What I mean by good guy is a guy who helps a bunch of randoms all the time and has almost no sense of self. I prefer benefit-oriented MCs who have bottom lines like the one from 'A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality' and 'The Legendary Mechanic'. I'm fine with reading evil MCs as well as long as they are reasonable like Fang Yuan or Leylin. As for chaotic evil MCs, I do not really like them. I do not like the chaotic aspects of chaotic justice or chaotic evil. What do you all think about good MCs? Do you share my opinion or am I alone here?
I like good, selfless characters. But not when they're being good to people who don't deserve it. Like, they'd let someone trying to kill them go because its the right thing to do or some shit. I don't fuck with that.
I like good characters with a bottom line. They search for stable and efficient solutions instead of mindlessly sacrificing themselves. They do good deeds because humans naturally like what is good.
Depends on the how much they need to "pay" for the help. Like, helping a random person who dropped their things? Sure. Making the lives of yourself and the people related to you miserable just to help someone you met that one time? No way.
It's pretty normal to help other people who need help, yeah. Being a good person just means the protagonist's momma raised him right. I do agree there's a problem where many characters who are "good" have that as their only defining feature and are just kind of justice robots, but as a counterpoint, I'd like to point out most "evil" characters are injustice robots who only have the motivation of "I want to do evil stuff". There are also "normal" characters who are so focused on being "normal" that they just end up looking stupid. ... There are examples of all three types of characters done well, on the other hand. Even "chaotic evil" characters can be interesting (a novel recently starting translation about a certain butcher comes to mind) but I think it's a warning signal to begin with if the author opens up with "this character is [insert alignment]", or "he's a hero" or "she's a villainess". It means that will probably be the bulk of the character's personality, with any growth being a moment of doubt followed by the epiphany that the protagonist should keep doing the same thing.
I'd say that the opposite is true and that most writers have no idea how to construct villain protagonists so the ones the come up with tend to lead to terrible stories. Generally speaking the best villain characters are the ones who still have some sort of attachments; even if they're not normal ones. The true sociopathic protagonist just aren't all that compelling to read about. I think that the real problem is when characters (usually protagonists) do things and there are no consequences for it. I like it when characters do things that fail spectacularly or when events spiral out of their control. This is storytelling and the some of the best moments come out of characters having to think on their feet or are otherwise out of their depth. This is anathema to a lot of writers so their books end up feeling stale.
That's definitely a real problem, but it's not really related to whether a character is a good guy or not. It's more on the plot development side of the story.
The best solution is not to consider the dumbasses sparing their mortal enemies and sacrificing themselves for random strangers as good people - you aren't a good person if you do that, you're just stupid. It's not a good deed to leave a threat to your and your friends' and family's lives around and neither is abandoning the people who care about you for no good reason.
Same I agree I don't like lawful good characters If the story is dhit chaotic evil can be bland as well
I like bad ass characters myself, one’s that cross the line between good and evil much like this story here. https://www.novelupdates.com/series/everyone-else-is-a-returnee/
I think any character can be enjoyable regardless of their moral alignment as long as they're written properly. But considering how that's a luxury and your MC's probably a two dimensional NPC who had his character development arc postponed until the Monday 4th of never, you're going to have to improvise a bit. On one side you have Kirito's stupid brother, a victim of genericism who's vulnerable to hypocrisy and character inconsistency. Tends to have a justice-boner every now and then. Due to him being copy-pasted for god knows how many times his actions are pretty predictable, resulting in a pretty linear story. On the other side you have your average villain who's evil just for the sake of it. Not to be confused with scammers who claim to be 'evil' but need the author to dehumanize their adversaries to be able to even do as much as touch them (yes, I'm looking at you Cale). Often comes with a pre-packaged 5$ backstory. Has a chance to go around killing a bunch of people for no reason. I would personally prefer the latter over the former, simply because it adds a sense of uncertainty to the story and allows for the writer to tell the story from a side character's POV(is that too much to ask?), abandoning the MC. Since let's be real the MC probably has plot armor and is a demi-god who succeeds at everything he does.
