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So far most of the villains that I’ve written about have been stoic, charismatic and kinda boring honestly. And I want to change that by making them somewhat insane. How would you go about that?

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I can recommend some stories about good villains.
Especially 2-3 insane ones.

Celestia or Twilight come to mind...

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So, personally, I think if you want to avoid a boring character, going the insane route actually makes me kinda nervous--I think a lot of people will use "they're insane" as a catch-all handwave to have the character do whatever the author feels like having them do, which to me comes across as a cheap hack that's not particularly entertaining or interesting.

If I were tasked with writing an insane character, then, I'd want to make sure their decisions make some kind of sense. That's not to say they're thinking things through carefully and making rational and practical decisions all the time. Maybe it's very far removed from what any other character considers sensible. But I would try to make it so that there is a flawed reasoning at work that guides them to whatever bizarre conclusion they reach. I think that would go a long way to keep them feeling like an actual character instead of a plot device.

But I also don't really care for setting specific rules like that outside of context. What ultimately matters is that the villain you write serves a worthwhile purpose in your story. If you accomplish that, whether they're stoic or insane or anything in between, you're doing it right, far as I'm concerned.

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There are many ways to create a truly insane villain, whether it be making them completely no-holds-barred crazy like The Mask (from...The Mask), wacky and chaotic but still somewhat sane like Discord, or so insane that they loop around to being somehow sensible. If you’re looking to create an insane villain, my advice would be to use Thanos from the MCU as a reference. He is the very definition of an insane villain. On the surface he seems calm, sensible, and perfectly in control, yet his reasoning, logic, and goals are so far removed from the entire universe’s that it makes him genuinely, clinically insane and unfathomably dangerous.

A normal person would think that, to solve the crisis of so many people in the universe and not enough resources, nations and planets should work together to find a way to grow food faster, or to share technologies so that new discoveries could be made and thus find a way to refine resources better and use them more wisely.

Thanos’s solution: wipe out exactly 50% of all life in the universe, thus granting the other half of the universe more resources and more space to grow. Now, this is obviously crazy and it wouldn’t actually work, but if you go by numbers and equations on paper only, which is what Thanos did, his solution actually makes sense, and that’s why it’s so insane and so horrible, because you can clearly follow his train of thought and why he reached that conclusion. That’s why he is known as “The Mad Titan”.

It’s a truly fascinating case study into what a truly insane villain can be like, and I encourage you to use him as a reference, as well as The Joker from The Dark Knight and The Riddler from The Batman. There are videos all over YouTube covering these three villains, and I think once you watch a few of them, you’ll get a clearer picture of what true insanity in a well-written villain looks like.

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Have you ever heard the phrase "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”? It's not the "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" part that is insanity. It's the fact the person whole-heatedly believes that repeating the same action will result in a different outcome that makes them insane.
You can give your character a belief that they whole-heartedly believe but every other character finds completely preposterous. I highly recommend researching real life delusional disorders like Delusional Parasitosis and Gapgras to give yourself an idea of what they look like. But I would also recommend not giving their disorder as specific real world name as that would both constrain you and put you in a bit of a mine field.

TalB #6 · March 25th · · ·

If it's your story, you should be allowed to write whatever works best for you, because there really is no right or wrong way for this.

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Drop by drop of despair. Thus everything accumulates and explodes.

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That's easy. Have them do things that are batshit crazy, but to them, are perfectly normal!

One story that does this exquisitely is this by Else Ynopemos:

[Adult story embed hidden]

It is a genuinely chilling read, as the main character's actions are completely justified (in her mind), yet they are so completely crazy!

See, that's the thing about true evil and insanity: a truly evil person doesn't see their own actions OR view themselves as evil. It's everyone else who does not understand why they're doing whatever it is they're doing...and that's what makes them so frightening and dangerous. Because they will NOT stop on their own...they will continue to commit their acts until someone stops them.

So! In order to write a good villain, it would be necessary to give them that mindset.

They might have some kind of trauma in their past, which makes them do what they're doing. And a little sinister laughter else would be enough to form the impression.

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So, personally, I think if you want to avoid a boring character, going the insane route actually makes me kinda nervous--I think a lot of people will use "they're insane" as a catch-all handwave to have the character do whatever the author feels like having them do, which to me comes across as a cheap hack that's not particularly entertaining or interesting.

Yes, this. It's kind of the villain equivalent of making Pinkie do absolutely anything, regardless of whether it's remotely in character, and justifying it with "she's so random!"

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write them as clasic heroes, the like of Gilgamesh or Hercules, modern times will consider them villains rhather then heroes so it's simple to have some fun with some characthers that will do anything for fame and fortune while being perfect in every way

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Here’s my answer for you, give the villain an exact opposite and/or make them the opposite of the hero. A good example would be bill cypher from gravity falls because despite him being both literally and figuratively two dimensional he’s an amazing villain, for two reasons one he’s not shown often so when he is on screen it’s a big deal, and two because he’s the exact opposite of all of the main characters without dipper Mable and the Stans to counter act Bills insanity he’d get stale, my suggestion is to do some research find fictional villains that are insane in their stories and do some research on why they are good, also look up some irl “villains” such as serial killers, and finally look up some mental illnesses to find defining traits of insanity. The most important thing to remember though is that insane people do not know or believe they are insane, just as narcissists don’t think they’re narcissistic. This video may be a good start.

https://youtu.be/-HGyIuumn5Q?si=dOSqahnCqwW5rcOu

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To summarize what a few earlier posts have implied, villains generally believe that they're right, morally and/or logically.

To amp up the insanity, one could combine the above with a RL mental disorder.

Taking Nightmare Moon as an example, her premise was that the night was underappreciated and that Celestia was receiving too much attention. Perhaps that was true. But she concluded, based on the facts, that the night should last forever, and her sister should be banished/killed. Other courses of action (that didn't involve violence) were not explored. A hero would have at least tried reason, diplomacy, etc.

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