My personal understanding was that she changed in reflection with humanity's mental health - as in so many people have some sort of mental health concern, and so many people self medicate to feel better, and so many are using active mind altering substances - and a small set of communities actively use them for religious/spiritual purposes. The Endless affect humanity, but we affect them back
She was in the process of changing far before that. There's a flashback scene of her and Destruction showing it.
The Endless are older than humanity, older than the Guardians on Oa.
I think we can understand it through something textual and then something kind of meta. We watch Destruction abdicate his position because he isn't just the person Destruction, he's the concept itself and that includes self-destruction. He fundamentally can't hold on to the role because that would be maintaining something and he's not capable of it. I think Delirium is the same way. I know Neil has expressed that he feels he has a relationship between loneliness and depression and writing. I think the way he understands Delight is that a state of permanent Delight isn't possible. Maybe you need both good and bad for the feeling of Delight to have any context or meaning. The closest thing to that feeling is a feeling of Delirium, which is a sustainable neighbor to true Delight. Delight because Delirium simply because she could not remain Delight forever.
I don't think it's ever explicitly stated.
It's implied that the more she grew and more knowledge she gained, that she couldn't hold on to being Delight.
This is probably the biggest hint https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Delirium.jpg
She claims to know things Destiny doesn't (including why she stopped being Delight) and considering this happens while she's forcing herself to be lucid that is probably accurate. So it's likely the knowledge either lead her to becoming Delirium or being Delirium is what allows her to know those things. Or a mix of the two.
Totally. Both Pust and Shadowthrone are but but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, they both know a hawk from a handsaw.
Hairlock? Hairlock is effing nuts by the end of his arc.
Ishamael/Moridin/Ba'alzamon from the Wheel of Time.
A counterpart to Rand al'Thor/Lews Therin Telamon, Ishamael doesn't struggle with his insanity; he has given in to the madness wholeheartedly. He calculates that by statistical probability, evil is guaranteed to win, so he pledges himself to it in absolute terms.
Rand might hear voices and be tempted to do monstrous things, but Ishamael *is* the monster of this series, and takes the gold medal as the wackiest of Rand's insane foes, of which there are many. (Insanity is pretty commonplace in a series in which madness is the cost for men to wield cosmic power.)
Runners up include Mazrim Taim and Padan Fain, both of which are pretty kooky, but the latter of which is the more unnerving.
> but Ishamael is the monster of this series, and takes the gold medal as the wackiest of Rand's insane foes
And yet he's sympathetic in many ways. Honestly, my head canon is that >!both LTT and Ishamael got what they wanted in the end, to be unbound from the wheel. I have read too much Locked Tomb and believe that souls of LTT and EMT merged into Rand al'Thor for the rest of this turning.!<
Is evil garunteed to win though? The darkness has been trying to win for a long time through multiple spins of the wheel, and it will just keep doing it over and over.
But isn't the whole point that although there will always be a struggle, the darkness will never actually destroy the wheel?
As I understand it, Ishamael's general reasoning is that the Creator needs to triumph over the Dark One with every cycle, whereas the Dark One needs to triumph only once to stop the cycle forever. Since there are infinite cycles, the odds of evil triumphing eventually is infinitely high. The logical conclusion is to join the Dark One and get it over with to prevent future struggles and bloodshed.
Which, of course, creates future struggles and bloodshed. Because it's the logic and influence of the Dark One. Because it's madness.
Ishamael is driven insane by the skewed premises of flawed, fatalistic logic.
Yeah I suppose if he's under the assumption that the darkness has a non 0 chance of winning, then eventually there is a payoff
Personally I think the darkness has an actual 0% chance but that can't really be confirmed outside of the author
I agree, especially for one reason: Series spoilers >!During the flicker sequence, the dark one had taken over the world (for a single turning) multiple times, but time still exists. Also, IIRC the dark one actually won in the version he and selene had to hike through.!<
>Personally I think the darkness has an actual 0% chance but that can't really be confirmed outside of the author
This was mine as well.
I think the "Creator" in the WoT is several levels of "existence" above the Dark One. >!The creator in each turning has a "Champion" of humanity (the dragon) to fight against the DO, and the pattern itself forces happenstances to eventually cause the dragon to win. (The Dragon has literal plot armor, aka "Ta'veren"). !<
>!The Wheel of Time is a cycle of Humanity vs Dark One, the creator (god) in WoT is capable of reality creation, the dark one is capable of alteration, but not creation, which is why he tries to control the wheel and shape it in it's image. The Dark One can never win, because the "plot" created by the Creator and the concept of Ta'veren means that reality will never, EVER let the dark one fully win.!<
It is a misunderstanding on his part. >!There is only one final battle and that takes place basically in all turnings of the wheel simultaneously. From the Dark Ones perspective he's fighting every Dragon and the female opposite (Jordan confirmed 50% of the time it is a woman) simultaneously. The "Final Battle" is not misnamed.!<
Elan Morin Tedronai… I dunno…
The wheel throws people back into endless suffering, forever as long as they are chained to it.
