Young Writers Society

I really dislike protagonist centred morality, where all the Good People like the MC and all Bad People dislike them. The problem is that "dislike" and "abuse" are easy to conflict internally, and while I know that abuse is imposing your will on others and dislike is simply wishing somebody wasn't involved in something... I doubt my MC does. Kerani might be a fairly brilliant tactician, but she can have a very fine tuned danger sense that means anybody who dislikes her tends to be on her bad list.

The situation is: Kerani is surrounded by people who see her in fairly mixed ways, from her abusive father to her extremely supportive siblings/friends. She herself blends caste lines in ways that are technically illegal, but she gets away with it because she's a noble.

Right now I've introduced her betrothed (arranged marriage) and I don't want him to be super-de-duper supportive because he wants a wife who stays behind the scenes, while Kerani very much is not that. But at the same time I don't want to make him completely against her because she has saved his life before and he knows how valuable she is.

My plot is already pretty full and I'm not terribly fond of adding in a self discovery angle (yet) where she realizes people can have mixed opinions of her and still be safe, but if that's absolutely required I'll toss another ball to juggle.

So basically what I'm asking is— how does one go about avoiding a protagonist-centric morality, when the protagonist themselves is very likely to fall into "you're either with me or against me" logic?

Meant to get to this sooner, oops! I'm here now. To answer the main question at the end since this is a valid one, I'm wondering the perspective of this? That'll definitely leave at least a bit of an impact on how this ends up being handled. From a first person perspective, I can see how this is hard to balance since the main character is the person leading the story and we're looking directly through their eyes and biases, maybe make it clearer in the novel that the main character isn't the moral compass. Maybe Kerani doesn't make all the right decisions and realizes this (I figure this goes into the self-discovery category or angle that you're hesitant to add) and this is part of her character development.

Having a character that is supportive of her being the one to point out a mistake that while she's a noble, she's not the most noble person. This leaves more of an impact than an abusive father or someone she doesn't have high regards for, though that's just a suggestion. Having the husband be somewhere in-between and her slowly learning to deal that the two of them won't always see eye-to-eye and that he's still trustworthy seems to be the best option here.

Learning how to juggle with hands and feet and adding in that character development of Kerani is the best option here. I also wanted to note that if you're not wanting to change her character, then showing the reader that she isn't the moral center of the story by her having this rash 'you're either with me or against me' attitude.

Giving her that personality flaw and showing she doesn't always make the perfect decisions is another way to go though I can see and understand how that's difficult to pull off with the main character. A scene in the novel that says 'I'm not perfect' or 'Why are you looking to me for advice' in a time of weakness for her (she doesn't seem to be a person with many of those moments though) could give some clarity there.

These are just a couple suggestions and ideas being bounced back, though! That's the input I have on this so far though I'm willing to answer any questions you have.

Thanks for the reply, @Nikayla!

The thing about all these suggestions is they shine a plot focus on it and assume I want her to stop being a with-me-or-against-me brat. She's not going to reach that level of development for years if ever (maybe in book 3 of 3). When I say there isn't room in the plot for her to be a better person, I mostly mean "she is an anti-hero, she will not listen to her being a terrible person because she already believes it and will just shrug because this method keeps her safe, and she is correct that it keeps her safe so she has no reason to discard this method."

If I were writing a slice of life story about how mental illness can destroy your life, it'd be fine and I'd go the blunter route. But right now she's imperfect and I want to keep that imperfection, but also not narratively support it.

And mostly I'm trying to figure out how to not narratively support it without going out of my way to write a scene that says "you're being a selfish brat, stop it", since that scene isn't going to happen. There are way more pressing matters at hand than having somebody sit down and lay all of Kerani's issues out for her on a silver platter (everyone else has their own worries, too, so there isn't anybody to notice she's even having this issue).