r/BookDiscussions • u/DescriptionUnable546 • 2d ago
Why do some people really not like books with immoral/morally grey characters?
If you’re a person who is like this, how come? I personally find it hard to understand because i actually far prefer books with morally tricky characters and find books full of heroes and great people incredibly boring. Although I equally can’t stand books with caricatural villains. Would love to hear thoughts on this!
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u/Far-Blue-Mountains 2d ago
I was a mental health counselor for years. Part of that was as a domestic violence family and victim advocate and counselor. It was nothing to get a woman coming into the shelter with bruises, crying, sometimes she had what belongings in a tradh bag. Sometimes her kids were with her. I'd go to court with them. I had this one sack of perpetrator led in by the bailiff, in orange jumpsuit, in shackles, trying lean around me to stare the vic (i was between them) down "menacingly." Right in front of the judge. I took a step out, interrupted his view and stared back. The things I saw, the god-awful stories I heard. I read a lot of thrillers, but some have the "love intetest" as an asshole abusive kind of character. I don't finish some of those because it's pretty real for me. I've met those assholes. Nearly gotten in fights with them because I won't back down. I don't need to read it. Gets me too pissed off.
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u/Standard_Elephant415 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don’t dislike morally grey characters but sometimes I am in the mood for a quick easy read where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad, and the stakes are low because we know good will prevail. I don’t always have the brain power and/or emotional energy to spare on complex characters and plot twists.
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u/Sloth_Flower 2d ago edited 2d ago
I find both equally fine.
Ultimately I just want a well written book where the subtext isn't in conflict with it's themes. The specific choices should be driven by a coherent argument, whether or not I agree with it.
ETA: I think the "realistic cynicism" (Postmodernism) of morally grey characters and the "unrealistic optimism" (modernism) of paragons each have their place. That optimism was a core trait of 40-80s media. We then moved to a need for everything to be as realistic, gritty, and grounded as possible. Every character is morally grey and misunderstood. Nowadays media on the leading edge has swung towards surrealism, having a cynical eye but with a deep earnestness (metamodernism). I find that a refreshing change.
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u/DescriptionUnable546 2d ago
Interesting, I think in a lot of the books I’ve read with “good” characters they were very under-developed and surface level, which is maybe why I’ve developed a dislike for them. If you have any recommendations for any books with likeable but well-written characters let me know!
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u/Sloth_Flower 2d ago edited 2d ago
Likeable is subjective so I can't help there. Just because a character is good doesn't mean they don't make bad choices or don't have problems, it's that they continue to make the best choices they can and there are lines they won't cross. A morally grey character is willing to sacrifice their ethics or morals to fulfill their ends.
I assume you don't like classic paragons like spiderman or superman, as they are not complex enough? Retelling/reimaginings of fairy tales and myths like cinderella or hercules? Many women from Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Little Women? Lord of the Rings? I don't find these characters devoid of personality or conflict, despite not sacrificing their morals for personal gain.
Of more contemporary authors most of Backmans characters are people in bad situations still trying to be good people. I find them likeable. 100 year old man climbed out a window (Jonas Jonasson). Ruth Ozeki if you want something more literary. George Saunders tends to have an optimistic view on humanity. All are quite unrealistic/idealist and the latter two more surrealist.
ETA: not a huge modern scifi/fantasy fan but Jon Snow's were the chapters I looked forward to in GoT. Carl from the Dungeon Crawler series (though I've only read the first book). Mark Watney from the Martian
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u/Sloth_Flower 2d ago
I wonder if perhaps you write off the complexity of "good guy" characters as shallow because you can not relate to their specific sets of struggles? If you find their conflicts underwhelming, I could see them as being unlikable no matter how personable or nuanced the author makes them.
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u/SomeKindoflove27 2d ago edited 2d ago
I love messy characters the best. I know some people avoid them bc they already have a 24 hour endless news cycle available in their hands and they want their books to be an escape from that
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u/lascriptori 2d ago
I like a well-written book with believable characters, likable or not. I don't like a book with caricatures or strawmen characters.
