After more than seven months of writing to reach this point of the story, I decided to share my thoughts. Not only is this a personal thing, so I can assess what I’ve done so far, but I also want to share to you readers my thought process in this story, my inspirations, and the ideas I want to explore.
Conceiving this story/Inspirations:
Female Main Character - When I started reading English translations of light novels and then moving on to web novels, I always read stories with male MCs. Eventually, I also tried web novels with female leads, most notably Worm. In recent years, there’s been some controversy regarding female MCs in books and especially movies about them being Mary Sues, as well as other criticisms. I then thought how about I try my hand at writing a female MC? I challenged myself to write a good female MC, even though a male MC would've made this type of story more popular.
Psychopath Main Character – I didn’t want to have a “normal” protagonist. I wanted something very different.
How about a psychopath? There are many stories with supposedly psychopath MCs, but I wasn’t very sure with their depiction. At first, I shelved the idea because I could see how hard it will be to write an actual psychopath MC, and tried to find some other peculiar defining trait for my MC. Then I came upon the book “Gone Girl” with a female psychopath MC. It changed my perspective on writing psychopath character. I’m not going to spoil anything with the book, just that it’s very different from other psychopath stories which mostly dwell on killings and shock value. Gone Girl goes deep in the mind of a psychopath and that inspired me. Furthermore, male and female psychopath have differences, which I considered as an interesting challenge to write.
World Building (Corebrings) – There are many stories with a superpowered group maintaining peace and stability but my inspiration for the Corebrings are the Knights in Knight Run. It’s not a famous webtoon, so many might not be familiar with it. Give it a try. I even used the name Purple Bloom in homage to the Purple Flower in Knight Run.
Alternative History – Instead of setting it in the far future like Knight Run, I set it instead in an alternate history earth. And the inspiration for that is SCP. You probably got a slight feel of SCP with the BID. There are other organizations mentioned in the story that will play a bigger role in the future.
Group of people with powers – There’s been mention that this story has a Worm feel to it at the start. I’ve read the entirety of Worm, Twig, and Pact. So Wildbow’s various groups of superpowered people has inspired me greatly, but my main inspiration for having a group of people with powers as part of the main cast is Animorphs. Goes to show that I’m a 90s kid. Basically, it’s Gantz/Evangelion for kids that got past censors because no one expected that kind of content to be in a children’s book with goofy covers.
Ideas I want to explore in this story:
Relatability – Perhaps one of the main tips for new writers like me is to make your characters relatable. Instead of making a “conventionally” relatable MC, I made a psychopath MC. So am I violating that tip I mentioned? Nope. I believe that all of us have psychopathic traits here and there. You’ll find yourself relating to Erind in one way or another even in weird ways. It is a social experiment of sorts.
Starting small – In most stories with OP MCs, or even YAs, the MC will become one of the most important person in the story quickly, like they’ll led the rebellion, have the secret weapon etc. I’m not saying that’s bad; if the story is geared for enjoyment and power fantasy then that’s the way to do it. However, I intend to write this story for a long time, and making the MC immediately an important player will put a time limit to the story, and I could easily write myself into a corner. Another reason we’re starting very small in scale and taking it slow is because I want to explore how Erind’s psychopath mind evolves through her experiences, before she becomes an evil mastermind in the far future of this story.
Absolutes are right – If you’ve noticed, the Corebrings and the BID and other people in authority take a black and white stance when it comes to Adumbrae. Transposing this to other stories, you may have an iron-fisted government and the MC will lead a rebellion, hoping to change the world into something in the middle ground. That is not the case here. I wanted to explore a story with a black and white figure of authority that is not evil, that is actually right. Why? Because our MC is a psychopath who can’t see black and white. Isn’t that an interesting twist to the usual setup? Not sure how this will go.
No main villain – I got this idea from Overlord. It’s pretty famous so I think many of you know of it. There’s no villain in Overlord. You may say the MC is the villain, but not really because he’s just trying to protect his own. Can’t also say his enemies are the villains in the traditional sense. For one they pose no threat to him. And they don’t even know about him and are just trying to survive. I’m trying out that setup in this story. I think readers might wonder why this story doesn’t have a clear cut villain. But as the story progresses, I hope it becomes clearer what I’m aiming for. Let's see how this pans out.
Depicting a Psychopath MC – There are plenty depictions of psychopaths in media, including in manga and light novels/ webnovels. Usually, what is branded as a psychopath MC is a revenge story where the MC is bullied/oppressed/betrayed and then he goes on a killing spree. That’s not a psychopath. Psychopaths can’t even muster the emotions to get angry like that. With that backdrop, many readers come into REND expecting that serial killer MC. My fault actually because the start of the story (before the edits) gave a wrong impression. Anyway, it is hard to put myself into the mind of a psychopath, which is why the first arc’s characterization of Erind is shaky before I eventually got to revising it to be more consistent.
Definitely gotta say my favorite part about the story is the way Erind is written. I read a lot, a whole lot, of everything, and Erind is a character type i'm always dying to see, the type of character who even this far into the story is still out for themselves. Usually, with these types of protags I find that somewhere along the way, they'll have a type of 'redeeming', where they start opening up and doing regular MC shit. That's boring as hell, a don't want another shitty nice guy MC, I want a cold, and deceiving, yet likable MC like I came for.
