Bored with Insanity: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"As I'm sitting there with a severed head in my hand, talking to it - or looking at it and I'm about to go crazy - literally I'm about to go fly away loose and just far apart I say, 'wow. This is insane.'...and I told myself, 'no it isn't. You're saying that and that makes it not insane."''|'''Edmund Kemper'''}}

 

 

 

Usually, this is more of a throwaway piece of dialogue or plot to explain how a character has managed to go back to normal or left the ranks of [[Cloudcuckoolander|Cloud Cuckoo Landers]]. Of course, it is ''by definition'' uttered by an [[Unreliable Narrator]], so they may or may not be as sane as they claim.

{{examples}}

 

* Pretty much every Awakened Being in ''[[Claymore]]'' seems to be this.

 

== Comic Books ==

** [[Grant Morrison]] has had characters speculate that the Joker has a kind of [[Hollywood Psych|super-MPD]], so he reinvents his own personality every few years. One year he'll just go with practical jokes, the next year he won't kill anybody, the next he'll kill ''everybody''... (Granted, said characters who forward these theories aren't exactly sane themselves.)

** Maxie Zeus, for Batman: Cacophony, dropping his "I am Zeus" delusion and cutting all ties with the Mafia (or so he claims - he's still in touch, just not ranting at them in full regalia). A visit from the Joker has him snapping back.

* Also in ''Sandman'', Delirium, the embodiment of madness (and, according to her brother Destruction, by inclusion also the measure of sanity) is forced, when her brother Dream breaks down in the face of an impossible decision, to take charge, and go sane. In this state, she is downright scary without being menacing, but when she speaks of this later - having returned to her daft normal self - the memory is so traumatic she can only say "It ''hurt''", while crying.

* This happened once to Alice in ''[[Dilbert]].'' She's ranting about some bizarre corporate policy, then abruptly stops and realizes that she's suddenly sane. Carol gently tells her to breathe into a paper bag until she gets over it.

* ''[[Deadpool]]'' did this apparently, in an alternative future featuring in Cable's most recent comic series. He hides in a meat locker, gets buried within it, goes insane, plays tic tac toe for a few hundred years, gets bored, plays hangman against a personality he developed on purpose in order to be able to play hangman (complete with a college graduation hat thingy), decides his other personality is too intelligent, kills it, and then gets bored, goes sane, more or less, and gets freed by a bunch of scavengers. All in 800 years.

** "Sane" is a relative term for [[Cloudcuckoolander|Deadpool]].

 

* Played with as part of one ''[[Bleach]]'' fiction. The main character became a Hollow while maintaining his human mind; the stress of realizing he was a monster that needed to devour souls to survive drove him to insanity. Eventually the insanity broke and he tried other methods of passing the time that involved less murders.

 

 

== Literature ==

** Wonko the Sane may count. Sort of. Considering he believes that everyone is insane, and he decided to go sane and build a nice little asylum for everything in the universe save for himself, a small house, and the Pacific Ocean. Whether he is this or not depends on whether you agree.

** More bored with violence for the sake of violence. And it's hardly an [[Ass Pull]]: Alex states that he'd begun to feel bored with his usual activities for some time prior to the very end of the book.

* [[Terry Pratchett]] is fond of this: the obvious example is Vorbis from ''[[Discworld|Small Gods]].''

** Also with Jeremy Clockson in ''[[Discworld|Thief of Time]]''. Without medication, he becomes ''too'' sane.

*** His Igor doesn't think he's sane (there's a short section where he wonders if he finally got a sane master, but... ah, no). It is, however, likely that without his meds, Jeremy goes straight through sanity into... ytinasni?

Ah. No. It wasn't, was it... }}

** Similarly, the Bursar of [[Wizarding School|Unseen University]] is so insane that he sometimes hallucinates that he's sane.

** Pratchett also has the very fun concept of [[Sdrawkcab Name|knurd]], which is like being drunk except in the other direction. Being very knurd makes you see things ''exactly as they are'', which is enough reason for most people to start screaming and never want to be knurd ever again. Vimes's colleagues are of the opinion he was born slightly knurd, needing a stiff double just to be sober, which as he no longer drinks explains his cynical outlook before and after.

** The duke in ''Wyrd Sisters'' alternates between this and being [[Ax Crazy|a complete and utter loony]]. The relevant quote is:

** In ''The Art of the Discworld'', Pratchett says that when your grandfather is Death you either have to go totally mad or completely sane. Susan's case is the latter.

** Well, that and he stopped sleeping with the thing under his pillow.

* [[Body Horror|Very bad things]] have been happening to Colonel Jax on a sentient hospital ship in [[Alastair Reynolds]] ' short story "Nightingale". {{spoiler|He's been surgically altered into a human artwork intended to represent the horror of war.}} When told that he seems proud of the results (though still quietly crazy), he responds, "Would you rather I screamed? I can scream if you like. It just gets old after a while."

