MCs

Annyeong everyone,

Today I'm going to rant about MCs...and no, I don't mean Masters of Ceremonies. I'm talking about Main Characters. Yes...characters...plural.
No matter what kind of story you're reading/writing, whether it's fantasy, horror, sci fi or even non-fiction; there are always multiple Mcs.

Think about it for a second: in a standard fantasy story you already have at least 2 MCs: the protagonist and the antagonist. Or as I like to call them: the good guy and the big baddie. Sometimes there are multiple protagonists or antagonists (e.g: The Fellowship in the Lord of the Rings). All of the MCs need to be created properly. Of course not every character (MC or not) has to have a super detailed background, but you do need to know enough about them to be able to make them believeable.

Now I'm aware that I'm doing something horrible to my MCs as a writer. I tend to play favorites. (BAD BAD ME!!!) Of course there will always be characters you like more than others, this is in itself not a bad thing. But when you start giving your favorite MC all the good parts...that's when the troubles start. Because it's your favorite, you don't want him/her/it to get hurt or be killed. So now you have a problem.
No one can (eagerly) jump into battles and come out unscratched. It's impossible I say! Not even Superman (yeah...corny example..) can do that. And killing off your favorite is even worse. You don't want to kill them...you don't want them to die, you want them to be happy and merry and have them frolicking around through a field of daisies.
But you can't! In order to make a story believable, your MC can't just fight a thousand battles, get poisoned a dozen times and get tortured for hours and NOT die. Sometimes you have to kill off those you love...no matter how much it hurts.

Here two examples of favoritism:

GOOD - Eiichiro Oda (mangaka of One Piece) has a favorite character: Captain Buggy the Clown. I didn't even know about this until I read it somewhere. Some people might like Buggy, some might hate him. I personally think he's hilarious. But the most important thing is that Buggy might be in the spotlights for a while (sometimes for stuff he didn't even do XD) but he always disappears after that.
In the end you'll most likely forget about him until he appears again. Buggy is mainly there for comic relief.

BAD - Masashi Kishimoto (mangaka of Naruto) is far too obvious in his favoritism. Everyone knows Uchiha Sasuke is getting too much screentime. Fans are actually starting to gag when they see him. For me watching the anime and reading the manga is becoming a drag: I only watch it because I feel I owe it to myself to know how it ends. Sasuke used to be my favorite character...until he became (SPOILERS) bad and boring and emo. No offense to emos...Anyways, since Naruto is the title character, Sasuke should not have more screentime than him! And Naruto should stop trying to save his so-called friend, it's getting old.

Well that was it for now,

Sayonara mina