Work Text:
If it happens more than three times it’s a pattern. There’s a word for that with stories, characters who follow the same paths through different worlds: the archetype of the brave soldier, the wild man, the princess in peril.
What does it mean if you find yourself following a pattern? Can you recognize it from the inside? Can you see the repetition, tens and thousands of times waking up in a cave, storming the castle, the rescued never staying safe?
And there is power here. Powers and abilities and resources no one else can touch or see, let alone access. There’s a trade-off, for becoming a story: protagonists don’t die [without meaning], heroes never lose [permanently].
- Link is the swordsman.
- He has to save the princess.
- The context changes.
- He has different tools
- different abilities
- different friends different enemies. The
- world is
- different.
- The enemy is the same [the enemy is different.]
- He has to save the princess.
- They are friends. They are lovers. They are childhood enemies. They’ve never met. They were friends.
- He knew her and she is gone and it’s terrible and it’s his fault [and it’s not his fault] and he has to
- save the princess.
he isn’t a *person* any more
He’s a story, a demigod, a force of nature, a train of thought, a trope and a concept and an experience and the product of a video game franchise that’s been around for less than a century and a line of unbroken narration that goes back for as long as humans have existed and there’s a person *in* there, there has to be for any of this to work but
maybe the story found someone who fit its needs. Maybe he was just in the wrong place at the right time and it caught him by accident. Maybe the story made him up whole cloth and he never existed outside it, just appeared with all his memories outside the gates of the dungeon
he’s not a person any more.
Is it worth it, to always win and never die, to pay with unending fight and never rest?