RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist<blockquote><p><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/WordWeavers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>WordWeavers</span></a> 2504.16 — If your MC wasn’t involved with the story, what would they do with their life?</p></blockquote><p>Wow! That's a <em>very</em> interesting question. This character is well-storied, so let's unwrap.</p><p>Current story: It was a turning point. In the previous story she'd learned something very essential about how people work, something she thinks she can <em>fix.</em> If she never gets to be in the current story—where she learns she can trust friends and then finds love—she turns the path toward evil.</p><p>-1 Story: She attends a school like Princeton with her saved prizefighting money. She becomes a professsor in thaumology and a spinster. Because she doesn't intervene in mob family politics, the main series antagonist may be assassinated. Whether that kills her is another matter.</p><p>-2 Story: She works as a grocery clerk and doing other odd jobs, possibly even performing "magic" tricks, eventually ending up in a lessor college. In this path she becomes an eccentric because she doesn't really trust people (she's autistic and can't really read them), something like Nikola Tesla. She likely invents something evil.</p><p>-3 Story: Having never run away, she grows up an increasingly angry and dissatisfied elite, with power she feels she has not earned. She governs a small but prosperous prefecture well enough that she is well loved, which confuses her. She marries someone suggested to her and has children who end up squabbling over accession. Being as they are <em>her</em> children, one will be evil. The author will ensure she's female and has to fight her brothers, which sours her.</p><p>-4 Story (unwritten, hinted at in backstory): The immortal main series antagonist has been practicing eugenics, amongst her other sins. In her case, it's encouraging the migration of peoples between towns and prefectures, also doing some careful matchmaking. The MC's mother was one such highly "magical" methodically bred endpoint, and one of the main antagonist's lessor students. Had the woman not encouraged the MC's future mother's thaumaturgy and singing talent, the woman would not have met (read: been strategically introduced to) the MC's father. </p><p><strong>The MC would not have been born,</strong> and neither would the MC's mother died an untimely death having being caught on a spy mission. (Of course, <em>that death is assumed.</em> The author gets to retcon that fact in a later story, as has already been done <em>but not confirmed</em> for the simultaneous death of the MC's father.)</p><p>[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]</p><p><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/BoostingIsSharing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BoostingIsSharing</span></a></p><p><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/gender" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>gender</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/fiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>fiction</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/writer" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>writer</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/author" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>author</span></a> <br><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/mystery" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>mystery</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/thriller" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>thriller</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/romance" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>romance</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/sf" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>sf</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/sff" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>sff</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/sciencefiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>sciencefiction</span></a><br><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/writing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>writing</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/writingcommunity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>writingcommunity</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/writersOfMastodon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>writersOfMastodon</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/writers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>writers</span></a><br><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/RSdiscussion" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>RSdiscussion</span></a> <br><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/RSstory" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>RSstory</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/RSReluctanceStory" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>RSReluctanceStory</span></a></p>