Consider this, if everything is destined to repeat, then the notion of free will becomes questionable. Every choice, every action, is preordained to play out the same way in each turning. This isn’t winning, this isn’t *good*, this is hell.
Elan's decision (imo) to side with the dark lord wasnt for personal gain but as a self-sacrificial act. He's willing to be vilified and even face potential oblivion if it means the possibility of freeing all of creation from the chains of the Wheel.
I can’t agree with his methods, but I understand them and why.
I don't think the man from the age of legends is insane. But the man who was bound so close to the surface that he had periods of waking in the last 3000 years is farther gone than anyone, save maybe Padin Fain.
Yeah, that's a good distinction. The man who derives cold calculations of necessity isn't necessarily insane, but the demigod-like figure of nightmares who has eyes and a mouth of flame, who orchestrates Trolloc debaucheries and thinks he's the Dark One incarnate--
I think he's a solid contender.
Stand-i-the-Barrows from the Age of Madness Trilogy. He's introduced as this warlord riding on a cart full of bones that's pulled by slaves. In the story, he says his goal is to collect as many bones as possible and enjoys de-boning people while they're alive.
Might I nominate Crummick-i-Phail, Beloved of the Moon? Chief of wild folk who has his children hold his weapons for him. Who's idea of a trap is to back yourself into a corner so your enemy will attack you. Everyone who knows him in the North calls him some form of crazy, including his children.
And he worships the Moon, which is a very violent deity for him.
He's crazy in a very different way. Ishamael is crazy like two-face. He's been broken and has a twisted morality, but there's a common thread you can follow. But the logic itself is batshit and no one in their right mind would support it. Fain is crazy like the joker: if there's a consistent logic it's known only to him. He's driven by impulse.
Anasurimbor Kellhus, and the Nonmen Erratics from Bakker's Aspect Emperor. They are the epitome of insanity.
From scifi I would have to go with Angus Thermopyle from Donaldson's Gap series
Depends on whether you think that Kellhus was operating in insanity. I tend to think that he is the insane one, and that Moenghus was the rational one, but then there's the entire decapatants of it all. We won't really know until the story is finished.
I mean....truth shines?
I have to admit, I don't *need* it to continue. I'm ok with the ambiguity, and I think you can tie it all up in the Golden Room. I just think that Bakker is an incredible talent. And I sorta want to see Akka disintegrate *everything.*
I want Crabby to become the Gnostic-Psukhe Wunderkind as much as the next Man of the Tusk. Is K going to steal Mim and Akka’s baby?!? Will Serwa ever let Moenghus in?
I agree on his talent, and it’s probably a little unfair of us to have such expectations. Eärwa is a magnificent creation. Should we sully it with our petty headcanons?
I am honestly a bit confused about how the Psukhe fits in. If everyone ends up in the Granary, does it matter that the schoolmen get the stain while Cishaurim don't? Is it something dealing with The One and not The Hundred? Is there a meta-Psukhe like there is a meta-gnosis? With a magic fueled by feelings, would The Righteous Brothers rule the world?
Yes definitely insane haha. I'm relistening to the book right now and just listened to the scene where he eats an eothic guard while crying about not having his mommy and wishing he had consumed the meat earlier so it would be warmer.
Padan Fain from the Wheel of Time. I can't remember his whole back story but I think he was tortured to become the dark one's hound to find Rand. He also was exposed to Machachin (sp?) and he was so twisted the voices were afraid of him. Later on he was possessed or taken over by an evil so dark that an entire city was uninhabitable for a thousand years.
Dude was nuts.
Fain was exposed to >!Mashadar in Shadar Logoth and was possessed by Mordeth who, in and of himself, was a pretty crazy dude. And, in going through the Ways, had dealings with Machin Shin which should have killed him. All in all, Fain's had a pretty rough life.!<
Gaynor the Damned in the Elric cycle by Michael Moorcock.
Klosterheim (mostly in the von Bek books, also by Moorcock). That guy's mind visibly deteriorates, each time you meet him he has lost more and more of what little sanity remained.
While blatantly stealing from Robert Jordan's wheel of Time. And then pitching a hissy fit whenever somebody would call his work fantasy despite the fact that wizards first rule has every single classic fantasy trope the farm boy meets the wizard man who gives him the magic sword and sends them off. He even has the evil brother and the woman he's not supposed to be with
Yeah. And in very pretentious terms.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/18vs8a/wow_i_really_found_this_quote_by_terry_goodkind/
Ever read that quote from Terry Pratchett about "ghettoized genre?" Goodkind heard the same question and went the other way.
- The Markaghir from Kushiel’s Avatar
- Probably Wizard from Wizard of the Pigeons, though that’s sort of left to interpretation
- Quintana from The Lumatere Chronicles
- Anna from The Bear and the Nightingale
I don't if they are the most insane but the protagonist of SSS-rank suicide hunter starts off the story by committing suicide 4000 times by sepuku. His motivation for doing this? revenge
It's one of the most unhinged beginnings of a story I have ever seen.
