The previous question may seem strange in how obvious the answer seems, but I ask you to consider it. MC can ask Strade why he tortures and kills, to which he gives an unsatisfying non-answer. A critic might reply, "He tortures and kills to get his rocks off! DUMMY!" Certainly. But this doesn't explain why it gets said rocks off.
It seems doubtful that even Strade knows why he does what he does. but if we examine the games, we get clues that reveal more than one would think.
The very first time we meet him, he seems friendly, personable, and even generous in the way he offers drinks. I believe his charm is completely superficial for reasons we'll get back to. In the meantime, he reveals he is an engineer who came from Europe (presumably Germany). By the time we end up in his basement, these facts have evaporated from our memory. He leaves us be in order to be well rested for the activities of the next day.
If we hide our emotions from him long enough, he gets frustrated and butchers us outright. After enough time of him torturing us passes, he pulls us over to a table saw. He rambles about how machines are all made with a certain intention while asking us how we're feeling.
Despite the desire to know how we're feeling, Strade is a man's man. He drinks beer, builds things, and is handy around the house. He's from Germany: a stereotypically masculine country known for its industry, systems of order, and stoicism.
We realize he's no ordinary sexual sadist. It's been said that Strade views people as machines. I would add onto that: Strade is a living machine. He's trying to collect as many data points as he possibly can. Each scream is a hypothesis confirmed.
Carl Jung would probably describe him as an archetypal masculine figure. He is obsessed with learning how things work, and that extends to people. In other words, he wishes to take what's considered irrational (emotions) and slot them into the rational. He wishes to take what is considered chaotic and put it into something that is measurable. Our guy is a machine man with a machine mind. He wants to take human feeling and dissect it until all mystery is gone. He won't rest until emotions are reduced to a math equation: 🧍♂️➕🔪🟰😱
Strade's machine mind is dedicated to order and systems. When he meets MC in the bar, he's not actually engaging in conversation with us. He is running through a script. Don't believe me? If we are standoffish and rude to him, he won't take the hint. He will plow right ahead with talking about himself in a simulation of an actual convo. He will press us to drink beer even if we refuse him. He probably figured out a long time ago that people are easier to manipulate if someone gives them things, and alcohol impedes their judgment. Even something that is meant to be spontaneous like a random meetup has been broken down to a process.
As he's torturing us, he keeps trying to find new ways to get us to react a certain way. Once we get predictable, he quickly loses interest and uses us for his orgasm to get from point A ➡️ point B. Every person is meant to serve a utility in his perspective.
Consider Strade's main source of income: snuff streaming. As he tortures and kills his victims on camera, donations come flooding in. He is literally transforming human misery into money (if that's not an apt metaphor for capitalism, I don't know what is). It's something he reserves for MC only when our sanity drops to zero and he can no longer restrain us.
Compare this to Ren, who is in most ways irrational and unpredictable. He's a fox beastkin, an unknown to most humans, thus he has an air of mystery to him. He lies constantly. You can rarely predict his next move. It would make sense why Strade grew obsessed with him, as he's always full of surprises.
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