Mind-wiping = Death? (fictional scenario)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I wasn’t sure how to title this or if it should go in cafe society or MPSIMS as its pretty mundane.

Anyway, elsewhere on the internets I’m standing on the sidelines watching a drama-fest of apocalyptic proportions surrounding one episode in an otherwise innocuous web-comic (I won’t link to it as its something of a work in progress). It concerns a scene in a story set in a dungeons and dragons style fantasy world. A thief has broken into a castle but has triggered an alarm while stealing a valuable object, she tries to escape but finds herself cornered. A lone guard is the first to arrive on the scene, he tries to arrest her but at this point the thief uses magic to physically transform him into a copy of herself, further to that she also permenantly and completely wipes all his memories and copies her own memories into his mind overwriting his personality. In the confusion she escapes with the artefact and her double is captured in her place.

People are getting upset because they feel its a dark and gruesome incident and out of tone with the rest of the story, that the thief has effectively killed the guard, the other side feel that its a fun and clever way out the situation and they don’t know what all the fuss is about as its not like she killed him or anything.

I’m firmly in the former camp but I’m not really invested enough to participate in the argument, but I don’t understand why so many people think what the thief did is no big deal. In my opinion it was downright evil.

Thoughts?

2

It’s both murder, and a betrayal of the new personality which is still in most ways herself.

3

Pretty brutal. Unless someone is able to reverse it, the guard’s dead. And now the thief has an identical clone who’s been captured… and has all the memories the captors will want about her. She doesn’t really escape.

4

Is this character one who’s been shown to be OK with killing in the past? Because as described, this is killing.

5

Yes, I don’t understand why the author even had to add the mind-wiping part, if she had just physically transformed him but left his mind intact it would have been a little (OK a lot) mean but not nearly on the same level as killing him, and why would you want another version of you, someone who feels she is you, captured?

I don’t know enough about the comic to say, but it seems to have a generally light-hearted and fun tone so I doubt it, thats part of the reason why some fans seem to be so upset. And yes I agree, its killing.