I need help with doppelganger

[Haku45]

I'll be honest, I haven't seen many stories that use dopplegangers well. There aren't enough of them in fiction. Some of my favorites are twin peaks and fean and hunger. So I wanted to use them. At the moment, I'm thinking about mc teaming up with her. (I haven't decided yet if she'll be part of a harem, but that could be an option) mc and her will try to kill the original to finally free her from the shackles of fate. (In my novel, doppleganger can only live normally if the original is dead. If not, all his actions and the universe itself gonna try to end his life).

So... what can you recommend me?

 

[Arch9CivilReactor]

I'll be honest, I haven't seen many stories that use dopplegangers well. There aren't enough of them in fiction. Some of my favorites are twin peaks and fean and hunger. So I wanted to use them. At the moment, I'm thinking about mc teaming up with her. (I haven't decided yet if she'll be part of a harem, but that could be an option) mc and her will try to kill the original to finally free her from the shackles of fate. (In my novel, doppleganger can only live normally if the original is dead. If not, all his actions and the universe itself gonna try to end his life).

So... what can you recommend me?

I’m pretty sure there was a manga with doppelgängers as a main magic mechanic, but the anime version kinda ruined the source material by turning the MC into a high schooler.

pretty sure it was called Black God.

 

[Haku45]

I’m pretty sure there was a manga with doppelgängers as a main magic mechanic, but the anime version kinda ruined the source material by turning the MC into a high schooler.

pretty sure it was called Black God.

I heard something about it. I should check it out

 

[CharlesEBrown]

The first such story I've seen was by Edgar Allan Poe, William Wilson. Sadly, I loaned my copy of "The Collected Works" to a friend and was only halfway through this one at the time; he needed it for a book report and never returned it.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" (another of Poe's stories) plays with this a little too but not as much as William Wilson. Looking it up I also saw an example I had not considered for literary doppelgangers: Fight Club.

You kind of have a reversal of the literary doppelganger in Robert Bloch's "The Very Bad Friend" (the story he believed Hitchcock originally planned to option but then wound up working with him to develop Psycho).

There have also been Doppelgangers a few times in Star Trek - the original series had Kirk split into two by a transporter accident (The Enemy Within), an android duplicate of Kirk trying to replace him (What Are Little Girls Made Of?), matter and antimatter versions of the same guy needing their help (The Alternative Factor), the entire Mirror Universe stuff, Riker cloned by the Transporter and the clone becomes a different character (Second Chances), and several other stories. The "Kelven Universe" movies even open with Spock meeting Spock...

 

[Cipiteca396]

The vocaloid songs Copycat and Imposter Advisory come to mind.

Oh, there was an episode of Ghost in the Shell where a fake shows up and takes the place of one of the main cast.

The simulacrum spell can result in this in some fiction, most notably Mother of Learning.

---

That out of the way, why support the Doppelganger over the original? It's a twist, certainly, but you're gonna need an interesting justification for it.
Is the original evil? Does the copy have something to offer that the original doesn't? Is the MC just dumb enough to believe its lies?
The idea of breaking its fate is fine on its own, but why does someone else have to die just so that can happen? Isn't there a third option that you should really be aiming for?

 

[Haku45]

The vocaloid songs Copycat and Imposter Advisory come to mind.

Oh, there was an episode of Ghost in the Shell where a fake shows up and takes the place of one of the main cast.

The simulacrum spell can result in this in some fiction, most notably Mother of Learning.

---

That out of the way, why support the Doppelganger over the original? It's a twist, certainly, but you're gonna need an interesting justification for it.
Is the original evil? Does the copy have something to offer that the original doesn't? Is the MC just dumb enough to believe its lies?
The idea of breaking its fate is fine on its own, but why does someone else have to die just so that can happen? Isn't there a third option that you should really be aiming for?

I'll be honest. My mc is not the good person. And she can clearly benefit from having a clone take over the original's place. However, this is one of those arcs where she starts to think about her actions. Is she doing the right thing? Is her survival and benefit really worth more than someone else's innocent life?

But also the reason why mc is kind to the clone is because of the clone's fate. The clone didn't decide to be born that way. Monster didn't decide to become a monster, he was born that way. And so seeing her sad situation, she projects it onto herself. She actually sympathizes with her. But I didn't decided overall how to end they story. Does clone kill original, and become free. But she gonna feel depression after all of this. Understanding that she not become free. She just taked someone else place in this world. Or she could find the the way to destroy fate and become actually free.

Sorry if I made some mistakes, I sleepy right now. And I hate typing in phone

 

[Jocelyn_Uasal]

just this