forum Who is the most morally-ambiguous character in your world?

Started December 24, 2017 by @andrew health_and_safety flash_onAdmin

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Who could be good.. but could be bad.. or maybe is a little (or a lot!) of both?

I've gotta say either Othello or Minseok are two of my most morally ambiguous characters, but I'll say Minseok because he's a part of my most current project. He's a confident guy, he's a happy guy, he's a little gay, he's a little religious, he cross-dresses, he betrays others for money, he's ambitious and dishonest. Very complex and fascinating to me, which makes him all the more fun to write.

Raethl.

Raethl is probably one of my favorite characters because I didn't expect the direction his character arc would take in the last draft I wrote, but as I wrote it, I knew it was right. He's a fun-loving, thoughtful kind of guy. He's very passionate, and things upset him quite a lot, and he reacts strongly. He's also playful and goofy sometimes.
…and he's also motivated almost entirely by the desire to get revenge and make those people suffer.

First, a little backstory:

A few thousand years after Chaos was destroyed and the gods took over, Chaos began manifesting again and gaining followers. In the beginning, the followers were easy to take care of, there wasn't a lot of them, but the number of followers eventually became too much. The head of the gods, Amoredakis (name in progress), trapped Chaos and all its followers in a mirror, smashed the mirror and spread the shards of glass across the sky (i.e. stars.)

Every so often, one of these shards will fall to the ground (meteors) and leave a tear between wherever Chaos is and the real world. If a person gets too close to one of these tears, they become an Atasa, a human being that is possessed by Chaos.

Isaac Black is in the process of becoming a fully transformed Atasa, and he uses the abilities that Chaos gave him to do what he thinks is right. Some of these things are bad, but some of them are good.

Connor. In the beginning of his career he was really greedy and sought eternal life, but got himself stuck in the fabric between time and space. Now he's just chilling and thinking, with nothing to do and nobody to talk to.

With the way I made my characters almost all of them are morally grey/ambiguous. Nobody is entirely good which is why there is no "hero" but almost none of them are inherently bad (save for like 5 people?). But the ones most in that ambiguous area I'd have to say are: Zho, Avaellyn, and Serenity.
Zho was being manipulated by a superior but even after their death still retained the fear and obedience of that person– they essentially exist to kill but they don't kill innocents without reason. Avaellyn in conflicted because he's been alive so long that he just wants to die and be with the family he killed hundreds of innocents for before being resurrected out of pity. Serenity feels blessed and cursed because of her immortality and sometimes uses it to help people but sometimes uses it to murder for money.
They're not good people, but they're not ENTIRELY bad shurgs

James Avery Egan, he's literally the antichrist (he's kind of the anti-hero) and he's the ruler of hell. It's somewhat complicated.

Robert Kinsey, at least a little bit. He's done some shady things in his past, and definitely abused his own powers at one point or another.

I'd have to go with Reon on this one. Her past is definitely shady, and I'm sure she wasn't always a good person. She's also the most willing to do something illegal and dangerous to get what she wants.

Arthur Larimer. Even though he works as the story's main antagonist, the only reason he gets himself on that list is because he holds no loyalty to anyone but himself. He lacks the empathy you would expect to see of someone in his position, and no one knows what he's really after.

i mean there's Meave, who sent her daughter away for her own safety (you ruined a perfectly good daughter is what you did, Meave, look at her, she's got anxiety) and that didn't work out well for anyone. but then there's Tara who will do whatever it takes to defeat the antagonist even though she says she's completely loyal to Nova. BUT then there's also Luna who wants nothing to do with anything even though she's the last of her kind and kinda has everything to do with everything. she will fight a god if she has to but not necessarily for the greater good.

Lewis is a street divinist… but he has real magic. He amazes strangers with real retrocognition and tells them that he can also psychically predict their futures for only a "small" fee. Turns out, only the retrocognition part is true. Ordinary people are drawn in by the real magic and are more willing to then pay a pretty penny for the fake stuff. He's an alright guy, really. He tries to give people a little bit of hope to work towards for their future and he also guides hundreds of young mages in need to where/who they need to see by means of his network of communication. But, you know, swindling isn't exactly the most morally sound thing to do.

Shae, my protagonist, has a very high regard for human life. She's dedicated her life to the pursuit of keeping people safe, to keep tragedies in the past from repeating themselves. She's saved a lot of lives and many might see her as a hero. It'd take a LOT to make her kill another person. Other species, however, mean very little to her. She'd let a hundred alien babies who've done nothing to her die to save one human. The short-sightedness she demonstrates in trying to keep humans safe almost plunges humanity into a war they can't win.

Edward Foster. I am not going to lie, I have been drawing some inspiration from Jaime Lannister in the way I have been characterizing him lately, and if that doesn't tell you all you need to know about him I don't know what will.

Easily Emma. She was teased brutally by her sister and she felt ignored by her parents, only at home with friend of the family, Jo. However, her circumstances were very unique, and though I’m not trying to justify her family’s actions, some factors in Emma’s raising were not their fault. Unfortunately, she uses the excuse of her family to be increasingly cruel to others, and even to mistreat Jo, her surrogate mom. Though Emma can be and has been kind, she almost considers herself “tainted” and again uses it as an excuse to be horrible. However, she is getting better. It’s definitely about morals here. Is she allowed to take her anger out on her family for their mistreatment of her? Should Jo be doing a better job of handling a child with a dark past? Or should Emma try to be more understanding, and try to stop lashing out at people she doesn’t know and who have done nothing to her?

The physical incarnation of Death is a character I play with in many of my stories. Death is, by nature, Lawful Neutral. A servant of Order who does not consider such ideas as 'good' or 'bad'
Evil is subjective, and Death is higher than such paltry philosophy.

My most morally ambiguous character (of the world I'm working on now) is a three year-old.

From all of my worlds the character that is the most morally ambiguous is called Cookie which is a 5 year-old pink alien that has Kyle(a human) as a best friend. Kyle is a bit more morally stable so he has to reign Cookie down.