I was writing a fantasy novel and in it, the captain and his troops were ordered to massacre a village (of fictional creatures); after the massacre the captain quit his position in anger and disgust; the captain had also smuggled a child out of the village.
When I mentioned this on a writing forum I was on, people got upset and everyone rebuked the idea that the captain would quit his position and defy orders because......it takes a long time and a lot of effort to become a captain.
This was supposed to be a positive reflection on the character, that he would be disgusted at being ordered to commit a genocide (it wasn't JUST a massacre; absolutely no one from the village was to be allowed to live, including kids), but posters got upset because....it takes a long time and a lot of effort to reach such a rank and no one would quit their positions or disobey orders, that it was unrealistic; people were genuinely upset; PEOPLE WERE GENUINELY UPSET.
My conclusion? A rewrite of the character so he's not a military dog, but someone else who would've been in the area and ignored. My novel has anti-colonial themes although they weren't that central to the story; if the military are supposed to be jackbooted thugs then that's how they're going to be portrayed going forward.
I genuinely can't believe people would actually be upset at this point when it's supposed to reflect well on the character; this post was also an old one, as in around 2016-2018, so before the Gaza genocide or the Russian SMO. Absolutely disgusting bootlicking individuals.
remind me not to solicit a writing forum for feedback on characterization of people who aren't sniveling cowards.
your original concept was literally a foundational piece of
Andor Spoiler
Luthen's backstory arc.anyway, even outside of fiction and heroic principles, people legit leave the military officer corps all the damn time. it's very "up or out" and the higher you are, the less slots are availble for ascent, so the overwhelming majority at each rank are pushed to mandatory separation after a set amount of time at that rank if they aren't promoted.
so not only is that wroters forum full of absolute cowards, they are also just plain incorrect about hierarchical organizations.
Ironically if you wrote a character who's only mildly upset at genocide and has zero intention of quitting the military over it because they openly don't consider it worth it, they'd STILL get upset (because they want war criminals portrayed heroically)
These were people who had SOME members who wrote stories critical of colonialism and yet they're most likely the 'they were just following orders' type people
I've definitely written stuff that's very against imperialism and a lot of Western power structures, but I tend to portray the people involved in those systems as the jackbooted thugs they are, rather than have them realise the harm they're doing and heel-face turn. They're usually the villains, not the protagonists or good people in any way. They're eitherr a powerful antagonist, or a nameless mob of evil. I suspect these people would be just as upset if not more so by that.
For myself I needed a way for the badly injured MC to be saved by someone who had a good reason to be in the area, and someone who had the skills to teach them how to fight; in light of the bootlickers jumping down my throat on the matter, I instead made the captain a woman from an aristocratic lineage (the captain was himself of aristocratic background) who was in the area hunting and decided to follow the troops into this valley. She still starts out a 'Bill Maher classic liberal' and eventually towards the end the protagonist fights them off and leaves; the woman after having much hardship trying to raise the MC in a racist fashion and then being shown mercy by MC and allowed to live much later on (at that point she was trying to kill the MC) gets major cracks in her world view.
For myself I struggle to imagine large groups of people as cruel; I know it happens, I understand it intellectually but I can't understand it....emotionally? Israelis for example, for whom the majority are of the mindset that it's okay to kill Gazan babies because 'they'll grow up to become terrorists' is genuinely beyond my ability to comprehend; I cannot empathize with people like that, it's genuinely hard for me to think of any large group of people being like....well, Israelis. Ironically the human kingdom in my setting is absolutely Nazi fascist, but I don't understand Nazism emotionally nearly well enough to write them that closely.