Writing Tips and Reviews

Adoption and Protection? Meaning in the Story?

As a writer, you make a plethora of characters, from children to adults to ancient beings. There's no stopping you if you want to make a three-thousand-year-old hero have the form of an eight-year-old child whose intelligence is at the level of a peanut. But does that mean they need to be "adopted and protected?"

It's a common trope in role-play to see a partner have a young-looking character then immediately jump on the "must protect" train. Which is fine to a certain extent but can be overwhelmingly annoying when done too much.

-Adopting Characters-

I'm not a fan of people seeing my characters and saying, "I'm going to adopt them!" When I created the characters Kizuki Homura and Ryuu someone jumped on the "I will adopt and protect these precious little babies" train. I agreed to have our characters be friends, but it got to the extent of treating them like babies who can't put on diapers. They're grown adults with the minor setback that Ryuu is blind since he was in a war, plus... ancient demons, that's important.

They weren't meant to be "adopted" by this guy's character, they were meant to be friends. But somehow, it turned into them being precious little babies who needed protection. Mother Gothel levels of "you can't do anything without me because you're incapable of living on your own."

This is when "adopting" someone's character takes it too far. When there's no agreement or real reason beyond "everyone I meet is a tiny baby because I'm 100 years old." And if that's the mindset your character has... don't expect people to like them. You and the partner need to have an agreement, if it was "just friends" then turning it into "my OC adopted them" will make the partner want to stop the relationship. This goes for solo work as well, when making a character adopt another, there needs to be an agreement, paperwork as well in most cases. A child on the street comes to a doorstep, the baby in a basket, an adoption center, or people of the same age adopting each other as siblings, all are acceptable. Hell, have a businessman adopt an employee if their child doesn't want to continue the business.  

I remember when talking about Shrutakarma, I said that his childish behavior comes from negligence from his father, and someone immediately jumped to "I'm taking him away from his family and raising him myself!" Yes, a three-thousand-year-old hero who has the form of a sixteen-year-old needs to be adopted and raised. Do you see the issues with this "must adopt everyone's characters and treat them as little babies" mindset? Making adults into "little babies" so you have an excuse to treat them as such will get you blocked.

-Protection-

Not everyone needs protection. Karna Lily, despite how weak he initially is, can do more damage than his Lancer form with the right setup. "Don't judge a book based on its cover," as people say. A young child can be a powerful opponent depending on the world setting and their home life. Maybe they're immortal who stopped growing at a young age.

A character with the mindset of "must protect" typically has it because they want to save people. It could be that they lost their family and friends and don't want to see anyone suffer the same way. Or maybe they're just born stupidly overprotective. Asbel Lhant from Tales of Graces is that way... and it's a meme in the community. The knights, parents, grown-ups with children, siblings, even kids can have this mindset. But it has to be done in a way that doesn't annoy the reader, or in the case of role play, the partners.

You see, shoving your partners to the side so your character can do everything is something no one likes. Not even with the "must protect" mindset. In stories, it's more acceptable as you're controlling the character cast and it's for an arc, but in role play, it's insulting to the partners. Shoving them into a backseat to say, "I will protect all you precious babies" is how to get everyone to leave you and find their own battle. Because role play is about everyone and their characters, not you thinking that only your character is allowed to fight because everyone else is a tiny baby who can't put on shoes. There is a theme here, and I hope you're getting it.

Doing it with the reason of self-sacrifice, thinking the enemy is too difficult for others, or it's a personal fight is acceptable. The character could later be lectured on how they're part of a team and need to remember that everyone fights alongside one another. If they are too weak for the enemy, then training together would be the best option.

What are some other acceptable ways to have a character "protect" others? Well, knights are trained to fight for the people, parents can keep their children safe, siblings can stand up for each other, teammates can stand back to back, and so many other ways that don't need to lower the capabilities of another. You don't need to devolve characters into "tiny little babies" to have another character protect them.

-Bottom line-

Don't treat characters as little babies so another can be on the high ground without a message of how that's unfair. Mother Gothel's character was meant to undermine Rapunzel to keep her in place and when she broke out, she learned how much her mother was holding her back. The message was about how parents can hurt their children by being too overprotective. A character whose personality is similar to a parent should be taught to back off if they go too far. A character who protects others without care should learn to work with the team. Self-fulfilling "everyone around me is a little baby" only works if that character is meant to learn to treat others equally.

It could have been a good arc for the guy's character. For them to learn that they can't treat others as babies just because think of themselves as higher than everyone else. Because it is demeaning to be treated like an incapable baby. Instead, it continued and nothing changed. And that's not character development, it's character stagnation, and that only works when there isn't a need for change. Such as Yuri Lowell, who was the catalyst for change but already went through an arc in his past.

Characters who adopt others should have a relationship with them and it should be mutual or done legally. And while characters who want to protect others have a much wider spectrum to explore, they shouldn't be demeaning the others without some form of consequence.