Morally ambiguous hero/ines?

[fayanora]

I hate it when morally ambiguous characters are just labeled either villains or anti-heros. I think that’s why I like my character Lyria Spellspinner so much. She's cunning, manipulative, secretive, isn't afraid to kill people when she feels it's needed, defies the laws of nature and man by being heavy into the dark arts, befriends dark creatures,

Comments

[neko_no_baka]

Yeah, there's always this tendency to write off morally ambigious (or as I like to call them, more realistic) characters as anti-heroes. I think it comes from the fact that anti-heroes was coined when fiction used a lot of character-types, in order to subvert those narratives. How much it holds up in current writing, when more and more of us are insisting on writing more in depth, complex, and, well, realistic characters in fantasy and all forms of fiction.

Yet, the anti-hero is its own 'type', it is the character that does bad things for the right reasons, and is tormented about it. An anti-hero's quest is not only to save a person/place/thing, but falls under the "human vs self" story, a lot of the time.

Anyways, I like talking about characters; in the story I'm currently working on for AO3, I haven't really mentioned it yet, but my main character is a notorious rebel who has been labeled a terrorist by her government. Despite her being very picky about her targets and what exactly gets blown up. And now she's sitting in a cell with nothing to do but face everything that she's done.

Excuse me, I need to go rub my hands gleefully and update.