Today I am going to talk to you all about something I've noticed. Cliche villains and "insane" characters.
We've all seen the "*Insert Name* F/M Killers" running around Feral Heart. And I'm not just talking about Creepypasta characters like Jeff the Killer, this trend of "insane" characters is something you see everywhere in all kinds of roleplay.
Yet these characters are just as cliche and overused as your typical mary-sue.
Really, they are boring.
They absolutely have no motive, which makes them pretty boring bad guys. I mean, even evil characters in kid's shows have motives. Take Nightmare Moon from MLP, a pretty cliched villian (don't kill me bronies!). She had a reason behind her doing (she was overshadowed by her older sister, and jealous of her), she didn't just kidnap Celestia "for da evilz".
Yet these characters on Feral Heart are just evil for the sake of being evil. They don't have any goals, they are just evil. Now, a lot of people try to back this up with saying "they are insane!" Insanity is incredibly difficult to pull off in roleplay. And the majority of these insane killers just run around killing people, that's the only insanity we ever see. Insanity is more than just killing people for no reason. In most cases, an insane killer would kill because they have a twisted world view, which is what would be responsible for them to see killing as alright.
All of my villain characters have motives behind their doings.
Take my character Queen Animat for example. Animat kills people, and her motive behind doing it is incredibly simple. Yet it's not because she's insane, because she most defiantly is not. She is simply programmed to kill in order to survive. She has no other motive. She does not feel any remorse for her victims, yet she is not sadistic and does not enjoy it ether. She kills because it is as natural to her as breathing, and if she did not she would die. It's a base survival instinct.
Two of my other villain characters, Sachee Navera and Oxygen could be considered insane. Yet nether of them just run around killing people simply because they can.
My character Sachee Navera is the queen of an alien nation. She's not so much a character I use in roleplay a lot, as she is a character that some of my other characters will talk about. Her people have been persecuted, abused, and exploited for quite a while now, and it has started a huge war. Sachee is paranoid. She doesn't know who she's going to have to fight, who's going to back-stab her, who's on her side and who's not. This constant paranoia has driven her to the brink of sanity. So her solution is to destroy the "competition" before it can even become competition. She's terrified and doesn't know what to do. So she kills anyone who shows the slightest hint of being a threat; even if it's just something incredibly trivial.
My character Oxygen could also be classed as insane, but for a different reason. When she was just a child (she's of a fantasy race of my invention, so I often use more "human" terms to describe them), she was blamed for the death of her older brother. She was so young that even though her brother's death was sad, she would get over it. And she did get over it very soon. However as soon as the blame for his death was placed on her, being young and impressionable, she learned that blaming others for your own problems is perfectly acceptable. So now every-time she has a problem, she'll take out her anger on someone else, often quite violently. She was taught (by accident) that using other people as scapegoats is okay, and that has become her world view.
All of my other villain characters have motives behind their evil-doings, as well. And I can guarantee Animat, Sachee, and Oxygen do not consider themselves to be "evil", "killers", or "insane". They see themselves as being the good guys, even though they are far from that.
So yeah, just something I've noticed around FH before.