"I'm sure it must have made sense for such a change to occur."

"Yeah. And I don't think he does a personality 180 or anything, just." Shrug. "Not familiar with the circumstances."

He nods. "So, the Pact airships are attacked by Mordremoth, half my friends disappear and are presumed dead or captured..."

"Captured, they're not going to offscreen kill anyone that important. They'll make them die in front of you. Probably slowly, with time for them to have some dramatic last words and some sort of satisfying narrative conclusion." Pause. "It's actually pretty fucked up when I say it out loud like that. Anyway. You learn Mordy's collecting corpses and prisoners, and at a dramatically appropriate time, Rytlock appears from the Mists, blindfolded and with new fancy magic to help you in a key moment in battle. Uh, you and the rest of the Pact take up learning how to use gliders, which isn't very relevant but is pretty neat. Hm hm hm, standards heroic business, you make nice with the hylek—another sapient race, told you Tyria has a lot of them—and eventually find one of Mordy's prisoner camps." She reads the next section, and then winces. "Ah. Eir and Faolain—a bad person, don't worry about it guys she's not going to live very long—are in a cage together. Faolain agrees to help you, but fat lot of good her promises are, because when the standard big monster shows up and she trips, Eir goes to help her up, and Faolain stabs her for it. Eir stabs her back and Faolain dies, but then Eir gets gotten by the big monster. In front of her son." Pause. "Yep, I stand by my statement, that's really fucked up, what the hell."

"—Eir is going to die?!"

"Well not anymore she's not! ... Here. In this reality, anyway."

"...right." He sighs. "That is, yes, as you said, 'really fucked up.'"

"So fucked up! Eugh. I mean I have approximately no legs to stand on for calling other people's writing fucked up, but still."

"Have you done... similar things?"

"The villain betraying and mutual killing someone trying to help them? No. Killed people in front of their kids?" She pauses, frowning. "... I don't... think so? It's kind of hard to recall. I've written a lot of pretty fucked up stuff. I wrote the death of a mother's child once, but I was in my teenage angsty writing phase, I've mostly grown out of that kind of thing. Usually I'm more for really internal tragedies or really large scale ones."

"I suppose it is just fiction to you."

"Yeah. And my characters don't really mind if I put them through hell? As long as I don't, mm. Character assassinate them. The trials are a chance to show how they shine, not break them apart into tiny pieces."

"Ah, yes, that meta-instance you mentioned earlier."

"Yep! Though if the specific instances found out they had an author that had purposefully put them through horrible things, they might understandably not be happy. Aheh."

"How does that work?"

"Difference in perspective, mostly. 'I'm fictional, so the thing that matters is how people read me,' versus, 'I'm a person, so the thing that matters is how I feel and how I'm treated.'"

"And knowing they're fictional does not help with the latter?"

"For some characters it does, for some characters it doesn't, it depends on them. And people can come to the conclusion that it matters how people read them and it matters how they feel and are being treated. The categories aren't mutually exclusive, there's space for both."

"Interesting."

"Yeah. Anyway. Back to storytime?"

"Sounds good!"

"You know, I volunteer that, and then immediately get stuck trying to figure out how to summarize something I've never personally played," she admits, self-reproachfully. "You go chasing after Caithe again. You find her, and so does what's left of Faolain. Oh, uh, Caithe and Faolain were a thing before Faolain went evil, so people playing along at home, this is narratively satisfying instead of just arbitrary. You get the egg from Caithe, Caithe goes chasing after dead-and-raised Faolain to give her a proper final rest instead of the messed up fate Mordy gave her. Okay, I have to say, I have never confronted someone with the undead corpse of their evil ex-girlfriend, so, points to me I guess?"

"What kinds of story do you like telling?"

"There's a decidedly heroic bent to a lot of them, honestly? Where good is good and also good is not dumb. I mentioned my genres were 'miscellaneous heroics' and 'adorably fluffy romance,' didn't I? I can write for villains or morally grey situations, but honestly, I don't think it's my strong suit. Whereas I write some damn good heroes."

"But heroes do need something to fight, do they not?"