u/No_Cryptographer735

I'm writing a story set in the 16th century. My characters are soldiers. There is one issue I'm not sure I have successfully resolved yet, and it's the fact that violence against civilians was so normalized during those times. My characters have to eventually do things that would be considered war crimes nowadays, like looting villages. I don't want my main character to become completely unlikeable, but I also don't want to turn him into a modern-day progressive either. I read accounts from the Vietnam war, and even in the modern era, with much better guardrails against such violence, it's extremely rare that someone actively resists once his unit starts massacring civilians. The best that could be expected is to remain largely passive.

What do you feel is the right balance between the character being part of such atrocities vs his conscience waking up that doesn't leave him unaffected by the violence he witnessed and even participated in, but doesn't feel anachronistic either?

So far, my solution is that he dissociates, does what he needs to do, tells himself that it's normal, but deep inside he doesn't believe that it should be normal.

Edit: Maybe likeable is not the right word, but someone the reader can empathize with. I think I have to tell a bit more about the story for people to really be able to answer my question:

The MC is an Ottoman soldier, a Janissary. While they were the elite of the Ottoman army, they were also slaves who were conscripted as children, so he didn't really have a choice. As a 19-year-old, he is going on his first campaign to Vienna, and in the beginning he is very enthusiastic about it. He is a frequent target of his comrades because of his shy and quiet nature, which he tries to suppress. He meets a girl he likes, but when she actually talks to him, he just blushes and drops the pitcher he is holding, unable to say anything, which he is very embarrassed about, and he decides that he will become the hero she deserves. But it soon turns out that war is 5% heroic deeds and 95% crawling in the mud while his friends around him are dying from dysentery, and that 5% heroism also comes with a steep price. Nevertheless, he is obsessed with proving to everybody that he is a real man, setting unrealistic standards for himself.

The campaign is a disaster, and he returns home feeling not as a hero, but as someone who went through the most harrowing experience of his life. He meets the girl again, and the "hero of Vienna" once again just stammers and sweats. But she explains to him that she always liked him, but not because he was a tough soldier, but because he blushed and dropped the pitcher. She never cared about his war, doesn't know where Vienna is, and doesn't really understand the concept of a holy war, she just wanted a guy who looked at her the way he did. Back in the barracks, he is brutally punished for sneaking out at night to meet this girl, but now that he has experienced, for the first time, being accepted for who he really is, he feels as if he has conquered the world.

I'm writing a story and it would be nice if the main character could talk to the girl he has a crush on. :D I've found some info saying that they were mutually intelligible, but if an expert could confirm it that would be nice.

Someone in another thread asked for studies about having a native-like accent as an adult learner, and I thought it might be interesting to a lot of people here.

I'm pasting it in the comments because for some reason it's not allowing me to do it here.

I started studying Turkish (TL) 4 months ago. I have studied other languages before to high levels, but always with a teacher in a classroom. I have been reading about the idea of not doing output until you have been doing hundreds of hours of input, which promises a more native-like speech at the end.

In the beginning, I thought I wasn't interested in talking to people anyway, I'm not that sociable, I just want to read books and watch videos, so no harm in delaying output.

After about 300 hours of studying, I'm not convinced that there are no disadvantages even in this case.

First, after about 200 hours, I realized that I actually started to narrate my thoughts in (very rudimentary and grammatically incorrect) Turkish. In other words, output happened, whether I wanted it or not, but there was absolutely no feedback in any form. In real life, even if the native speaker doesn't correct you, they keep responding in the correct language.

Second, doing output actually helps you remember words and grammar points. Originally, it felt like output would just replace time spent with input, but actually, I realized that I need to do a LOT more input to make up for not doing any output.

And finally, I think at some point it just becomes hard to resist doing output. At least to me, it started to feel like I go to a party every day, only to sit in the corner and go out of my way to avoid talking to people. Even though I'm not that social, I feel like we all have the need to connect to people, and sticking to rules like "no output for 1000 hours" felt needlessly constricting. And I'm surprised how motivating it can be when I say something to someone in their native language, and they respond, and I understand the response! Even starting out not wanting to talk to anybody, I realized that I actually do, even if it's just responding to a comment about something stupid.

On the other hand, I'm not that convinced of the benefits of not doing output. It promises better grammar and accent, but if that's the case, why don't people who really need native-like speech, such as those working for intelligence, delay output?

And as for accent, I actually read about a study that really resonated with me. This study said that people with the most native-like accent are the ones who can really see themselves as part of a new culture on some level, who are the most assimilated into their adoptive cultures.

Anecdotal, but it seems to be true for people I know, including myself. My English is my strongest language by far, but its also the one with the worst accent, in spite of living in the US as an adult for 7 years. I think the reason is that I spent over a decade learning this language as an uninteresting school subject that is pretty much removed from an actual culture. It was like "I have to learn how to use present perfect for the test tomorrow, and then I can go and do stuff I actually care about," instead of a genuine interest in a culture. By the time I actually started to regularly interact with native speakers, instead of my Hungarian-accented teachers and classmates, I had been exposed to mostly the wrong accent, and practised the wrong accent for over a decade.

If this is true, interacting with native speakers early on is actually going to benefit me more than hinder my ability to speak like a native. But at this point, I'm thinking that even chatting with AI is better than completely delaying any output, because output has so many benefits, even if you truly don't want to talk to anybody.

We are making aliyah in a few weeks. My daughter doesn't know any Hebrew, and any attempt to teach her myself has failed. I'm thinking that if she could watch her favorite type of videos in Hebrew, that would help a lot.

She likes to watch people doing interesting crafts, cake decorating, and animals (especially birds). I don't necessarily need content aimed at learners, but content where the youtuber narrates what is happening in the video, so she can infer the meaning based on visuals. Like, the narrator says, "I'm going to attach this plastic flower with a hot glue gun," while doing exactly that.

Another thing she likes is My Little Pony, but I haven't been able to find it in Hebrew. Supposedly, the translation is so bad that they made it disappear.