1. Ryan Elder

    Ryan Elder Banned

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    What name should this type of terrorist group be called?

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by Ryan Elder, May 1, 2016.

    I don't know if technically this group would be called a terrorist group in political terms.

    In my story, there is a group of people who are have poor social skills because of their conditions while growing up. Conditions that would prohibit them from developing relationships with people and also romantic relationships of the opposite sex. This causes them to suffer from their involuntary celibacy, and they form a group of... I guess you could say serial rapist killers and going around getting revenge on people on society because of they are looked upon and treated as inferior, or at least inferior from their points of view.

    It's unusual for serial killer types to work in groups, but when it comes to a group that is going around doing this, what type of name would they be called? They can either come up with their own name and leave a calling card, or the public/media can give them their own name and dub them with it. Which do you think is better?

    The only name I have for the group so far is the Involuntarily Celibate Liberation Front, or I.L.F. for short. But if that name sucks I could come up with a different one but I wouldn't know where to start while naming such a group. One person so far told me that the name sounds really really bad, for this type of context, so if others agree, than what would sound better?

    What do you think? Thanks for the input. I really appreciate it.
     
  2. Mikmaxs

    Mikmaxs Senior Member

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    I'm assuming that there's context here that you're leaving out, because the first thing that I'm thinking here is just... 'Why don't they hire a prostitute?' If the big deal is that they don't get to have sex... There's a lot of ways around that. A lot of people lack social skills and can't get laid. *I* lack social skills and can't get laid.

    Back on topic, though...
    Is it some kind of condition that you've created for your story? Knowing more details about what causes them to kill people, among other things, could be helpful. How did they find each other? How did the idea of 'Let's kidnap and rape a buncha people, then ditch their bodies up at the old quarry!' get proposed? Do they want people to know who they are and why they're doing what they're doing?
     
  3. Ryan Elder

    Ryan Elder Banned

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    Well they don't hire a prostitute because they feel that would be copping out, rather than acting on their actual problem. They want to be desired by the opposite gender, like everyone else, and get love and intimacy for free, rather than pay, and being looked upon as those who have to pay for it, if that makes sense. They direct their revenge to those who reject them cause they feel powerless, and want to gain power. Paying for it, does not make then feel like they are gaining control, cause they are paying for it, so it's submitting to the problem, if that makes sense.

    Yes they want people to know what they are doing so they send in anonymous, untraceable messages to the media and online of what they are doing and why.

    Basically they found each other originally by one meeting another in a support group, then one meeting another, in another, and then they go set out to find others, and so on and so forth. One would have to suggest the idea, that the only thing we can do to be heard is resort to extreme means, and the others are influenced into letting the ends justify the means and going along with it.

    When you say *I*, are you referring to yourself?
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2016
  4. SethLoki

    SethLoki Retired Autodidact Contributor

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    'The Reavers'.... little used yet easily remembered; got the phoneme 'eeve' in it, you know like 'evil' < that'll suit the subconscious and the word reave means to unashamedly take in a raidy, pillagey kinda way — assuming they want to project fear?
     
  5. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    They are nihilistic to the point of being... Well, just fucking horrible. Seriously, I hope you aren't going to try and make them sympathetic to any degree but that's just not going to wash.

    I really don't think they deserve a 'liberation front' sobriquet; they aren't a political cause and there's no obvious justification for what they are doing. The PLO could get away with that because they had the perception of being freedom fighters. Not so these guys. The media certainly isn't going to use the name. It sounds like it's sarcastic; the kind of thing that whoever is investigating them might sneer and call them for all being pathetic babies.

    I think you need to take a step back to find their name. They all have something in common, right? What does society call people like them who don't kill people? That's the answer. The name will come from that. If this were Brave New World then they'd be Epsilons so they'd perhaps be Epsilon Supremacists (written as ɛ+). So look to your background and figure out what society calls people like them. Even if society calls them something nasty like 'vermin' that's certainly how society is going to continue to report on them regardless of what name they try to claim. For those in the group some might rankle, others might try to reclaim it as a point of pride; but if they are all used to being called that, well, that's the only name that most of them will know for themselves.

