#some of you accidentally contribute to the military entertainment complex and like.

[wutheringmights]

Hi! I'm a really big fan of your war criminal Warriors. Do you have any tips for writing morally gray Warriors?

I know my branding is "Warriors is a war criminal," but he's not actually breaking a law. Hyrule doesn't even have a Geneva. He's more of a war monger lol

Anyway

I think the trap a lot of people fall into when attempting a morally gray character is thinking of good and evil as a spectrum with morally gray at the exact center. My problem with that idea is that gray morality isn't at the center-- your average, slightly selfish person is.

Another problem with being in the center of the spectrum is that your character will seem better or worst depending on who they're compared against. A guy who has no problem killing people is a villain when they're up against a saint, but reasonable compared to a tyrant.

My solution and what gives Warriors that little spice is to give him traits on both extremes of the spectrum. Warriors loves his friends so much, but he is also capable of feeling nothing for another person. He's caring, but he's also manipulative. He is trying his best to be good, but he has done so much bad. No matter who you put him up against, his positives and negatives are never diminished.

I think a lot people also fumble a bit with committing to gray morality completely. I'm not sure how to best describe it.

If someone is morally gray, their bad traits have to be really, really bad. They have to commit atrocities. But as a writer, you have to know what exactly those atrocities are. Warriors killing a person isn't what makes something terrible. It's that the person wants to live, that they had a family waiting for them.

Take his manipulation of Spirit. The fact that he's forcing Spirit to fight in a war is only the surface of what makes him terrible. It's not even the lengths he goes to in order to manipulate him that horrifies you. You think he's terrible when he can see the number this does on Spirit's well being, physical and mental, and keeps going anyway.

Atrocities don't matter when they don't have consequences. That's what gives everything bad he does weight.

Of course, balancing his ability to be terrible with what makes him good is also important. This is why writing exclusively from Warriors's perspective is vital. We have to see the world from his perspective to know why he does what he does. That's what makes him relatable. That's how we build empathy for him. Warriors would seem like a completely different person if it was written from an outsider's perspective.

That brings us back to the elephant in the room, which is his role in the military.

There's a lot I can say about how his role in the military affects his moral standing, but I'll try to keep it brief.

When it comes to writing Warriors as morally dubious in terms of his military career, I think a lot of people fumble with the consequences and blame.

A lot of Warriors angst that deals with him having to kill mass amounts of people concludes with the sentiment that it was for the greater good. Angst about the turncoats emphasizes his feelings of betrayal and inability to trust people.

Both of those interpretations are valid, but they also deflect blame from Warriors. It makes him a victim on both accounts. I'm not going to say that he isn't a victim, but those interpretations don't make for compelling gray morality. The consequences don't stretch far enough. They don't give Warriors agency.

So if you're going to make him a war criminal, you have to look at who he's affecting and why. What does killing scores of people mean for anyone who's not Warriors? What does this mean for a nameless civilian? What does betraying Hyrule mean for the turncoats, and what does this mean for Warriors?

Basically:

Extreme good and extreme bad works better than a middling stance

Relish in terrible consequences

POV is important

Military bad