: Re: How can I portray a character with no fear of death, without them sounding utterly bored? Imagine a fantasy hero with a 'time reset' ability like the protagonists of Groundhog Day or Edge of

@Odierno164

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007 doesn't come off as a psychopath, but is singularly unafraid of death. In one movie he dives off a cliff, without a parachute, to intercept and land on the wings of a private plane. He's always got zero fear of heights, fights, guns, speed, whatever. Fearlessness is pretty much his central trait.

As Galastel says, you have the wrong notion of "psychopathy", psychopathy isn't about fearlessness, they lack empathy, sympathy, and remorse. Other people are just objects to them, obstacles or tools, they just are incapable of caring about the pain or fear or emotions of other people. (There is evidence now that this is due to actually faulty wiring in their brain, which would make it uncorrectable, not addressable by any therapy or surgery, and quite literally physically impossible for them to care.)

It is possible to be fearless without being a psychopath, other emotions can be intact. That includes love, sympathy, maternal feelings for children, etc.

I'd make it clear, on her first jump, that these feelings are present. For example, she comes across a scene in which a little girl on a bicycle has been struck and killed by car, driven by a young woman, that is now distraught and being arrested. She is asking everybody in the crowd, "When did it happen? How long ago? What time?"

She gets her answer, forty-five minutes. She jumps back in time, abandons whatever she was doing and sprints to the scene like her life depends on it, into the intersection, runs in front of the car to intercept bike and kid, snatches the little girl off the bike, as tires are screeching and the still moving bike, sans kid, is struck, tumbled under the screeching car and rolled into a mangled steel spaghetti.

There was no reason for her to make this time jump, abandon her task and sprint for the intersection other than to save the life of the little girl. You've proved her bona fides as a fearless hero and altruist, she used her time travel power to save a life.

Don't tell us what she is thinking or what she believes, devise a scene to show us what she believes. She is fearless, and will sacrifice her own interests to fearlessly prevent the death of an innocent child.

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