Pretentiousness

"There's actually a word for something that things it has deep meaning, but is really just going through the motions. That word is Pretentious." --ShowWithNoName, Clockwork- Your Time Is Up Review

DEFINITION
Pretentiousness is what you get when you attempt to claim some kind of importance or dignity to something, yet overly exaggerate it or have the something be really not that important.

This is often used for the bad typical or anti killers. They're given a reason to kill, but the reason is really so mundane or disconnected from the actual events of the story that it's effectively a non-sequitar.

EXAMPLES

 * In the story "Clockwork: Your Time Is Up", the protagonist, Natelie, blames all her problems on the concept of Time. It even manifests to her cutting out her eye and replacing it with a clock. However, it basically makes no sense as her problems were an abusive parent, bullies, a broken heart, and sexual abuse. It makes even less sense since the story keeps time jumping around just before we ever see any of the abuse, the bullying was essentially a non-sequitar and minor inconveniance (being called a whore for talking about her abuse), and she LITERALLY GOES INSANE AFTER HER BOYFRIEND BREAKS UP WITH HER. Time is apparently the problem, despite it having basically nothing to do with the story.
 * In the story "Ticci Toby", the protagonist, Toby Rogers, kills his father because he's an abusive drunk that didn't visit Toby's sister she was dying. However, before any of this really starts bugging Ticktack Tubby, Toby is effectivly made into a proxy of Slenderman. Not to also mention that Toby can't feel pain, so any weight that being beaten used to have has now vanished into thin air.
 * In the story "Homicidal Amber", the protagonist's sister, Amber, slaughters her family and the protagonist's love interest for basically no reason. All Amber ends up doing is swinging moods, acting like a brat, and mumbling about "getting in the way" before she effectively (poorly) re-enacts "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". It swings into pretentiousness since this whole "getting in the way" schtick becomes Amber's motivation for murder, AND works it's way into her catchphrase.