). She's young, but almost an adult. Yet, when I think about her, I find that I characterize her as a military nerd who wants to enlist in the army against her family's will. Thing is, she's like 1,60m. She's rather frail, yet still argues against her family, who want her to take over the well-going shop. While I kinda liked her rebellious traits, and she's got reasons to idolize the army that protects them all, by now I feel like she's bordering on delusional. The army is fighting orcs, which, for me, refers to creatures close to the Warcraft orcs, before turning green (may have made a naming mistake). Through magical circumstances she becomes some sort of Lich, and she gets enlisted, yet now, of course, she complains at the fairly brutal training she receives, because she's physically not up to it, aside from her magic. So the girl who always knew better and argued that she could totally become a soldier is now against soldier training.
Also, she hates the orcs with a passion, to the point that it sounds fairly racist. Given the setting, this makes sense. But as she learns to use her magic and gets forced to kill animals to practice, I find that she seems to have an easier time killing a semi-intelligent orc, rather than a dog. Like, she's so close to say "at least it was just an orc". Also, there are a form of demi-humans around. MC isn't particularly racist about them, but has some societal sentiments. It's those little things that, in hindsight, make her seem pretty crappy. As I wrote before, I usually let my characters play themselves. Her attitude in many ways makes sense to me. Fortress town at the border, knows orcs just as wild beasts, keen on killing them all, idolizes the military beyond reason, demi-humans having generally bad reputation, due to them being somewhat animalistic. All this comes together and makes her who she is. Yet, while I'm fine writing her as is, I sometimes ask myself if the path of playing her out realistically is alright. Like, I don't quite support racism, but my character...

On that line of thought, I wrote a lot of settings where my characters said problematic things. Like, one of my MCs can't understand how a republic would work, as she only experienced a monarchy. One character even argued to turn the monarchy more into a dictatorship. As I neither support racism nor dictatorships, that's pretty problematic, in my opinion.

Do you experience such things as well? That your characters have developed a bit of an independent life, and now make you write stuff that you hope you won't have associated with you, or are concerned about the backlash to their characters? How do you deal with them being hated by some comments, while you still kinda want to respond that, given their circumstances, they are acting understandably, without seeming personally too supportive of their agenda?

One of the ways to avoid this making the character seem like a bully is a POV swap.

If the fight is going to be a curb stomp do it not from the protagonist view

expentio said:

Do you experience such things as well?

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Yeah... In MFGR, Nick is a bit of an asshole, but the way I wrote the story blew it out of proportion from what I intended. 70 chapters in and I kind of want to delete the whole thing and rewrite the story to slow down the pacing, include better relationship building, and make things seem more natural... after reading it over again, I realise I just wrote a gooner power fantasy instead of a fun Isekai LitRPG based in worlds seldom used.

As for fictions with racism ... Putting them in a fantasy world is just that, fantasy. I would argue that having contemporary morals in a non contemporary setting ruins the world building.

That being said , readers don't like a bully. So keep that in mind.

Isn't it being imperfect make the characters become more alive?
In my opinion, worldbuilding that based on "perfect world" only lead to generic worldbuilding. For example, like Game of Throne, it was crossing the line of some moral issues, but that was what made Game of Throne series memorable.

That's precisely the advantage of dark fantasy... you can explore the moral gray area. My fiction is even built on the assumption of a moral premise: What if the world chose to forget its savior and its sins, while the savior chose instead to protect her daughter's innocence?

So, implicitly, I cannot be neutral in narrating where I am forced to choose between domestic peace vs. the peace of the broken world.

Most of my characters also live by certain moral values. For example, Marry El Rose lives by the values of bloody justice for silenced victims and absolute protection for children (especially her little daughter). Caelan El Rose is a little girl who lives by true innocence and affection for her mother as the center of the world. Detective Clara lives by empathy, conscience, and the awareness of not being able to turn away from the victim even though she will be traumatized.

The characters in my fiction make their moral values the center of their lives. The friction between the characters' moral values is what creates the living conflict. I just narrate them based on how they live as humans who have their subjective morality.

Eldoria said:

That's precisely the advantage of dark fantasy... you can explore the moral gray area. My fiction is even built on the assumption of a moral premise: What if the world chose to forget its savior and its sins, while the savior chose instead to protect her daughter's innocence?

