Not the way I was using the term. I'd say it means she's a bit ignorant (just hasn't learned certain things), but it sounds like morally she may well be mature and not naive at all. But the problem with characters like that is, it's hard to write a morally pure character who doesn't come across as naive or just kind of stupid. Or preachy and 'holier-than-thou'. My go-to example is Hercules from the Legendary Journeys show in the 90's. I don't know that I'd call him naive exactly, but he was a goody two-shoes who used his god-strength to beat up bad guys, and he seemed hypocritical, like a parent saying "Don't hit people!" while swatting the kid. When they introduced Xena she was a far better character because she was morally conflicted. She was a former evil warlord, the worst of them all, who had turned over a new leaf and decided to not do evil anymore and to fight against evil warlords. By contrast Hercules did seem childlike and possibly naive, or at least a rather dumb example of morality. I'm not sure a goody two-shoes can really work, the idea itself seems a bit naive, if the character isn't. I said there definitely can be people like that, and there can, at least for the most part (nobody can be perfect all the time), but they're the most boring people in the world. Saints are, and monks are. How can you create an interesting story around a boring character? Though I suppose that was the arc of Captain America in the movies, wasn't it? He started off a boring do-gooder (40s/50s morality the way it was presented in the TV shows and movies then), and got savagely roasted by Tony for it, until he became more self-aware and got over some of that goody two-shoes routine. Which makes a person seem condescending to everyone else.
And then Gabrielle, Xena's sidekick, was a bit naive, while trying to learn to be like Xena. She had to largely get over her childish naivete and develop an understanding of how malevolent people operate. She had to experience evil and human malevolence a few times, and experience some overpowering destructive impulses within herself, before she could overcome the naivete and start the journey toward real morality. This is much more of a typical 'real world' journey toward mature goodness, as opposed to someone who was apparently born morally pure and never had to go through any harsh experiences to forge herself.
For sure, some people do not respond with hate. But it was mentioned that in this case she does start out with hate for her mother's killer and then decides to forgive. I just meant to point out it has to be a process from point A to B.
She's not the main character. She is one of the younger ones that looks at her team and is like "but we are the heroes?" So she isn't the central character but the force that reminds the team they are supposed to be the good guys. If that helps?
Maybe this is the journey Sally went through when she at first hated and then learned to forgive? but I agree, it needs to happen in a way we can understand, She would need to confront those spiteful feelings within herself and somehow convincingly rise above them. That might require an entire book or a major portion of one. It's a pretty major character arc that can't be dispensed with in a sentence or two.
^ And this is essentially Shadow work. You have to find the evil and the petty childishness within yourself, confront it and accept it as something that belongs to you (rather than project it out onto others and scapegoat them, the way most people do), and only then can you understand it properly in others. This takes a good deal of time and is a heroic journey into your own soul. As long as you still project your own petty attitudes onto other people you're not emotionally mature.
Another aspect of forgiveness is that Sally has to be able to humanize the offender. Her attitude towards him must change. This might require some interaction between them.
Ok, I see. So basically she's serving the role Captain America served in the Avengers movies (in a way). A morally pure one commenting on modern lack of morality at times. Or on the questionable morality of superhero stories maybe. Or of certain hot-headed superheroes like a Wolverine type maybe?
As a side character, I wouldn't delve into this nearly to the degree as a main character. She can have the traits she has, they may raise questions among her companions if they see her as unusual or even inexplicable. Part of the main characters unraveling her past can make for an interesting side story, but I don't know that it has to be dwelled on at length. Also, when thinking about psychology and how it applies to characters, remember the science is based on research and observation of groups of people, from which results are obtained and (possibly) extrapolated to the population at large. The science provides answers in terms of likelihoods across the broader population, it doesn't tell you that a person who has experience x, y, and z has to or will react in any specific way. Your character is an individual. You can use a science like psychology to gain insight into human behavior and use it in character development but there is no reason whatsoever that your specific individual character has to act in accordance with it.
Oh absolutely! If a psychiatrist or psychologist treats a person as a type rather than an individual, get the hell out of there!! They don't know what they're doing. I'd say they're misunderstanding the whole idea of psychology. It's specifically about the individual, though it compares them against broader types as it must.
Understood. But is she A main character? To use the example of the Avengers again, each of them were part of the main cast and had their own stories. None of them were really secondary. Or is she truly a secondary character who doesn't have an arc?