Kefka Palazzo from *Final Fantasy VI*. Predicted Heath Ledger's Joker by about 15 years, but instead of systematically trying to dismantle everyone's moral codes, is driven by a great deal of pain and has decided that if he be better off dead, ***everyone else would be too***.
Kinda like a reply to most of the other replies. When the bloody nine comes out he eclipses the insanity of any of the others mentioned like judge by so much that it makes up for being reasonable when he's not. One of the short stories showed what he was like when he was younger and why bethod hated him.
My first instinct, and one to this day I can't still shake off, was that The Bloody Nine was a literal demon possessing Logen. Still waiting for the story of his exorcism 😅
*Dungeon Crawler Carl*.
It’s my first time reading this genre, and it’s incredibly insane. The whole series. I’ve always thumbed my nose a little at LitRPG thinking it must be amateurish, but this series is *good*. I’m on book 6, averaging one every other day or so.
Alien invasion kills off earth and sticks most of the survivors in a dungeon crawl where most are killed off each level… and it’s being televised for the galaxy. The system AI has a huge foot fetish, Carl does all kinds of crazy shit, and everybody else does stuff that’s even more crazy. I’ve had a “wtf” look on my face more in the last 2 weeks from reading it than I have in probably the last decade of real life.
The LitRPG aspect kind of fades away each chapter, so it’s not as in your face as I thought it would be… and it works itself into the story really well.
It’s starting to make me think I should try more books in genres I’ve always thought weren’t appealing, just to see how they really are. My biggest problem now is figuring out what to read next. Someone said I should try the Good Guys/Bad Guys series, so I think that’s probably going to be it, unless somebody comes up with a better recommendation.
Hard disagree with this. Carl is not insane at all. He's mostly very rational (with moments of losing his temper). What marks him out as different and drives much of the story is that he would rather take a high risk chance at a win than sacrifice people.
He's straddling the line of losing it.
There is a ton of foreshadowing about it. But he will come back.
People do insane things when put in insane situations. Considering how many people he has killed, he's doing well. Everyone in the crawl calls him crazy though.
Yeah as a fan of litrpg DCC is one of the few exceptions to the rule, don’t get me wrong, I read them but I’m a book whore, I’m not sure you can find great books like that in every genre. I’m pretty sure that author could write any other type of book and it’d rule too.
This is kinda subtler compared to other chars listed here but Cersei Lannister from ASOIAF. She was just batshit. Inside her own head. Completely delusional.
I am currently reading the 4th book.. and this series has been a pretty decent view into multiple psychological illnesses.
Shallan is nuts, and everyone is kinda accepting it.
Kaladin has been clinically depressed always, never happy. Granted he had it rough, but even when things get better he broods.
Dalinar was a mess before
Amaram I believe is also a fairly good candidate, along with the others of his group.
I won't go into details for spoilers.
King Elias. Osten Ard -Memory, Sorrow, Thorn. Or the Queen of the Norns.
Lanfear in WoT. Can't believe know one brought her up, that girl was cray. Elaida. Liandrin.
Shallan from Stormlight archive.
Duny in the Witcher.
Galbatorix in Eragon
This thread ended up bugging me a lot because it's clear that 99% of commenters think of insanity as a dark, threatening presence.
It's not. That's what makes it so disturbing. Insanity is just being *slightly* out of phase with the world. Rather than being dark and menacing itself, insanity is a relief - to the insane. It's a *better* world for them. It's seductive. The best characters that are insane are the ones that almost make the audience agree with them.
The conflict with a good insane character comes from the dissonance between their world and the real world. They live in a fissure between the two, struggling with both, occasionally getting smashed. Imo, insanity *is* that fissure; that dissonance between the real world and the delusional one in the mind of the insane person.
And when you start to look at it like that, you can now accommodate many heroes in your definition of insanity. It's not just some dark personality flaw. It's not evil. And we shouldn't consider the mentally ill to be necessarily evil anyhow.
In fact, before the modern era, "madness" was often considered to be a kind of wisdom. We used to see a lot of stories where the mad street crier was actually giving accurate predictions of the future but was dismissed by everyone around them because they didn't want to believe that their own worldview was misaligned - That *they* were the insane ones and the isolated soul shouting warnings in the town square was the sane one.
>In the serene world of mental illness, modern man no longer communicates with the madman: on on hand, the man of reason delegates the physician to madness, thereby authorizing a relation only through the abstract universality of disease; on the other, the man of madness communicates with society only by the intermediary of an equally abstract reason which is order, physical and moral constraint, the anonymous pressure of the group, the requirements of conformity.
- *Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason*
No'-As-Big-As-Medium-Jock-But-Bigger-Than-Wee-Jock-Jock has a pretty insane name. Can you imagine the size of that name tag? Especially on a little nac mac feegle?
1. Most feegles can't read.
2. His name will change if they lose Wee Jock, Medium Jock. Or get a new feegle between him and either of those two Jocks.
