Question: I am a really firm believer in being true to the characters in one's story, and writing the characters as you think they would act as opposed to writing them in order to please everybody. My problem: A certain character in one story I'm writing is probably going to offend a LOT of people. My story is NOT Christian literature, nor does Christianity play any large part in the story at all. In fact, the moment in the story I'm about to mention is an "isolated incident" of Christianity; Christianity's cameo in the story, I guess. Anyway, this character is neither the hero nor villain, but he comes really close to the anti-hero role. He does what he can to support the hero as they are best friends (in fact, the hero is this character's ONLY friend), but he is not at all what most would call a "good person". He is reclusive and cold-hearted, and doesn't see much point in concepts like mercy or compassion; In his eyes, if you were stupid enough to wrong him, you deserve a full punishment. But the core of his character is a near-universal disgust of modern society, by which I mean he can't stand how a few customs and ways of thinking (e.g. Christianity and industrialization) have more or less taken over the world (polytheistic religions are gone, "Western culture" is spreading like wildfire). In general, he just sees the modern world as bland and bigoted in contrast to the diversity Ancient World. In the one scene I mentioned earlier, a pastor tries to persuade him to "accept Christ", and offers him a crucifix pendant. Having such a personality as his (part of which is a burning pride in his own polytheistic heritage), he takes great offense and spits on the pendant in the man's hand before walking away. It is perfectly true to this character... but do you think it is a bad idea?
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