Everyone needs to mello out...

So for Nano I wrote an urban fantasy (rewriting it now) and the main feedback I keep getting is that the main character is too "chipper" to borrow the words of one reader. It seems everyone expects them to be dark brooding MCs, or at least hide their pain behind a smartass facade. The character in question isn't hiding anything. She accepted her "condition" (being a ghoul) long ago and is just living her unlife. She's generally just a funny person, as immortality is largely comprised of being bored and jokes help liven things up a bit. This is part of the humor for me, as her friends are the more "broody" type that she finds silly.

Basically I prefer drama come from the plot itself, not a character's lingering issues. And because I hate stories where a vampire/wizard/whatever is centuries old and STILL angsting over it. Basically what does everyone expect out of the hero of an urban fantasy piece.

You said it, (dude/girl, delete whichever is inappropriate)!

Angsting over hundreds of years would get boring. Besides, angry isn't a positive emotion. Eventually after being angry a whole lot, I realized that it wasn't a good way to live and made a resolution to not dwell negatively. That decision dramatically reduced my crying fits and increased my confidence.

Granted, all heroes have problems. It's how they deal with them that count. I've been trying to beat the creeping angst/smart-aleckness out of one of my heroines for a while since that wasn't who she was: level-headed and withdrawn. Even after all she's been through, she's too busy working on fixing the mess she's in to complain and honestly prefers not to talk about it..

Heh, I get you completely. I used to RP a character that had all kinds of reasons to angst, but it took a LOT to get her to actually do so. Given that she was a pretty young elf by her species' standards, she angsted quite a bit about the idea of living for a long long time, figuring that if losing all her human friends to old age didn't get her, the boredom would. She actually wished she could be a human sometimes, heh. But mostly she took everything pretty well, even though there were bad guys trying to kill her most of the time, and "good" guys trying to kill her because they thought she was a thief. (She was, briefly, but only because she wanted info on one of the bad guys who was hunting her, and figured if anyone knew secrets about him, they would.) And through all this she'd sit around joking with her friends and writing songs.

However, then she was dating this guy, only he kinda bored her, so she dumped him. This made him so depressed that he sold his soul & became a priest of an evil god. She had to kill him at least once. This is the point when she actually broke and went on a week-long drinking jag, heh. I think that's probably enough to drive anyone a bit bonkers for a while.

It's a sad world we live in if angsty characters are expected. I'd be quite _happy_ to read about a "chipper" character for once. I don't read books to be depressed!

Oh yes, this, all the way. Considering the complexities of my world, which, like most, is full of many different characters and societies, yes, there's a good bit of angst possibility - especially with the humanlike gods of myth meddling in mortal lives at a whim, and the complications of magic and mortals and myths all intermingling during the Drifting, when all the stories began to come together. But while I like muddying the waters and giving my characters lots of new trouble every time they turn around, it just wouldn't be any fun doing it to someone that couldn't even get themselves together to handle it.

The character I have with the most reason for angst and brooding is actually by far the most composed on the surface. He has a lot of mental and physical scarring and general torment going on deep down inside, and his sanity is questionable, but he's a trickster god, and therefore it's not in his nature to dwell on such things. Also, he's a shapeshifter, so his method of dealing with past trauma is generally by changing himself to another environment or simply trying to escape by putting on a different face and pushing his old identity behind him. And, as he's of questionable sanity, his moods are mercurial and his twisted sense of humor creates a lot of interesting situations. He pushes all the fear, anger, urge for revenge, and sheer pain down, and down, and down... Repression isn't necessarily healthy, of course, even in the face of immediate danger, but he's certainly no hero, and he knows that he can make it work just long enough to put off his eventual fate, which is to go completely insane and try and destroy the world. I have lots of other examples, but he's the easiest to explain - I pick on him a lot, actually, in the forums. =P

So, yeah, I love torturing characters, but only when there's more important things going on for them to angst about it. -shrug- Otherwise, it would pretty much be played for comedy, like the boy who cried wolf (Erm. god who cried Ragnorak, maybe?) Or further conflict between characters, culminating in other important plot twists that would then distract from the possibility of angst.