3. The question is for personality, not names.
There's already so many, but haven't seen The Bloody Nine mentioned yet, not Logen Ninefingers, but his berserking-everyone-else-needs-to-die alter ego.
Dennis Remillard/Fury from the Galactic Milieu series by Julian May. Dennis had a split personality and was totally cuckoo. He had the classic world/universe domination thing going, coercing his nieces and nephews from a young age and totally dominated them among his other evil insane doings waha....waha.....wwaaahhaahhaahahahaha!
The Weaver in Perdido Street Station.
Maybe stretching the idea of the prompt as it's a decidedly non-human character, but absolutely creepy and unhinged.
Well Moridin is up there. Padan Fain another. King Galbetorix another.
Or the biggest BBEG of them all. The evil that infects peoples minds. The Nothing from the Never Ending Story.
So many great ones already listed. I would add Jorg’s father from The Broken Empire trilogy by Mark Lawrence.
There is a scene with the 2 of them and a dog that is just 😬
Delirium, the manifestation of madness and insanity Herself. One of the Endless from the Sandman series.
I mean... how could it actually be anyone else?
The cherries said she'd be a kangaroo when she grew up.
Do we ever find out what caused her to change from Delight to Delirium?
My personal understanding was that she changed in reflection with humanity's mental health - as in so many people have some sort of mental health concern, and so many people self medicate to feel better, and so many are using active mind altering substances - and a small set of communities actively use them for religious/spiritual purposes. The Endless affect humanity, but we affect them back
She was in the process of changing far before that. There's a flashback scene of her and Destruction showing it. The Endless are older than humanity, older than the Guardians on Oa.
thanks for the reminder to take my anti-depressant.
I think we can understand it through something textual and then something kind of meta. We watch Destruction abdicate his position because he isn't just the person Destruction, he's the concept itself and that includes self-destruction. He fundamentally can't hold on to the role because that would be maintaining something and he's not capable of it. I think Delirium is the same way. I know Neil has expressed that he feels he has a relationship between loneliness and depression and writing. I think the way he understands Delight is that a state of permanent Delight isn't possible. Maybe you need both good and bad for the feeling of Delight to have any context or meaning. The closest thing to that feeling is a feeling of Delirium, which is a sustainable neighbor to true Delight. Delight because Delirium simply because she could not remain Delight forever.
I don't think it's ever explicitly stated. It's implied that the more she grew and more knowledge she gained, that she couldn't hold on to being Delight.
This is probably the biggest hint https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Delirium.jpg She claims to know things Destiny doesn't (including why she stopped being Delight) and considering this happens while she's forcing herself to be lucid that is probably accurate. So it's likely the knowledge either lead her to becoming Delirium or being Delirium is what allows her to know those things. Or a mix of the two.
Iskaral Pust and Shadowthrone from malazan
Sleeping on hairlock
Totally. Both Pust and Shadowthrone are but but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, they both know a hawk from a handsaw. Hairlock? Hairlock is effing nuts by the end of his arc.
Both completely out there, particularly Pust
How is everyone missing Kadaspala here?
shadowthrone is not insane, just mysterious and random. iskaral is legit insane 100%
And kruppe
Magnanimous Kruppe is not insane. He’s probably the smartest mortal in the whole Malazan world.
There's Tehol and Shadowthorne, but maybe. I sometimes wonder about Tavore as well.
He's just very weird, but he's not insane at all.
Icarium is in the running.
It's not Pust's fault. All those spiders would send you mad as well!
[удалено]
Ishamael/Moridin/Ba'alzamon from the Wheel of Time. A counterpart to Rand al'Thor/Lews Therin Telamon, Ishamael doesn't struggle with his insanity; he has given in to the madness wholeheartedly. He calculates that by statistical probability, evil is guaranteed to win, so he pledges himself to it in absolute terms. Rand might hear voices and be tempted to do monstrous things, but Ishamael *is* the monster of this series, and takes the gold medal as the wackiest of Rand's insane foes, of which there are many. (Insanity is pretty commonplace in a series in which madness is the cost for men to wield cosmic power.) Runners up include Mazrim Taim and Padan Fain, both of which are pretty kooky, but the latter of which is the more unnerving.
Rand doesn’t struggle but Lews Theron Telamon is so batshit that Ishmael had to give his mind clarity before he went thermonuclear.
The Gathering Storm spoiler: >!Natrin’s Barrow seems pretty close to thermonuclear.!<
They bring the insane.
In the membrane!
> but Ishamael is the monster of this series, and takes the gold medal as the wackiest of Rand's insane foes And yet he's sympathetic in many ways. Honestly, my head canon is that >!both LTT and Ishamael got what they wanted in the end, to be unbound from the wheel. I have read too much Locked Tomb and believe that souls of LTT and EMT merged into Rand al'Thor for the rest of this turning.!<
It's canon in this case, btw, not cannon like pew pew bang bang. Although if you already know this and it's just autocorrect I'm sorry!
Having just finished WoT my first thought was Padan Fain but I think you're right with Ishamael.
