Bramblethorn
Sleep-deprived
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2012
- Posts
- 17,606
... I saw it for what I think it was intended as: a story about a broken person pushed too far and did something unthinkable precisely because he's broken.
Valid. (Haven't read the story in question, but I'm happy to trust your interpretation.) But I don't think that's quite the end of the discussion.
Roleplaying culture has a term "My Guy Syndrome". MGS is when one player is obnoxiously disruptive and justifies it with "well, that's what my guy would do". The GM prepares an adventure where the town mayor recruits Our Heroes to deal with the town's giant rat problem; That Guy decides to stab the mayor and burn the town down instead. "Oh, my guy just has a long-standing hatred of authority and wattle-and-daub architecture, it's the only plausible reaction for him in this situation. You wouldn't expect me to go against character, would you?"
But deciding to play that kind of character is in itself a choice...the kind of choice that players make when they want to do disruptive shit. These days, when I'm running a RPG, I make sure the players know it's their responsibility to come up with a character concept that's not going to ruin the game for others.
Same consideration applies here. Yes, if somebody is abused and horribly betrayed and pushed beyond their limits, it may be plausible for them to react murderously. But the author chose to put them in that predicament in the first place. If they choose a premise where they know murder-suicide is the only plausible outcome, they've chosen to write a story about murder-suicide.