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In some sense you are talking about an anti-hero; a hero that has qualities or attitudes the audience may think are bad, but put up with because the guy is intent on accomplishing something else th...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-19T22:13:33Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38994 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T09:50:22Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38994 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
In some sense you are talking about an anti-hero; a hero that has qualities or attitudes the audience may think are bad, but put up with because the guy is intent on accomplishing _something else_ that is an obvious good. This is the key to making your MC acceptable instead of alienating: **Despite** their weird belief system, their mission in this story is to do something unambiguously **good,** either for humanity in general or one person in particular. That is pretty much the whole trick. In the 1994 movie ["The Professional"](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110413/), a brutal hitman kills all kinds of gangsters and (corrupt) cops, but we like him anyway, because he chooses to save and protect a 12 year old girl. It is possible to have some attitudes and actions that are in fact IMO irredeemable; in particular torture, rape, and murder **of innocents** for the fun of it. But I will grant the imagination of others may exceed mine, if it can be done, the negatives of the MC must be outweighed by some positive thing they are doing in this story, something nearly all readers will agree redeems them.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-09-18T12:13:00Z (about 6 years ago)
Original score: 8