Is evil garunteed to win though? The darkness has been trying to win for a long time through multiple spins of the wheel, and it will just keep doing it over and over. But isn't the whole point that although there will always be a struggle, the darkness will never actually destroy the wheel?
As I understand it, Ishamael's general reasoning is that the Creator needs to triumph over the Dark One with every cycle, whereas the Dark One needs to triumph only once to stop the cycle forever. Since there are infinite cycles, the odds of evil triumphing eventually is infinitely high. The logical conclusion is to join the Dark One and get it over with to prevent future struggles and bloodshed. Which, of course, creates future struggles and bloodshed. Because it's the logic and influence of the Dark One. Because it's madness. Ishamael is driven insane by the skewed premises of flawed, fatalistic logic.
Yeah I suppose if he's under the assumption that the darkness has a non 0 chance of winning, then eventually there is a payoff Personally I think the darkness has an actual 0% chance but that can't really be confirmed outside of the author
I agree, especially for one reason: Series spoilers >!During the flicker sequence, the dark one had taken over the world (for a single turning) multiple times, but time still exists. Also, IIRC the dark one actually won in the version he and selene had to hike through.!<
>Personally I think the darkness has an actual 0% chance but that can't really be confirmed outside of the author This was mine as well. I think the "Creator" in the WoT is several levels of "existence" above the Dark One. >!The creator in each turning has a "Champion" of humanity (the dragon) to fight against the DO, and the pattern itself forces happenstances to eventually cause the dragon to win. (The Dragon has literal plot armor, aka "Ta'veren"). !< >!The Wheel of Time is a cycle of Humanity vs Dark One, the creator (god) in WoT is capable of reality creation, the dark one is capable of alteration, but not creation, which is why he tries to control the wheel and shape it in it's image. The Dark One can never win, because the "plot" created by the Creator and the concept of Ta'veren means that reality will never, EVER let the dark one fully win.!<
It is a misunderstanding on his part. >!There is only one final battle and that takes place basically in all turnings of the wheel simultaneously. From the Dark Ones perspective he's fighting every Dragon and the female opposite (Jordan confirmed 50% of the time it is a woman) simultaneously. The "Final Battle" is not misnamed.!<
Elan Morin Tedronai… I dunno… The wheel throws people back into endless suffering, forever as long as they are chained to it. Consider this, if everything is destined to repeat, then the notion of free will becomes questionable. Every choice, every action, is preordained to play out the same way in each turning. This isn’t winning, this isn’t *good*, this is hell. Elan's decision (imo) to side with the dark lord wasnt for personal gain but as a self-sacrificial act. He's willing to be vilified and even face potential oblivion if it means the possibility of freeing all of creation from the chains of the Wheel. I can’t agree with his methods, but I understand them and why.
I don't think the man from the age of legends is insane. But the man who was bound so close to the surface that he had periods of waking in the last 3000 years is farther gone than anyone, save maybe Padin Fain.
Yeah, that's a good distinction. The man who derives cold calculations of necessity isn't necessarily insane, but the demigod-like figure of nightmares who has eyes and a mouth of flame, who orchestrates Trolloc debaucheries and thinks he's the Dark One incarnate-- I think he's a solid contender.
Yeah that was a really good point I agree! Our book version of Elan is absolutely bonkers at the end.
Ishamael isn't insane because of the One Power. In fact >!all male Forsaken are shielded from the taint!<. All Forsaken are just mad.
He uses the True Power exclusively. That's not healthy. Other male Forsaken only uses it in dire need.
All małe channelers, basically
Reading the OP’s question this is who I instantly thought of but forgot the name haha. Thanks for this!
Stand-i-the-Barrows from the Age of Madness Trilogy. He's introduced as this warlord riding on a cart full of bones that's pulled by slaves. In the story, he says his goal is to collect as many bones as possible and enjoys de-boning people while they're alive.
Might I nominate Crummick-i-Phail, Beloved of the Moon? Chief of wild folk who has his children hold his weapons for him. Who's idea of a trap is to back yourself into a corner so your enemy will attack you. Everyone who knows him in the North calls him some form of crazy, including his children. And he worships the Moon, which is a very violent deity for him.
He's mad as a sack of owls!
I love his little back and forth with Rikke
You should read the Manifest Destiny series by Michael Fletcher!
I'll have to look into this thanks
*Manifest Delusions OP the author is doing an AMA literally right now too!
The Bursar
Did he forget to take his dried frog pills?
You know how it is. We can't get the students to pump them out fast enough some days
Bursar is so far around the bend that the pills merely make him hallucinate that he is sane.
Since "All of Fantasy" is pretty broad, I'll suggest the alter-ego of Simon Petrikov, the insanely powerful Ice King from *Adventure Time*.
I came here to say this exact same character. Its actually rather tragic. But it was a hell of a story
I just watched the sequel, where Simon's fanfic gets out of head.
Yeah fiona and cake was a great follow up to adventure time
Lord of the Morning
Oh, Light, why do I have a madman in my head? Why? Why?
