fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2444 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2444 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 021 secrets from Secret Submission Post #349.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So I have this character who is a bit ambiguous in some ways but in the end is a sympathetic character. He plays a role as a sort of double agent for good in the end. I noticed how Snape may not have come across as "heroic" as JKR intended. Sorta made me realize that U can't just say someone is like this I have to prove it.

The character is raised by a mother who is a psychopath. It's never explicitly stated what she did to him growing up but he is gynophobic as an adult. That said he's not misogynistic or shown resenting all women. He's just scared of what they could do to him. He is fully aware that his mother is not a representative of all women. He just feels anxiety around them because of his mother. He was raised in a home rife with dysfunction.

His mother tried to do everything she could to convince the character he was a sociopath as well because she was "lonely". She tells him that she and him are "different from ordinary people and others can't understand them like they can"

As a teenager he is resentful and angry. She sends him to live with her husband the father that left him with her. The father himself was abused , but the son feels rejected by the father because he was left. So he acts out in aggression by being disrespectful and is a bit of a bully to the man's young son. Though he also tries to instill in the son the same twisted survival beliefs that he was raised with "you can only trust your own".

He eventually returns to his mother after the family suffers the loss of one of their kids and he has a feeling his mother is somehow behind it.

When he's a young college student he has a bad temper and ends up in a moment of rage attacking a young cousin and damaging the kid's eyes. The main difference between him and his mother is that while she is willing to do cruel things and think little of it, he can hurt someone with his temper but has remorse for it. As he grows up his mother uses him as a pawn in her business, having him get a good job as CEO through nepotism while she retires.

The characters is also pulled into her less than legal deeds along with his two uncles. (one who is willing if it will get him something and the other who just doesn't give a damn about much anymore). The guy is seemingly a puppet for his mother used by her psychologically and emotionally.

Within the family he tries to protect some of the other kids from the parents' abuses.

when it comes to the hero , this character tries to prepare him for some conflict to come by "testing" him. Threatening or "warning" people close to him and testing their loyalty. Testing his endurance. He is fully aware that his actions are not heroic but he sort of feels like they're necessary to protect the protagonist from the manipulations of his mother.

He's forced into working with his mother but at the same time there's a part of him who is working against her because she is evil and what she's doing is wrong. Deep down he hates her for what she is and what she did, but feels like he can't hate her completely because he's her mother. He has his own character arc in trying to break away from her.

I worry that this character will be seen as a "creep" or "wrong" for working against his mother. Or that his bullying his half brother and father as a teenager is too damning. How does he come across?

I don't see anything wrong with him working against his mother, but his bullying of his half brother and father does stop me from feeling completely sorry for him. If you want him to look completely sympathetic, cut the bullying out, or if you're willing to settle for a gray character, keep it in (just don't have the half brother he bullied name a kid after him once he learns about his tragic past).

I do want him to be gray.

I just didn't want the creeperish stalker type vibe that Snape gave off. Or the fact that his romantic obsession was considered his "redeeming quality" . The half brother retains a bit of resentment afterwards but just recognizes that the character is fucked up on a lot of levels.

It was more the half brother than the father. With the father the character doesn't know the extent to which his wife abused him or what it was like for his father at the time. He was like...probably sevenish when the father left and the mother filled his head with stories to manipulate him. As far as the character sees....he was confronting his father about knowingly leaving a child with an abusive mother.

The father is....well very avoidant about the subject and doesn't really actually sit down with his son and talk. Because of ...well the manner in which the son was born the father just isn't fond of him. When he tries to be stern a handful of times he is overly harsh and at aleast one point after heavy drinking brushes off the character in a way that...sorta comes across as "you're a little demon spawn just like your mother".

So with the father it's more poor communication and blame on both sides.
But with the brother he totally took out some of his frustrations by picking on the kid. Yeah..He's totally to blame for that and he knows it and doesn't act otherwise.

Well, I think you're doing fine then. He doesn't come off as a creepy to me, just fucked up.

He sounds pretty fucked-up, and like he'd be kind of polarizing. Which isn't a bad thing, really. A lot of my favorite fictional characters are like that.

Oh yeah that's what I would like.

I guess I just want to avoid...well with Snape there's a lot of people who act like his obsession was his redeeming quality rather than his ability to stand up to Voldemort in the end, or to make the choice to sacrifice himself to fix what he did).

I felt like that implication was...a bit disturbing. Like it's putting emphasis on the wrong thing to idealize. I guess I wanted to avoid something like that.

Make him hot. People will forgive him.

I want people to acknowledged his wrongdoing and that it was wrong (nothing annoys me more than fangirls with their head buried in the sand)

I just want to avoid the inherent creepiness of something like Mr. "His unhealthy obsession with a person was his redeeming aspect" .

Also I would sort of laugh to myself if my character did get "oh he's totally my fictional woobie husband" because of the sheer irony of the fact that they wouldn't realize he'd be terrified of them if he were real. *shrug* I'm not going for Draco In Leather Pant just....not inherently warped ideals.

[ SECRET POST #2444 ]

A question about how a character would be perceived

Re: A question about how a character would be perceived

Re: A question about how a character would be perceived

Re: A question about how a character would be perceived

Re: A question about how a character would be perceived

Re: A question about how a character would be perceived

Re: A question about how a character would be perceived

Re: A question about how a character would be perceived