This was actually one of the things I considered. Superheroes was the very thing I had in mind. In that case, it changes a lot of things. What you're writing is more common within superhero/power fantasy . Honestly, I thought you were writing a realistic drama with zero fantasy elements. Maybe a story about Sally's recovery from these two incidents. But you're not, and it's not even your focus. Just by writing Superheroes, you're already writing something very different than a realistic story about a girl's recovery and that changes things. I do apologize for the assumption. Bad guys "with good inside of them" were definitely common in the Japanese anime I was watching as a teen. I'm sure this is also common in western franchises like DC and Marvel. The best example I can think of is Sasuke from Naruto, which matches exactly what you described. Sasuke was basically a P.O.S. for the majority of the show but Naruto never gave up on him. Honestly though, now that I'm older and look back into these kinds of shows, I still find them naive. Their scenarios and characters and their developments definitely feel quite far away from reality. I mean, and I say this from experience, when your friend's gone rogue then yeah. There's not much you can do, and you become extremely discouraged over time. The Naruto stuff makes zero sense from a realistic point of view. But that doesn't bother anyone. The humans in Naruto are completely different than the humans in reality. They've got super powers and such and they can fight, even their societies are different. The same applies to you. Your Superhero character isn't the same as an everyday human girl. Superheroes fight things and are used to being in danger, so being almost killed is something Sally knows about. She has superpowers. A normal everyday girl doesn't, and a normal everyday girl should be as far away from the person that nearly killed her as possible. But again, Sally is a superhero. Superheroes are entirely fictional and you have no choice but to make stuff up. That isn't to say that anything goes, good and believable character development should be your aim.
No need to be sorry. It's impossible to give the full context the first time around. It's nearly impossible to give a full context at all to be honest. Though they aren't veteran super heroes. Actually most of the girls panic at the idea of needing to be heroes. Sally is unique in the sense that she is like "isn't this what kids dream of? Why you all panicking! This shit is awesome!" But I agree with you on Naruto. Gosh that's possible the most critical comment I have taken(I know you didn't mean it as such a negative lol) But funny enough the other characters don't wanna give the Sasuke - like character another chance. Sally is the only one sticking up for them. But for fairness. She agrees to potentially give up. As it was stated in material. "I'm not ready to give up on her but if she fails again. Then I'll walk away with you guys but til then. Let's give her a real chance! Not just pretend to up until she fails!" If that context helps
Yeah, I can see the first one. The second one... I agree with the words she says, but processing an incident like this requires a lot more than just forgiveness. She would have to deal with the trauma, and resolve the notion that forgiving the killer would mean disrespect to her mother, among other emotional issues. It is more likely that she would just not process the trauma at all in order to avoid being consumed by the aforementioned "venom," and thus she would have latent, unresolved issues regarding this individual. She might tell people that she forgives them, but she would be bottling up a lot of feelings.
I'm going to reply to the beginning post. So I understand there are probably other things that people have said and things that you pointed out. I just don't feel like reading the entire thread. So how do you know your character has a flaw? Well, you can do so by asking the most important question in the universe: So what? You mentioned your character is bad at academics. Okay, is that something that she struggles with throughout the book in a way that's relevant to the conflict? You can have her bad at academics, sure, but if all the times she struggles with it is in this opening scene and it is effectively never brought up again, then you might as well have a perfect character. One of my favorite superheroes is illiterate. When the actual good writers were writing for her, they showed how this flaw affected her. Not just in her ability to be a superhero, but also in her everyday life. Simple things like ordering tea at a restaurant were a huge struggle. She was very ashamed of it. And you'd see throughout the series where she would actually sit down and try to learn. That is an example of an actual flaw. The same superhero had another flaw: she was messy. But that flaw wasn't really a flaw because it didn't actually hinder her from doing superhero work or her normal life. You responded to another individual about being naive. We can argue all day over what's meant by that, but that would still leave the single question: When does she being naive become a problem in the conflict? Use examples from your book. If you can't, then that's just saying it to say it. Does that mean this character is hopeless? I never want to say that any particular approach to the character is an absolute good or bad thing. When it comes to art, you can't talk in absolutes. I will say that it is a hard thing. From the sound of it, most people like the character. That is a good sign that there's something about the character that's working for them. This is where you have to go back to your character's purpose in the story. If her purpose is being a side character who is present sometimes, but certainly not always, and serves the purpose of being the voice of encouragement for a protagonist whose internal struggle is overcoming their doubt, then your character may work fine. If your character is the protagonist and a central focus, then you might have an issue.