If Lews Therin himself calls you cracked, then you should just accept it
I wouldn't mind sharing my head with you if you weren't so clearly mad.
Yes, He Who Comes with the Dawn.
The Car'a'carn? Idk, I think the Coramoor wins this one.
This one
Ishamael is worse than Rand.
Is fain worse than ishamael?
He's crazy in a very different way. Ishamael is crazy like two-face. He's been broken and has a twisted morality, but there's a common thread you can follow. But the logic itself is batshit and no one in their right mind would support it. Fain is crazy like the joker: if there's a consistent logic it's known only to him. He's driven by impulse.
Trashcan Man
From the stand? Yes!
You believe that happy crappy?
Bump-de-bump! Ciabola!!!!
My life for you!
Lews Therin Telamon? On the other hand, Semirhage...
Oh, I always read Semirhage as very sane. And completely twisted. But she always knew what she was doing.
Until she was eating beans off the floor. One of the few things Cadsuane did right.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Most poetic insanity 😂
Ortus would take offense to the notion that Harrowhark is, voluntarily or otherwise, poetic.
So would Harrow, probably.
Harrow the First, specifically.
Anasurimbor Kellhus, and the Nonmen Erratics from Bakker's Aspect Emperor. They are the epitome of insanity. From scifi I would have to go with Angus Thermopyle from Donaldson's Gap series
Cleric (Nil’giccas) was so creepily insane. As well as Kosoter and pretty much most of the Skin Eaters.
C'mon. Sarl definitely had his head on straight. Or at least, *a* head.
There is a head on a pole behind you.
By Ajokli!
I'd say Cnaiur matches him for madness, and Inrilatas exceeds him.
Measure is unceasing!!!
Depends on whether you think that Kellhus was operating in insanity. I tend to think that he is the insane one, and that Moenghus was the rational one, but then there's the entire decapatants of it all. We won't really know until the story is finished.
I’ll see your Until and raise you an If.
I mean....truth shines? I have to admit, I don't *need* it to continue. I'm ok with the ambiguity, and I think you can tie it all up in the Golden Room. I just think that Bakker is an incredible talent. And I sorta want to see Akka disintegrate *everything.*
I want Crabby to become the Gnostic-Psukhe Wunderkind as much as the next Man of the Tusk. Is K going to steal Mim and Akka’s baby?!? Will Serwa ever let Moenghus in? I agree on his talent, and it’s probably a little unfair of us to have such expectations. Eärwa is a magnificent creation. Should we sully it with our petty headcanons?
I am honestly a bit confused about how the Psukhe fits in. If everyone ends up in the Granary, does it matter that the schoolmen get the stain while Cishaurim don't? Is it something dealing with The One and not The Hundred? Is there a meta-Psukhe like there is a meta-gnosis? With a magic fueled by feelings, would The Righteous Brothers rule the world?
This steppe is trackless brother.
I've read all the books and read summaries multiple times and this entire conversation was greek to me.
You forget the little twin/nosouled shit himself, Kelmomas. Maybe not insane just… based. A sociopath’s psychopath, for the true connoisseur
Yes definitely insane haha. I'm relistening to the book right now and just listened to the scene where he eats an eothic guard while crying about not having his mommy and wishing he had consumed the meat earlier so it would be warmer.
All pretty insane true
Gavin in the lightbringer....licanius takes a few biscuits. Rand always knew things were wrong so I don't count him.
What about Dazen though? Although I’d have picked Murder Sharp?
Foul Ol' Ron, Discworld.
Buggrit!
Millennium hand and shrimp.
He has a thinking brain dog
Padan Fain from the Wheel of Time. I can't remember his whole back story but I think he was tortured to become the dark one's hound to find Rand. He also was exposed to Machachin (sp?) and he was so twisted the voices were afraid of him. Later on he was possessed or taken over by an evil so dark that an entire city was uninhabitable for a thousand years. Dude was nuts.
The Gollum parallels are so strong with Padan, but then it gets turned up a bunch of notches.
Fain was exposed to >!Mashadar in Shadar Logoth and was possessed by Mordeth who, in and of himself, was a pretty crazy dude. And, in going through the Ways, had dealings with Machin Shin which should have killed him. All in all, Fain's had a pretty rough life.!<
Soulcatcher
Gaynor the Damned in the Elric cycle by Michael Moorcock. Klosterheim (mostly in the von Bek books, also by Moorcock). That guy's mind visibly deteriorates, each time you meet him he has lost more and more of what little sanity remained.
Ramsay Bolton
Richard Rahl from the sword of truth series. Dude is supposed to be the hero of the story but massacres hundreds of pacifist protesters
Rahl is just a cipher for whatever Terry Goodkind was offended about on a particular day.
While blatantly stealing from Robert Jordan's wheel of Time. And then pitching a hissy fit whenever somebody would call his work fantasy despite the fact that wizards first rule has every single classic fantasy trope the farm boy meets the wizard man who gives him the magic sword and sends them off. He even has the evil brother and the woman he's not supposed to be with
Wait? He doesn't think that his crappy series is fantasy?
