A lot of people on Episode like reading stories with relatable MCs, which sparks me the question; does that we are all the same/is every MC same?
So, I’m asking everyone, what is relatable for you, and since we are all different people, it’s pretty easy to guess that we don’t often see ourselves as the MC. So, why are relatable characters so important? Shouldn’t we have three dimensional, compelling characters?
Kinda leaning towards “grey area” MCs with this question. You know, not the good guy, but not the bad guy either. An anti-hero, maybe?
I think being realistic is important to some extent. We need characters to be three-dimensional as well as realistic. I prefer it when we can sort of choose the MC’s personality, because usually they’re a cliché sassy MC’s or naive MC’s.
When authors try too hard to be relatable though:
I like characters that are well-developed, as well as sort of relatable.
I think there always needs to be relatable aspects of an MC’s personality. Things like love, failure etc help us to relate to the MC. That in turn makes us care about their journey more. But I think people lately seem to act like relatable has to mean “in a normal situation”. I’ve related to dragons in stories before!
To be honest, I use the word relatable a lot when talking about Episode characters, but now that I read this, I realise that what I probably mean is “compatible” with me. Like, there are certain attitudes that I just cannot stand in MCs for whatever reason. Sometimes they make it up with another (or other) attitude(s) that I can understand better, and that leads me to say “well, but would be the point of expecting all characters to be exactly like me?”, and so, I pay no heed to that or those factors and enjoy the story regardless. Or on many occasions, that particular attitude I dislike is kind of “justified”, or more precisely, I found it understandable in that specific context of the story, and well… you get the point.
Then there are characters that I simply cannot tolerate because we have absolutely nothing in coming and on top of that are boring and blah blah blah…
Anyway, I think “relatable” in my case means “compatible with me” when it comes to characters. Stupid dyslexia.
