Stop Making Your Protagonists Sympathetic

Why the most interesting characters are the ones (other people say) you shouldn't like

The protagonist of my novel The Reply is not a “good” person. Certainly not in the modern definition. What he is: perfectly adapted to his world.

Captain Henry Somerset is charming—but it’s performance, a weapon he wields to disarm and seduce. He treats women like conquest trophies, drinks too much, and channels his considerable trauma into becoming excellent at violence. His loyalty is fierce but possessive. His competence borders on inhuman. When he smiles, it’s calculation, not often warmth.

He’s also the most compelling character I’ve ever written.

In Nhera, where the ocean is sentient and predatory, where competence is the only thing standing between you and drowning, Somerset is exactly what survival requires. He’s as dangerous as the world that forged him.

And yet every writing workshop, every social media thread, every virtue-signaling checklist would tell me he’s “problematic.” That I should soften him, redeem him, make him learn to be kinder.

Because here’s what modern writing advice gets catastrophically wrong: sympathy is not the same as compelling. And the relentless push to make protagonists “likeable” is producing fiction that’s predictable, safe, and—worst of all—boring.

The Sympathy Trap

We’re told protagonists must be:

• Kind (or trying to be)

• Morally legible

• Motivated by care for others

• Redeemable through growth

• Fundamentally good

This isn’t craft advice. It’s ideology masquerading as technique.

The moving target of what counts as acceptable character behavior shifts with political winds. What’s “sympathetic” in 2025 would’ve been unrecognizable in 2015. Writers tie themselves in knots trying to hit a standard that changes faster than they can revise.

The result? Protagonists who are safe. Predictable. Designed by committee to offend no one.

If you always know your protagonist will choose compassion, help the vulnerable, and learn to be better—what’s the point of reading? That’s not narrative tension. That’s cozy political porn.

The Diegetic Problem: When the Author Shows Their Hand

Here’s the craft issue: authorial judgment kills immersion.

When your narrative voice signals disapproval of a character’s choices—when the prose itself leans in to let readers know “this is bad and you should feel bad about it”—you’ve broken the fictional dream. You’re no longer in the story. You’re being lectured about the story by someone who needs you to have the correct opinion.

Diegetic writing—fiction that stays inside the world without external commentary—requires neutrality. Not moral relativism. Neutrality. You present the character’s logic, their context, their choices, without the narrative voice editorializing.

Example of non-diegetic writing:

Somerset smiled that cruel, predatory smile that revealed everything ugly about his treatment of women, his need to dominate, his fundamental brokenness that he refused to address.

Diegetic version:

Somerset smiled.

The first version is the author controlling your interpretation. The second trusts you to see what’s happening and form your own judgment. One is propaganda. The other is fiction.

Fiction isn’t an instruction manual. It’s not modeling correct behavior. It’s exploring what humans do under pressure.

When you write morally complex characters without narrative judgment, readers engage authentically. They think. They debate. They feel complicated things about people doing complicated things in complicated circumstances.

The moment you signal which opinion you want them to have, you’ve turned fiction into a morality play. And readers who came for story, not sermon, check out.

There’s disposable fiction—stories consumed and forgotten. And then there’s fiction that stays with readers for years because the author trusted them to form their own interpretation. When you let readers build their own relationship with the text, when you resist the urge to guide them toward the “correct” takeaway, you create space for genuine engagement.

Writing that aspires to educate readers on morality is a virtue signal, not a snapshot of human experience. And virtue signals don’t stick with anyone—they just demonstrate the author performed the right opinions at the time of publication.

Why Unlikeable Protagonists Work: The Somerset Case Study

Let me be specific about why my protagonist works despite (because of?) violating every “likeable protagonist” checklist:

He’s adapted to his environment. Nhera isn’t a world where kindness is rewarded. The ocean is sentient, predatory, and wants you. Ships disappear. Sailors drown. The sea whispers promises and threats in equal measure. In that context, Somerset’s weaponized charm, his possessive loyalty, his refusal to be vulnerable—these aren’t character flaws. They’re survival traits. The world made him dangerous because anything less gets claimed by the depths.

He’s a commoner who clawed his way to Post-Captain through merit alone. The aristocracy despises him for it. His response? Seduce their daughters, drink their wine, and beat them at their own games while smiling like he was born to it.

The charm is trauma response. At his first high-society gala, a noblewoman treated him like an exotic pet—praising his “raw talent” and “unrefined energy” with amused condescension. That humiliation forged his rakish persona. He treats women of that class as conquest to reclaim the power stripped from him. It’s pathological. It’s ugly. It’s psychologically coherent.