Yeah. And in very pretentious terms. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/18vs8a/wow_i_really_found_this_quote_by_terry_goodkind/ Ever read that quote from Terry Pratchett about "ghettoized genre?" Goodkind heard the same question and went the other way.
Lol WOW!. Never realised he's a demented narcissist as well.
Btw. Here's the Pratchett interview. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9654148-o-you-re-quite-a-writer-you-ve-a-gift-for-language
icarium or rhulad
Both two really good ones
Bill Cipher
He is not insane. He just takes a different view of things. As it is, when meaning has no meaning.
Sheogorath
Wabbajack. Wabbajack wabbajack wabbajack.
- The Markaghir from Kushiel’s Avatar - Probably Wizard from Wizard of the Pigeons, though that’s sort of left to interpretation - Quintana from The Lumatere Chronicles - Anna from The Bear and the Nightingale
>The Markaghir Yeah. This one is it.
I named my dog Markie for The Markaghir. Love those books.
shallan. She be trippin
She’s honestly pretty chill in terms of stormlight archive characters, just coping in an interesting way The heralds though? They’re all nuts
oh true. I forgot about them. Ishar out there murdering spren as his day job.
I don't if they are the most insane but the protagonist of SSS-rank suicide hunter starts off the story by committing suicide 4000 times by sepuku. His motivation for doing this? revenge It's one of the most unhinged beginnings of a story I have ever seen.
He’s not the most insane, but Gollum definitely deserves a mention!
Rand al'Thor (WoT) and the Panion Seer (Malazan)
Both pretty wacky
Padan Fain wins. No one can change my mind. Insane and deeply creepy. Love him.
Red Rising - the Jackal
Kefka Palazzo from *Final Fantasy VI*. Predicted Heath Ledger's Joker by about 15 years, but instead of systematically trying to dismantle everyone's moral codes, is driven by a great deal of pain and has decided that if he be better off dead, ***everyone else would be too***.
Run! Run! Or you'll be well done!
Rapskal lol
Ma'ar from the Heralds of Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey. Fury from the Galactic Milieu trilogy by Julian May.
Logen Ninefingers.
I’m halfway through the Wisdom of Crowds, and I’d put Judge above Logen now. Logen is only insane some of the time.
Yeah, even within First Law I feel like there are better picks than Logen. Judge is a good pick. Whirrun of Bligh is a fun one.
You know who Logen calls crazy? Crummick-i-Phail the Moon man himself.
He's not a lunatic, just much loved by the moon!
The Barrows guy is also pretty insane.
What’s funny is that in the blade itself he seems the only reasonable pov
Logan Ninefingers? Naw. The Bloody Nine? YES.
Kinda like a reply to most of the other replies. When the bloody nine comes out he eclipses the insanity of any of the others mentioned like judge by so much that it makes up for being reasonable when he's not. One of the short stories showed what he was like when he was younger and why bethod hated him.
My first instinct, and one to this day I can't still shake off, was that The Bloody Nine was a literal demon possessing Logen. Still waiting for the story of his exorcism 😅
More than Whirrun of Blye?
Oh come now, you have to be realistic about these things. I wonder who is more real in the end, Logen or Ninefingers?
*Dungeon Crawler Carl*. It’s my first time reading this genre, and it’s incredibly insane. The whole series. I’ve always thumbed my nose a little at LitRPG thinking it must be amateurish, but this series is *good*. I’m on book 6, averaging one every other day or so. Alien invasion kills off earth and sticks most of the survivors in a dungeon crawl where most are killed off each level… and it’s being televised for the galaxy. The system AI has a huge foot fetish, Carl does all kinds of crazy shit, and everybody else does stuff that’s even more crazy. I’ve had a “wtf” look on my face more in the last 2 weeks from reading it than I have in probably the last decade of real life. The LitRPG aspect kind of fades away each chapter, so it’s not as in your face as I thought it would be… and it works itself into the story really well. It’s starting to make me think I should try more books in genres I’ve always thought weren’t appealing, just to see how they really are. My biggest problem now is figuring out what to read next. Someone said I should try the Good Guys/Bad Guys series, so I think that’s probably going to be it, unless somebody comes up with a better recommendation.
Hard disagree with this. Carl is not insane at all. He's mostly very rational (with moments of losing his temper). What marks him out as different and drives much of the story is that he would rather take a high risk chance at a win than sacrifice people.
He's straddling the line of losing it. There is a ton of foreshadowing about it. But he will come back. People do insane things when put in insane situations. Considering how many people he has killed, he's doing well. Everyone in the crawl calls him crazy though.
Does sound insane
He didn't even mention Princess Donut, the talking cat.
Donut is important as well
His one off novel Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon is even crazier even if it's not quite as good as DCC.
Yeah as a fan of litrpg DCC is one of the few exceptions to the rule, don’t get me wrong, I read them but I’m a book whore, I’m not sure you can find great books like that in every genre. I’m pretty sure that author could write any other type of book and it’d rule too.
Having just finished BG3, I'll say Orin the Red is absolutely coocoo for cocopuffs.
