I like complicated characters the most, ones that are a mix of the good and the bad. The man pictured is Sydney Carton.

I don't know that character but I like that type as well. Someone who has a backstory who explains who they are. Someone who has the option of being good or bad and chooses good. Id like to write someone like that into my story.

or someone who has had a history of being bad & chooses good b/c they know the fallouts & consequences of being bad...
do u write stories btw?

Yesss..
I do write stories. Sorta. I have a billion and ten ideas in my head I want to turn into novels but never have the patience to do it. XD

yeah, same i have a billion ideas but never have time to get them all down & when i start i want to race b/c i have other ideas developing... but racing leaves the descriptions & characters to be boring so i rlly shouldn't do it. i intend 2 make them into movies tho once i'm finished writing them all down XD

Cool!
I want to be in the movie biz. Either actor, writer, or director but it prob wont happen. I want to be an author, but I do have some ideas that can only be movies.

yeah... i'm into musicals, & so most of my stories r intended 2 b musicals, so they just ain't the same in a book as on tv. i think i want to do like a tv show thing with movies, where i produce & write the movie script & hire different directors 4 different stories... that way i'm not too busy but could do what i love; creating music & stories.
why do u think it won't happen?

wow! Thats amazing
Its not realistic. Im better off living on a farm writing novels XD

lol hey if u've ever heard of harold finch, he's a goal setter & loves to achieve his goals. one of his goal setting tips was to make the vision "impossible" b/c nothing will stop u if u achieve those type of goals. he once said he wanted 2 visit every continent but some1 said he couldn't b/c he couldn't visit Antarctica, so his Antarctica goal moved 2 the top of his priorities & once he worked 2 achieve it, he was thankful 4 the kid who told him his goal was impossible... XD

Lol. But thats not what I mean by unrealistic. I cant explain it tho. It's... complicated. WHATEVER!!! So im gonna stick to being a world-famous writer.

i figured, i was just saying that cuz why not lol

Ok

XD

thx tho XD :)

Yeah, it's not just a flat kind of character and they're more relatable honestly

Exactly.

The character that has the most depth, the most layers, and the best personality is shrek. He's like an onion

I LOVE SHREK!!! :D

A good writer

don't make the character a mary sue

Agreed

Someone who has a good sense of humor and doesn't do stupid things and nearly dies.

Well...ok! XD

Harry Potter.

But they DO do stupid things and one DOES die! XD

okay fine, but harry doesn't exactly die, right?

Weeelllll....
plus they BOTH almost die on numerous occasions XD

:)

Or Ron.

I see you have returned to your home of memes and game my good sir.

CS Lewis is good

Yes he is. Thanks for noticing!

Not being like Rey

LOL, I agree, she's so flat and boring and doesn't really have ANY relatable characteristics

I like a good anti-hero myself, you never know what they're going to do next and the unpredictable nature keeps the reader/viewer engaged in their character. Doc Holliday is a good one, sort of a wild card good guy that dabbles in things not characteristic of good guys. The Ben Wade character (played by Russel Crowe) in 3:10 to Yuma was a great example. Obviously a bad guy, but sort of helps the good guys too. And to keep with the western theme, Blondie in the Good/Bad/Ugly is another one. Not afraid to kill someone, but generally leans towards being a good character.

Yeah, they act differently in different situations versus a character that's easily predictable.

That can differ depending on the story, and also on the message the author wants to convey, and of course the intended audience. The characteristics an author should take in mind for children's stories are different than for mature stories.

I am a writer myself, and for some reason I think I did my best jobs on my villains, or at least a lot of my villains. And important lesson of life is that "evil" does not exist, and that it's just a conception in which "good" people try to distinguish themselves from the "bad". This makes it interesting for me, as a POV style write to get into the mind of the villain and to see the world from their point of view. Even though their actions cannot be justified and are completely inexcusable, there can still be reason behind their "evil", and understanding how the villain thinks also makes that you understand their powers and weaknesses better. Quite often the villains even have a valid point behind their "evil".

