Was this idea doomed from the start?

I'm really confused. From the little that you wrote describing the story, it sounds like you deliberately portrayed the character as an unlikeable creep and a blatant stereotype.

Are you asking if you should be surprised that one of your readers didn't like either of those two things?

Some readers prefer likeable characters. Some readers don't like blatant stereotypes. Therefore, it makes sense that, if that's the way you wrote the character, someone wasn't going to like him.

You could have chosen to have a likeable good guy who didn't conform to traditional Native American characteristics. That particular reviewer might have liked your story better.

And another reviewer might have complained that the guy was too likeable and didn't seem like a Native American ...

 

Without actually reading the piece in question, I doubt anybody on this board could tell you if you screwed up the character or not. If you feel that you did, you're probably right, though. At least, in my experience, I usually come around to the conclusion that that nagging feeling I had that the piece wasn't working was right.

 

Hi Feo,

This from my perspective as an outsider to the book, is the value of reviews in action. I can't tell you if you got your characters wrong. No one can, not even the reviewer. Only you can. So the question becomes is your character how you wanted himto be? It doesn't matter whether a reviewer doesn't like him. What matters is whether or not the reviewer got the character right in terms of the story you were telling. And it sounds to me like he did. You wanted to have an unlikeable character and one who pushed an unlikeable stereotype. So your reviewer picked up on that meaning you did it well enough at least for him.

Since I seem to be on a Moby Dick run at the moment ask yourself - does anyone actually like Ahab? No. Would there possibly have been reviewers complaining that the captain was unlikeable and filled the unrealistic stereotype of the madman too well? Probably. Does that make the book wrong in any way? No. Moby Dick does what it sets out to do perfectly. It tells the story of a madman obsessed with a whale that took his limb. In the same way no one likes Dr Moreau. You do feel for him to an extent. You see the madness but also the dream in the man. How about She? Apart from being constantly described as beautiful is their anything likeable about her at all? No. Noble perhaps, regal certainly, but not likeable.

If I were reading the review and had read the book I would be thinking these reviewers get the character. My question wouldn't be about whether the characters were well fleshed out. It would be more about the overall feel of the book. The focus. The one thing in the three or four considering that there is a sequel to She, is that while these unlikeable characters are indeed the focus of the books, they are not the POV. Why? Because in part at least if they were readers would have to share the headspace of monsters and madmen. They wouldn't like that - and it would be difficult to write as well. Therefore the writers instead used the headspace of another character - a narrator. That way the reader gets another, more familiar if someone Victorian perspective of the characters, and gets someone they can like. The narrators are all good people. And they all see the madness and darkness of the focus characters. They provide judgements on their behaviours that readers can both like and agree with. But at the same time they allow the stories to be told so that the readers fully understand the focus characters.

To me this review suggests that the reader did not get this experience. Instead he / she got put inside the headspace of a character he understood but did not like. That's what he/ she is reacting to.

Cheers, Greg.

 

Hi Pen,

Starship Troopers is part satire and part sci fi action flick. The book is not satire at all, but purely the thought processes and idea of Heinlein who was actually at least in part a right wing miliatarist. He actually built a bomb shelter from memory and was on committees during the cold war to consider survival after the bombs dropped!

As I understand it the book and the film script were merged at some point which is why you get these strange satirical shots like the recruitment videos mixed with the right wing thought processes like the cost of citizenship. (I do wonder how someone like Donald Trump would get on with these ideas being a right winger who talks tough but dodged the war!)

Cheers, Greg.

 

You could embrace the idea, personally I think it sets you up for lots of growth for the character and even gives you an ongoing conflict with the audience, deciding whether you like a character or not is sometimes far more rewarding that being told you like them, or should do.

 

Who do we think we hate most, and most often, other than perhaps the people we love and or admire, but have lost faith in?

It is too easy to express hate without sympathy for Ahab.

His character was written as having spent 40 years on the open sea.

40 years of toil and hardship changes people.

How better to explain the cantankerous nature of the elderly?

How many friends did he lose to the wind and waves, how many precious moments did he lose with his wife and child?

It is a natural part of being human that we must eventually come to the brink and taste from the cup of madness.

Sanity is a wave and we must learn to ride the crest.

Until a person has had to swallow the bitterness of betrayal and loss, they should not be so generous to hammer out the stamp of disapproval for the great and all absorbing vortex that formulates mental affliction.

The white whale is suppose to represent the hand of the imaginary person in the sky. Ahab feels betrayed for his years of hard labor because the imaginary person in the sky has punished him for biting off more than he could chew.

Perhaps his death is not blasphemy.

Perhaps we should see Ahab as a man willing to sacrifice his own life for the shitty hand that luck has dealt him.

At least he died with pride and the blood of his enemy in his lungs.

If one is vain enough to seek glory, what could be more glorious than that?

 

You could have him confronted by a Native American that truly follows their beliefs.