Morinda was never meant to be a major character. It just kind of accidentally happened over time, but now she is, and I need to figure out what to do with her. The problem is she doesn’t really perform any important role in the story. I suppose I could just leave things like that, but I don’t think the readers (assuming there ever is any) would find that very satisfying. Let me start by giving the background she has so far. She was born out of wedlock in a small village. Her father was a wizard who knocked up her mother, and then abandoned them, only sending them enough money to survive. It should be mentioned that being able to use magic in this world is largely hereditary, and for that reason wizards are ‘strongly encouraged’ to only marry other wizards, so situations like her mother’s are not that uncommon. Anyways, she grew up with a childhood friend who she eventually became romantically involved with. They then eventually became engaged, but shortly after he was discovered to be a talented knight (a supernatural profession in this world), and was adopted, and taken away, by a powerful knight clan. At first they still had some contact, but she hasn’t heard from him in a long time, and she’s not too happy about that since she’s still in love with him, and all that. She met the MC when he came to her village to stay for awhile, and she worked as his maid while he was there. Nothing really romantic is going on between her, and the MC, and I’m not planning for it to since there is another character I’d rather the MC be with. I’m not planning on making this a harem story. Anyways, she eventually left the village with the MC in order to try her luck at the magic school he attends. She hopes that if she becomes a wizard she can reunite with her fiance. Luckily for her she has some of her father’s talent for magic, and got accepted into the school. That’s where things are at right now. So now I’m trying to figure out her fate going forwards, and to think of how she can be a meaningful part of the story. I was thinking of maybe having a magic school outing later where they are all attacked by demons who are attempting to kidnap the students. The MC will be forced to choose between saving her, and the girl I want him to be with. He’d choose the other girl leading to her being killed, or maybe transformed into a demon who comes back for revenge. Does that seem any good? Any thoughts on her character would be appreciated, thanks.
Is your MC lone wolf? Does he have a party? If you want a significant role for her you can stick her in your MC's party. It doesn't have to harem and if it bothers you, you can balance you party to have equal numbers of both genders. If you really want to go far, make an organization for illegitimate children of wizards (legal or illegal, maybe an underworld organization that uses this for manpower or a political figure that wishes to use this aspect for fire power) since you mention that magic is hereditary so these children should have magic too. Awaken her talent or make her hardworking or something, give her a position with some power. If she has power within an organization, you can use her as connections for the MC. Don't be so quick to kill you character that you've developed, it's harder to make unique characters after you've used up ideas.
If it based on your original idea, I think like this. If MC close to Morinda, I think it is better if Morinda has a mental breakdown. "Why? I always not chosen?". She become negative, and turned into demon(??) slowly, at first she still retains her humanity, like is this correct decision? no? crisis identity then search for the fiance that leaves her, if fiancee betray her, yes she kill him. She snapped, everything doesnt work well for her, and she decide to side with the evil and destroy everything, since she was corrupted, when becoming demon she is calculative, and doesnt trust anyone. I think she is better as 'big boss' later on. I see rarely NPC that MC ditch become villain. MC will regret his choice maybe? character development? from now on MC wont make same mistakes again?
It is very interesting to me, to see the butterfly effect of what MC choose. Because I think, not many novel does this, more like villain become villain because someone else, not MC, then they found MC by chance and they clashed, so MC easily kill them, "since they are evil! and I dont know them anyway". No deep thoughts If it is like this, it will make MC think twice, this is their sin of sacrificing someone, and MC should pay the price. MC will be in dillemma, should MC kill her again twice? MC is the one who make her like this. MC feel guilty.
Err, how about an asspull with the MC saving the girl intended while Morinda got lucky with a handicap/ scarring but still alive. Of course she will hate the MC for not saving her and all, but if she is the type that can understand that their relationship is not that deep in the first place, then maybe you can extend her to be MC's rival in school and work. From what I understand by looking at her baclground, she has someone she is already fond of, most likely her hatred from MC will stem from the disfigurement rather than MC not opting to save her, as spoken with their relationship being only temporary master and servant. I do believe the relationship has been lessened as their enrolment had made them into equals?