Anyway enough of my rant, keep up the good work!
Another series on here that I read is, There is something wrong with this game. A VRMMORPG novel that has one of the more interesting MCs, still a major power fantasy and the MC isn’t so much a Psychopath but more like someone who developed sociopathic tendencies due to finding out that her parents never actually loved her after they completely abandoned her when she was diagnosed with leukemia. They also have lovers and children with a different person and are okay with that. The MC effectively decided to chose hospice at her parents house which resulted in them moving out to their lovers family and leaving a terminally ill girl in a house alone with a video call every 6 months or so. It’s very interesting to see her perspective and also how she views her “Friends” as “NPCS” who she raises favorability with in order to take advantage of them. It’s impressive. Like her “Best Friend” is training to become a doctor because she found out her best friend had a terminal illness and a body too week to survive the only theoretical treatment. But the MC still doesn’t see her as a “Friend” her position in the guild is strategist, highest level member, and from the perspective of the guild leader “the member of the 7 stars that outshines even the radiant sun(Him)” she gets free stuff just for being the cute mascot and that’s her persona she has crafted to the point that the rest of the guild sometimes forget that she is the strongest member who could have been the guild master if she didn’t hate being in the spotlight and have poor social skills.
@Kristeen yeah that one was pretty decent as well, read it ages ago, probably need to catch up on it.
@DannyCakes it’s a fun read. I kinda hope that Rena can Redeem Hackett even just a little, or at least her face is never exposed, like the entire guild would fall apart without its emotional support loli.(those are words that did come out of my mouth) and I do want to see Rena get a happy ending if nobody else. She cares soo much core someone who can never appreciate kindness because of a coping mechanism they created after finding out they were unwanted and any love show to them was fake.
i completely agree with what you said. a lot of the time, with "psychopath" MCs (not our Emcee), we get immoral characters (and even then, they will have some "standards" or things they consider themselves above, in an effort to ground them with some kind of moral bottom line) instead of amoral. There are very few depictions of characters that are actually amoral because authors get overeager showing their lack of normal morals and then try to backpedal out of the caricature of a raging serial mass murderer and the easiest way to do that is to give them a bottom line in the form of "really hating slavery" or "cares about -person-".
once you've pushed a character to become a raging serial mass murderer, the only way to stop that is either permanently or the way they came in. and usually, the way to enrage someone is either via their morals or their emotions, and psychopaths have neither. instead, they have their Rules, which take the same role in their mental state as morality and complex emotions do for non-psychopaths
Awesome that you also agree that most stories don't actually have psychopath MCs. Most people don't believe me on that. Exactly like you said, authors try to show their MCs as lacking morality in some aspects while showing some aspect as they are "good". Psychopaths have their own view of morality which doesn't coincide with what's socially acceptable - it wouldn't make sense to a real psychopath to kill everyone but then save the slave girl, which is a pretty common trope in a lot of stories.
And thanks for reading my story. It looks like you binged read it.
@Temple I did. I read through to 2.3 as it was being released though
@Temple sh*t Not that you mention that you reminded me of a story I was so hyped for when I read the summary and was like 'yeah psycho in an isekai!" And then they kill like some bandits and save the slave girl
I was kinda mad
Very disappointed though
And now I want ernid kind of character in an isekai
Yk the I'm a spider so what type of Isekai
Should be interesting as f*ck
@Ebunari That's kind of the formula now though and what readers expect so that's why most authors do it. And yeah not really a psychopath character. I did enjoy I'm a spider so what but I've only read the light novel of that some time ago. Haven't kept up to date or tried the anime or manga
@Temple ah no like you know the summary stated the MC was a psychopath or sociopath I can't recall so I was hyped, so yeah I hate clickbait novels
Also when I said spider Isekai type of thing I meant the same places and stuff, stuck in a dungeon type of stuff then getting out
The anime is a bit meh but my favourite voice actress plays kumoko so I watched it
I read the manga first so I may be biased but it was very good
Only read up to vol.7 on the ln though
@Ebunari Webnovel readers got an expectation what a psychopath MC should be so the author probably just did it and most webnovel readers also liked it even if it was wrong. The trope of being supposedly a "psychopath" but only doing bad things to bad guys is what's common in webnovels now. I discussed this a lot in the Author's Retrospective after Arc 3 actually, and I see you're like halfway reading that arc already.
@Temple
That kinda sucks but understandable as people don't like their moral compass challenged
And yep nearly there
@LimitBound Reverend Insanity has a similarly psychopathic MC, he won't torture and kill just for fun (most of the time), but if that helps him out or brings him some kind of benefit he won't hesitate to backstab and do all kinds of horrible things. Also he is kinda Isekai-ed and returned (went back in time at the start of the novel). I would recommend it but it has 2.3k chapters and is banned (no ending, big sad), also it's main selling point in Cultivation Novel (CN) community is that if you've read a few other CNs you will love it as it has almost no bs clichés. Oh and also basically every character is a scheming, backstabbing, murdering, SoB (I can think of maybe like 2 people who are actually good).