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Apr 23

To make this post with as few spoilers as possible, I have a character with a lot of mystery surrounding their identity, purpose, motives, etc...

For those who don't care about MAJOR SPOILERS or have read through already, go here for more valuable info.

...The character I speak of is a twist villain, Libby. A talking plush toy who seems to come more and more to life to sabotage our protagonist. In universe, the original Libby is a character from a children's TV show, and this plush tried to pretend that she was essentially the living embodiment of that very same character, personality and all, but later was revealed after the show was watched again, that the two are in fact very different in terms of personality and all that...

...They were designed from the ground up to have a lot of mystery, and "unknowingness" about them, who/what they really are, their motives, and make that the fun part. Leave it up to viewers, and our characters, to speculate. Largely, I must admit, this is because I couldn't really think of anything I liked at the time.

Now, as I consider things for a remake, I actually do have something I like, but as a remake where things will be very similar but different, clean ups to the story mostly, I've been wondering a lot about changing this about the character, and actually unraveling the mystery (to an extent). But... I wonder if that would take away from the fun? Or maybe it'd make thing more engaging? Would it ruin something special about the character, or make them even better?

Any thoughts on this, especially from my readers, would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

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I honestly don't know. Part of what made Libby such an interesting villain in the story was exactly that sense of unknown and secrecy. While I was reading, my understanding of what Libby actually was took a hard right with essentially each new chapter.
In a sense, it seemed that Libby's identity was constantly very fluid; she could literally turn out to be almost anything and it would make sense given the information we were given about the character. Personally, I thought this made the story even more exciting because of the feeling of inherent unpredictability of what could happen and how it could happen.

SPOILERS

We went from insane kid's imagination, to insane kid's hallucinations, to what appeared to be some kind of actual demon possessing the doll, to perhaps the antithesis of the 'Childhood' character. And when Libby finally got ripped apart, she just stopped moving, with no other details given.

I mean, in the end, it was Donnie's story, so having this vaguely eldritch mystery constantly hovering around served as a great way to constantly keep Donnie on his toes. Whenever Donnie wasn't making his own decisions, he was being pressured into doing something by either AJ or Libby. We knew what AJ wanted from Donnie pretty well. The same can't really be said for Libby. She felt volatile, I suppose, which made her feel more dangerous and, more importantly, different from AJ. Like I said, since it was first and foremost Donnie's story, I didn't really feel like I was missing out on anything by not really knowing who or what Libby was.

I don't think it would really feel as engaging or exciting if we knew what Libby actually wanted to achieve beyond irreperably damaging or just straight up destroying Donnie's Dreamscape, even if we got the answers after a long mystery arc. The ambiguity surrounding Libby's motives meant that she could constantly surprise us and it would almost never feel out of place.

If you ask me, I think it would be cool to learn more about Libby's place in the world and perhaps see some minor questions surrounding her answered (like her relationship, if any, with Childhood and Stalkee). However, I think the grand narrative, things like Libby's true identity or actual origin should remain ambiguous, otherwise I feel that, to me, it would make her presence less imposing. You know, the whole thing about how the monster becomes less scary after you've seen/learned about it.

Personally, I would love to see things like maybe Libby (somehow) interacting with other characters besides Donnie. I also think it would be fun if any questions answered about Libby would only bring up more questions, deepening the lore and maybe enhancing the feeling of scope.

Granted, I adore convoluted mysteries and I know they're not everybody's cup of tea, so make of this what you will.
But anyhow, that's what I think about it.

Just another thing:

You said that the remake will be similar but different. Does that mean that the plot of the remake is going to deviate in any way from the original? Will it be an AU of some kind or, like you said, just clean ups and enhancements to the story?

Thanks for the input! Very interesting!

Now, what's an AU?

Alternate Universe. Basically an alternate telling of the original story.

Ah, then yes it would. I don't want to speak to much on the (still unconfirmed) remake, so that veteran readers can still have stuff to look forward to, still be surprised, but if you see anything in the original story that seemed a bit random, or out left field, expect it to be more properly represented.

22 days later