At first glance this prompt by The Jittery Junebug screams betrayal, but looking at it again, I concede that it might very well not be. It might be about someone trying to help the person she is talking to.
Now maybe you looked at the prompt and immediately saw someone trying to help or maybe like me you at first only saw the potential betrayal. Whichever you saw, there is a story there.
Is it a story of someone who is making themself look small in order to make someone else look big? Maybe this is a power behind the throne situation. She could be someone who doesn’t believe in herself enough or maybe she just doesn’t like the limelight for some reason. It could just be that she’s an introvert and dealing with people for too long drains her and she’s just not interested.
Or maybe she’s been injured or otherwise looks in a way she perceives as bad looking or ugly. Even if this is the reason, she doesn’t actually have to be ugly, only think she is. I don’t know a lot about The Twilight Zone, but I saw a clip of an episode where a woman was being treated as absolutely hideous because to our eyes she was stunning. Perception does not alter reality, but objective things, such as beauty standards, can alter how we view reality.
The opposite potential, the one I first thought of is certainly possible. Instead of trying to make the other person look good, she could be trying to make him or her look bad.
If the situation is bad, how bad? Is she setting someone up for a social faux pas? It could be something as little as a, very well spoken, toddler setting it up to look like someone else drew on the walls. Or it could be something as big as making it looking as if someone else was the sole person responsible for a massacre.
Most likely it is something in between, something that is undesirable, but not necessarily heinous. Maybe the other person was supposed to walk the dog and got sick so they asked her to take care of the dog and she agreed, but she locked the dog in the head of houses bedroom and didn’t clean up the results or even she did take the dog out and deposited what the dog left behind somewhere in the house. Kind of weird, but people do strange things sometimes.
So how do you see this? Is she trying to help someone or cause that person harm? What is her end goal? How will you use this prompt if you decide to use it?
