True to form as I enjoy picking peoples brains, I was curious as to what sort of characters people enjoying reading or writing more? The reluctant hero thrust into the story out of their control? A plucky anti-hero who goes against the grain but with good intentions? Or maybe even just your regular white knight who always does what they think is the right thing even if it might not be? These are just a few examples from the top of my head, but I’d like to hear more from the guys and gals on here, what do you guys like?
I generally will enjoy any type of protagonist as long as they're interesting and consistently developed, but I must say, writing a main character who's driven by lust, has a position of power and a very under-developed sense of morality is kind of liberating. I think it might be to writing porn what making your character a complete dumbass is to comedy.
In a more expanded answer..... What I enjoy for main characters isn't the same as everyone. I dislike the kind of person develops mind control or lust powers to perform sexual assault despite it being so common. It's fine for those stories to exist. They are fiction. I just don't really enjoy it in the sense of not just being one off or once in a while things and that being the whole story/h game. It gets old reeaaaally quick. There's plenty of h-games about getting lusts powers and using them to rape, but I bet you only remember three or five ones you might have liked out of the 15,000 or so out there. As for female protags, it's not quite so simple either. To me a female protag should be....not too sexually overt? This sounds like a strange criticism for porn writing to have, but.....even with npcs and other characters, when a character is just....too easy and overtly slutty? It actually can just kind of make things less appealing when there's no build up or process other than "One fuck and mind broken." And let's be real. The corruption/breaking is usually the part people like reading about the most in that kind of thing and when it's made too easy or the character is just too easy it can really take away from an otherwise really well written scene when the pacing goes from random stranger to master! after meeting up in a park bathroom stall, exactly once. I dunno.
For the protagonists of the stuff I write here, I tend to have either shy and nervous young men, or strong, confident older women, both because I enjoy writing those and it also leads nicely into my own kinks. They do usually have good intentions or at least see it that way, since I don't at all enjoy writing or reading about someone who's just a morally bankrupt asshole who gets everything they want, and I try to keep their development through the story fairly realistic as well. I like writing about the journey of the characters as well as the destination, and how their wants and viewpoints change throughout the story. So, like a naive young man who gets some experience and starts to enjoy and embrace his submissive desires would be a good example of a character in one of my stories. Or a tough, dominant woman who learns to care more for her partners and so finds a relationship that satisfies her.
At the risk of sounding pretentious, I prefer protagonists that are deep, flawed, and unique. 'Deep' in the sense of having a clear personality and character that is expressed through narration, dialogue, and the actions they take (or can take); 'flawed' in both ability and morality, not being totally incompetent or evil but signicantly imperfect in both regards; 'unique' in that there is a reason the story is following this character, in particular, rather than any other character in the story. Granted, it's very rare a protagonist isn't sufficiently unique. I don't mind reading about evil protagonists, but the problem with evil protagonists, especially on CHYOA, is similar to the problem with evil player characters in Dungeons & Dragons. The types of people who want to play an evil character and the types of people who are good at playing an evil character are almost mutually exclusive.
Playing a "Good" villain means everybody wants you dead. EVERYBODY. Doesn't matter what they believe, they can point to you as the source of their problems, No matter what your problems are, they can point to you, and claim that YOU are the fault of it. Really good villains are people like Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, Rasputin, Brother Number One (Pol Pot), Elizabeth Bathory, Dracula, Moriarty, Darth Vader, Cleopatra VII, Satan, Xi Xing Ping, The Presidents of the United States (Former and Current). If you want to play a good villain, you have to be willing to have EVERYBODY hate you, and nobody really wants to be hated by everyone. You have to be Paranoid, obsessed with your own power, and convinced that everyone, literally EVERYONE is plotting against you. Take your "Evil Overlord List" and throw it away. Every action that you get involved with has to involve your direct pleasure/benefit, and you don't give a damn who suffers for it. Yeah, you may have a moral code, but you CANNOT play that openly. You have to keep Kayfabe at all times. You DO NOT CARE about the people, and anyone who tries to curry favor with you by acting like you needs to be reminded that YOU are the power, not them, and by acting in your name, they only magnify YOUR name, and by taking any power for themselves, they are setting themselves up as your Rival, meaning you NEED to destroy them. Period. No matter how small or insignificant the threat. Not too many people want to read a long story about somebody doing that and talking about how great they are. Well, I mean maybe they do, to judge from the new york times best seller list...
For reading stories?... I enjoy all four types of major characters so long as they're done well. The Hero: does good things for good reasons, the Anti-Hero: does good things for bad reasons, the Anti-Villain does bad things for good reasons, and of course the Villain: does bad things for bad reasons. That said, I don't particularly like assholes and will oftentimes cheer for the characters who do things for good reasons (Hero and Anti-Villain) as opposed to characters who do things for bad reasons (Anti-hero and villain). For lewd/erotic stories I do prefer female protagonists to male ones. That's not to say I don't like male characters, it's just female characters I find deeper and more fascinating. Male characters are more like "I want to fuck that. So I'll try to fuck that." Female characters typically have a deeper motivation than that. Might be why I prefer women who cheat stories. She's already committed to another person, so what drives her to that betrayal? It just creates more drama and conflict I find. But that's my own personal quirk/fetish. For me what makes a good villain is that they believe they're the hero. They're convinced that what they're doing is the right/just thing to do. Even when to any passive observer what they're doing is clearly wrong. It's that mindset that creates a fascinating character. Tragic but fascinating.
