Is This Believable?

So I've got a character who I've set up as a Complete Monster. An unrepentant Terrorist Without A Cause, Serial Killer and mass murderer who cannibalizes her many victims. Throughout the whole story, she acts the part too, racking up a huge on-screen body count, not to mention the off-screen ones. But wait, what's this? The impeccably calm and cool monster is showing some Sanity Slippage!

The big secret involving her character reveals that she was orphaned at the very beginning of her life, her mother dying in childbirth and her father another casualty in a long ongoing magic war. A patriotic and experienced magus collected orphans like her to try and perfect an experimental form of magic, the root of her Cannibalism Superpower, which he thought could change the tides of war. So far, not one of them had survived it though. When she took to it, he subjected her to a slew of traumatizing tests and experiments. She'd killed and eaten twenty-two people before she decided to make the patriot the twenty-third. By then, she was thoroughly physically and mentally scarred. Her long and barely hindered rampage was her Last Dance. She had been trying all this time to commit Suicide by Cop or, failing that, burn herself out with all the stolen magic she'd acquired.

In your opinion, does this bid for sympathy work in subverting her established image as a Complete Monster or does it fall flat on its face?

I think its going to come down to how people feel about FreudianExcuses. I personally tend to resent characters more after the excuse than prior to it. Another variable is does she get away with it? She wants to die so if she actually succeeds in that goal I have to admit I'm not going to feel sorry for her.

You say she was a terrorist so I'm assuming she's killed people who were in no way responsible for her past.

And if her goal was death, unless she was under some form of I Cannot Self-Terminate then I have trouble excusing her method of seeking death.

And as for her sanity, how insane is she? Like cognizant enough to control her actions or enough that a modern judge would excuse her?

So in short, for me to find her sympathetic, her condition would have had to leave her with some kind of compulsion to cannibalize people as well as left her incapable of suicide. That sounds horrific enough of a life to justify Suicide by Cop. But if she chose terrorism as a venue simply because then no, I find her remarkably unsympathetic.

Er, I find it odd that you describe the situation as all that bad stuff happening before the "sanity slippage".

I don't know if I'm the best person to ask about this, I can tolerate a lot before applying the Complete Monster label. I think it's a tad melodramatic, is this supposed to be Warhammer-esque Grimdark?

Seconding I Confuse Me's last paragraph. I'll also say that a lot of it depends on the execution—do you want it to be obvious that we're supposed to sympathize with her and it's a huge tragedy and stuff, or it's just a by-the-way explanation for why she's like that? I think the former would inspire more eye-rolling.

I don't really find her a complete monster, but I don't sympathize with her either. I can't respect a person who gets a superpower and is perfectly willing to stir shit up, but goes on a suicidal rampage instead of dreaming a little bigger. It's just not exciting or cool, I just want to put the pathetic wretch out of its misery already so we, the audience, don't have to put up with it any longer.

edited 25th Jun '11 11:10:24 PM by melloncollie

She's cognizant, but nowhere near sane. The magic she uses has psychic kickback, the memories and personalities of the people she cannibalizes are also absorbed, not just their knowledge. Now it wouldn't be very effective as a tool for combat if they melded with the original, it would produce a dazed, confused and weakened soldier. So they're packed tight, a composite personality separate from the original. But as long as the total number of victims are limited, an individual using the magic can avoid any sort of overlap between themselves and the composite.

Problem is, she passed the limit a long, long time ago. This method of separation is only safe up to a certain limit of victims, a figure usually determined by the individual's mental fortitude. However, 10 victims is accepted as the absolute limit, even for the mentally strong. Note that by the time she killed the patriot and escaped, he'd forced her to kill twice that amount. She hears them in her head. And at the center is the patriot, whose forceful will functions as a sort of core for the composite. He still pushes her to his will. And when she refuses to comply, he may even assume control, however briefly. She can't kill herself because he won't let her.

edited 25th Jun '11 11:15:18 PM by KSPAM

She wants to die, so she kills a huge number of innocents. And her only excuse is that she's crazy.

No, that doesn't sound sympathetic to me. At all. Insanity can only excuse so much.

Making any form of terrorist sympathetic is just a major stretch, even an insane one. I find with certain characters its possible to pity them without sympathizing with them. I think this might be one such case.

Okay, so if sympathy is the objective, leave out the terrorist bit. No need for her to murder people who wouldn't even benefit her Cannibalism Superpower.

My view of Freudian Excuses is... well, it's pretty poor. Anyone pulling the "people did bad things to me" to justify doing bad things to completely unrelated people will probably lose sympathy points with me. I agree with I Confuse Me - she might arouse some pity, but she's still completely unsympathetic. And I would say that being a terrorist or not has no relevance to the issue - not only can "terrorist" be more morally ambiguous then it sounds, but your description really doesn't convey her being a terrorist at all - just a mass-murdering maniac, and one who by your own words is unrepentant - she may be forced to kill people but that doesn't prevent feeling bad about it, at the least.

Short version:

It falls flat on its face.

Judging by what you've said, it may be beneficial for your story to completely forget about eliciting sympathy at all. I've never been big on the whole concept of a Complete Monster devolving into a wangsty little emo kid who resorts to Freudian Excuses, all in a bid to win the audience's sympathy. The best you can hope for is a really well executed Sanity Slippage.

Basically, you have to decide if her being a Complete Monster is more important than the audience sympathizing with her. Because it looks like you may have to choose.

edited 27th Jun '11 7:44:59 PM by Psychobabble6