So, implicitly, I cannot be neutral in narrating where I am forced to choose between domestic peace vs. the peace of the broken world.

Most of my characters also live by certain moral values. For example, Marry El Rose lives by the values of bloody justice for silenced victims and absolute protection for children (especially her little daughter). Caelan El Rose is a little girl who lives by true innocence and affection for her mother as the center of the world. Detective Clara lives by empathy, conscience, and the awareness of not being able to turn away from the victim even though she will be traumatized.

The characters in my fiction make their moral values the center of their lives. The friction between the characters' moral values is what creates the living conflict. I just narrate them based on how they live as humans who have their subjective morality.

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I also think that moral ambiguity is an interesting concept and deserves to be developed.
Still, I am asking myself what I want from my MCs.
Like, how far am I willing to let her slaughter orcs and see them as lesser than animals? They are some form of very aggressive, savage, tribal people, but overall still people. So I think I'll have to address this.

At the end of the day I feel like you have to decide what kind of story you are going for. Your lich MC sounds pretty deplorable to me, which is not a bad thing nescsarily. But it can go a few different ways. It can turn into a redemption story, where she learnes the error of her ways and breaks out of the social programing that has made her who she is. It can be a Breaking Bad type story, where by the end the reader roots for her downfall. But if her mindset is not challenged and those challenges don't change her, for better or worse, I feel it won't make for a good narrative, and that's just a universal truth of storytelling in my opinion. So the question should not be as much about what the character could and should be, but what she can become.

Edit because I hit post by accident like an idiot: As for the problematic worldbuilding I feel like its fine to do, as long as you actualy grapple with the morality of it. Death of the author is a thing, but it can never be absolute. At the end of the day no matter how detached you are from your work, if you just make a racist power fantasy its not gonna matter. If the glove fits, and all that. Cultures are not monoliths, so if you are gonna show problematic things don't just stop there. Show dissent, show hesitation, show things from the POV of the people hurt by the problematic status quo. It might upset some people, but the best stories in my opinion are the ones that make you think. So as long your stories and world building pose questions rather and make statements, I believe you would have no trouble assossiating yourself with them.

As for how to deal with negative comments, yo uare always gonna upset someone. It comes with the territory in the creative process. You just need to figure out who to care about upsetting, and ignore the others (to the best of oyur ability).

I have a story that never got far enough along to post where the MC flat out lies to ... just about everyone, including the reader. He's very unreliable... but also basically a good person, aside from some serious issues with truth...

Well, that's the thing. Character development can make a character a worse person, but "bad" character development is still character development. People might get annoyed, but if it actually makes sense for such a change to happen, it works. People might complain, yeah, but they also might appreciate it. Especially if she had some sort of redemption, or even just struggles with her morals after. We all make bad choices, some far more extreme than others, and yeah, sometimes we even go against our morals. But does that make your character bad as a character, or bad as a person? That depends on you, really, and how you handle the transformation. I think the biggest thing that will determine whether or not it works is
why she hates the orcs. You know the saying, you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.

As for my experience, I've had a character that believes in somewhat questionable things, but I can't say they've ever gone to extremes.

Some of the best literature in the world is about characters who get worse. Sometimes, by the end of a story, they realize who've they become and try to get better. Sometimes they don't. Ultimately, we are all writing about the human condition, and that includes aspects of ourselves that are unsavory. I'd really encourage you not to be afraid of letting your protagonist change significantly throughout your story. It's good that you have a strong idea of who you want her to be and the principles she follows, but, ultimately, if the story is taking her in a direction where she begins to betray those principles (or lose them altogether), that's a good thing. That's character development. That's dramatic and engaging and exciting.

And don't be concerned about 'backlash' to your characters. Like I said, art is about all of ourselves, even the bad parts. And also, anyone who assumes that you, the author of a text, must automatically agree with the opinions of the fictional characters you write is someone who needs some more education in the arts. Focus more on your themes. What does your story say overall? Does it critique life under a feudal monarchy? Does it show the self-destructiveness inherent to racism? It doesn't matter what the characters you have say--they're devices for the larger narrative.