A Horrific Secret?

My Urban Fantasy trilogy's teenage protagonist is depicted as a normal boy who is forcibly dragged into the supernatural community and slowly undergoes a drastic shift in morality (and sanity) until he's almost unrecognizable. However he remains committed to his goal of returning to his normal life, and that "normal life" is heavily idealized and high-lighted.

Then he engages in a psychic duel with a villain who gets into his mind and forces him to relive an attempt to smother his infant sister when she was only a few days old. He dissociated from the memory because the horror of the murder attempt was so shattering. This happened only months before the events of the current story.

What I'm wondering is....

• Would this put off readers who have grown to like the protagonist?

• Related to the first, but—he has suffered a great deal through the story—and this forced memory worsens it. Will people then think he got what he deserved?

edited 22nd Jan '16 11:15:00 AM by Swordofknowledge

Well, why did he try to smother his sister?

He didn't like the idea of suddenly becoming a sibling after sixteen years of being an only child. His parents became more irritable from the stress, and often snapped at him. They took away things he wanted (an example would be driving lessons, since they were expensive, and they needed money for the new baby). Plus there was the constant screaming and crying all the time, and being forced to feed her—which he found disgusting—I could go on and on. One day he just decided to end it.

edited 22nd Jan '16 2:07:21 PM by Swordofknowledge

Attempting to murder his infant sister does not sound like something a 'normal', mentally healthy teen boy would actually try to do- and, yes, I know that teenagers in general can be a bit lacking in the morality department for developmental reasons. He honestly sounds like a huge brat, at best- like, he had several months to accept that he was going to be a big brother, and that babies do not often put people in the best of moods.

Another thing- I don't know if his parents knew beforehand that the baby would put driver's ed out of their budget or if they just didn't bother to tell the protag, but did his parents suggest that he start taking odd jobs from his neighbors for pay, or try to get him a job? Assuming he's from the United States, kids as young as fourteen can be legally employed with pay, and kids even younger than that can make money delivering newspapers. If driver's ed and having access to things his family can no longer afford is that important to him, the sane thing to do would be to either accept that it ain't happening until his parents get the money, or start working to pay for what he wants himself. The fact that he apparently did neither, made a huge issue out of helping with the baby, attempted to kill her after just a few days, and is reacting badly to his new life is making me question his mental health.

Also, this might just be me, but a couple days plus a few months sounds like an awfully small amount of time to go from 'I don't really want a sister' to attempted murder to 'my old life and baby sister were freaking awesome'.

Of course, as you said, there's more to the story than what you revealed here. It could be the case that isn't mentally ill, almost went through with an extremely bad decision, felt truly sorry for what he did, and then started to like his baby sister once she got a bit older and started looking and doing cute things instead of being just a screaming pink alien raisin. He could have been dealing with some other problems in his life. I don't really know... so I'll let others chime in on this.

edited 22nd Jan '16 3:59:14 PM by CrystalGlacia

You raise some pretty good points. I hope you don't mind; I'll try to answer them so you can see if you look this up next time.

• The mental health/morality issue: Yes you're right—this isn't what normally functioning teenagers do. The whole premise of the situation is that he slowly has become darker and "hardened" during his ordeals, but he sees himself—as does the audience—as a normal guy caught in a horrible situation. The point of The Reveal is to show my protagonist was never a "normal guy". He already had the potential to exhibit the ruthlessness and cold-blooded nature he has adopted at the time he is bombarded by the memory.

• Deciding he liked his old life and baby sister: It's a matter of perspective. When he tried to kill her and was complaining about his old life, he was an average—if slightly murderous—New England teenager. Since then he's been enslaved by vampires, almost murdered by Knight Templar werewolves, seen horrific atrocities and acts of brutality, and watched two of his best friends die horrible deaths.
  • An added note to this second point is that he didn't remember trying to kill her. In fact, he had already stopped hating her when he was kidnapped and become an almost model big brother. The reason is because the attempted murder shocked him so badly at the idea of what he was capable of that he freaked out and disassociated from the memory, remodeling himself as a kind and caring brother to literally pave over what he'd done.

The thing is, if he was eight or ten you might be able to argue he didn't really know what he was doing. He had a vindictive or ruthless streak maybe, but not a clear understanding of the consequences of his actions.

At sixteen, unless (as Crystal Glacia points out) he was mentally ill, it sounds like a clear-cut case of It's All About Me.

I think that would be hard to sell as plausible. Again, it comes down to the fact that at 16 I think it is abnormal to caught off guard by the consequences of an attempted murder.

Another good point Crystal Glacia raises:

Another reason it might make more sense if this happened when your character was a child, some time ago, rather than when he's his modern, teenage (almost adult) self.

edited 23rd Jan '16 4:22:45 AM by editerguy

Yeah, that's something a child who doesn't have a good grip on what death is would do, not a teenager. If someone over the age of eleven did that, I would strongly suspect some very serious mental health issues. Of course, if you want to use that to illustrate just how cracked the protagonist has been the whole time, that's a different matter, but it's beyond the pale of conventional sympathy.