There are so many options i could think of... Is there a way that you can just put her as a companion? She could 'awaken' her talent in a life and death situation (not as soon as the school time if ever). She could get relevance on putting her with a new significant role that could also make connection to the lover she is asking for another arc without being a harem member, she could just be thankful that she gets to serve her master for a while and have her goal of going to magic school to find her lover and something to connect her to have the knight join later? (Solution 1) If you go to a dramatic death option, you could also have the 2 option with the lover was forced to not communicate and still in-love with the maid (he gets angry when he knew you somehow killed her) or he just don't care anymore and have the maid realize that (no more plot related to the lover then)?
what do you mean with meaningful? for this cat meaningful on story mean it affect plot or character plot can consist it drive the plot to certain direction direct or indirectly such as romance or death lead to war, conspiracy, ending~ character hmm value hold by character, character personality, growth or something like that~ da easiest way imo death and romance~ breakup on romance is hmm good way to grow da character albeit romance actually hard thing to write~ death another way to grow fa character on tragic way perhaps~ oh there also way hmm support by slapping character value by argument or something so character view toward certain topic affected or change~ well that some idea for start~
How about OTT Or maybe yuri development with the MC's girl and they abandon MC Or let Morinda have the same fate with her mother; get knocked by MC and give birth to "not planned kid" and live quietly in a small village and they only have some little cameo when the kid start the adventure of Morinda the 2nd Or Morinda got isekai-ed and now struggle in spin off story how she try return to her world Or Morinda's fiancee magically appear as reinforcement and thus mc and fiance incorrectly save their respective beloved ones...... and due to Stockholm Syndrome, MC end up with Morinda and Fiance married the MC's girl ...... ..... .... I think i still have some nasty idea that will make you frown so lets stop here before imagination running more wildly
Hmmm as of now I can't really see a reason for her to just die in there... She could develop into a nice supporting character actually, if you can somehow have the mc help her get back to her relationship with her beloved you'd give the MC some limited connections with the knight organization which could be used at a later date, or maybe keep her as a party member but have her develop a relationship with someone other than the mc, give her some chemistry with the archer (as an example) or another ally of the mc, it's nice seeing people other than the main character develop relationships and grow Or maybe just to throw her away, make her develop a relationship with someone random in a city where the mc doesn't go frequently and have her settle in there, just because you don't really see them as important doesn't mean they should die/have a bad end, please spare them mob character lives #mobcharalivesmatter
Since it's a school outing, there should be bunch of kids. Say in the confusion during the attack, the kids get separated into small groups as they try to defend themselves. The MC can make his choice to aid your best girl while Morinda is left with some other kids/classmates. You can leave her and their fate uncertain from the MC's point of view for tension. Whatever happens to Morinda, happens off screen. Thus you could keep Morinda alive for future use. Perhaps during her off screen survival experience, her actions turn out to be above average and she catches the interest of some important classmate/instructor/guardian and she gets offered to be taken in by their family/group/whatever. She goes off on her own way, while thanking the MC for their time together, blah, blah, blah. Then time skip to some future story arc where the MC meets her accidentally or deliberately to ask for aid from her backers.
There are many things you can do with Morinda. Where does her magical talent lie, for example? People likely wouldn't overtly 'encourage' the "mages marry mages" rule (after discovering the detriments of inbreeding) unless there was some tangible benefit, like a 100% chance of mages in the bloodline instead of 30%, or the children are more likely to have a larger Mana Pool/Variety of Magic Types to draw upon. Not making guesses to how your Magic System works, by the way, just throwing out options. Anyway, what you can do with her is different is she's an Enchanter, a Dedicated Battle-mage, an All Rounder, a Puppeteer, an Elementalist, or something else. Keeping her alive is better than killing her off, even if you don't know what to do with her, she may be able to take the place of some other character you were intending to introduce down the track. Hell, she even has motivation to train and grow at the same rate as the MC, even if they aren't interacting. Placing them in separate classes is a good idea, and having them meet occasionally as she develops her skills far various reasons, from inter-class sparring or showcasing the items they produced in workshop class, would be interesting. The main point is, you don't need to keep her deeply in the story, particularly if she entered the School later than the MC. Hell, having her become a friendly junior rival character could be interesting, as could having her become a friendly craftsman. Basically, you can probably easily have her fill the role of some minor or secondary character you have yet to introduce without issues.