Due to this I like characters most that you will also misjudge at first, but when the reader begins to understand the world from their point of view, you get a complete different picture. Villains are often perfect for that, since to them being on the "evil" side of the plot you easily want to dislike them at first, but if you get to know them, you may feel sorry for them and even gain sympathy for them, even knowing that they did something bad and need to be punished for that. This was my challenge when I set up my story for my "Secrets of Dyrt" RPG game, and the game has two prequel novels going into the deep of the villains of that game and give a pretty in-depth inside on how they eventually came to walk "the path of evil".

Now when I take it to work to other writers and even outside the scope of villains, misjudged "good" characters can also do a great deal. Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter is a good example. At first you'll take her for a complete lunatic idiot, but when you get to know her better you'll see she's sweet, brave and very intelligent, and that you can count yourself very extremely lucky if you have a friend like her. Luna is not a villain, but a character you easily misjudge on first impression nonetheless, and that's what I like about her.

You can easily guess that Severus Snape might well be one of the best fictional characters I've even seen. Seven books long you have no idea what game Snape is playing, and when it's all revealed at the end of of book 7, you realize you've been a fool

Yeah, I like a lot of the villains. It's just interesting to look at things in a different way

I LOVE SNAPE! XD
Actually I liked Snape from the first book, haha

I've been victim of a few teachers who were incompetent, and Snape therefore brought back some traumas in me I suffer from. I still can't like him as a person, but as a novel character he was fantastic. Of course Alan Rickman already called him the character of whom "nobody knew where it was going", and that was indeed what I liked about Snape. Especially after finishing book 6 I was utterly confused about Snape, yet when book 7 reveals his true role I wanted to kiss Rowling's feet for a fantastic job she did on Snape. I would not go so far to name one of my kids "Severus" in his middle name, if I were in Harry's shoes though.

Yeah, if a story takes the point of view of a villain well, the reader is forced to see things from a different perspective. I do take pride in my role as author that I could manage to show the good sides of a man who made a career out of swindling and blackmail, and who has a very overinflated ego to make matters even worse. Although I must admit, only an open-minded reader might be able to see these in him, but that too was intentional. (He was also a challenge because he never lies, but he knows what information to hide so you make the wrong interpretations and assumptions, and that was pretty hard to do, as I had to weight every word he said 100 times (if not more) before I wrote them down).

Being evil for the sake of a villain having to be evil is easy, but a villain who actually has a point behind his/her evil, that takes the challenge. I also like villains who are not villains. People you do at first believe to be villains, but when you get to understand them you find out they are not villains at all, and that they were never scheming anything bad at all, and that they even didn't even try to commit a crime at all, and that you actually find out they were even trying to do good. In some stories they even turn out to be secretly fighting at the "hero's" side all along.

I love characters you misjudge at first, only to make you realize you were foolish when the truth about them is revealed later.

It's a challenge for a writer to do, and they also symbolize something I firmly stand for myself. That you should never judge people on your first impressions, as they mostly fool you.

That's cool that you can write with that kind of character.

And yes, they have to have a reason behind what they do, otherwise it's just kind of boring.

i'd say one who is constantly tested & works hard to overcome the testing... one where u go on a journey with them and see them making right choices in difficult times... (they don't have 2 b perfect [it's an unrealistic expectation] but they can b a strong-willed prsn who puts others over themselves)

Alright alright

yeah XD (i write btw & most characters i write r meant 2 b like ppl i'm either inspired or annoyed by :) some aren't tho :)

Oh cool!

I like Sydney Carton because he really is a good person, but he also has serious problems that he tries to deal with but can't shake off (he's an alcoholic). He's from "Tale of Two Cities" and I'm not going to spoil anything serious in case you haven't read it and you want to. I don't know if I'd recommend it. It was kind of boring other than Sydney, the history in it (of course), and Madame Defarge (also a complicated character, but more on the opposite/evil spectrum).

Then there's Mewtwo (yes from pokemon, sue me), cause he was a genetically modified clone that had some interesting/traumatic experiences before gaining full consciousness, but then when he DOES gain consciousness he kills all the scientists that created him and goes out and has some life experiences.

I also like Shrek and lord Farquad XD