Broomhead wrote:So it's manipulation to find out someone's birthday via their friends? Or being warned not to touch certain subjects around her by them? That, my friend, although a form of manipulation, is called being socially adept. Blackmailing her is the closest assumption I can think of that you would come up with based on what I said, but you know I have a white knighting complex (as do a lot of people here, I'd imagine).
It seemed to me like you were hinting at using some kind of mystic foreknowledge of a person (as would be available to you if you were hypothetically inserted into the world of a story) to know what psychological levers to pull to make them (or attempt to make them) fall in love with you: "a couple of key things to make them fall over the edge", as you put it. However, using your foreknowledge in that way would be morally dubious. For example, look at the scene in
Groundhog Day where Phil uses trial-and-error (via the time loop) to figure out the exact right things to say to make a woman in the town sleep with him. We're meant to think he's an asshole for doing it. It's akin to how if I were to, say, surrepitously read someone's email to figure out something they wanted and then bought it for them, I would be condemned - rightly - as a creep. It was that sort of behaviour I interpreted your comment as entailing, and that sort of behaviour which is fundamentally manipulative.
By the way, I just wanted to mention quickly that
this isn't intended as a personal attack - I'm not accusing you of anything, and if I gave that impression I sincerely apologize. It's more a reflection on the hypothetical morality of that sort of behaviour, and it's more of an academic point than anything since it's not like anyone here is actually gonna go through the old "sucked into the story" chestnut we see in low-quality fanfic.
Of course, if anyone on the forums actually
does get sucked into the story and subsequently escapes to tell the tale, you have the right to make me eat my words.
.
