If you're trapped in the body of an untrustworthy enemy, how to convince your nearest and dearest

[jack]

1. For the love of God, don't try to do it in person. You'll get stabbed before you can open your mouth, and it'll all be uphill from there. Send a message.

2. Lead up to it. Hint that you might be alive, and then what might have happened, and then admit in whom.

3. Don't start with the extraordinary hypothesis, and then try to provide evidence. However convincing, it always looks like flannelling. Start with hints, and then the evidence, and when they're hungry for an explanation, propose the hypothesis.

4. On the other hand, if try to lead up to it, leave a good explanation somewhere safe, so if you're killed again, they can piece it together

5. Being trapped in the body of an enemy is always dire. However good an idea it might seem, always try to avoid it.

Comments

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

6. Be ready for this situation by making sure that you and your loved one have a shared secret that *nobody else could possibly know*, to be produced at any critical moment when it looks like they don't believe you :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL; yes, that's always good (in lots of situations too -- helpful for timetravel[1], mind control, even sometimes codeword if you're forced to write a letter). Sometimes you don't get a chance, though, but people seem to deliberately put themselves into difficulties, eg. by walking up to spouses not ready to deal with the feeling of being hated... :(

[1] Although superfluous in many genres of time travel. Eg:

Jack: I'm you from the future!
Jack: No wai!
Jack: Think of a number.
Jack: OK
Jack: Oh boy, that was a long time ago, can I remember...? Yeah, 7149.327.
Jack: Whoah!

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

With respect to number 5, what if the enemy is really attractive or strong? Assuming one could introduce the nearest and dearest to the idea without incident, I can see no downside!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

ROFL! But yes, that's what I mean. It always SOUNDS attractive. Hey, I get to eliminate the enemy, AND his organisation, at one stroke, AND find out anything he was hiding, AND get a really good body.

But it always goes wrong. There's always an old enemy of that enemy who attacks you, or he'd just signed himself up to some sort of crazy self-immolation cult, or you loved ones THINK they're ok with it, but it turns out they hate the sight of his body, or your old pets are mysteriously spooked and someone finds out or his old crimes catch up with you or his memories start influencing your personality. And generally ALL of them :)

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

Maybe it only goes wrong in fictional narratives, though.

I am the person who reads the books in which the hero/ine stands up to great temptation (power, sex, money, love etc) and if it's not transparently obvious that the prize is poisoned, thinks "I'd do it". This probably makes me the Corruptible Sidekick character, or the one who hastily drinks from the fake Grail and instantly dies. But in fiction, the hero/ine often stand up to temptation for such poor reasons!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I am the person who reads the books in which the hero/ine stands up to great temptation (power, sex, money, love etc) and if it's not transparently obvious that the prize is poisoned, thinks "I'd do it".

:) I think it's often an instance of a moral dilemma -- that is, the narrative set-up is supposed to pretend there's a binary choice between good and corruption, and no whining about alternatives allowed, even if the context doesn't actually explain why it wouldn't work.

Of course, even if you accept that, it's often still trying to fast-talk you into thinking that keeping your word is always more important than other considerations, or vice versa...

(Funnily enough, with the villain-offers-marvellous-reward, it's often almost the reverse of real life. In real life, you'd have a legitimate claim that you don't trust the offer, whatever it is. Whereas in fiction, you're supposed to assume that it's true, but that any sort of compromise is automatically wrong :))

Maybe it only goes wrong in fictional narratives, though.

Maybe. If it were a temporary thing, and you got to play with his/her body, it could certainly be amusing. But it still makes me think it's very likely to go wrong -- there's so many things that can go wrong :)

did i miss something?

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

speaking from experience?

Re: did i miss something?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

ROFL! No, that hadn't occurred to me :) No, not at all. It was a reaction to a book I was reading. Honest :)

[darcydodo]

Have you been watching Buffy again? Tsk tsk. ;)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

ROFL. Actually, no -- I seem to recall Buffy actually did this very well (well, in the most prominent example, I can't recall how many other similar ones there might have been). Buffy and Faith learned useful things from the experience, and didn't as I recall behave very stupidly at all (apart from the initial premise). Maybe I'm forgetting some of Buffy's difficulties, but I thought she was captured almost before she had a chance, and the watcher's council didn't trust either of them, and then she finally did convince her friends.

It was actually a book, which isn't that good as a book, but most of the ideas are interesting, but that made me rant about this :) It's about someone cursed to repeatedly swap into the body of anyone who kills him; but as things fall apart, it feels very much like an introduction to a character we've seen elsewhere, thouasands of years later, who can't remember where his plural existence started, and is slowly going mad from the combined snippets of recollections from so many bodies.

He still hasn't come up with one of the painful but potentially effective methods of assassination his condition affords him: walk up the opposing army and start hacking. Likely, once all but one of the guards have been stabbed in the back by their comrades, he'll be the one left standing :)

[(Anonymous)]

I've three thoughts on the matter:

1. Another way to look at it would be that you have managed to steal your enemy's body. Go to his bank and donate all his money to charity. Post videos on his behalf to YouTube. Give orders to his minions.

2. Virtual reality makes this possible. Your second life or world of warcraft accounts have been stolen, and all you have left is the login of the b'stard who did it.

3. "By their fruits shall ye know them"