Saturday, February 18, 2012

Reader self insert character meeting the traitor alone

[So this is a product of two different things.  One is this thread at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings in which characters meeting with people they believe are villains alone, unarmed, with no way to call for backup, without telling anyone that's what they're doing, and without so much as recording the conversation is brought up and, appropriately, looked down on.  The other was someone saying in the comments of this thread at the Slacktiverse that adding them to a story would massively change it and me thinking that I probably wouldn't, unless I remembered the story and could use that knowledge to change things.  And at some point I stopped thinking about it in terms of "I" and switched to a newly created fictional character.]

[So the story so far is that Character 1 has been transported into, more or less, a book ze read/movie ze saw/thingy ze thingyed.  When ze got ze lost hir memory as is traditional in starting characters with mysterious origins.  The result being that ze had no foreknowledge of events, just an increasingly strong sense of déjà vu.  Ze has joined up with the heroes but has yet to make any difference in the story, and this is what happens when ze does remember and decides to follow the long held, justifiably criticized, trope of meeting with the traitor while completely defenseless.]


Character 1: “I've finally remembered. I remember who I am, I remember where I from, I know why I feel like I've been through all of this before. Where I come from I read all of this in a book, I didn't know it was real, I had no idea you were real people or that this was really happening somewhere. I thought your lives were fiction.”

Character 2 starts to leave, “That's nice, I have to-”

Character 1: “Please, just listen a little while longer, this is important. Please.” Character two stays, but is clearly annoyed.  Character 1 continues, “The reason that I've had a constant sense of Deja vu is because I've read all of this, which means that nothing I have done has made a difference. Everything would have been exactly the same if I weren't here. I haven't changed anything. I don't matter.

“That changes now. Right here, right now I'm going to matter.”

Character 2: “This is all really nice, but I think your head injury is-”

Character 1: “I know you're planning to betray us.” *Pause* “I'm not going to let that happen.”

Character 2: “Ok, first, you're delusional. Second, if that were true how would you stop me?”

Character 1: “It's very simple, either you can decide not to betray us right now, or you can kill me right now. But you're going to have to pick one or the other.

“I know that you're not a bad person, I know that given time to think about you'd realize that it's not something that you want or need to do. I also know that if I do nothing you won't get that time. It'll be over in a moment with no going back. I'm changing that.

“Now it's not just one act, but two. To betray us you'll have to kill me now, live with that for a while, and then still to choose to do it then. You'll have ample time for reflection. That's my gift to you. The reality of the situation in a way that's immediate and undeniable, and time to think over that reality before you do something at effects so much more than a single life.

“I'm unarmed. I haven't told anyone else, but if you don't decide to come clean and join our side for real I will. And I'll leave out the part about reading it in a book so that they'll take it seriously. It doesn't matter whether or not they believe me, the suspicion will be enough to ruin your plans. So if you want to go through with those plans, you're going to have to kill me.

“I know you well enough to know that that's something you can't push from your mind. You might be able to put off really thinking about betrayal until it's already been done, you might be able to treat it as some abstraction disconnected from the reality of the people in front of you, but you can't do the same with my dead body. You'll be able to get away with it, I'm sure, but you won't be able to dismiss it the way you've dismissed thoughts of what betrayal will mean to the others.

“I ... didn't think I'd have a chance to say this much. You've been quiet for a long time.”

Character 2: “I'm thinking.”


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