day no. 16,616: story always wins

"Lewis explains, 'Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon's lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.' Eustace had subsisted on the wrong stories... His imaginative training had not prepared him to deal with dragons -- and so he becomes one." — Christiana Hale, Deeper Heaven

Story always wins and a hard heart is no defense against a soft head. A starved imagination will be revenged. You cannot keep narrative at arm's length. If you try, you only succeed in being an unlikable character. You cannot cram facts into your skull in order to keep story out. Your mental closet cannot be so packed full of material and moth balls as to keep the magic out. In fact, Edmund only discovered more magic in that wardrobe upon further inspection, not less.

If you ignore dragons, you become one. If you avoid thinking about your sin, your thoughts will be sinful. You cannot keep the plot at bay. There is no such thing as a narrative-less existence. You cannot crawl off the page. You are a printed word. You can either be emboldened or struck through, but you cannot blot yourself out. You were printed at a price and the ink of your existence does not belong to you.