Okay, so before this begins, the character in question is transgender (girl to boy), for context. (Skip to the last two parts if you don't care about the backstory summery.) I'm in the midst of writing a character backstory, and I've come to a bit of a roadblock. The backstory is that this character, named Ket (not his birth name), is born as the child of the couple who leads essentially a cult community in the woods, apart from all other society. Everything is generally hunky-dory except for the weird customs and such, but to someone who was born there, it's not weird because that's all they know. Ket was living happily like this for a long time until he started feeling differently about himself and his identity. Ket was born as a girl, and when he was about 12ish, he started to realize that he didn't feel like one at all. This marks the first time Ket's beliefs started deviating from his family's and culture's beliefs. Over the next few years, Ket starts growing more confident, rebellious, and curious - which leads him to essentially break one of the main rules of the cult, which is not to interact with the outside world. Ket basically finds himself at a visitor's centre, with all kinds of brochures and whatnot. After a few hours in there (getting stared at by people who are like "Does that child need help?"), Ket grows addicted to the outside world in a sense, and learning more about it. He continues going out every so often to the visitor's centre and some other places in the locale, as well as talking to people and making a few friends, learning more about the world outside the bubble he's been living in his whole life. Over this time, Ket is growing as a person and also subtly rejecting the roles he was born into with little actions. His parents are pretty aware that he isn't as "brainwashed" as they raised him to be, but they are pretty dismissive of it, attributing it all to be just a phase. Anyways, this all comes to a head when his succession ceremony is announced for his 18nth birthday, as his parents are planning on stepping down to let Ket become the leader of the woodland cult. A big part of the ceremony is the new leader's parents choosing a person of the opposite sex for them to be married to. Also, girls of this cult aren't allowed to cut or trim their hair until they're married, so basically all of the girls below 18 have really long braids. Ket, although having lived in this society for his entire life, has become more aware of the outside world and of the different choices people have with their lives than anyone else there. The big turning point is when Ket puts his foot down and says no to his parents for the first time. He doesn't want to lead the cult and be stuck there in the woods forever, he doesn't want to be married to anyone, especially against his will, and he doesn't want to be a woman either. He completes this with using a knife to cut off his braid. You can imagine how shocked his parents are after all of this, but this is where they show their true colors after all this time. There's a set of rules of the succession ceremony which are the most sacred rules in the entire cult. The rules say, summing it up, that everything has to go perfectly, or else they invite the wrath of their deity. The rules are also pretty clear what to do about people who break these rules, and the rules of their cult. The parents go from being parents to being the leaders of their cult, and in their minds, they are left with no other choice than to default to the rules. Their beliefs are much more important to them than their family. This means for Ket that it's "Spiritual Burial". The Spiritual Burial is enacted when a member of the cult becomes "too corrupted" (breaks too many rules, rejects their customs, etc), and the only way to prevent their spiritual presence from lingering on with their family and inviting misfortune and bad reputation on them, is to burn the person alive on a pyre (when the body is laid atop a fire). So, Ket is tied down atop this pyre and burning when he is contacted by a strange presence who takes the form of a vulture with white eyes circling overhead. The vulture tells Ket that it can save him and give him control over his own fate if Ket agrees that he owes the entity a favor *RED LIGHTS*. Ket hastily agrees. What the entity didn't tell Ket is that it would need to take control of his body to save him. It does so, causing every person in the cult's conclave to die almost instantly from looking at it, as the entire cult was there to see the Spiritual Cleansing. At the end of this, the being returns control of Ket's body to him, leaving Ket in a, let's just say less than mentally healthy situation. Ket is faced with all the family he's ever known lying dead before him with their brains oozing out of their ears and eyeballs. I've thought about how he might react to this, but for some reason it's become the biggest writer's block I've had in a while. On one hand, these people were his family and gave him nothing but love for his entire life. On the other hand, they just tried to kill him with absolutely no deliberation or hesitation, which would make any person doubt if the love they'd been getting was genuine. So, the issue is how Ket feels about this situation looking back. Would he feel hate for these people who had condemned him to death so easily? Or would he remember all the love they'd given him up until then and attribute it to just the crazy beliefs of a crazy culture? This will pretty much shape how Ket's character turns out in the long run, and I really can't say that he'd be inclined towards one or the other as a character at that point in time. It also determines whether or not he hates the entity who killed them all. Any words of advice or anything at all is very appreciated! If you read all the way through this, you're awesome.
He would feel everything. This is not cut and dry. He would hate them for trying to kill him. He would hate the monster for killing them as well. If they truly believed, he would perhaps find it difficult to hate them for following their beliefs, even if he does think they are crazy. What were their feelings when they were watching him ready to burn? Were they conflicted? Is this cult one dimensional or are they humans with human feelings and conflict? Why did the entity do it? Was it malicious? Is it evil? All of these things will come into play.
I think the people of the cult are more human than the two leaders. There would've been a lot of conflicted feelings in the crowd, especially amongst the younger crowd, but no one to stand up for them. Ket's parents were both "brainwashed" long before they had a child, and also had developed the ability to just mentally shut out some of that stuff as the leaders have to do, as their verdict is the verdict that condemns people to the fire. All the care they gave Ket was as genuine as parents can be, but it wasn't for the sake of him becoming his own person. I don't think either of them would have been very conflicted in the moment. If they'd given it more thought or had more time to think about it after the fact, I believe they'd both feel regret deep down, but their sense of duty would keep it from surfacing. As for the entity, it has a goal that it needs Ket for. It's not as powerful as it makes itself out to be, not by far, and it needs a vessel or aspect in order to interact with the mortal world. I don't think it's malicious or evil, more chaotic neutral, if anything. You make a really good point. He would feel all of the above. Part of my writing process for the last 6 or so years has been to be able to bounce ideas off of and talk to people who I used to write with. Since those people are no longer in my life, I'm finding more and more that I'm missing things that should be obvious. Like why would he feel just one or the other? That seems so silly now that I look back on it. Thanks for helping me screw my head back on.
