User blog comment:William See/So ya wanna make a creepy OC./@comment-5306249-20200112013839

An addendum on mental illness as well: while mental illness can play a key role in shaping a character and their motives or perceptions, it is strongly advised you don’t rely on this as a narrative vehicle unless it involves an incredibly strong, character building event. You want to focus less on the trait, more on how it affects the story.

Romanticizing of neurological quirks or just plain old psychopathy is not an excuse to have a character kill other people. These illnesses are very real and very complex and cannot simply be reduced to skin-deep tags like “crazy” or “killer” or whathaveyou. Likewise, a character will not always develop illnesses or killer complexes the way many Mary Sue stories would have you believe, many grow up adjusted or simply ‘different’ depending on the person.

Instead of having the character become a misanthropic, homicidal teenager (bit of a redundancy) because their dad hit them, place them in a story many years in the future where they’re fairly adjusted but have a crippling fear of closets due to their abuse, for example.