Premise: After going through a tragic childhood, Nathaniel Vandell, a male high school student, gains the power to consume people's sadness. He uses his power when people come to him with their problems in order to create a world where no one is hurt. As he consumes more and more sadness from people, he starts to have heart problems, trouble sleeping, an eating disorder, fatigue, etc, but he hides from others to not worry them. He sacrifices his own happiness and health for the sake of others. I'm thinking of making a novel series and the mc's suffering gets progressively worse. Concerning the mc's character development: at first, he wants everyone to be happy. His method is to take away the sadness from those around them because he believes that people can be happy if they never go through trauma. However, his logic is flawed because it hinders their development and ability to become stronger. Moreover, taking away sadness doesn't solve the problems but causes the people to run away from them. His mentality stems from his traumatic childhood and unresolved internal conflict that he runs away from. He wants the pain to go away but doesn't try to resolve the issue. The MC consumes more and more sadness until he can't handle it. He develops health problems and his personality worsens. Then a character comes to show guidance and support. As their bond strengthens, the MC slowly learns the universal truth that happiness comes from confronting and resolving their internal conflicts while learning from those problems and becoming a stronger person. Then, he starts to help the people whose sadness that he consumed to resolve their issues, which in turn removes the sadness embedded in his heart. After all of that, he then confronts his own problems.
Sounds like a psychic vampire which is perfectly fine. It's not completely original, but that doesn't mean your story won't be good. Your premise and plot seem good to me.
Another note: I'm not an expert in this genre, so it's possible that the idea of a benevolent psychic vampire may not be as common as I thought or perhaps is known by a different name. I only heard of the idea of a benevolent, bad energy absorbing psychic vampire from Art Bell, so take my reply with a grain of salt.
Sounds like a good idea. I wonder though, what does he do with his power after he realizes that it doesn't really help people? Does it mutate into something similar but more helpful? Does he simply stop using it? Or maybe some people need their pain removed, at least partially? Or maybe he finds that rather than just absorb their pain, he can transmute it into resolve for them to face what they need to face? It would be a shame for him to end up with a useless power once he's learned his lesson.
It's just called 'vampirism' because they can consume the energy from others (usually good, but possibly bad energy in your case). It doesn't have to relate to other forms of vampires. You can call them whatever you want (like the Wraiths from Stargate Atlantis).