Fu***ng yes. My god, so many japanese novels have this exact plot point in them. It's even more annoying when the character is still evil, and tries to do bad stuff to MC, but they die due to some other characters actions, or someone else getting revenge on them. Typical example of wanting to have cake and eat it too.
the thing is that most people have no idea how the world works or what's right/wrong. Who said killing is bad? Killing someone who committed a crime or enacting revenge is the right to do. Of course, that's super simple and doesn't take into account any other factor but on the base level, killing is not wrong. Murder is.
I've rarely seen very many do-good MC's lately. Honestly, I like the ones who are helpful to the others and get some sort of an unexpected benefit in doing so! I like happy-go-lucky MC's. But most of the novels lately have to do with scheming, violent, cunning or indifferent MC's. Its not bad but I really haven't seen the kind of MC's you're talking about in a while. And this is reading mostly Chinese LN's.
The thing that bothers me with the good guy character is that they tend to do small acts of goodness that get taken way out of proportion and get a ton of rewards from it, which takes away the idea that he was doing it purely from goodwill, or they're basically trying to sacrifice themselves for every random stranger on the street, which tends to feel very disingenuous and reads more like they need psychological help. I also have a huge problem with the good guy character literally butting into everyone's business, even when he is explicitly not wanted there. They tend to take hard stances in morally grey situations, trying to appeal to our modern sensibilities so we will agree with them, even when it's completely inappropriate for the situation/time. It's annoying and makes me instantly dislike the character, because it doesn't treat them like a character. I know some people enjoy that kind of thing but it just annoys me to no end. Also, they tend to easily forgive people of terrible crimes, which usually comes across as super hypocritical. Like, who the hell are you to let a murderer go scot free without a trial??? I like characters with defined personalities, with quirks and actual relationships. It's amazing to me just how fun it can be to read about a character just hanging out with their friends. No good or evil, just having fun. I think one of the problems with good guy characters is that they don't really get to have relationships of equal standing, everyone must bend to the good guys oh so glorious charm and be his literal slave. The good guy must ALWAYS be right.
Revenge by itself isn't a good reason to do anything at all. If someone is being a villain, that's reason enough to stop them. If they're going to cause problems for you in the future, stopping them from doing that is likely a good idea. Making an example of someone to prevent others from doing the same may also be of use. When a heroic MC has a revenge target the narrative usually supplies one of the above reasons or something else that makes their revenge-taking something that is objectively worth doing. Something that would make their vengeance quest worth doing even if it wasn't personal! The personal aspect just drives the MC to be the one to do it - it being revenge does not by itself make the action worth pursuing. Imagine the MC busts down the door and kills an old guy that's been selflessly helping others for several decades after repenting for whatever they did to the MC. Helping so effectively, in fact, that the the world will objectively be a worse place without this now-genuinely-selfless old guy helping others in it. Is this heroic? Frankly, showing that "If you do bad things someone might kill you several decades from now" isn't going to do much to dissuade any current criminals. The cigarette companies would have gone out of business long ago if such distant and uncertain consequences were sufficient to stop people from doing things.
Killing for justice unrelated to you is something I agree with. However I disagree with the revenge aspect. Killing the person who killed someone unjustly for revenge is not wrong. It’s not bad. Now you can say, well I’m killing for justice and not revenge. Fine. But, revenge falls under justice. Unjust revenge however does not, for example like killing the daughter of the man who killed someone close to you. Or killing 5 people in exchange for the murder of 1. Or killing someone who just idk beat up someone close to u. And so on. You get my point.
I consider revenge to be a very specific form of schadenfreude - the gleaning of pleasure from the suffering of another. It can cross paths with being righteous, but only because taking additional enjoyment from one's actions is not an inherently bad thing. It does not, in any way, add righteousness to the revenge-takers actions. Any situation where revenge is making things better would be just as good in the larger scheme of things if the revenge-taker was a 3rd party without any personal connection to the situation. It'd be less satisfying to read about, because.. well, schadenfreude is an enjoyable sensation and revenge stories often offer guilt-free schadenfreude (since the target is generally someone that should be defeated anyway for non-revenge reasons). Edit: That's not the only reason people enjoy such stories, of course, just a part of why it'd be less satisfying if the MC lacked a personal connection.