So I have two protagonists for my WIP, this issue focuses on Dragomir, the male one. He's the vampire I've talked about a lot here, and as I have mentioned before, one of my goals is that his dark nature is never far from the reader's mind. He will string people along to fulfill not just his needs, but his tastes and he has no guilt in picking up people in vulnerable positions to that end. So when he is with the female lead, a senior at the school who has been roped in by the hunters themselves, part of the reader towards the beginning wants her to side against him. But in the middle, we see his enemies for the first time, and the reader starts to see his reality as the female protagonist does. The idea of this being that the meaning of monster becomes much more blurred. We see the female protagonist find resolution to help Dragomir, which in turn earns her his respect and that prompts him to open up more, and we see the side that really lives beside the bloodlust. My question is would this be a good twist or would that just annoy a reader?
Why is every vampire Slavic? Not speaking only of you, it's a common trend. And ironically his name means "Precious Peace". As for the "twist"? I can't say as there's a million ways it could go right or wrong. Overall it doesn't sound at all unique since most vampire stories involve the vampiric lead as not being entirely trustworthy but once a Big Bad shows up he suddenly appears saintly by comparison. Buffy the Vampire Slayer sorta did this with Angel; whether you're on your way to making a good story with a relatively common plot depends entirely (I think) on the details in between the plot points. Like if you can get the reader to invest and care about all (or most) of the main characters (including Precious Peace, even if he's evil) then I think you've got a good story on your hands. However it's a bit of a "I saw that coming from Page 1". And, just from a general plot overview standpoint, it wouldn't be a surprise if Precious Peace either heroically defeated the Big Bad or villainously joined him (or usurped him) as all three are done to death in some form or another. The key isn't the obvious twist; it's making it matter that counts (because what isn't obvious is whether Precious Peace will indeed become a better person, go down a rabbit hole of madness, become a hero, a villain, etc. as there is precedence for all of these things).
Romania and Serbia in particular have longstanding vampire lore, some of the earliest stems from the Carpathian mountains, hence the link. Vlad the Impaler didn't help with this matter, as he was the inspiration for Dracula. In my case, the name has a direct significance to the plot, as well as his background. But the idea is that the notion of God and evil is subjective and thus cannot be pinned down. The thing is, the 'big bad' wants him dead because of what he is. There's no way out of that and he's not interested in finding one. It's hard to say without spoiling too much, but an inspiration for the story's direction is the saying, you either die a hero or live long enough to see you become the villain.
You do realize morality must be objective for it to be true, right? Otherwise it's merely preference. While it's true most people have differing ideas of what's right and wrong, that does not mean right and wrong is subjective anymore than the confusion surrounding WWII and 20's-50's Russia means that neither are real and there is no truth to the matter. It just means it's very difficult to grasp it. I have much more of an issue with the theme than the story, for it is very postmodern. Historically the heroes tend to be the forgotten and the villains tend to be the winners who are both capable of manipulating future views of the past as well as doing enough good to compensate for their evil. Easy examples are American presidents; the most famous and beloved tend to be the worst in American history; the least famous and least known tend to be the best. There are, of course, exceptions (where they have a lot of good and evil about them that it's hard to pin them down as objectively good or evil) but in the last century it's a pretty consistent trend.
And yet we have entire societies based around religion, which, if one wishes to be completely objective, is humanity filling the gaps or choosing to believe something other than the truth. Ideologies have been the fuel for humanity's greatest conflicts and the loss of thousands of lives. In finding an external villain, we don't have to look at the monster within ourselves, and often, we gain a sense of satisfaction in feeling we've 'won' the fight.
Your assertion here needs some clarification. Are we talking about morality in the sense of "stealing is wrong"? Or in the sense of, "In this specific case--see this twenty page document offering the details--the choice of Person X to steal bread to feed his child was 84% wrong, because he stole that bread from a parent who had a hungrier child, and he knew that fact. If he had not known that fact, his choice to steal the bread would be only 46% wrong, because we must account for the fact that in this environment, it was not unlikely that the victim of the theft would also be experiencing hunger." If you're saying the first, I'd say, no. Just no. If you're saying the second, there might be some way to decide whether an action is definitely, without the slightest doubt, right or wrong, but since we can never know all the details, I don't know if it mattters.