There are a lot of great replies here. Thanks for that. I’ve thought about it some more, and have decided to ditch killing her off, or the whole demon revenge thing. Some of the ideas for that last one seemed interesting, but I don’t think I’d be able to pull it off well. Anyways, I guess I’ll just leave her as a companion character, who comes, and goes, in the story. I think maybe the real reason I was reluctant to do this before was because doing so means I probably need to give some resolution to her romantic, and family, issues, which is a lot of work. Maybe the best way to deal with this would be to have her, and the MC, split for awhile (because as a third year he will graduate before her) then all that stuff could happen when he’s not around. Then she can just tell him the results of it all when she sees him next. That would probably only take a few paragraphs, whereas describing it all in detail while it happens would likely take me thousands of words. Either way, I guess I still have to actually decide what happens in that regard. I was thinking that maybe there is some important girl in the clan that adopted Morinda's boyfriend who wants to marry him, and has been keeping him from seeing Morinda. She’s also been hiding the letters that Morinda’s been sending from the magic school. I’m not sure how I want things to play out though. Does the guy really love her? Will he choose her? Will he try to go the polygamy route (that’s somewhat accepted in this world because of their whole obsession with breeding better super people)? Should they end up together, should she find someone else, or just be single? Who knows. I better pick something though. I suppose it really doesn’t matter much except in terms of her character development. You are right that the mages marriage traditions do serve an important purpose. In order to be a mage in this world you need spiritual roots. Usually only the children of mages will be born with spiritual roots, and even in the rare instances when non mage children are born with spiritual roots they are of the lowest quality 'trash' spiritual roots. The quality of the spiritualist roots determines their ability to gather magical power, and those with ‘trash’ spiritual roots are unable to reach the peak for that reason (actually an important plot point in my story is that the MC has trash roots). The spiritual roots do indeed come with special abilities, but the only special ability I was thinking of was various degrees of different types of elemental affinity. Now that you brought it up I think all add some other abilities like being good at enchanting, and whatnot. The percentages you picked are pretty close to my own. Here is a list of some pairings, and potential outcomes. Mage + non mage = There is a 25% chance of having the same type of spiritual roots as the mage parent, but slightly weaker, and more ‘mixed’. Two mages of the same type = There is a 95% chance that the children will be the same, and a 5% chance of them not having spiritual roots. Two mages of different types = There is a 90% chance of children having ‘mixed’ roots, a 5% chance of them having ‘trash’ roots and a 5% chance of them not having spiritual roots. Two mages with different ‘mixed’ types = There is a 70% chance of children having ‘mixed’ roots, a 25% chance of them having ‘trash’ roots and a 5% chance of them not having spiritual roots. Also of note, there is an unsavory practice some mage clans have when they need ‘new blood’. They will have a lot of out of wedlock children, then later when those children are grown come back, and test them for spiritual roots, and then absorb the ones who have them into the clan. They figure that the widening of the gene pool, and the increased numbers, is worth the reduction in ‘purity’. I’ve considered having Morinda be such a child. It would be interesting to see how she would react to the return of the people who abandon her, and her mother. Still it doesn’t really serve any good purpose in the story so maybe I’ll skip it. Anyway the mages of this world are kind of horrible, but I still find the situation very interesting in a bleak sort of way. Because of their unsavory practices they are powerful, and because they are so powerful no one can challenge them for their unsavory practices.
I feel like you would have had to give her a resolution at this point, anyway, even if she ran into or turned into a Demon and was subsequently killed. Even if that resolution was the MC discovering her ex-fiance and what his life is now like. The character sounds interesting, and it would probably be better for the story if the readers witnessed some of the resolution, either by having Morinda with the MC when she discovers her ex-fiance's situation and running off, or having the MC run into her when she's near whatever resolution occurs with her ex-fiance. Though, if you want to avoid readers getting a "Morinda will end up with the MC" implication, you might prefer the first and have her recap later on. Honestly, if they're both still at school now, I suspect that having Morinda discover what happened with her ex-fiance due to an inter-school competition or something else related to the school would be a good start up that the MC could witness. A good way may to be to have some friendly interaction with children from a Knights School where ex-fiance was mentioned, and Morinda having discovered more information, plans to visit him at some point, possibly forcefully. However you want to deal with the resolution could happen off screen and informed to the reader via recap to the MC later. It also has the benefit of not making the MC the center of existence, and pointing out that there are other people's stories going on at the same time that could be equally compelling.