honestly a majority of the stuff i see calling out a book for being probelmatique just has me roll my eyes. it's puritanical ideology to suggest that a main character must uphold the strictest standards of moral fortitude in order for a book to be "good" or pass some invisible PC test. and i hate saying that, because it makes me sound like those free speech whack jobs on the alt-right, but seriously, how hard is it to develop media literacy? just because a character is a piece of shit doesn't mean the author is campaigning for YOU to be a piece of shit, personally. not everything has to be some big ethical grandstand—people are flawed. we fuck up. we make mistakes. sometimes we learn, sometimes we don't. the point of literature is to reflect us as we are, not some god-honoring mirror dimension without sin. end rant lol
As someone who writes flawless characters I am absolutely seconding the fact that characters need flaws. All my revisions are just... making my characters actually human because they are initially so incredibly flat and boring lmao
honestly a majority of the stuff i see calling out a book for being probelmatique just has me roll my eyes. it's puritanical ideology to suggest that a main character must uphold the strictest standards of moral fortitude in order for a book to be "good" or pass some invisible PC test. and i hate saying that, because it makes me sound like those free speech whack jobs on the alt-right, but seriously, how hard is it to develop media literacy? just because a character is a piece of shit doesn't mean the author is campaigning for YOU to be a piece of shit, personally. not everything has to be some big ethical grandstand—people are flawed. we fuck up. we make mistakes. sometimes we learn, sometimes we don't. the point of literature is to reflect us as we are, not some god-honoring mirror dimension without sin. end rant lol
As someone who writes flawless characters I am absolutely seconding the fact that characters need flaws. All my revisions are just... making my characters actually human because they are initially so incredibly flat and boring lmao