To Be Feared or To Be Loved

This post was written in reply to Chamomile's  Am I Bonkers?

"Why do they adore her but not me?"

"I cannot fathom it. You are far superior in all ways."

"I know, but Mirana can make anyone fall in love with her. Men...women...even the furniture."

"Majesty, is it not better to be feared than loved?"

"I'm not certain anymore. But let her have the rabble. I don't need them."

As I writer, I have never felt confined to a single genre. I've found expression for myself in many different forms of writing, sometimes making it hard for me to focus on one specific project. Recently, however, I discovered that I have one trait that plagues my main characters, no matter the setting. My characters lack love. 

The Tea-Spitters were, in part, what made me realize this phenomena. While they were discussing their OTPs and 'shipping characters, I was sitting in the corner alternating between plotting how to turn a princess into a beastly Robin Hood by destroying her family and writing extensive papers on the survival and suppression of a handful of languages (only one of which is still alive and flourishing today). At first, I only paid half a mind to what they were saying, thinking it was only two or three couples that they were oogling over. Then I started to realize that everyone had a main couple, and my poor characters were the punk goths in hoodies that were left scribbling death notes on paper hearts in the rain outside of their high school homeroom on Valentine's Day.

Since I made this dreadful realization, I have spent a good amount of time contemplating what it means. Obviously, I feel insecure about deep personal relationships, even if I don't realize it. My characters are hypersensitive about such things and come pre-equipped with defense mechanisms to keep the world at arm's length--something I have done for years. In fact, I don't remember a time when I wasn't suspicious of people. Unfortunately, it goes beyond suspicion. I would rather willfully be alone than risk not fitting in or having to deal with the rest of humanity. Even when I do find friends, they are merely that, and nothing more. Even worse, I expect them to choose to move out of my life in a few years. I was burned one too many times; I've forgotten how to be vulnerable.

To be able to truly express something in writing, it has to be real to you. If the author has not experienced and contemplated and wrestled in the mud with an idea, a concept, or a feeling, it isn't real to the reader. Our job as writers is to tell a story that originates in our very bones, give the idea flesh and then let the imagination breathe life into the creation. Unfortunately, many authors have a quirk that inhibits them from writing a certain type of story, or force them into one mode of character arc or storytelling. This either makes for brilliant writing in one specific area, or causes an author to run the risk of simply mirroring the life of the compassion-fatigued introvert.

The reason why people in old French and Spanish paintings had such pointy beards. 

With Chamomile's conundrum, I can argue that her insane characters are what bring depth and conflict to her stories. I have no such excuse. Families provide billions of opportunities for drama and conflict. My only excuse is that families are too much work. Think about it. What would your mother say if you went traipsing across the universes on adventures or lived in a round treehouse for all of your life? And what would you do with your two year old when you have to defeat evil on the home front? Strap her to your back in a papoose while you go into hand-to-hand combat with the minions of darkness? Leaving him with a baby sitter is out of the question--we all know baby sitters are really witches waiting to cook little kids as soon as their parents leave for an extended weekend of rest and rejuvenation (kids, I promise that only happens in books. Well, for the most part. Normal looking but crazy Norse god worshipping people who use battle axes in their ritual ceremonies do exist in the real world, too).

Even while logically arguing against any psychological bleed-through, I know that isn't why I fail to give my characters families. I can be lazy, but not that lazy. Beside, making my characters orphans doesn't preclude them from having a love life, yet I routinely refuse my characters the safe haven of a significant other. My own bad romantic experiences rear their ugly heads by denying even my favoritest characters the simple pleasure of loving another being. Instead, their worlds run on fear, power plays and the need to be self sufficient. Who needs Prince Charming? my MCs chorus, each polishing her weapon of choice.

Who indeed.