I ask you, fellow crafters of magnificent worlds filled with hope and dreams, or tragedy and despair. Do you write your protagonist relatable to make the experience somewhat mundane, or write it for the readers to experience from another, detached perspective of someone else whom you couldn't relate to? I myself have never considered being related to any protagonists from the fictions I have read, and I also don't consider my protagonist to be relatable to anyone, except for the minority. ( He is ruthless, somewhat insane and literally cook dead infant. Not so goody protagonist, huh? ) But his wickedness doesn't stop me from enjoying my read, as I viewed fiction in a flow of event more than in perspective of the protagonist. It is because of this that I don't really enjoy the infamous underdog story where MC win because 'power of friendship aka Exclusive Power-up On Demand'. Maybe it's because I am narcissistic and thought that I am smart and logical, so that's why I hate illogical sequence of events and how 'love and friendship' literally save MC ass randomly.
I 'm a bit lost with your post, but you can make a person "relatable" even if they have a completely different mindset. It is these stories that change us by sucking us into their world and leaving us disoriented when we leave it. If you can't relate to the protagonist you are just reading a series of events, and while the events can be incredibly amusing and entertaining, they will have less emotional impact if we don't relate or emphasise with the protagonist. We won't care about what happens to them or why.
Unrelatable characters are fun. But I think it works only in comedies. In other genres, it will be difficult to keep readers interested if they don't live vicariously through the characters.
I'd say that in this context, relatable rather means that one can understand and somewhat agree with why the protagonist decides to do what they did or why they are like they are. Like maybe they're going to to kill a lot of people, but they have their reasons to do so, maybe their family having been killed or something like that. Though I might be wrong.
I've never tried writing an unrelatable protag, it does work sometimes even for non-comedies... But you need to be good at writing to make it somewhat decent, like really good, and I'm not. So relatable protag is what I'll keep doing until the day I feel happy with my skill, for anything people gets to see anyway.
For people who couldn't imagine any unrelateable protag, I think, for me at less, Apartment For Rent has the unrelateable protagonist. It's a short story that I recommended if you wanted something unique. Definitely worth your time.
I prefer a good and healthy mix TBH, if you want a 100% relatable MC you can really only write slice-of-life IMO (which can be nice, but all slice-of-life stories I liked I could not relate to at all) and with a totally unrelatable MC there's a good chance a lot of readers will be turned off. If you throw average Joe who hasn't really accomplished something into an isekai story the MC has both relatable and unrelatable traits. I mean, who can claim (and prove) they've been summoned as a hero to another world before? Personally, I like immersing myself into a story. It's actually something I got from playing RPGs especially Pokemon and later on Elder Scrolls, since I was in control of the character, all the action I took as said character and influencing the things around me in the game. When reading books I also dive deep into the story, usually experiencing the events unfold from the MCs perspective (which is why I write first-person usually, it comes naturally to me). Being deeply immersed in a story usually makes one more receptive towards emotional events, be they positive or negative. This also makes me dislike "evil" actions more, especially when they were completely without reason and just stem from something mundane like insanity or indifference. If it's well written, I can be persuaded otherwise though. I have no real problem with the "Power of Friendship" trope, but as I said, it all depends on how it's written. I'm currently watching Black Clover and I think they did it quite nicely. Essentially everyone has latent power and potential hidden inside them, which is usually known beforehand, but something needs to draw said potential out of them. They need to achieve a breakthrough to get stronger and the "Power of Friendship" gives them strength to not give up in front of the bottleneck.
I for one read any story that interests me. Whether the Mc be a bumbling, naive youth or a battle-hardened veteran. I mostly like to view the story as a movie I am spectating, like a phantom witnessing the moments as they are happening. I just want the story to be immersive and not break it's own logic. MC being relatable was a point I never honestly understood. The only thing that is a preference is that the story is not a harem, but that's just me whining. I love the immersive feeling I get when I read, often hours pass-by by the time I stop reading an interesting story. When I realized that, it became the only criteria for me to enjoy a story, the MC can be the devil for all I care.
