True story:
“So Danny broke the guy’s arm, kicked his legs out from under him as he stripped the gun, and then stomped him between the eyes hard enough to crack his sinuses and sink his head to the ears in the sod. Just as he was thinking he needed to kill the guy, he recognized he was nonfunctional and stopped.”
Who was this other guy? What was he doing there? Why did he point a gun at Danny? What happened next?
The sane and social are fascinated by stories; sociopaths less so.
Where we seek to fill in the gaps of situation, characterization, and motivation, the sociopath sees only a threat or an obstacle and acts to remove it. For us the story above is woefully incomplete; for the sociopath it’s all that matters.
The story preceding the action has no bearing on the mechanical facts of that action whatsoever; what Danny did or didn’t do to attract the gunman’s attention, the gunman’s motivation and state of mind when he threatened Danny don’t make his arm impervious or susceptible to breaking. The story does not affect mechanical results one way or the other. It’s useless noise.