* Ishamael, [[The Dragon]] for [[God of Evil|the Dark One]] in ''[[The Wheel of Time]]''. When we first see him he is easily angered, has [[No Indoor Voice]], and is basically inhuman, and he's so gone so insane that [[A God Am I|he believes]] he ''is'' the Dark One. After he dies and gets a new body, he's reached the other side of insanity; his new incarnation Moridin is a calm, patient [[The Chessmaster|Chessmaster]] who regularly draws on [[The Dark Side|the True Power]], which is supposed to be addictive and madness-inducing, with no negative side-effects. He's still a nihilistic [[Omnicidal Maniac]], but he's perfectly logical and philosophical in his reasoning.

 

* Happens to ''[[Monk]]'' when his doctor has him trial a new medicine to snap him out of his anxiety and repetitive behavior. He becomes extremely personable, but can't focus in his usual way when he's called to investigate a crime scene. {{spoiler|He ends up quitting only because he doesn't have the same dreams of [[Posthumous Character|Trudy]] anymore.}}

 

== Video Games ==

** And recently has gotten bored with having a split personality as the Lich King (his humanity, the evil spirit that possessed him, and his own mind) and killed the other two. Now completely evil.

** Justified in that he stops acting insane the moment he loses his soul - he no longer cares about anything, and therefore has nothing to stress over... and he actually gains a sense of humor.

'''Arcueid:''' "---Let's see... to put it simply, I calmed down after a while." }}

* Fujiwara no Mokou from [[Touhou]]. We only meet her after she's calmed down, but apparently she spent 300 years in a state where she could only preserve her sense of identity by killing everyone she met. And then got bored of that so she spent 300 years doing ''nothing''. And then she got better.

 

== Web Original ==

* At the Chat-based RPG [[On Rails]], ran on the messageboard ''Casa Dos Jogos'', the [[Reality Warper]] (but that for some reason couldn't use his powers, them being controlled by his [[Enemy Without]] - that is trying to do an evil [[Split Personality Takeover]], by the way) Loki went crazy through the story, specially after getting his powers and failing to use them when their lives where at risk (reason already mentioned). After years in-game (centuries, actually) he finally snapped - again, and regained his sanity, going from a [[Cloudcuckoolander]] [[Plucky Comic Relief]] always trying (and failing) to use his powers either in battle or on [[Mundane Utility]] to a [[Only Sane Man]] [[Jerkass]] [[The Scrappy|hated by even his player]]. Of course, it has been hinted, with him acting as a Jerkass anytime his [[Enemy Without]] is around even before coming back from crazy, and acting full-jerkass on an [[Lotus Eater Machine]] scenario - not counting the fact the fact that said [[Enemy Without]] is [[Jerkass Dissonance|a much more charismatic jerkass]] (not counting [[God Mode Sue]] and [[Manipulative Bastard]]), to [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] proportions.

 

 

* While insanity doesn't make one sane, in the way we think of it, there have been psychological and sociological arguments have made it rather evident that insanity is culturally defined. In some cultures hallucinations aren't a sign of madness, but a sign of connection to another world. Similarly, there have been cultures that engender megalomania in their code of conduct, and even at least one example of an isolated island culture where paranoia is the rule and a person who has killing rages is considered quirky and someone to avoid when he gets into his moods, whereas someone who is genuinely helpful and cheery is treated as genuinely nuts. What makes you crazy in one society makes you sane in another.

** See also jokes and/or anecdotes about how insanity is perceived. One famous example: a man gets a flat tire and pulls over, coincidentally outside a mental hospital. As he's changing the tire, a truck passes too close and scatters his lugnuts. While he's pondering what he's going to do about this, he hears someone trying to get his attention. It's a man inside the hospital's fence. "Take one lugnut from each of the other wheels," the patient says; "that will hold on the spare long enough for you to buy some new lugnuts." The man thanks the mental patient and expresses his surprise that he was able to come up with such a clearheaded solution. "I'm in here because I'm crazy," says the patient, "not because I'm stupid."

** Why not? It worked for the Hippies. Or should I say the Reagan generation?

** [[Jade-Colored Glasses|At least until that bores them too]] and they move on to something else to [[Bread and Circuses|stay entertained.]]

** According to some of the denizens of /b/ (so take it for what you may), the whole pony thing is a way to make /b/ seem uncool to newcomers. That way when some new idiot shows up, having heard of /b/ and thinking "I gonna be cool and go hang out on /b/" they see the pony threads and go "WTF is this!? /b/ is uncool, see yah later." It's a test, not insanity.

*** [[Take That|Does /b/ really need any help looking uncool?]]

** This is often a case of many people who either are in a lucid state or simply become self-aware of a psychological issue that was self-blinding in nature. MPD, ADHD, certain types of paranoia, varying levels of schizophrenia... Although usually brought about through emotional trauma or heavy intervention, and almost always requiring extensive (if not life-long) therapy and medication, a surprisingly large amount of times, the impetus consists of little more than "not wanting to deal with the hassle any more."

*** As someone experiencing this to the letter (with, among other things, depression), it's not so much [[Nightmare Fuel]] as it is "Depression/Suicide/Fatalism/Learned Helplessness Fuel".

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Madness Tropes]]