forli
Well-known member
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- Aug 15, 2019
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One of the weirdest things about web novels that I've noticed is how there seem to be A LOT of authors that really want to have their main characters commit genocide. Most of the time it feels like the author just started by wanting the main character to be a mass murderer and then wrote a story around it.
Now, at first, you might think that if that's what you are after, the obvious choice would be to make the MC a villain. The problem with that is that as far as I've seen, villain MCs are just not a thing in web novels. Sure, there are plenty of evil MCs (including many that are not labeled as such), but never an MC that the readers are actually supposed to root against. Instead, their evil is always glorified and treated as part of what makes them 'cool'. These evil MCs are always used for nothing more than shallow power fantasies (The fact that the power fantasies of so many people seem to involve killing thousands of children is concerning, to say the least).
Explaining the motivation for a likable character to commit genocide is obviously impossible, so instead authors use some extremely bad excuses that can be roughly sorted into 3 categories.
Excuse 1 - I committed genocide in self-defense:
Killing someone to stop them from killing you or someone else is usually considered to be morally acceptable. So if the only way to save your family/friends/people is to kill the group that's threatening them, that should also be fine, right? The fans of stories that do this will usually be like "If I had to kill thousands to save my loved ones I would do it! If you think that's wrong is because you have been brainwashed by modern Western values!".
The problem is that the very idea of killing thousands of civilians being the only way to protect your loved ones is completely bonkers.
In the cases when the protagonist is overpowered and the bad guys pose no real threat, I'd argue that even killing an enemy army is morally dubious when they can just be threatened instead. But even if the bad guys are a real threat, it's insane to think that killing civilians is necessary.
So these authors always need to turn their characterization and world-building into complete nonsense.
The most common method is to make every single member of the group of people to be genocided cartoonishly racist or hateful against the group the MC is a part of, to the point of being suicidal. Every farmer, child, and old lady would rather die than stop trying to kill the MC's people and will be extremely cruel to any that they can get their hands on (I was going to include an extra category of excuses called 'they deserved the genocide', but that tends to be just an addition to the other three).
An alternative is to make the method of genocide ludicrously contrived so that the MC 'has no other choice'. Like giving them a superweapon that will inevitably kill the enemy civilians along with their army (but not the civilians on our side somehow) and cannot be used to threaten them for some reason.
Excuse 2 - I don't follow 'human morality' :
Let's just make the MC a dragon/monster/undead, that way you cannot judge their actions the way you would judge a human's, right?
The problem here is simple, the MCs of the novels that do this always think and act EXACTLY like a human, except for all the murder. If you ever see a novel be praised for having a character that acts like a REAL dragon/monster/undead, what that means is that the character is a human that will occasionally turn into an amoral murder hobo.
Naturally, if they didn't, the readers would not be able to self-insert as them to have their genocidal power fantasies.
When the author feels like they really want to insult the reader's intelligence, they will try to make a point that goes something like "There are so many stories with an MC that massacres monsters without a second thought, now the tables have turned!". As if killing mindless creatures that cannot be reasoned with was the same as a sapient being killing other sapient beings.
A lot of these """non-human""" MCs are reincarnated humans, and instead of making them struggle with their human memories, most authors will just claim that the transformation into a dragon/monster/undead took away their emotions and empathy, because the best way to make a character interesting is for them to not have emotions I guess.
These characters without emotion or empathy will then proceed to be very emotional and have a lot of empathy toward a group of other """non-human""" characters close to them. They'll just not have empathy towards humans or humanoids, because that's how empathy works, that's why there's no such thing as non-human self-insert characters and why cartoons with talking animals don't exist.
But only having empathy for your group of people while not thinking twice about killing those outside of it is something that certain humans have also done. And that's the thing, these characters that 'don't have human morality' are not non-human, they are just evil humans, but the narrative will pretend that they are not.
EXCUSE 3 - This story is light-hearted so my genocide doesn't count:
I will never understand why, but I've seen quite a few novels that are supposed to be 'light-hearted slice of life' include a character that's some powerful being that committed genocide on humans at some point in the past (sometimes even the present), usually worded as "destroyed a kingdom" or "destroyed x cities". Then the story will treat it as a joke and everyone will act as if that never happened.
It just drives me crazy every time the main characters run into any villains after that. They'll be like "That evil noble stole money from the orphans! So evil!" And I'll be like "How many orphans did your friend over there murder?!" Or they'll be like "Those humans are so racist" And I'll be like "More racist that the genocidal monster?!"
I don't know, maybe it's just me but this one is actually the one that bothers me the most. With the other two, I can at least understand by some edgy teenagers might think that they are 'deep'. But these attempts to sleight off hand a genocide past me just feel like a personal insult. And it just feels so pointless and like such a bad match for the genre.
