Before I do a reply I'd like to quickly note that I predisposed my annoyance with "personal reasons" instead of "this is". Instead of making the statement one of fact, I made it one of personal feeling, ergo I didn't imply that someone else doing it and enjoying it was necessarily wrong, simply that it agitated me in particular.

Anyway.

[quote=Jig]You are right in that most people know nothing about it and b!tching about a societal ignorance is fair game, but complaining that people don't always write psychologically accurate characters is a bit like complaining that Pikachu isn't biologically viable.[/quote] 

Except Pikachu isn't real. This would be like if I wrote that all Chinese people want to eat babies and murder Americans and [i]literally nothing else ever crosses their minds[/i]. See how that might be offensive?

Note, too, that I didn't call for it to stop. I said that I don't tolerate it very well in my RP's. My offense, my feelings on something, are not justifiable means for which to call others to stop doing it altogether. If that's what gets your plot rolling, and you enjoy it, fantastic, but I won't enjoy it.

[quote=Jig]When you say generic psychotic monster, I think you're hitting the nail on the head with the word monster. These characters are destructive to the world around them in a way that reminds me of slasher movie monster/villain - they are armed with the designated role of villain that both automatically justifies their violence (in an RP, this may be social violence rather than literal) and makes a contract with the audience that they will perform with that violence in ways that allow them to be just slightly more powerful than their victims. When you go see Hallowe'en, you expect Michael Meyers to do some stab-stab-stabbing.[/quote]

Ironically, you mention Halloween. A film where the main antagonist has a back story. He was born evil and empty and everyone knew this. He has a particularly livid hatred of teenagers and thus goes after them. He has a motif, a motivation: Something which most generic villains in RP's lack. Like, badly.

I mean, it says a lot when even most slasher flicks will go out of their way to give at least five minutes to explaining why the monster is murdering people if it wears a human face.

[quote=Jig]For me, what makes this fail as a concept is that the 'villain character' is usually the player's input. In those works where you can get away with having an almost two-dimensionally psychotic (forgive the use of the word; you know what I mean)[/quote]

I don't mind you using the word to explain something. It's not like it's a dirty word.

[quote=Jig]character, the character is basically a plot device to give the real characters something to overcome or be destroyed by.[/quote] 

Yep, which still doesn't excuse poor character execution as, if you're going to use the antagonist as a plot device, you need to tell players why the antagonist is their enemy. Develop him so they don't just feel like it's a generic adventure to slay a generic villain. This is how you make memorable stuff that people feel inspired to stay with.

[quote=Jig]Unless an RP has been founded around that antagonist (or had the antagonist tied into it), the antagonist has no role; the conflict is already there. Therefore, the antagonist's primary role reduced to being pointlessly belligerent in a way that typically seems out of place and usually obnoxious.[/quote]

Yup. 

[quote=Jig]The great and massively under-celebrated thing about RPing is that it's one story told from every character's perspective. Because of this, a character (like the antagonistic-by-design ones) that is not deep or developed feels egregiously empty. With all the space there for exploration, why isn't there any?[/quote]

Exactly. There should be some. I mean, here's the real crux of it: Western fiction is character-based 99% of the time. If you don't have humans, then you anthropomorphize something in the environment, typically animals. The plot is built around the characters. The story progresses because of the characters. If any of your characters are weak, you are damaging the entire story, which results in forcing other characters to pick up the slack.

[quote=Jig]I don't think it's that a 'generic antagonist' is a bad thing by design:[/quote]

Anything that is generic is stereotypical. Anything that is stereotypical is generally overdone and boring. You at least want to put a unique twist to something, to make it yours, or just to make it different. You can use generic for unimportant things, but for something as important as a main antagonist? You better give them a personality, a history, a face--something. Something which players can spot and remember as unique. Otherwise there is no reason why a player should join your RP and not someone else's generic fantasy RP, or generic Naruto RP.

The same thing happens in films. There are a lot of generic films out there that are not memorable whatsoever. For every Lord of the Rings there's a dozen fantasy B-grade knockoffs that deservedly die off in the public memory due to just being so abhorrently uncreative and [i]generic[/i].

[quote=Jig]I just feel they typically feel out of place in RPs. I recommend the British series Utopia to you. It's full of people getting slightly too comfortable with fighting against a government conspiracy and being able to break into houses, torture and kill people. That and the colours and soundtrack are beguilingly bizarre as well. The plot's a kind of generic government conspiracy one, but it's done with aplomb.[/quote]

I'll think about it. :hehe