Thank you all so much for your questions!
Here we will list the questions we have received but are currently unable to answer. All the questions listed here are free for anyone to answer. Once answered, we will publish the question and the answer! :) Please remember to source all of your material, even if it comes from your own knowledge/experience, or a friend's. Thank you so much!
"What's it like stalking someone?" -Pokegeek151
Wow, good question! First remember that nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guy. In their head there's always a rationalization. Nobody will ever admit to stalking because they don't feel that's what they're doing. I imagine a quite a few justifications would work. Biggest one I see, chick flicks. He pursues her tireless ly and eventually she falls for him, sometimes just because he loves her enough to never give up. Everything the guys do in love stories would, in reality, result in a police report and no contact order. Many stalkers probably fancy themselves as the real life Matthew McConaughey. Enough dedication or saying/doing just the right thing will win her over. Many others believe she's playing hard to get, we're all familiar with that excuse. Also, there's the angry, post break up stalking, that's fueled by a feeling that they were wronged and that justice and fairness dictate that she not live a happy life or find another relationship, or that she at least confess and apologize for her perceived wrong doings. In any case, use the rational feelings any one of us would have and stretch them to a situation where they're unwarranted, that's the key to a sick mind. I've seen many cases. The majority of the cases, when I finally met the guy, she fell into his arms and they were a happy couple until he was out of earshot then was a "creepy stalker" again. Selfishness is a lot more common than mental illness. A quite a few other cases were an attempt to collect a debt. Irresponsibility, dishonor, as outright theft are more common than mental illness too. The majority of the legitimate cases I've seen are the "how dare you leave me and break my heart" type. The romanticised version are usually thick headed about it. He feels nothing but tenderness for her, is hurt when he sees her with another guy, all the normal stuff. Picture yourself with the feelings of both situations of loving somebody that's with somebody else and being on the verge of talking the girl you're in love with to going out but life keeps cheating you out of it. These personality types usually anthropomorphize life, giving it motives, biases, and even grudges. "Bad guys" usually think of themselves as the victim. There's also controlling people, the ones that have to "own" or dominate somebody. I can't relate to them on any level or flex normal feeling to accommodate it, so who knows what's going on in their screwed up little melon. Hope this helps a little
ReplyDeleteI agree with much of what Zeke posted, but have an additional perspective to offer: stalker chicks. Following boys around – or other girls – is an extremely common behavior for young women. They often do it in pairs or packs of supportive friends who go with you to the mall to “just by chance” show up at the food court where the cute boy works. Generally girls grow out of this behavior by the time they’re 20 or so, but not always. Mostly, nothing ever comes of it.
ReplyDeleteAs with most human behaviors, there is a spectrum from normal to odd to truly abnormal. I think most people can identify with frequenting places where a crush might be – consistently choosing the cute girl’s checkout line at the grocery, heading to the local watering hole on the night you know your crush shows up to play pool, or during the hottie bartender’s shift even when it’s not a regular party night.
These are normal behaviors. Most everyone has indulged in these behaviors at one time or another, and almost no one would consider them stalking.
Then there is the next step moving into rather odd behavior, and plenty of people have engaged in this sort of thing, but there are plenty of people who would look askance at it as well: showing up during your off hours to hang out with your crush under the pretext of pitching in to help with extra work, going out of your way to offer rides or include your crush in activities or events that you don’t propose as actual dates. This is generally in the realm of “I know this person isn’t really interested in me, but maybe more exposure to me will change his/her mind.” Again, this is fairly common – most often among younger people as it shows a certain lack of maturity. If you’re interested in someone and things aren’t progressing in a spontaneous manner, then you make your interest clear, and if the person isn’t receptive, you move on. Most adults know when someone just isn’t interested. If we really like the person, we might cling for a while to the idea that the object of our affection just doesn’t know we’re interested, but generally we know we’re fooling ourselves and this is just a coping mechanism meant to ease us out of our crush.
So, it’s odd to pursue someone’s company in convoluted ways rather than to make your intentions known, but it’s not all that uncommon, and it’s generally harmless. This behavior starts to slide toward abnormal when the pursuer does things like secretly trail the crush home from the parking lot or hang around outside their home or workplace, or the homes or workplaces of other people in their lives. This may start as just strong curiosity – I wonder what kind of house s/he lives in? What kind of person is s/he when I’m not around? What kind of person does s/he like to hang around with who isn’t me? Gosh, I just like to look at him/her.
And then it’s occasionally down the rabbit hole to violent or even deadly obsession. The national stalking statistics are incomplete in that they don’t capture many incidents of stalking that end harmlessly. In cases of criminal stalking, women are more likely to be stalked and more likely to be assaulted or killed by their stalker than men are, but 1 in 13 men report having been stalked in their lifetime whether or not that resulted in violence. It is also almost assured that many victims of stalking – both male and female – never report the incidents if they are minor.
So, a very long-winded way to get to this part, but the best way to get into the head of an abnormal character is to find the normal behavior that all or most people engage in and then push that behavior or thinking to its more extreme manifestations. Too often we see villains who are caricatures of evil. The closer your villain is to normal, the more easily the reader can identify with parts of the villain’s psyche, the more interesting the villain and the more disturbing the effect on the reader.