Postmodern tones aside, the protagonist as a red herring has worked before, and can work here. It's all dependent on execution (I know that's too obvious to be very useful). However, the terms "protagonist" and "antagonist" are really obfuscated here for me due to the nature of the characters. So I don't know if it's really a twist. In my opinion, the real theme and orienting point of the story seems to be the idea that the concept of "monster" is complex, and that because of this a monster might be redeemable (ex. Luke's faith in Darth Vader, his *spoiler*). In an effort to avoid the rabbit hole of debates on morality, my advice is to ensure Dragomir has strong motivations. Flesh him out well. Think inner-conflict. Of course, you can't reveal too much until the female protagonist earns his trust, like you mention. But why does Dragomir act how you describe; seemingly no guilt, preying on the vulnerable, etc? And can you provide a sufficiently *sympathetic* reason for this, one that's concealing or suffocating his actual nature? Is it that he's always been treated like a monster and started to believe it himself? EDIT: I mean, you could go the route of "he's just the lesser of two evils", but I don't buy into that idea myself. So if that's the case then I can't help ya'.
"Antagonist" does not mean "the baddie" just as "protagonist" does not mean "the good guy". That said, what you got is just a regular character arc, me thinks. A very interesting character arc, I must say. But, strictly speaking, if the story is about him, he's still "protagonist", despite turning from bad to good, or good to bad, or whatevs, you know what I mean.
Theft is immoral. There are no circumstances that suddenly make something that is immoral, okay. Murder is immoral killing; immoral killing is (I would think) taking a life when not defending oneself or someone else. Morality is a matter of principles, not of what is practical. Most often, having to choose between the lesser of two evils, is the result of making immoral choices prior (or other people making immoral choices prior). Like I wouldn't have to consider stealing to feed my kids if I wasn't a deadbeat or married to a deadbeat; or, in the case of something like war, if X and Y weren't burning each other's fields (or something).
You're begging the question. Are you really saying that someone's death, or ten deaths, a hundred deaths, a million deaths, are the MORAL choice, if the only way to prevent them is to, say steal a penny?
The immorality is coming from whoever is pointing the gun at those people. Once free will is constrained (like in a hostage-taking scenario), morality becomes non-existent--the perpetrators losing all moral protections. There is no morality without free will; and forcing someone into doing something removes the free will of that someone.
That's not really an answer. Am I allowed to steal the penny, or will you condemn me and tell me that the moral choice was to let the million people die?
No, it is an answer. In what plausible scenario could millions die from not stealing a penny? The closest real-world example is stealing money from a cash register in order to hand to a robber who is threatening to kill you (and others) if you don't. Is it moral to steal the money? Of course not. Is it immoral? No. Because either way, you were robbed of free will.
It could work if you actually make Dragomir seem like an antagonist, and not just a morally grey character. People will have no difficulty accepting a morally grey vampire character. In order to do it well, I think it shouldn't just be a clean turn around. Use this element to open the question of where does he fit exactly? Explore what makes him okay, why his flaws are acceptable.
This sounds like more moral relativism than normal moral relativism. Saying I'm "robbed of free will" makes it clear that the moral choice is to save the others' lives by handing over the penny, but it apparently frees me of even a little tiny bit of immorality stemming from stealing the penny. OK, this has reached Debate Room level, so I'll stop.
Morality assumes choice. Holding a gun to everybody's head isn't a good way to measure who's acting morally, because it's no longer evident who is doing what you want because they want to and believe that it's the right thing, versus who's playing along for the sake of keeping them and their family alive and "don't have any other choice". Hitler's regime and Stalin's regime are excellent examples of how tyranny undermines morality. It's part of why tyrants become paranoid; determining who is and isn't against them becomes next to impossible. --- To tie this back to the thread here, Dragomir will be a stronger character if he has agency. He won't be a morally ambiguous character by reacting to funneling circumstances; he'll just be weak. Dragomir will be a well rounded and believable character, however, if he takes some action and makes decisions.