I don't think it's the right idea that a villain is only good if they are unapologetically evil monsters. If anything, that usually just ends in a generally flat character that you don't remember anything about. Very few people remember fat old corrupt ceo #204 or #Evil wizard #64 without something that sets them apart. A villain whose only motivation is to be evil because they're evil is usually just pretty quickly forgotten about. Not every villain is the hero of their own story either. It ultimately comes down to the writing. Just fact is....a lot of the time, the writing to make a good unapologetically evil character isn't usually pulled off. I'm not really a fan of characters whose whole thing is they're proud of being a unlikable piece of shit. There are times where it works for anti-hero characters though and it all depends on the writing and atmosphere. Oga in Beelzebub. He's probably one of my favorite high school anime protags because of it. He's an interesting spin on the book dumb mc who likes to fight. The difference is, fighting is all he enjoys. The whole plot of the show for the first season is his LACK of standards compared to all the other characters against him and he's just too strong for them to measure up too. He can at any point, go on a rampage and hospitalize 50 some students and...instead of using his strength to take over the school or destroy the planet or anything, he's largely just too apathetic to give a shit. It's not that he doesn't want to or won't fight people, he already knows he's the strongest and just doesn't really want to waste his time fighting other people to prove it unless they seem worthwhile. Kind of like One Punch Man, except for the fact that Oga just differs from the typical overpowered shonen mc due to the fact he was explicitly chosen as champion of the demon realm because he's just too strong compared to other humans and the fact he's so ruthlessly violent that even the people who are roughly close to his power level, just aren't impulsively violent enough to be seen as good enough to be guardian of the demon lord. Like he's not really made out to be absolute evil, but it's established that the typical traits of a anime protag of being strong, dumb, and loving to fight, aren't actually a good thing. He truly rules as a main character though. He's not a hero character or a villain protagonist. He's just a selfish asshole. And why that works is because it's a comedic setting in universe where people react to just how much of a dick he can be accordingly. The shock and appalled attitude at seeing him punch out one of his own allies for getting in the way is treated like he's ruthlessly insane. The fact he'd rather ruin his friends vacation at a resort just because he couldn't go is treated as him being a dick. The nature of a sociopathic comedy show in general is that while the audience is supposed to laugh at how awful the characters can be, there needs to be people who are surprised by this or react with horror. If everyone just accepts it and doesn't acknowledge it, it loses all impact. The fact he has to raise a baby with no idea how to take care of one can be played for laughs. If it was just accepted in universe everytime he made a bad decision with parenting, it suddenly just becomes a lot darker and just not funny at all. The tone and light of a show is important to what makes things work. To a darker show: Samurai Champloo. Mufen is another anti-heroic character who definitely isn't on the side of good. He never acts like he is and he doesn't particularly get better as the show goes on. He and Jin only work with each other explicitly because they want to be the one who gets the honor of killing the other. The fact they'll completely drop what they're doing because they'd rather try to finish the other one off is shown to be a negative thing. Mufen was a pirate who steals everything and kills people for no real reason other than he just likes it. He'd be a full-on villain in any other show, but when the people you are up against are either much worse or too mission focused to care then he becomes the type of character where it's Evil V.S. Eviler. And Mufen is fucking awesome. The fact he will rather poison someone or stab them off guard with his hidden dagger are treated like terrible insults to warrior honor...but they work. And they work because HE KNOWS that his opponent is going to rigidly stick to fighting as honor bound and as reasonably as possible. He's so dangerous because of how wildly unpredictable he is and he doesn't have any rules to how he'll fight. He's never shown feeling bad about anything he does. But why that pyschopathic style character can work is because of the dark tone and people still acknowledge him as a terrible person. So, yeah. Tone and atmosphere of a show are important for villainous or anti-heroic characters. It's important for a good anti-heroic characters that they have the right media and how you want to portray their actions. Most of the time a asshole for the sake of being an asshole character doesn't work outside of comedy or dark settings where the bad guys are still so much worse. If they're the only terrible person while everyone else around them did absolutely nothing to them, it pretty quickly just becomes an unlikable character instead of a interesting villain or anti-heroic centered protagonist when it's not meant to be played for laughs and they are just doing shitty things against people who don't really deserve it. If you're curious, about one of my own villainous characters in a non-lewd book I'm working on(Or eventually plan to work on instead of just saying I'm working on it.): Spoiler Basically one of the majorly villainous characters is best friends with the main character. The main character is a witch who wants to rule the world but just isn't really evil enough to do anything too menacing so people largely don't care. Her best friend on the other hand, is treated as the much more serious villain. He's essentially an imaginary friend she subconsciously created with magic power. He exists physically, but his race is essentially created by mages to act as servants. And they're fine with that. This race honestly believes that they and mages are supposed to be friends. And the mages think that too. However, what