There's definitely a divide on whether "relatability" is a deal-breaker for readers, especially because the term doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. One form of this was the most common criticism I got with Devourer of Destiny: why should anybody getting into the series give a damn about its nominal protagonist? For context, Dirge is intentionally inhuman and inhumane because he's what I reckon somebody who actually lived (not sat in seclusion) through twenty millennia in a cultivation universe would be like. He's treated the penal code as a bucket list and he's climbed to as high as anybody's gotten on their own on the cultivation ladder. He's so used to schemes and plots that he constantly overanalyzes things. He's a horrible person who manipulates and backstabs everybody when he isn't straight-up doing something terrible like electrocuting orphans to find out how souls work. Frankly, I'd be concerned for anybody admitting to finding him relatable in anything but the loosest terms. For the record, making a character that far in the "not very human" camp your primary PoV is exhausting, and I really don't recommend doing it for anything you're going to be spending a lot of time on, especially on a heavy and regular release schedule. It's bad juju for your mental state overall (people laugh at the occasional rants from Reverend Insanity's author about wanting to kill Fang Yuan off, but having been there, I feel for him). Anyway, yes, it's a barrier to entry for readers. Some people just cannot get into a work where they can't relate to the protagonist (and they'll tell you this early and often), although there's also a portion of readers who will remain absolutely riveted due to the rubbernecking impulse to see what heinous disaster is coming next if you're going the villain protagonist route. It definitely and visibly limits who will read and stick with your work. If that's the story you want to tell, though, just accept that and do it anyway.
Eeeeeehhhh when I write relatable I have a lot more fun especially if I can jack up fantasy like it take my mundane life ie my friend who just became a dad to twina so I wrote his life as the son in law of Lucifer with seven kids and me as Satan a crazy dragon lady who is sensitive about her age and the missing mom as well in a comma its relatable as I nust take bits of issues I see in life and throw them to hell, literary
Relatable is mandatory for any serious work. This does not mean that a reader approves of a characters actions but rather understands them. <= Great example, albeit for a villain If readers do not understand a character they don't really connect with your world, your story. This is something you really need to avoid. Heck, even trashpiles like ATG manage to do this to a degree.
As long the stories is good, doesn't matter if the MC is relatable or not. I can't related to narcissist, but I do enjoy reading and writing that type of character (Mostly in comedy genre)
... The hardest is how to write a good harem novels, which have drama, comedy, developments, ... to use and make the stories better and even harder and better when it is no netorare, hurting other women to choose 1 woman, weak will/ too prideful main male lead, forgotten characters (harem here mostly), too short chapters, ... And to some close to mc, his teachers, friends, ... and
Only works for comedy and nothing else. Characters have motivations. They do not move without a reason, even if the reason is based on emotions. This is what makes characters relatable. And no, a good plot and setting won't fix this. Your characters are one of the main pillars. They are the window to the world for your readers. If this window is a distorted mess the readers will feel absolutely nothing and drop your novel within chapters. Or they are CN readers... those are infamous for being mindless reading machines to the point they can survive MTL.
I would be offended if my computer didn't have a library of MTL's... if it can invoke strong emotion in that jumbled mess of words then believe me it's good writing just not well-written heheheeee!!
This is almost the exact opposite for me. I found that the only comedy I enjoyed was the one that I can relate to. I also disagree with unrelatable protag only worked in comedy. Take my previous example, Apartment For Rent is by no mean comedy, but I still enjoy it even though the protag is a sick fuck who is unquestionably insane. I'm sure that I don't have any interested in practising murdering and voyeurism, and I also think that others would not find him relatable too. I understand his motive and his mindset, but no way in hell would I relate to him.
I believe the thing for a good MC isn't relatability, but believability. For example, Reverend Insanity has a protagonist who is innately so ruthless that he discards his emotions, slaughters his family, and believes in the weakness of following social construct. Although barely any of the readers would relate to his actions, they do know why he does so, his reason is that he is reincarnated from his past life where he has experienced the cruel world. His weak talent for cultivation is ridiculed by his colleagues after everyone built him up to be a genius while his twin brother who was in the shadows got recognized as a big talent and rose to the top overnight. Furthermore, the cultivation system rewards ruthlessness with many techniques requiring the sacrifice of virgins, your lover's heart, etc. So, the MC could only disregard his heart and become a demonic cultivator who freely roams without constraint for morals. This is believability, a motivation that is given to a character to give reason for their actions and philosophy.
I don't read much so I don't know how widespread is that trope, but personally, I'd rather create spotlight for side-characters enough to hijack the whole point of the story. I can't really see someone as protagonist unless they die in the end of the story, or have someone else substantial for them die at the end making them miserable... Also, I think all story out there are illogical at some point. If stories were all too logical, we would see mathematical formulas rather than story. You can bitch at how untypical and overuse a progression is but fact is that some new people out there would still feel like a child over those story due to some (probably) retrograde ambitions they once have as a child. The problem for most readers, pardon me for not being one, is having consumed too many novels that it becomes "A search" to satisfy expectation, just like overeating without digesting. Well, I guess I relate to all novels on personal level that's why my brain's doctor's advice is not to read another book after reading a good one. UwU~