Anyway, one last thing I want to say. Can you all stop pretending that genocidal MCs are something original? Because they really are a dime a dozen, but all of these novels will have people talking about how different from all other stories they are.
Now, at first, you might think that if that's what you are after, the obvious choice would be to make the MC a villain. The problem with that is that as far as I've seen, villain MCs are just not a thing in web novels. Sure, there are plenty of evil MCs (including many that are not labeled as such), but never an MC that the readers are actually supposed to root against. Instead, their evil is always glorified and treated as part of what makes them 'cool'. These evil MCs are always used for nothing more than shallow power fantasies (The fact that the power fantasies of so many people seem to involve killing thousands of children is concerning, to say the least).
Explaining the motivation for a likable character to commit genocide is obviously impossible, so instead authors use some extremely bad excuses that can be roughly sorted into 3 categories.
Excuse 1 - I committed genocide in self-defense:
Killing someone to stop them from killing you or someone else is usually considered to be morally acceptable. So if the only way to save your family/friends/people is to kill the group that's threatening them, that should also be fine, right? The fans of stories that do this will usually be like "If I had to kill thousands to save my loved ones I would do it! If you think that's wrong is because you have been brainwashed by modern Western values!".
The problem is that the very idea of killing thousands of civilians being the only way to protect your loved ones is completely bonkers.
In the cases when the protagonist is overpowered and the bad guys pose no real threat, I'd argue that even killing an enemy army is morally dubious when they can just be threatened instead. But even if the bad guys are a real threat, it's insane to think that killing civilians is necessary.
So these authors always need to turn their characterization and world-building into complete nonsense.
The most common method is to make every single member of the group of people to be genocided cartoonishly racist or hateful against the group the MC is a part of, to the point of being suicidal. Every farmer, child, and old lady would rather die than stop trying to kill the MC's people and will be extremely cruel to any that they can get their hands on (I was going to include an extra category of excuses called 'they deserved the genocide', but that tends to be just an addition to the other three).
An alternative is to make the method of genocide ludicrously contrived so that the MC 'has no other choice'. Like giving them a superweapon that will inevitably kill the enemy civilians along with their army (but not the civilians on our side somehow) and cannot be used to threaten them for some reason.
Excuse 2 - I don't follow 'human morality' :
Let's just make the MC a dragon/monster/undead, that way you cannot judge their actions the way you would judge a human's, right?
The problem here is simple, the MCs of the novels that do this always think and act EXACTLY like a human, except for all the murder. If you ever see a novel be praised for having a character that acts like a REAL dragon/monster/undead, what that means is that the character is a human that will occasionally turn into an amoral murder hobo.
Naturally, if they didn't, the readers would not be able to self-insert as them to have their genocidal power fantasies.
When the author feels like they really want to insult the reader's intelligence, they will try to make a point that goes something like "There are so many stories with an MC that massacres monsters without a second thought, now the tables have turned!". As if killing mindless creatures that cannot be reasoned with was the same as a sapient being killing other sapient beings.
A lot of these """non-human""" MCs are reincarnated humans, and instead of making them struggle with their human memories, most authors will just claim that the transformation into a dragon/monster/undead took away their emotions and empathy, because the best way to make a character interesting is for them to not have emotions I guess.
These characters without emotion or empathy will then proceed to be very emotional and have a lot of empathy toward a group of other """non-human""" characters close to them. They'll just not have empathy towards humans or humanoids, because that's how empathy works, that's why there's no such thing as non-human self-insert characters and why cartoons with talking animals don't exist.
But only having empathy for your group of people while not thinking twice about killing those outside of it is something that certain humans have also done. And that's the thing, these characters that 'don't have human morality' are not non-human, they are just evil humans, but the narrative will pretend that they are not.
EXCUSE 3 - This story is light-hearted so my genocide doesn't count:
I will never understand why, but I've seen quite a few novels that are supposed to be 'light-hearted slice of life' include a character that's some powerful being that committed genocide on humans at some point in the past (sometimes even the present), usually worded as "destroyed a kingdom" or "destroyed x cities". Then the story will treat it as a joke and everyone will act as if that never happened.
It just drives me crazy every time the main characters run into any villains after that. They'll be like "That evil noble stole money from the orphans! So evil!" And I'll be like "How many orphans did your friend over there murder?!" Or they'll be like "Those humans are so racist" And I'll be like "More racist that the genocidal monster?!"
I don't know, maybe it's just me but this one is actually the one that bothers me the most. With the other two, I can at least understand by some edgy teenagers might think that they are 'deep'. But these attempts to sleight off hand a genocide past me just feel like a personal insult. And it just feels so pointless and like such a bad match for the genre.
Anyway, one last thing I want to say. Can you all stop pretending that genocidal MCs are something original? Because they really are a dime a dozen, but all of these novels will have people talking about how different from all other stories they are.
And I'd like you not to leave, because I just noticed that your story is on my reading list and I want to read it some day.