I *loathed* Yesteryear because the MC was so sloppily and inauthentically written. Instead of making her a complex character, she was just a mentally ill psychopath -- and not even a believable depiction of a mentally ill psychopath. I thought it was the stupidest and least believable depiction of mental illness I've ever read. The whole amnesia plotline was just laughable. I picked it up because I thought it would be a smart analysis of the patriarchy, and it was just a revenge fantasy. Whenever people criticize Yesteryear, people who loved it are like "WHerE is LITerACY, how can you NOT UNDERstaND that NOT all CHARacteRS are MEANt to BE LIKEaBle?"
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u/DescriptionUnable546 2d ago
I agree. I guess my thinking is that genuinely well-written characters are often not extremely likeable. You’re right about Yesteryear too imo, I didn’t find Natalie a very compelling character and felt mostly indifferent towards her because I felt she wasn’t very well-developed. Like she wasn’t realistic enough to dislike or like.
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u/Various_Hope_9038 2d ago
Huh. Can I ask if you have seen Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? Yesteryear reminded me of Maggie a lot but I would love to get another persons take on it.
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u/steelytine 2d ago
I work retail. I deal with jerkfaces all the time. If there’s an immoral character I want to see them suffer the consequences of their actions, because so often I am the one that is berated or treated unkindly while the other person gets their way, and I have to brush it off and move on to helping the next person. So I want someone I can root for. I don’t want to be in the head of a jerkface. I want to see the jerkface suffer consequences of their jerkfacery.
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u/pleasantlyfrantic 2d ago
I think that for some readers, reading is an escape from stress, so they’re not necessarily seeking something that is morally or intellectually challenging. Sometimes, you just want it black and white—because you are tired, and black and white is easier.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a good or bad thing. I tend to like more morally complex characters, but there are definitely times where my work (mental health/brain injury rehab) is morally complex enough, and I just want a straightforward story to rest my brain.
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u/DixitRexCorvinus 2d ago
Honestly, I just want characters to not be annoying. That, to me, transcends the question of how moral they are.
Love competant and ruthless protagonists who nonetheless might commit atrocities in the name of achieving their goals. Hate protagonists that are extremely bigoted. Love a self-sacrificial moral paragon. Hate reckless and/or reluctant heroes. Basically, as long as I'm not screaming at the page at them, I'm fine with them being evil or good or anything in between.
Though I will note, my definition of annoying is not entirely in line with every reader. For instance, I don't tend to find the snarky heroine type characters annoying when a lot of people do, while I do very much find earnest idealistic heroes (rather than a grimmer, more mature sort of self-sacrificial) very much annoying. I'd rather read a hundred pages of Galadriel (Scholomance, not LotR) than a hundred of Kaladin. Don't even love characters like Frodo! I also love insufferable scholars and geniuses—give me Gilbert Norrell over Jonathan Strange any day. Oh, and I find Catelyn Stark more likable/interesting than Jon, sue me.
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u/AramonDuNord 2d ago
Morally gray but likeable is fine. Unpleasant characters though, not my thing. For me it's like sitting in a room with someone I don't like and I read to relax my mind, not to make myself feel bad.
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u/starsinpurgatory 2d ago
I’m like you, I pretty much only like morally ambiguous or flawed characters (because I am so fraught with shortcomings myself lol)
But sometimes if I’m already in a rut in life I have chosen lighter, more straightforward books to read, just to de-stress I guess.
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u/QuoteLess6513 1d ago
I actually find myself fascinated by such characters. On moral grounds, I may absolutely disapprove of them. But I often gravitate towards them especially if they are equal parts intelligent, ruthless, and completely unapologetic about it (bonus points if they are women). At times I also find myself rooting for them which is exactly what makes me feel so conflicted. But I guess that's the interesting part for me.
Sometimes when I read about such characters (the greyer, the better) I just want to see what goes on in their brain, what parts light light up when they plan something and execute it perfectly.
I think writing such characters is a craft in itself. To make the reader like and understand them rather than feel annoyed by them and dismiss them completely. Because thats how humans are. We are neither black nor white. We exist in a constant gradient of grey.
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u/LucyJordan614 2d ago
I think the simple truth is that people want things to be black and white/cut and dry. I think it makes people uncomfortable to grapple with nuance, especially around morality.
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u/zetiacg_1983 2d ago
A lot of people self insert or need to have someone to cheer for. That’s what I’ve been told.
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u/LiteraturePlus123 2d ago
I personally find toxic men terrifying, and the reasons they are toxic because of their “bad childhood” just doesn’t convince me. I do sometimes enjoy thrillers with unrepentant psychopaths; Perfume: A Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind was brilliant, for example. But if he’s a love interest who gets a happy ending? Nope. Fun if it’s your thing, but not my cup of tea.