I feel you. I had a similar thought awhile back about characters who are unnaturally old. Extremely old characters are most often portrayed as kindly and wise, willing to dole out tidbits of life knowledge just out of the goodness of their old and wrinkled hearts.

But, to me, being that old would make me a grumpy old man times 1000. Everyone you come across would be an incompetent moron by comparision. So, my ancient wise man would be a curmudeonly, sarcastic prick

I think a chipper ghoul would be pretty odd. How chipper can you be if you kill people and eat their raw corpses?

But be that as it may, I'm sure it would make interesting reading. The potential jokes are indeed endless.

A vampire whining about being a vampire doesn't make much more sense than a human whining about being a human. (Not that this stops some humans, sigh.) Most people don't worry about what they eat. Why should a vampire?

But the truth is, they angst because they are fictional proxies for teenagers, who do tend to angst about their existence. Adolescence is the time when most people ask themselves the big, depressing existential questions. (I've been there, done that.) Thus, the vampires standing in for adolescents also suffer from big, depressing existential questions, even if the character is 700 years old and should be wiser than ten grandmothers by now.

(How excited can you get over the latest pretty young mortal if you've already seen a dozen of them age, wither, and rot? You'd probably stop caring, or at least not care any more than you care about a doughnut. We all know what doughnuts taste like, and we still want another one, but do we angst over them? Hell no.)

I love chipper characters - my character has some angst, but he a mostly chilled character as well.

So far you have me hooked and I'd love to read it.

Brooding characters wanted... That's funny isn't it? Why do people want brooding characters? They don't seem to complain if the chipper character is part of a group, but if it's the main character they need to have an attitude. Do you have a brooding character too? Maybe there's just not enough darkness. Maybe you can throw in a moody grump to balance it out. Or maybe you can use an existing side character and transform their dialog and facial expressions into something sarcastic and nasty.

See, to me it isn't a cheerful character that is a problem but an inappropriately cheerful character.

No one can be happy all the time and character's shouldn't be either. If a character's family has just been slaughtered and they shrug and skip off on their merry way, that is going to bug me.

Otherwise I'm all for some cheerfulness.

I agree with Fuzz! An optimistic character is definitely a worthwhile pursuit, and especially one who works to be optimistic and try to see a glowing side to things - but sometimes, even optimism fades - even if just a little. Doubt strikes everyone at some point, no matter how happy and chipper someone is.

Plus, chipperness can often 'chip' away at conflict, which at times can be frustrating. A massive battle, thousands dead, and the happy character pulls out a pink umbrella and a cup of hot tea to wash it away... Just sort of nulls out the devastation. Brooding characters have the same effect - when absolutely everything! is a conflict, then it makes even the climactic scene where the village is done under by a land slide, a volcano, and a hurricane all at the same time seem like nothing more than another hangnail.

Go for the cheerfulness, though! Cheery characters are awesome! But, even the cheery ones take a roller coaster dip now and then.

agreed with Fuzz and Tricket.

i mean, accepting your fate and making the most of it is one thing but almost being turned into a sex slave, then almost getting sentenced to death because you are "unworthy" and then being doomed to feast on human flesh for all eternity has got to have some kind of impact on you. especially since the 'human flesh' thing is ongoing.

also - does she have any meaningful connections? is the ghoul who saved her literally her "master" (in that she must obey completely) or is it more of a mentorship?
'cause being isolated and controlled by some other being sounds like it would be a really sh*tty way to exist.

i realize this is just a really general overview of your story, so maybe your MC has more positive things in her (un)life, you just may want to emphasize them a little more.

As for the feedback the TC received, I think someone who's lived a long time without lasting relationships will get lonely. Hell, even us humans with our puny lifespans will get lonely without others. That's probably why there's so many angsty immortals and why it might seem strange that yours doesn't seem to acknowledge this in some form or another (maybe, I haven't read it after all). It may or may not be relevant, but just putting my two cents in.

There is nothing wrong with chipper charries. I mean I'm getting tired of all the brooding and the angst, but if its false cheeriness then thats a problem.

I mean if she is dating another fellow ghoul and something happens to him and she just shrugs and goes to pick out pretty yellow flowers for him then you have a flat charrie and that is annoying and no one wants to read that.

This subject reminds me of the song Dark Side by Tim Minchin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQmJ_vxHB4