How to make a Misanthropic Character likable?

I'm currently mulling over this one story concept of mind about misanthropic mind reader( I know, not the the most orignal concept)who gradually comes to better understand humanity by exploring the human conflicts that surround him.

Obviously this concept hinges on the main character being likable from the start, and I'm having trouble thinking how such an extreme misanthrope can become likable. I'm also wondering how to avoid character wangst and darkness-induced apathy.

And thoughts?

Make him funny.

Well, then I'm pretty much ripping off Daria though.

Make them funny in a different way. There are a million ways to be misanthropic. And a million ways to be funny.

Does he really have to be likable from the start? Well, if he eventually becomes more reasonable, I'd probably like him. But, personally, there's not much that can be done to make a misanthrope likable for me. Being funny is apparently enough for others...

edited 14th Oct '12 9:47:07 PM by Teraus

Some people on here seem to have such Small Reference Pools when it comes to fiction. There's probably literally hundreds of fictional misanthropes out there, the majority of them very different. I've never seen Daria and don't expect I ever will, so how likely am I to accuse you of "plagiarizing" it?

And while being funny may not make him likable to everyone (though it does seem to be the primary cause of Jerkass Dissonance), at the very least it should help you avoid the wangst issue.

edited 14th Oct '12 9:55:27 PM by nrjxll

@OP: make everyone else worthy of the main character's hate. As long as the audience can sympathize with his misanthropy, you're golden. Plenty of examples in modern fiction of that working. I believe we even have a trope for something like that...

edited 14th Oct '12 11:04:49 PM by drunkscriblerian

Yeah, that works, too.

Well, the hero doesn't have to be good. He just has to be better than everyone else the story stacks him against. The Nineties Antihero basically ran off this premise.

But then we have the risk of Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy...

Well, it depends, actually. My tolerance for cynical stuff like this is much smaller than that of most people. Many people sympathize easily with misanthropes.

But the point of the story is him realizing that Humanity is not as evil and disgusting as he thinks, doing that would just prove his worldview.

@Jude: so start with everyone around your protagonist being deserving of his/her hate, and then introduce characters that aren't...then, emphasize the protagonist's struggle to reconcile his preconceived notions about the world with the new information he/she is acquiring.

No one likes admitting that their worldview could use some updating, but everyone intellectually knows we need to keep doing it. Good stories have been hung on less.

Honestly, I think that creates a real Broken Aesop: "there's nothing wrong with despising your fellow human beings as long as they deserve it".

A Family-Unfriendly Aesop maybe, but how is it broken?

I just started watching Daria actually and if anything I found it pretty affectionate towards humanity. It's about a sensitive and caring person whose tentative efforts to reach out are constantly sabotaged by other people's idiosyncracies and her own defensive nature. She recognises the good in people but can't overcome the barriers imposed by the difference in self-awareness, causing her to fall back to her comfort zone - she relies on subtle mocking because it lets her vent her frustrations without being at risk of hurting people's feelings, because despite her complaints about humanity, she doesn't actually bear any ill will and mostly turns her feelings of irritation back on herself, perpetuating a cycle of stubborn pride and disappointment.

Or maybe I'm reading into it too much.

Still, it suggests another possible line for making misanthropes likeable: woobiefication.

edited 15th Oct '12 5:39:24 AM by Kesteven

Make them a genuinely interesting character with a degree of depth and some range of emotional response beyond "I hate people." Not liking other people or being around other people is merely a facet of a character's personality, and the reasons for that dislike and the ways in which they might manifest that dislike tend to vary from person to person.

In other words, write a person who possesses a trait rather than a trait that inhabits a character.

Well, I do have something of a character in mind: As a kid he was extremly introverted and didn't spend much time in the company of others. He didn't develop much in the way of social skills, he often misinterpreted social ques and was generally very awkward in social situations. He spent much of his time observing other people, eavesdropping on conversations, making up stories in his mind for why people acted like they did.

Eventually he prays to God and asks for the ability to understand other people,the next day he gains the power to read minds. He is shocked how deceitful, manipulative, and hateful everyone's private thoughts are, and is disgusted by their violent and sexual fantasies. By the time he becomes an adult he's learned to hate everyone, but deep down inside he still desires to understand people.

