So my MC is a super villain and his love interest is his side kick he's a supernatural type and he's something of a scary ubber villain he's been around for a while and he in exchange for saving her life makes her his servant. Basically she knew what she getting into but at the same time she was backed into a corner. They are sort of like Joker and Harley but they have more in common with Lex Luthor and Mercy from Superman. The thing about them is that they have a very bizarre 50 Shades type dynamic where he at least begins by seeing her as his property and plaything and she's fine with this because of what she's been through in the past and he treats her significantly better than others have. The point is that it's no secret how messed up their relationship is she openly refers to him as her Master and he'll refer to her as his pet, property, possession. She acts as as his maid, secretary, enforcer, and concubine but their relationship evolves over time. This is because he's not human he doesn't like or care for certain concepts such as love. It later comes out that he was once human and she sort of wakes up those long time dormant human emotions he's long since suppressed. He doesn't openly show love towards her at first it starts more as him getting mad when someone hurts her and him getting mad saying things to people who hurt her like "How dare you harm my possession!" and him saying to her as form of comfort "You are mine no one else can have you no one else can even touch you." His ultimate goal is to bring about what he believes to be a paradise by enslaving humanity and he believes by doing so by ridding humanity of choice he will save it from itself. For her it's that she is afraid of helplessness she is devoted to the MC partly out of gratitude for him saving her and partly because she feels she needs him. At the same time she's afraid of going back to how she was before she met him and she was very helpless and weak pretty much she was forced into a life of servitude and was broken by the time they met she was about to die and then he stepped in. She's also loyal because she believes in the world he seeks to create and as someone who has suffered as much as she has she believes the ends justifies the means because in her mind he's going to create a world where what happened to her wont happen to anyone else and basically what happened to her was she was abducted and her life was destroyed by cruel and the perverse. She reveres him for his power and she's so broken she doesn't know how to function on her own and this comes into play a lot she strong in her own right because of the power he gave her but she is so used to taking orders from him she doesn't know what to do without him like she'll have a panic attack and say "I need an order I don't know what to do." I'm just wondering do they sound like good main characters and what do I need to work on? I just worry they are too screwed up for readers to enjoy.
From what you've written, I get the idea of what they are (their place in the book, a bit of their backstory, their relationship to each other) but not who they are, their personalities outside this dependency thing. Is he rich? You say he's not human, does that mean he has no interest in wealth/comfort/physical attraction, or does he actually prefer a life of luxury (or austerity)? Is he old, is he goodlooking, is he someone what doesn't talk much and is very blunt and plainspoken? Is she talkative but has learned the hard way to stay quiet, or is she quiet by nature, or does she babble when nervous? Does she have nervous habits, does she like good living or prefer to stay in the shadows? Is she sensitive to subtle indicator for other people, or does she miss them and feel after she does something wrong? Is she sentimental by nature - does she hoard mementoes of good times (or even memories)? Is/was she an outdoor person, a nerd, a homebody, an intellectual, a bit of a ditz? This sort of stuff will flesh them out and impact on the storyline....
It's very difficult to tell how good a character is written or portrayed by the description alone. I'd be happy to look at the first couple of chapters and say what I think. I'm pretty harsh, but you wouldn't have to wonder.
It's pretty near impossible to tell how interesting characters are from descriptions, like Kallisto said. We have to follow the characters and actually read the story to get a sense of how interesting they are. If I write a book that's just about a family man and store manager, and say "he's a smart, heartfelt guy with a bit of dry humor", that... probably means nothing to anyone. If I have a scene where an employee at his store is having a stress breakdown because of the holiday rush, and we follow the main character taking them back into the office and comforting them, maybe giving them the rest of the day off to recuperate... that could be a powerful character-defining scene that accomplishes what a little description can not. I will say, your opening line, comparing your characters with Joker and Harley and saying there's a 50 shades-like dynamic was very cringe-inducing for me. Such a description might make the characters "interesting" but that doesn't mean people would read a book about them. I've found discussions about the recent netflix movie "Bright" to be very interesting, but not in the ways the movie intended, and I'm certainly never going to watch it.
I would say he is rich he's been around since the time of the crusades and he's a bit of a shape shifter and this plays into his personality quite a bit part of his reasons for looking down on humans is before he was a demon he was a nobody and part of why he's so callous towards humans is he sees them all as shallow hypocrites. Things that he is interested in his own vices like sex and money. He's very introverted and is often thinking but he's blunt to. I would say she's talkative she's not very good with social norms and doesn't realize just how insane and weird she is at least she's not capable of admitting she's screwed up. She bounces between being aware of her actions and not being aware if that makes sense like she has a human pet (I know it's weird) and she's basically taken a guy and broken him. She justifies it in her mind as her taking care of him and it's revealed her constant obsession with BDSM stems from the sexual abuse she suffered and the logic behind that is that she felt sh had to become her inner demons to conquer them. I'd say she's very sentimental but she doesn't show it. A big thing about her is that she misses her family her old life but the part of her that is still innocent is too ashamed to face them. On the other end of things and her reasoning is very complicated she is something of a sex addict and control freak by which I mean she dresses like a dominatrix and behaves like one because control is everything to her and in her mind if she abandons her super villain persona she'll be weak again. She used to be a very outdoors type girl but she as an adult rarely goes outside her master's domain alone. In that regard she's somewhat of a shut in. I only used Joker and Harley as an example because my two MC's are supervillains my MC's actually respect each other a great deal and if anything they are very codependent. However he is not abusive possessive yes but he's not abusive.
There's a huge jump between intentions and result. You are simply complicating those character's lives at the moment. A complex character can be interesting. Writing with attention to detail can be interesting. But that's all potential. It's a theoretical possibility
Certainly not 'too screwed up' to enjoy. 'Screwed up' can be great, but it needs to be mitigated so that the reader can understand or get alongside the character appropriately, without some point of contact with the female character you describe she could be irritating or contemptible, with the right 'hook' we could easily be rooting for her to win.
