Understanding the virtues of faith, hope, and love as applied to characterization

A story I'm working on features a set of triplets named after three virtues: Vera (faith), Nadezhda (hope), and Lyubov (love). The catch, however, is that each triplet possesses a deficiency in the virtue they are named after but an abundance of the other two, and I suspect I may have discovered an incomplete understanding of the three virtues on my part when trying to apply these conditions to their characters.

So far, the best example is Vera, who lacks faith but possesses hope and love. Her lack of faith manifests itself as a refusal to accept anything that she cannot prove or demonstrate for herself using logic, empirical evidence, or a combination of the two; this means a rejection not only of religious/spiritual matters or the supernatural but also of those external traditions/superstitions/customs others hold and impose on her. The hopeful side of her personality leads her to believe the world to be a benevolent though harsh place; as a result, she believes anything she does to achieve a positive outcome to be worth doing no matter how much effort is required, and she consequently never gives up. Her abundance of love shows itself as a deeply felt appreciation for the value she derives from both the material world, and the shared humanity of other individuals, which also causes a bitter disappointment when those others do not live up to her lofty standards. In short, I see her defining character traits culminating in her being a Nietzschean Ubermensch type character.

By contrast, Nadezhda's lack of hope leaves her depressed and fatalistic, unable to act or think in such a way as to imply that she has any choice in what goes on in her own life or care to try to exercise some agency of her own; for instance, she shrugs off tragedies like losing a loved one or getting violently beaten with a casual resignation, thinking that such is the nature of life and considering herself a disgustingly evil person for even daring to fantasize about the world being a better place. Her faith serves as a crutch for her lack of hope, causing her to rationalize her malevolent view of the world in such a way that she neglects her own physical needs on the basis that they are not important compared to her spiritual needs. Her capacity for love comes in the form of a neurotic compulsion to diminish and sacrifice herself to tend to the needs of others whether they be her friends or enemies. The end result is a Stepford Smiler who compensates for her crippling depression by focusing on the needs of others reminiscent to how the character of Sayori is portrayed in Doki Doki Literature Club!.

Given the above, the two sisters seem to have enough of a foundation upon which to further define their characterizations, yet I struggle to have a similar base concept for Lyubov, who lacks love but has faith and hope. The best I can currently think of to describe her is a sociopath or narcissist as either can easily display a deficiency in love, but then that raises the question of how either of those could demonstrate an abundance of hope and faith. Thus, my question is this: how can I go about completing my understanding of the three virtues such that I can compile as complete a baseline characterization for Lyubov as I have for Vera and Nadezhda? Are there resources such as texts or examples of characters from other works which may help define each of the virtues or illustrate how such a combination may affect a character?

Interesting concept.

I not sure if this is the right approach but for Lyubuv, I say...

• Go with a Lack of Empathy mixed with a more self-centered take on faith in hope. Resulting in a person that buys into the Original Position Fallacy despite all evidence to the contrary and no matter the cost. Someone who assumes things would end well for her regardless of all evidence to the contrary, even as she joins the leopards eating faces party and the leopards prepare to feast on her face (as an example). A person that is as naive as she is cruel.
• An alternate take is for her to posses love, but in a way that could be barley considered as such, such as a an Entitled to Have You character. a less cutesy version of the Yandere, who has a conception of love so twisted it is near In Name Only. This can be combined with the above regarding Faith and Hope
• A different twist to the same effect would be the narcissist, who has love, but only for them and them alone and is therefore a kind of love that could be debated as not actually being love to begin with. Like the second idea, it can be missed with the first, and in face enhance it because of the aforementioned Lack of Empathy
• the last idea is a little more independent. As it instead twists Faith and Hope instead of twisting Love. The resulting being the kind of person that not only expects the world to get worse, but actually desires and revels in it. One of some people who want to watch the world burn. A Dystopian if you will.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Feb 16th 2023 at 7:54:14 AM

I suppose that my first question is this: Does the outcome have to be negative?

Vera's description seems to me to largely paint her abundance of Hope and Love in a positive light: she sees the world in a positive light, and appreciates the world and people around her, with only one major negative being mentioned that I see.

Conversely, Nadezhda's description seems to me to largely paint her abundance of Faith and Love in a _negative_ light: you describe her faith as a "crutch", her love as "neurotic", etc.

So, which way do you want to go with Lyubov?

And is that dichotomy intended...?

Well, as a start, have you read up on them on Wikipedia? (I presume that this is the triplet that you have in mind.)

Lack of empathy is overrated as a diagnostic criterion. Sociopathy is also characterised by impulsive recklessness and risk-seeking behaviour, and nothing says "faith and hope" like an unassailable conviction that nothing will go wrong no matter how many times you get yourself fired or hospitalised.

(This rarely comes up in popular culture, because it interferes with ableists and edgelords using "sociopath" as a label for ruthless calculating masterminds.)

Huh, TIL.

That does seem like the kind of thing that would go hand in hand with my suggestion involving the Original Position Fallacy (minus the Lack of Empathy bit ofc)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Feb 18th 2023 at 2:45:37 AM

A bit, yes.

(To be clear, Lack of Empathy is also part of the diagnostic criteria - people just tend to stop there and assume that's all they need to understand. It encompasses not just "only ever pretends to care about other people" but everything from "can't catch emotions from people unless someone reminds them to" to "needs a direct explanation to know what someone else is feeling because anything else would be a wild guess".)

Thanks everyone for the feedback. It gave me a lot to think about. Now to address some specific questions/comments.

Admittedly, the relationship dynamic I'm going for with these characters is a sibling rivalry between Vera and one of the other sisters (Originally, Nadezhda was supposed to be the rival, hence the negativity, but Lyubov now makes more sense given the ironic naming rule.), with the third acting as the glue to keep the siblings together. I'm not sure what exactly happens with the intermediary sibling yet, but her sudden absence is planned to be the catalyst for the other two's rivalry to intensify until both escape Soviet Russia only to clash with each other in the United States.

As for the Wikipedia entry on the virtue triplet, that is indeed the triplet I had in mind, and its explanation of Love (called Charity in the article) is particularly illuminating. Basically, it says that Love informs the other two virtues, which I take to mean it reinforces them; this implies that an absence of Love would weaken the others.

Thanks for pointing that out. I seem to have overlooked that detail. Given that information, and the insight from the Wikipedia article summarized above, it makes sense that Lyubov's Hope and Faith are weakened and twisted into a sort of blind naivete which displays itself as the Original Position Fallacy.

With that established, here is the current working characterization for Lyubov: her lack of Love leaves her feeling empty inside (She would call it "boredom"); as a result, her abundance of Hope and Faith is stunted into an obstinate belief that no matter how detached from reality her actions or thoughts are, everything will work out in her favor. In other words, she would be a lower-functioning take on Magda Lupescu.

Also, thanks to the advice from this thread, I can actually take this working character concept for Lyubov and use it to replace a similar but inferior character within the same story. I'm still working out the details, but Lyubov can actually serve to deconstruct the concept of societal decadence by actually thriving off of and accelerating the erosion of liberty in an otherwise free culture rather than as the borderline strawman that other character currently is.