this cumulates into is that a race of servants made by mages when they were children isn't really a good thing. Because they are explicitly built to be best friends with their mages when their children, they are almost always super happy and cheerful to put up with their masters. It isn't an act. They really are like that. However, they are also created by children and having the mental maturity of a child along with blind optimism is a lethally dangerous combination. The end result is the main character's best friend views whatever the witch does as good, because he's supposed to. Anyone who opposes her trying to take over the world is bad and just trying to bully her. In his mind, he's really not doing anything wrong by helping her amass a demon army or take over a city and doesn't get why anyone would have a problem with this. Inversely, the others of his race he meets who are opposed to him, want to stop the witch because it's what their own mages want, but it's made clear they honestly don't know why her taking over the world is a bad thing other than their own best friend doesn't want it, so it must be bad. Later in my planned second book far off into the future that will probably never come, this ends up as the servant race bands together to try and spread their happiness and love across the dimensions....unfortunately, their "love" is a physical and extremely toxic poison that's lethal to everything except themselves and they really don't understand why people are trying to prevent them from making the expanse. The best they can reason is since they are trying to make everyone friends, the people trying to prevent it must just not like having friends. As far as they can tell, they're honestly not doing anything wrong. They aren't broken in anyway. They haven't turned against their masters. Rather, they work perfectly. The real danger their race represents is that they're too good at what they do and since their morals stem from whoever made them, they have no way of introspection or self awareness that they might actually be bad. I don't know. Just kind of what my idea was of where I'd go with them. A race that's innocent and childlike, but it's made apparent that this is not really a good thing when they can't understand how helping someone created a magic empire to take over the planet might be bad. They only understand that helping their friends is good and just don't really get that anything they could do could hurt or inflict emotional pain on people. They sincerely believe they're helping.
Heh... well, there we disagree, respectfully. Course, I'm going with Kayfabe on this. (For those who do not know, Kayfabe is a Pro-wrestling term, meaning that you pretend everything is on the up and up when you're playing a bad guy. Sure you can get redeemed in some other storyline, OR play the hero in another storyline, but when you're playing the villain, it's your responsibility to play it to the absolute upmost and get as many people hating you as possible. Where would Hulk Hogan Have been without Roddy Rowdy Piper?) It all comes down to the type of storytelling you're aiming for. If you're the type who likes fun and adventure... If you're wanting your players/audience to have a good time, feel like they saved the day, and are a genuine bonafide, HERO, you gotta make the bad guy worth that effort. That means lying, cheating, and generally playing king slimeball rat who will never give the hero a decent fight, because he always slinks off to cause problems elsewhere. The nastier your villain, the more redeemable/forgivable your heroes are. I mean, SURE the guy might be a little lecherous... but at least he doesn't... I dunno, Torture Puppies to cause an old Lady to have a Heart Attack. (Apologies to Michael Palin, who performed just such an act in one of his films) Villains in a Heroic setting should NEVER play fair. They should cheat, lie, and generally behave exactly like a "Smart" hero from any modern story. If the heroes ever feel like they have the upper hand by playing by the villain's rules, you're doing it WRONG. The villain's rules are there to hamstring and defeat the heroes, and his minions are either unwitting dupes or active collaborators. The heroes should feel like they can lose at any minute, and even at the end... only win because they're doing the RIGHT thing... which is what the villain will not do, because it was far easier to be pragmatic. It's a LOT of fun to write, and watch, but really requires that you be in the right mood for it. Of course, it also requires that your players/readers think like heroes, and not like the average person just trying to keep their head down and play it "Smart." --- Now, if you're going for literature, and honest portrayal of human emotion, well... there we get into what we believe about people. If you're going with the "Survivor"/Reality TV lessons, then absolutely, ignore EVERYTHING I said above. That's a completely different morality, and a different aspiration for people. Many of those characters have varying and complicated explanations for every single thing they do, and as a result, seeing it from all sides means that at any point, anybody can be the hero, simply by seeing the whole thing from a different point of view. Many modern films I think fall into this category, as we can see many of them recut and completely changing the emphasis, many times for comedy effect, but often remade in reverse, or Rule 63'd or any other variation. Same story, just with the characters flipped and replaced with the flavor of the month. As an attempt to make the story more universal, I don't personally enjoy writing that way. It feels a bit too samey to me, and I can only watch "Malificent" or any other thing where we need to understand WHY the guy was such a jerk, and sympathize with them because of their misguided intent. It's a bit depressing, but it does sell books, so... YMMV. It all depends on what the story is you want to tell. If you want a complex story full of human emotion and sympathy for the misguided devil who was only following orders... It's pretty popular and you can find it a LOT of places these days. On the other hand, a villain who everybody really hates... well... you REMEMBER them. Where would the History Channel be without Hitler, after all?