He is obsessed with idealistic Heroic Fantasy media, escaping into a world where pure, righteous people exist. I was also thinking he'd be comically prudish after being exposed to the sexual fantasies of everyone else, even the tamest sexual act causes him to gag.

Well that pretty much all I have about the character up to this point. Does this seem sympathetic?

The message of the story is, at least in part, "people aren't as bad as you think they are". In drunkscriblerian's suggestion, everyone around the protagonist at the start is as bad as he thinks they are. You don't see the problem there?

I think the problem is that the basic "character holds a stereotypical view of Group X until he meets someone from Group X that forces him to reassess his views" plot only really works if the character doesn't know anyone from Group X.

The OP mentioned wanting to avoid wangst, though.

I'm just going to quote myself here, because you apparently missed it.

I'm going to ask you what about my statement constitutes a Broken Aesop.

Maybe make them someone who just wants to be left alone, and wouldn't have this hate-on for humanity if they didn't have to deal with them on a daily basis.

The part that I have referenced (counting this post) three separate times:

It makes very little sense for a story whose message is partially about not holding those around you in contempt to begin with those around the protagonist deserving their contempt.

Uh, excuse me but what the fuck?

In a story, you establish a situation and then mess with it; in this case, the writer would establish a misanthropic character (and build sympathy for him by showing the targets of his hate as deserving), and then mess with it (by introducing characters who did not deserve the protagonist's hate).

I'm still not sure what about that is a Broken Aesop; in storytelling, one establishes justification for the protagonist...without that, why would an audience sympathize with them?

As I see it there are two ways to make a misanthrope likeable. One, make everyone around him/her worse and keep them that way. Two, make most of the people around him/her that way but include some counter-examples and have the protagonist change his/her views about humanity because of that interaction. You are free to disagree with my assessment, but I fail to see Broken Aesop in any of this.

edited 16th Oct '12 11:38:22 PM by drunkscriblerian

You could tie the character's misanthropy to a single event/person. They were bullied, or grew up in a broken home, or were raped, or any number of other possibilities, in whichever position along the Sliding Scale you prefer.

As the story progresses their abilities gradually reveal how rare what happened to them was, and they start to shift their world view to a more optimistic one, coming to terms with their own past in the process.

Alternately, the traumatic event that happened to them is actually semi-common, and using their powers they gradually connect to someone/someones who shares their experience, who helps them get over it, either emotional connection or by explaining how they did.

Alternately alternately, the event is really common, and when they read the minds of other people who haven't dealt with it, or who are experiencing it, or who have moved on, the protagonist is spurred by anger, indignation, morals, and regret to combat this social issue. As they gather signatures/start a club/stage protests/whatever people rally to their cause, and their support causes the protagonist to question their misanthropic worldview. When they finally succeed in their battle, the catharsis of stamping out the problem and the experience of working with their peers finally shatters their shell.

This is just a thought

edited 16th Oct '12 11:31:54 PM by CleverPun

Okay, let me try to put this as simply as I can: if the point of the story is that the protagonist is inherently wrong, then creating an initial setting where he is explicitly right is going to create a Broken Aesop.

The moral you are advocating would not be "look more closely at the people around you before dismissing them as contemptible", it would be "meet new people". While this on its own might not be a Broken Aesop (though I would be personally morally opposed to it), it contradicts what the OP is saying:

It's very hard for me to imagine any interpretation of these lines that does not suggest that the protagonist is supposed to be inherently wrong - that his belief that what he sees in the minds of everyone around him makes them worthy of his hate is wrong in and of itself - not that he's wrong because the deservedly hateable people around him aren't all of humanity and he just hasn't met the good kind yet.

Not necessarily. Plenty of stories set a moral tone and then take a left turn for parts previously unknown. Joss Whedon built his career on this premise if memory serves.

Do they set a moral tone that is explicitly correct? Because that's what this would be doing: setting it in stone that the people around the protagonist at the beginning are devoid of any positive characteristic and worthy only of his scorn.