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I've come across a problem with one of the main characters in my book. The "heroine" of my story starts out as an apathetic self-absorbed hacker, who seeks adrenaline thrills to find meaning in her life. With that in mind, I tried to show this kind of outlook is not evil, but neutral instead (the theory that all humans are self-interested). To make a point that she's not evil, I've shown that she refuses to cause physical harm to anyone, and won't work with a hacker organization that kills people. At the same time though, she didn't care about their agenda to expose a company that exploited child workers, because it doesn't affect her at all.

Here's a little exchange she has with another hacker, whom she helped to expose a corrupt organization (The MC is Joyce, aka Banshee_Harvest)

Banshee_Harvest: The infiltration went without a hitch, I managed to copy their entire database onto my hard drive. I’ve sifted through the code too, you were right. They were exploiting children for labor.

G00fy: That’s what I thought. I’m impressed Banshee, the TLF were ready to sift through that code with you. I’m glad that it ended up being so easy. It’s just another domino in the effort to free the people of these corrupt corporate executives.

Banshee_Harvest: Save your preaching for someone who actually cares. I was in this solely for the thrills. I’m uploading the files now #2_files_attached (New_labor_contract.pdf, Redacted_labor_contract_CONFIDENTIAL.pdf)

Banshee_Harvest: I’ll send the rest of the content if you’d like that, but I think that’ll be enough.

G00fy: Aren’t you the one who is always complaining that they need a cause to join? What’s so bad about the TLF?


Joyce swiveled in her chair, tucking her legs in, remembering the uneasiness she felt earlier.


Banshee_Harvest: I don’t like the rumors about you guys. You’re not afraid to hurt people to get what you want. And I don’t want to end up on that side of the fence. The ends don’t always justify the means.

G00fy: Lol, yet here you are, working as one of the most profitable hackers in the country, if not the world.

Banshee_Harvest: I don’t throw people under the bus to get what I need. You do.

G00fy: Listen, we do what we have to, no more, no less. The sacrifice of the few, or the one is for the good of the many, am I right?

Banshee_Harvest: Don’t try to push your fascist beliefs on me, I’ve heard about what you’ve guys done.

G00fy: We’re only trying to help. And I do mean that.


Joyce sighed in frustration. G00fy could be annoying at times. She didn’t want to join them. This was a one-time thing, and she meant it.


Banshee_Harvest: As I’ve told you many times before, NOT INTERESTED!

G00fy: Okay, you don’t have to shout. Thanks for your help, btw.

Banshee_Harvest: Np. However, there is the matter of paying me still. I think I should negotiate my price considering all that I was able to do, don’t you agree?

G00fy: I’ll have to talk with the other members about that, but you did agree to a 25 bitcoin price, which is a fair sum of money.

Banshee_Harvest: But I think, with all that I’ve done here, I do deserve a 5 bitcoin bonus, don’t you agree?

G00fy: That’s pretty hefty, like more than I can vouch for at least. Like I said, I’ll have to talk to the others about this. Thanks for your help though. The 25 should have already been sent to your account.

One of my reader's described Joyce (Banshee_Harvest) like this, "I'm hating Joyce right now. Her character is contradictory. She's selfish and a criminal. And she deserves to be in jail. Plus she's apathetic and arrogant and I don't see any redeeming qualities to her. So if I'm supposed to feel this way, you've succeeded. But I don't think I want to live with her as the protagonist of this book. I'll just want to keep shooting her in the head."

The purpose of this novel is to show her transformation from someone who is chaotic neutral to lawful good. However, I can't begin that transformation if my readers hate my character. How can I portray a chaotic neutral character as sympathetic and avoid making them seem evil? Or how can I make a selfish character relatable?

_{I understand that morals can be ambiguous, but it's important that my readers can at least relate to this character so they give her a chance. However, my character is really self-absorbed (she really doesn't have anything driving her other than thrill and money: at least at first.)}

I found a very elegant reduction of alignments in a Tumblr post:

I figured out a simple guide to the alignment chart last night:


Lawful: Rules matter more to me than individuals.


Chaotic: Individuals matter more to me than rules.


Good: Other people’s well-being is more important than my own.


Evil: My own well-being is more important than other people’s.


Neutrals: My opinion of what is more important is determined on a case-by-case basis.


So a Lawful Good character’s guiding moral philosophy might be “I follow the rules because the rules keep people safe, even if they are sometimes inconvenient or harmful to me or other individuals.” A Chaotic Evil character’s guiding moral philosophy would be like “Screw the rules and screw you.”

If Joyce is Chaotic, she's concerned with individuals more than corporations (so she won't kill, because that would harm an individual). If she's Neutral, then sometimes she will decide that people are worth helping, and sometimes she won't.

If you want to show her as Neutral rather than Evil, then you need a Pet the Dog moment. (TV Tropes warning!) You need to show that she is in the middle of the Good-Evil spectrum, and that she is capable of doing good things if it interests her. Ignoring child labor shoves her towards Evil, so I see your beta's point. There's a difference between self-interest and self-absorption. "I don't have to do anything about child labor because I don't know the kids" is not Neutral, it's Asshole.

The journey from Neutral to Good is not a long one. But going from Chaotic Good (I will help other people, regardless of the rules) to Lawful Good (I will help other people as long as I can follow the rules to do so, and I won't break the rules to help people) is honestly the bigger challenge here. How do you get Joyce from "screw you, I do what I want" to "I can't stop GlobalMegaCorp from using child labor because it operates in Backwardsia, where there are no laws against it"?

If you want your Leeeeeeeroy Jenkins! protagonist to be appealing, you have to make her appealing. She has to do things we like, or find fun, or could sympathize with. A selfish character can still be "not a jerk" if the character is capable of not being selfish all the time.

Loki is a Chaotic Neutral who repeatedly swings from Evil to Good. Captain Jack Sparrow is a Chaotic Neutral who isn't as Evil as he pretends to be. Petyr Baelish is a Chaotic Evil who pretends to be Good. None of them could suffer to be Lawful.

First, love your character. If you don’t, why should the readers care? Make her more than just this skill she has - make her who she is rather than what she does.

I have a hacker character who is a charming neutral, but assists assassins in a professional capacity. Most of what he does is what one might expect, but he takes joy in the challenge of checking a company’s security. He does other things, but has become the go-to if you need information that cannot be obtained otherwise.

I started with him as just some semi-anonymous person on the dark-net. That lasted about five minutes as he developed into an interesting charismatic person.

Joyce has a line she won’t cross, but acts as she does - why? Is she, like my hacker, intensely curious and striving to always improve his skills? Apathy is dangerous, self-absorbtion can be irksome.

Give her a reason why she became Banshee. Who was she when she was just Joyce? She is trying to do some good by exposing this corporation, but why? The bitcoin? Or does she care, even if she doesn’t really know it herself?

Does she perform this service because she believes, even subconsciously, in something? Is she a pure mercenary? Or does she charge what she does as a way of both justifying it to herself and fining those who have gone too far, who have no boundaries that she can see?

Banshee_Harvest: Save your preaching for someone who actually cares. I was in this solely for the thrills.

That response is quite extreme. Neutral would be more like:

Banshee_Harvest: No worries. It was fun.

The focus is still on the wrong thing, i.e. The fun.