Eh...that seems to suggest that morality only applies when there are no consequences involved. If there are consequences you "have no choice"? Let's skip the death part. A child is hungry, but she's not going to die. An apple fell from the tree. Taking it would technically be stealing, because it belongs to the farmer who owns the tree. But it's going to rot if you don't take it. (We assume, for the sake of simplicity, that you know this to, oh, a 99% certainty.) Is taking it immoral? In my view, no, it's not the least bit immoral. Taking it helps someone and harms no one But, yes, if a police officer saw you take it, they could charge you with theft, and they would not be immoral for doing so.
What you're doing is justifying an immoral act, not magically turning an immoral act into a moral one. That's why we have the justice system; so that people can excuse an immoral act because of the extenuating circumstances. Either the situation is a result of a multitude of other immoral choices that are out of the girl's control, or misfortune. Morality is actually more relative with your approach. Sometimes x is immoral, sometimes it's moral. Whereas it's always consistent if you make exceptions for immoral behavior. I'm not trying to be pedantic about this. It depends on whether you judge morality on the capacity for choice (free will), or effects (determinism). I am a compatibilist, because being pre-deterministic is psychotically depressing. I judge a person's moral character based on their decisions. A martyr, practically speaking, is a person who would sooner die and be the victim of immoral acts, then commit an immoral act themselves. Assuming one is of the determinist way of thinking, a law against drunk driving would be seen as having a morally good effect because it decreases the likelihood that people will do it. But the loophole is the "if they get caught" part. So really, it makes people morally inconsistent with their *choice*.
Well, no, I'd say that I'm justifying an illegal act. Not quite the same thing--I don't equate law and morality. (I'm not saying you do--I can't tell.) And I would similarly edit your statement about the justice system--I think that it in part takes simplistic rules that are necessary because you can't write down all the exceptions, and then decides whether the act in question was (1) immoral and (2) immoral enough to do anything about. I would say that drunk driving is almost always immoral whether it's illegal or not. (The "almost always" would require the creation of a nonsensical scenario like being the only one who can drive somewhere to save the world.)
My point is that you're either morally consistent and go by principle, or you're relativistic and sometimes x is immoral, and sometimes it's moral. I would say that the drunk driving is immoral by choice, yes. Making it illegal doesn't make people act more morally. It just makes some people not want to get caught, and more "careful" about their drunk driving. But if you're a determinist and don't care about what people believe is right and wrong, and only care about results, then I'll have to agree to disagree with you.
I think that’s too simplistic. Every act has a context. Context doesn’t mean people don’t think about right or wrong— it means they do, Trespassing is usually wrong. Is trespassing to rescue a child from a pit bull wrong? No. That’s not justifying an immoral act. It’s not failing to care if one is wrong. It’s context.
I see it differently. If I trespass on the property to rescue the child, I'm justifying my immoral decision on the presupposition that the property owner will understand, and the parents of the child will have my back. But the presupposition is always that it's immoral, which means I won't do it without justification, and I'll still apologize. And to return to the regimes of the 20th century, it doesn't only become difficult for the tyrant to determine who's with him and against him (because his threat of force makes people two faced), but it makes it impressively difficult to tell who was actually acting with immoral intent and who was committing immoral acts out of fear for their lives and the lives of their family. Not everybody has the courage and moral character to be a martyr, nor should they.
I don’t understand the “presupposition”. You surely wouldn’t stand back and do nothing if the property owner objected to your crossing the property line?
No. I'm committing the immoral act, but I have a justification that I believe will excuse it (meaning, it will be forgiven) in a court of law, assuming the property owner would actually try to stop me interfering with a pit bull mauling a baby, and press charges against me for doing so lol. What an incredibly absurd example.
See, to me, immoral means “you shouldn’t do it”. There seems to be some nuance for you that I’m not getting.
