I was writing a fantasy novel and in it, the captain and his troops were ordered to massacre a village (of fictional creatures); after the massacre the captain quit his position in anger and disgust; the captain had also smuggled a child out of the village.
When I mentioned this on a writing forum I was on, people got upset and everyone rebuked the idea that the captain would quit his position and defy orders because…it takes a long time and a lot of effort to become a captain.
This was supposed to be a positive reflection on the character, that he would be disgusted at being ordered to commit a genocide (it wasn’t JUST a massacre; absolutely no one from the village was to be allowed to live, including kids), but posters got upset because…it takes a long time and a lot of effort to reach such a rank and no one would quit their positions or disobey orders, that it was unrealistic; people were genuinely upset; PEOPLE WERE GENUINELY UPSET.
My conclusion? A rewrite of the character so he’s not a military dog, but someone else who would’ve been in the area and ignored. My novel has anti-colonial themes although they weren’t that central to the story; if the military are supposed to be jackbooted thugs then that’s how they’re going to be portrayed going forward.
I genuinely can’t believe people would actually be upset at this point when it’s supposed to reflect well on the character; this post was also an old one, as in around 2016-2018, so before the Gaza genocide or the Russian SMO. Absolutely disgusting bootlicking individuals.
The issue here is that the novel starts off at the genocide; the lady (at this point the captain has been changed to a woman from an aristocratic lineage who was out hunting and followed the troops into the valley; she’s known to the person who ordered the attack so he doesn’t care that she’s tagging along) voices her displeasure at the attack and even says it’s ridiculous that all these troops, both foot soldiers and highly trained and well armored hussars are being used to kill a small village of creatures; she finds the child, feels sorry for it, and smuggles the MC out.
Most of the novel the lady is living with the MC and it follows the MC’s growth and their toxic relationship; the lady starts out seeing the MC as basically something above a pet but leagues below human, but the MC’s reactions akin to a human (because the MC is obviously a person) confounds the lady because despite the MC understanding words, she’s not becoming blindly obedient like her dogs. Getting over that hurdle of seeing the MC as a person takes basically almost the entirety of the story and only happens after the MC defies her by leaving, and then later when the lady comes back to try and murder the MC and gets beaten and left to live because the MC still loves her despite their toxic relationship and that’s when the the lady’s world view is finally fully changed.
One of the things I want to show about my setting is just how inhumane the people of the setting’s views are of non-humans; the lady here is herself cruel to any non-humans she encounters, even if not murderously so, because she is at her core a supremacist, but she’s also a huge pet lover and initially intended for the MC to be a new pet, something different to what she’s raised up to this point (although THIS aspect came with the rewrite of the character; the former character, the captain, was simply disgusted with the genocide and this is why he rescued the MC).
I think the rewrite of the character away from being military made this easier; her rescuing the MC isn’t a major act as even if she’d been discovered to be smuggling the child out it wouldn’t have been treated heavy-handedly by the military given she’s of noble lineage.
The lady, while beloved by the MC, is decidedly NOT someone the reader is intended to empathize with; she IS cruel, unintentionally abusive, and a fascist (she believes in the human cause and sees the exterminations in the past in a heroic light). Her change of heart on non-humans comes solely from her relationship to the MC.