[OOC][PLOT][ARC 1] Planning for Season 1 - The Retcon

[Black Aeronaut]

I still don't get what this fight is about.  Black Aeronaut is the one who told us that we would all be better off if Benjamin never existed, and Rob wrote a story along those lines to help process his feelings.

The problem is the way Rob has it set up.  Look carefully at this part from Belldandy's letter.

...but there are a few people who we approached in this version of reality that we did not approach in the reality of your birth, and vice versa.

This does not remove Benjamin from the setting.  It only removes him from any active story telling.  He is still there, technically speaking.  And I don't want any sort of wiggle room on this.  I do not want anyone to think that maybe I can and should come back.  I do not want any seeds of doubt and/or hope for that left behind.  And not just because someone says so, but also because its there in the writing.  There will be no way to bring him back because he was never, in any incarnation of TNB, there in the first place.

If you think no one is gonna think that, then recall what Dartz said earlier - that it leaves a way for me back into the setting. And he's part of the project, even if not all that active. (EDIT: Dartz explicitly says, "All the data is still there." And if the data is still there? Then so is Benjamin.)

There is also the hidden message in the context of what Rob has set up.  Why would Rob Donaldson remake the universe so Benjamin wasn't an apartment manager?  In a deconstructionist setting, that cannot have been accidental on his character's part.  The only possible explanation is that Rob Donaldson did that on purpose.

There are so many negative implications for that.  And these are the sort of implications that are utterly toxic to projects like TNB.  Even if it's not Rob's intent, it implies a willingness to hurt another Author by fucking over their SI.  And besides, only the Author of a said SI has the right to do that to their character.

And there is also what I said earlier - if you're just rewriting everything else so Benjamin was never there, then why bother with this?  It's superfluous and unneeded.  The ONLY reason you would have something like this is if you are trying to send some sort of message.  The connotations of this particular message are not good at all.

And as far as many people are concerned, myself included, Death of the Author does not apply to Self Insert characters.

The only possible way to make this so that there are no negative implications or connotations is to fully acknowledge that my character exists in the setting.  Even if you don't drop his name, you have to say that this person existed, and that Rob Donaldson explicitly meant him no harm.

That is why I do not want this to be in Rob's story.  And they have little to do with what I actually want, save for my wanting my character out, and without harming the project any more than my departure has to.