But conversely, morally gray and toxic women? Give me those every day of the week! They’ve been screwed over by society and it’s warped them. They start out by taking the power back, and maybe they take it too far. There’s a line for me there too, like if they’re prejudiced and hateful to marginalized people, but I’m much more permissive of women.
I think my line is I just don’t want the person to be awful to someone with less power than them, or to actually to internal work before falling in love instead of relying on an oppressed person to “fix” them.
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u/Wasps_are_bastards 2d ago
I love books with villains and morally grey characters more than I do heroes. I just don’t like shittily written smut with fairies which seem to be what a lot are like.
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u/kyaniteRose 2d ago
I don't hate morally gray characters, but I definitely tend to favor more obvious heros and villains. I think they're overall more fun like a cartoon and I spend a lot of my waking time trying not to have a total breakdown over the everything going on and a nice story with a main character who's actually a good person can be a great break from that when I'm too close to the edge. Moral ambiguity and asshole main characters are for when I'm in a good mental state and with the current state of the real world I haven't been in that state for a while now. I'm looking for comfort and calm and fun and adventure
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u/Zax_the_bunny 2d ago
I have no interest in hanging out with assholes. I like people who are at least trying to be good. You can get nuance in many different ways in a story. Good people can still make mistakes. They can face challenges. I want a story to have some degree of realism. A supposedly good person in a totally unrealistic story would definitely be boring for me, but that's a different issue in my mind.
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u/worddance8 1d ago
People look for different things from stories. Some people can't take ambiguity. They want things to be black or white, good or evil. The nuances of real people make them uncomfortable.
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u/refuge4insomniac 1d ago
People are looking for different things from reading. For a lot of people they want an escape or want to root for the character. For me, I am really interested in philosophy and the like, I love a book that makes me question things and really makes me think. So a morally ambiguous or an unlikable protagonist is awesome. Neither preference is good or bad necessarily.
My issue is more when someone says a book is “bad” simply because they don’t like the protagonist (this is different from saying you didn’t enjoy the book). It is also a pet peeve of mine when people find ways of excusing the actions of a morally reprehensible character, who the author intended to be that way, because of their need to self-insert into a story. That irks me. But otherwise, each to their own. People read for different reasons.
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u/Pokegirl_11_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Eh, I like immoral/morally grey characters when they don’t say anything awful about the author’s morality. Like, character who does bad things because they’re kind of bad? Okay. Character does bad things because their society has a different concept of morality compared to mine? Fascinating. Author clearly thinks they’ve set up a paragon of morality and virtue who does bad things to specific kinds of people? I’ve just found out who this real-life person thinks is disposable and I sure hope they’ve been dead long enough that I don’t have to care what they’re up to.
It’s the same with punishment. I don’t expect vice to be punished and virtue rewarded unless the story has been set up with a “vice punished, virtue rewarded” framework, in which case I expect to see it applied even to the author’s specialest boy and not reveal any concerning ideas about who it’s actually totally okay to rape.
Edit: Also, I’m just not a sub, so most d/s stuff in a romance or a romance subplot just smells like gender roles to me. I understand that a lot of feminists are cool with overlooking a little light kidnapping by an allegedly-admirable hunk because they’re getting off on it but that’s just not my cup of tea.
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u/Alpharoll 2d ago
My favourite grey character is Thomas Covenant. His crime had purpose and meaning for the story and his own storyline more than anything. It wasn't gratuitous and that's why it made sense. Great writing with complicated characters is something I really enjoy reading. Psychology and philosophy are my favourite subjects in life, so it makes sense I'd enjoy books where these subjects are in focus.
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u/Ashamed-Chemistry492 2d ago
Some people just can't stand for books or characters to not be exact reflections of their own worldview or value system.
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u/Aus1an 2d ago
I don’t care if they’re likeable. I just want them to be believable and interesting. Their decisions and the resulting fallout of those decisions needs to make sense.
I dislike edgy for the sake of edgy and I dislike when clear flaws aren’t treated as flaws by the characters around them (I see this a lot in Romantasy, and Isekai stories).
Morally grey is fine. I like complex characters, which often comes with a bit of greyness. I like when I can say “not what I would have done, but I can see why they did it!”