- Joined
- Jul 3, 2008
- Messages
- 538
- Reaction score
- 51
It occured to me the other day.
While I was writing, my MC was rather depressed, and had been for a bit of time. Still, he was getting over his bleak view on the universe and attempting to redefine his life. I thought, "what would make sense for this guy to do so as not to be continually lonely and have someone to play with? Oh, I'll let him get a dog." --There was a little more to it than that, of course, and it's not a particulalrly long piece of what's going on with him. In any case, he picks one up and proceeds to nurture it while he's running away from pretty much everyone else he's been in contact with up until then, except for the people he's not actually supposed to talk to. So, that made sense to me, but then I remembered that my MC also has a tendency to seem like a really big asshole sometimes. He's certainly not the worst, but considering having bad guy's pet the dog (or as it's so called on TV Tropes, Pet The Dog >.<) is essentially how people, especially in movies, convey that X character is Not So Bad, um, well, it occured to me that might come off that way.
That wasn't the purpose of my letting him get a dog--I wanted him to have a companion he would trust and therefore be less cynical about-- but would that come off that way?
A little more information; MC basically has to kill people to survive--the group he's a part of mandates he and everyone else has to do some mandatory missions, most of which involve killing other factions, and sometimes other innocent people and (forcefully, in most cases,) recruiting others. He basically feels, especially at the beginning, that there's no point in pursuing actual friendships of most any sort with most people because they have a high tendency of dying, and a few other things. He does have one friend he'll watch out for, and he is in the process of becoming less cynical (and running away from that group), but he's still not the best person to pin your hopes on. That's obviously not everything and very general, but that's sort of the situation he's in at that point.
While I was writing, my MC was rather depressed, and had been for a bit of time. Still, he was getting over his bleak view on the universe and attempting to redefine his life. I thought, "what would make sense for this guy to do so as not to be continually lonely and have someone to play with? Oh, I'll let him get a dog." --There was a little more to it than that, of course, and it's not a particulalrly long piece of what's going on with him. In any case, he picks one up and proceeds to nurture it while he's running away from pretty much everyone else he's been in contact with up until then, except for the people he's not actually supposed to talk to. So, that made sense to me, but then I remembered that my MC also has a tendency to seem like a really big asshole sometimes. He's certainly not the worst, but considering having bad guy's pet the dog (or as it's so called on TV Tropes, Pet The Dog >.<) is essentially how people, especially in movies, convey that X character is Not So Bad, um, well, it occured to me that might come off that way.
That wasn't the purpose of my letting him get a dog--I wanted him to have a companion he would trust and therefore be less cynical about-- but would that come off that way?
A little more information; MC basically has to kill people to survive--the group he's a part of mandates he and everyone else has to do some mandatory missions, most of which involve killing other factions, and sometimes other innocent people and (forcefully, in most cases,) recruiting others. He basically feels, especially at the beginning, that there's no point in pursuing actual friendships of most any sort with most people because they have a high tendency of dying, and a few other things. He does have one friend he'll watch out for, and he is in the process of becoming less cynical (and running away from that group), but he's still not the best person to pin your hopes on. That's obviously not everything and very general, but that's sort of the situation he's in at that point.
