I've got a mage-in-training who sees ghosts. It's for an episodic kind of Adventurers Academy dealio. The seeing ghosts thing kinda drags on him, since he's almost always surrounded by spirits clamoring for his attention except for around his demi-demon friend. This kinda sucks the life out of him and most of the time he seems to have no emotional capability whatsoever until the rule 63 arc where the school manages to piss off the wrong extraplanar entity (Complicated, it's mostly a fanservice thing.) So what I'm wondering is, does having an emo af character cross any lines. There's a lot in the storyline that's probably going to piss a lot of people off, I know that, but Emo Joe is a blurry line for me, and I'm not sure if that's okay.
Is this character your point-of view character? Reason I'm asking is that if he is the POV character and we are inside his head, we should know why he can't feel emotion. He's been drained. That makes perfect sense to me, and can serve as a way for the reader to have sympathy for him, as long as he's not running around doing awful stuff. If he just sees awful stuff and isn't moved by it any more, well, that's what happens when you get emotionally drained. If he is not the POV character, however, it could get a bit trickier, because if somebody else is observing his behaviour (somebody else who doesn't know that he's being haunted all the time by ghosts that nobody else can see) he can appear to be cold and possibly heartless. Again, what you do will depend on how you want the story to go. If you're okay with readers not liking him for a while, you can portray him as cold and unfeeling. Until maybe later, when the readers discover why. A flash of understanding, late in the game, can change everything.
He's one of five POV characters. There's the emo guy, the demi-demon, a lamia, a graffiti artist, and Emo Joe's familiar. It bounces around between episodes. They've each got their own issues, but this one's the one that blurs the line between okay and wtf for me. It's in a third person perspective, we're not in his head, but we're following him around.
Hello friend. I agree with @jannert. The last thing you want is to for your character to be emotionless for no reason. I don't see a limit to your situation, but at least give to the readers a reason why his absence of emotions. Of course, don't spoil us go much, let us know little by little Maybe he starts as a character with a negative portrait but later will ahve a good ending? Learning something from his journey, or the vice versa. One thing I will advice is don't focus him on being goth, that should be his lifestyle, concentrate more on his personality and how he sees the world. Explore your character. I hope this helps. Kreo on good work and have fun.
The film High Plain's Drifter portrays a character who shows practically no emotion and yet rivets the viewer's attention exactly for that reason, nothing seems to faze him. He emotionlessly, rapes a woman, emotiolessly blows up a hotel, emotionlessly kills the three ex convicts who had whipped him to death. Is that the kind of character you had in mind? Or is it the type of character whose emotionlessness keeps him isolated from all the action because he just doesn't care? In the Star Trek series, Spock was portrayed as emotionless and yet he was always right in the middle of the action. He emotionlessly gave his opinion, emotionlessly applied the Vulcan Neck Pinch, emotionlessly fired fazer weapons. In fact, part of the allure of the Star Trek Series was watching how Spock emotionlessly handled things. So it all depends what you mean by emotionless.
In this context, emotionless means he lacks the ability to care and has almost no self-motivation. He's walking around at 3 percent battery, for lack of a better comparison. With the exception of when in the company his demi-demon almost-but-not-quite-girlfriend, the character is almost guaranteed to be surrounded by spirits, and they latch onto him because he can see them. Ever seen a movie where the ghost pretty much sucks the life out of the poor fool before finally possessing/killing him? That's pretty much what he's been dealing with since birth. He just does not feel the same way the rest of us might, because he doesn't have the energy or the ability anymore. He knows how he should feel in whatever circumstance for the most part, but he doesn't feel it because he can't. He's the quiet kid in the back of the room that everyone almost expects to pull out a gun and start shooting, who seems to talk to himself all the time, but he's actually talking to the ghost of the janitor or something like that He's there, but he doesn't take part. His grades mostly suck, but he doesn't get kicked out of the adventuring academy because he just barely scoots by and he's actually quite capable, just doesn't care or have much motivation. This starts to shift in the story when he makes friends with a demi-demon girl who repels spirits because, you know, demon, and for the first time in his life he's not being fed on by the dead. Which creates a power dynamic in that relationship as time goes on, further so when the lamia and graffiti artist enter the picture. And I realized this after I started writing, but Emo Joe is the only guy on a team of four + one familiar with the ability to manifest human form, so the circumstances and jazz that come with that would also probably affect him. Ghosties trying to convince him to make a move but they keep sucking the life out of him so he has no motivation to try.
Actually that was pretty much me up until the start of high school, which sounds like a self-insert, but I swear it's not. But yeah, basically a bunch of spirit parasites. His familiar and bondspirits are also of this nature but with them its a mutualistic situation. They're not feeding on him just to feed, they made a deal, and if they don't keep up their end they get to go back to hell.