I'm starting to think the word naive may be wrong. Lol I think rash is what I was thinking. And yeah I can totally give a moment where rashness is an issue for her. A few actually. Like she runs into a burning building cuz "hero" to almost get hurt and discover the building was already evacuated. She often runs up the demon to attack without thinking about how she's gonna react when she catches up to him. Which has led her to be tossed around more than once. I think this is where it leads into another issue of here. She tries hard to not show her pain. She's very optimistic and tries to smile all the time. And some of her teammates poke fun at "Sally being Sally" when she does something rash and silly. And she smiles and takes it in stride but sometimes this gets hard for her. Though on the flip side. These same elements have come to be a great asset to the team. Plenty of times she jumped in front of an attack and blocked I when the team had frozen like deer in headlights. And when they are sad her pep has invigorated them. She does certainly stink at school but I don't think this specifically affects her heroing. Rather this rash quick natured aspect to her makes it hard for her to sit down and study. And I do think I show a consistent line of her doing this. Though it may affect her heroing? Her unique magic is item creation. But due to her rash or quick thinking. She tends to think very inside the box. "I made a baseball bat. I'm gonna got smack em" rather then putting more thought into something more elaborate.
That's valid! Like the fact she bottled it up is very true. Which I guess does make her less perfect if she's more superficially gotten through these issues in the moment. I opened the thread based on the idea that one person thought this level of forgiveness was somewhat unrealistic in someone of her age and I suppose that's true if we say that her forgiveness was superficial. But it sounds like you don't disagree with the concept of her being this way in the context of a story.
Yeah, when I told you about Sally being naive, I more or less meant it from a realistic point of view. Her being reckless in battle was definitely not it. Again, to clear it up, since I was the one who started this to begin with, I meant that Sally was naive to think that she can save someone who killed her. In reality, you would be naive to think that you can turn something like that around, and you can easily get hurt and killed. But, this is a superhero world, and so bloodshed and death isn't as unusual. It's a different life than an ordinary one. I said a normal sixteen year old girl should never have to deal with someone like that, but Sally isn't a normal sixteen year old girl, she's a superhero who battles demons. You've gotta be more grown up mentally to fight these things than ordinary sixteen year old high schooler, and so she's different. Google defines naive as an adjective that can be used to describe "inexperience" which is true in a way. In terms of connotation though, people more or less use the term to describe younger individuals who think that things are one way, while they are really the other. For example, a little kid might think that all doctors are good people who learned medicine to help others heal. By the adults, the kid would be considered naive, because the kid isn't yet aware of the greed and corruption in the world. Not saying that all doctors are like that, of course, but some definitely are. I would only describe Sally as naive if her sense of heroism doesn't match the reality of what that means in her society's status quo. A good question to ask here is... how would the older heroes in Sally's world handle her situation using their experience?
I would say it's completely unrealistic for a 16 year old to have forgiven someone who killed her mother unless they weren't very close in the first place. Most 36 year olds don't have that kind of forgiveness in them, never mind a 16 year old - that's part of being human. By saying that she has, makes her beyond the realm of human believability. Batman hasn't forgiven his parents' killers - that's why he dresses as a flying mammal and punches bad guys in the face. He has to hold himself back because he knows that if he gives in to his base instincts, it would be very easy for him to off them (this is exactly what Punisher does). If your character is holding it in, then how do you show that? It has to be more than an occasional inner monologue, otherwise it becomes a throwaway character trait, and it also has to be something readers can relate to. Running into a burning building because her mother was murdered doesn't resonate. Beating a kidnapper half to death before she comes to her senses (for example) would be more understandable.
Congratulations! You have a flawed character and a very well-thought-out flaw to boot. And particularly when she feels ashamed and hurt but everyone is passing it off as "Sally being Sally." I think that would make me feel hurt, even if I know it's true and I try to take it in stride. As for her inability of academics, that's more a symptom of the flaw than it is the flaw itself. And that's exactly how you're supposed to do it. It's organic and consequential. And that's what you need.
To answer the last question Sally doesn't really have hero role models. She and the impossible girls are very much an oddity in this world. But later on she does meet angels. But if she had a view on what heroes were originally it was definitely from TV. But her impossible girl friends all think she s crazy but sweet. The angels when she meets them are a. It trickier. Many of them somewhat agree with her actually. But the angels agree with a heavy heart. Because they have been burned but they want to hold the ideals still. So generally many angels give a second chance but once you have burned that. They will never forgive you
Also oof. I been writing more and she tried to help the ghost of person who killed her mom. And her trying to help that ghost went south for her real quick as she got captured and now not only almost died herself but almost got her friends killed. She's gonna be sooo..... Oof after this. Like, she doesn't feel wrong that she tried to help but she realizes for sure that she took an approach that left her too vunerable So just.... Ooooof. Thought you'd find this interesting
Of course, you have to make sure what you're saying about your character is actually true and not just what you want your character to be. We often see things in our own stories that aren't actually there. We see our characters are more developed and interesting than they actually are. So, if you have people who are telling you that they don't see what you're seeing, then sorry, you don't have a good character.