His competence is the point. Somerset survives because he’s the best naval officer in Arune. Not the kindest. Not the most moral. The best. His skill at reading storms, navigating impossible waters, and commanding a ship borders on supernatural. The sea itself is obsessed with him.

Readers don’t like him. They’re fascinated by him.

Competence > Sympathy in Grimdark

Here’s what grimdark understands that cozy fiction doesn’t: interesting beats likeable every time.

Somerset doesn’t need to be sympathetic because he’s:

• Complex: His flaws have clear psychological origins. You understand why he’s like this even if you don’t approve.

• Competent: When he takes the wheel in a storm, his crew watches a man become a god. That’s more compelling than any amount of emotional availability.

• Consistent: He doesn’t apologize for what he is. No redemption arc where he learns to be nicer. He’s a weapon pointed at the ocean, and the ocean wants him back.

The moment you make Somerset “sympathetic,” you lose what makes him work. If he starts treating women better, stops drinking, learns healthy emotional expression—he becomes predictable. And predictable characters are narrative dead weight.

Why This Works Across My Cast

This isn’t just Somerset. My entire main cast operates on “compelling > sympathetic”:

Lieutenant Gore: Aristocratic, protocol-obsessed, cold. Loyal to Somerset not from affection but from pragmatic respect for competence. Possibly gay, definitely repressed. Would execute a crew member for insubordination without hesitation.

Daud van Richter: Richter’s bastard half-brother, her deniable knife. Missing molars from a job gone wrong. Kills efficiently, questions rarely. When Somerset forces him to choose between completing his mission or saving Somerset’s life, he chooses Somerset—not from friendship, but from recognition. Two weapons acknowledging each other.

What “Flaws” Actually Mean

Modern writing workshops treat character flaws like:

• Small, manageable quirks

• Opportunities for growth

• Things to be overcome by Act III

That’s not a flaw. That’s a plot device with a redemption timer.

Real flaws—the kind that make characters jump off the page—are:

• Structural to their psychology: Somerset’s performative charm isn’t a bad habit he can unlearn. It’s load-bearing architecture holding up a psyche built on class resentment and childhood humiliation.

• Incompatible with easy redemption: You can’t “fix” Gore’s aristocratic coldness without fundamentally destroying who he is. His inability to feel warmth isn’t a bug—it’s the feature that makes him work as an intelligence officer.

• Morally uncomfortable: Daud’s competence at violence isn’t softened by reluctance or regret. He’s good at killing and knows it. Readers can be uncomfortable with that. Good.

The Permission You Need

If you’re writing grimdark, horror, psychological thrillers, or any genre where stakes are survival rather than personal growth:

Stop trying to make readers like your protagonist.

Make them:

• Competent at something that matters

• Psychologically coherent (even if ugly)

• Consistent in their damage

• Adapted to the world they inhabit

• Interesting enough that readers have to keep reading or watching.

Somerset isn’t sympathetic by Bluesky standards. He’s a traumatized weapon who treats the sea like an abusive lover and his crew like the only family he’ll allow himself. He uses people. He performs constantly. He’s probably going to die badly.

But I can’t stop writing him.

And readers who claim they want “likeable protagonists” keep telling me they can’t stop reading about him either.

There’s no shame in finding complex, dangerous, morally ambiguous characters compelling. That’s not a failure of your values. That’s proof you understand that fiction isn’t a morality exam.

The shame comes from people who need you to perform the correct opinion about fictional characters—as if your engagement with Somerset says something damning about your real-world ethics.

It doesn’t. Fiction is where we explore what we may not tolerate in reality. That’s the whole point.

The Craft Principle

Compelling characters operate on internal logic, not external approval.

Somerset’s psychology makes sense to him. His actions follow from his trauma, his competence, his relationship with the sea. He doesn’t break character to be more palatable. He doesn’t soften for audience comfort.

That internal coherence—that refusal to apologize for what he is—creates the magnetism that sympathy never could.

Sympathy is asking for permission. Complexity is a territorial claim.

When you write for sympathy, you’re asking: “Is this okay? Will readers accept this?”

When you write for complexity, you’re claiming: “This is what this person is. Engage with it or don’t.”

One creates cozy political porn. The other creates The Reply.

---

For more craft analysis and worldbuilding breakdowns, subscribe. I post every Tuesday.

Fair winds,
—D. S. Black