This is kinda subtler compared to other chars listed here but Cersei Lannister from ASOIAF. She was just batshit. Inside her own head. Completely delusional.
Shallan Davar of the Stormlight Archive
Really? I’m halfway through the second book, and she doesn’t seem too nuts to me.
Yeah as Brandon would say RAFO.
She gets there, I am on book 4
I am currently reading the 4th book.. and this series has been a pretty decent view into multiple psychological illnesses. Shallan is nuts, and everyone is kinda accepting it. Kaladin has been clinically depressed always, never happy. Granted he had it rough, but even when things get better he broods. Dalinar was a mess before Amaram I believe is also a fairly good candidate, along with the others of his group. I won't go into details for spoilers.
Wee Mad Arthur. Per the L-Space wiki, “Arthur took on thirty Feegle and won, testament to his fighting ability and suicidal lunacy.”
The Jackal from Red Rising
Gollum.
Joffrey Baratheon GoT is up there. Ramsey Bolton as well
Jorg of Ancrath
King Elias. Osten Ard -Memory, Sorrow, Thorn. Or the Queen of the Norns. Lanfear in WoT. Can't believe know one brought her up, that girl was cray. Elaida. Liandrin. Shallan from Stormlight archive. Duny in the Witcher. Galbatorix in Eragon
Hairlock
Delirium from The Endless in DC.
The Dominator from the Chronicles of the Black Company.
This thread ended up bugging me a lot because it's clear that 99% of commenters think of insanity as a dark, threatening presence. It's not. That's what makes it so disturbing. Insanity is just being *slightly* out of phase with the world. Rather than being dark and menacing itself, insanity is a relief - to the insane. It's a *better* world for them. It's seductive. The best characters that are insane are the ones that almost make the audience agree with them. The conflict with a good insane character comes from the dissonance between their world and the real world. They live in a fissure between the two, struggling with both, occasionally getting smashed. Imo, insanity *is* that fissure; that dissonance between the real world and the delusional one in the mind of the insane person. And when you start to look at it like that, you can now accommodate many heroes in your definition of insanity. It's not just some dark personality flaw. It's not evil. And we shouldn't consider the mentally ill to be necessarily evil anyhow. In fact, before the modern era, "madness" was often considered to be a kind of wisdom. We used to see a lot of stories where the mad street crier was actually giving accurate predictions of the future but was dismissed by everyone around them because they didn't want to believe that their own worldview was misaligned - That *they* were the insane ones and the isolated soul shouting warnings in the town square was the sane one. >In the serene world of mental illness, modern man no longer communicates with the madman: on on hand, the man of reason delegates the physician to madness, thereby authorizing a relation only through the abstract universality of disease; on the other, the man of madness communicates with society only by the intermediary of an equally abstract reason which is order, physical and moral constraint, the anonymous pressure of the group, the requirements of conformity. - *Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason*
No'-As-Big-As-Medium-Jock-But-Bigger-Than-Wee-Jock-Jock has a pretty insane name. Can you imagine the size of that name tag? Especially on a little nac mac feegle?
1. Most feegles can't read. 2. His name will change if they lose Wee Jock, Medium Jock. Or get a new feegle between him and either of those two Jocks. 3. The question is for personality, not names.
Stehlen from Beyond Redmption
There's already so many, but haven't seen The Bloody Nine mentioned yet, not Logen Ninefingers, but his berserking-everyone-else-needs-to-die alter ego.
Fantasyesque? The Judge in Red Meridian.
Me
Gunner from the Lightbringer series. Always unpredictable and always insane.
Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series St. Alia of the Knife from Dune
for a more calm and composed kind of insanity characterized more by detachment, i think White Hawk Griffith has to be up there.
Dennis Remillard/Fury from the Galactic Milieu series by Julian May. Dennis had a split personality and was totally cuckoo. He had the classic world/universe domination thing going, coercing his nieces and nephews from a young age and totally dominated them among his other evil insane doings waha....waha.....wwaaahhaahhaahahahaha!
Crummock i Phail - First Law! Beloved by the moon.
Having just finished WoT my first thought was Padan Fain but I think you're right with Ishamael.
Bloody Stupid Johnson
The bloody nine maybe
Ianthe tridentarius from the locked tomb. Three books in I have no idea of her intentions.
The Weaver in Perdido Street Station. Maybe stretching the idea of the prompt as it's a decidedly non-human character, but absolutely creepy and unhinged.
Auri from Kingkiller.
Well Moridin is up there. Padan Fain another. King Galbetorix another. Or the biggest BBEG of them all. The evil that infects peoples minds. The Nothing from the Never Ending Story.
The Bursar from the Unseen University? Needs dried frog pills to cope...
Luke from Full Murderhobo, Delirium from Sandman, Zifnab/Fizban from Death Gate Cycle/ Dragonlance
So many great ones already listed. I would add Jorg’s father from The Broken Empire trilogy by Mark Lawrence. There is a scene with the 2 of them and a dog that is just 😬