    Society isn't going to give them a cool name. Not even an evil sounding name. The government give them a bureaucratic styled name that makes them sound insignificant, and the wider population will give them a name that makes them sound contemptible. I mean, people know why they are doing what they are doing, right? How can the bloke in the pub not look at them with absolute, bubbling contempt? They rape and kill people to make themselves feel better about being horribly inadequate. But that doesn't make them cease to be inadequate.

    Random aside - These people have no social skills; how have they formed a coherent group together?
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2016
  6. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    Technically, terrorism is the use of fear to achieve political aims. Originally, it was ascribed only to governments and it's only been since the early 1980s that terrorism has been attributed to groups other than governments.

    So, using the original meaning of the word, your group might be better described as freedom fighters or rebels.
     
  7. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    That's not really true. The use of 'terrorist' in the modern context has been around since at least the 1960s with groups like FARC and the Tamil Tigers (and not least the IRA) being called that specifically because it undermined their legitimacy. Earlier words like 'partisans' or 'guerrillas' became romanticized because of the well publicized efforts of anti-Nazi resistance groups in WW2 Europe and so there was a need for another word which made them easier to see as an enemy. Terrorist is a great word for this. There's no way to make it sound like a good thing.
     
  8. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    R-Cell would be a good name for them, depending on how large the group is. Though what is the obsession with rape on the forum? Not that I am guilt free, cause I have written about a rape. But to be fair when all was said and done the dude was missing a few fingers, and the front of his head.:p

    Anywho back on topic. They should be motivated by more than being just pent up testosterone and the need to unleash it. I am going to go out on a limb and assume that there is no pornography in their world. They would need to escalate from voyeurism to full fledged rape. There would be a period of identifying potential targets of interest and stalking/hunting, if you will. There would also have to be some sort of mechanism in place to prevent them from getting sex. I would like to assume you have bars in your story, or even drugs. These are great tools of manipulation for getting a person to give up sex. So even a socially stunted person would have a reasonable chance at getting gratified. Unless there is an absolute need for having a gang of rapists. Though in the real world they prefer to operate alone or in pairs, not in a large mass.

    Now as nice as sex is, and the intimacy of bonding with another person. Some of us on a whole other playing field than the norm. Also the most attractive receive it far more often than those of any other type. But the catch always seems to be the same, beauty does not always equate to being good at it nor fun. I am not going to digress further into this string of thoughts, but I do have a few tales of woe from dissatisfied individuals in conversations of sex. Now that being said, have fun and try to make this scenario work out the way you want it to. :)
     
  9. Mikmaxs

    Mikmaxs Senior Member

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    Yes, the *I* was talking about me, though it was mostly to make a point. Lots of people can't get the opposite gender to desire them. If you want to find one, just look for any guy in his twenties wearing a fedora! Zing!

    Seriously though, without knowing more about their 'Condition', I have to say that this idea seems a little... Well, far-fetched isn't quite the right word. I can totally see a group of terrorist-level gang rapists, but if their motivation for the terrorist-level gang rape is seriously 'We can't get laid', then I am pretty sure that they're already so unstable that they'd come up with another excuse to go out and murder people whether or not they had an active love life.


    As for names, though, do they have a real-life equivalent that they look up to? Some other serial killer who inspired them? They could take their name from him. 'Bundy's Disciples', for example, or whatever killer you choose.
     
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  10. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    @Mikmaxs Go with Dahmer.:cheerleader::supergrin:
     
  11. Ryan Elder

    Ryan Elder Banned

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    Okay thanks for the input. Well each one of them would have different conditions that would severely limit them from being desired by the opposite sex. One would have say facial paralysis for example, or one might be autistic or something.

    I was told by another writer to leave it to the imagination to the reader, what their problem might be. Especially since the villains are treated as mystery characters, for about the first two thirds of the story, and it's told from the police detectives point of view, as they are trying to find them and stop them. So I was told to leave it up to mostly the imagination as to what their conditions may be, if that's better?

    Also yes their are bars, drugs, and prostitutes. But they feel that would be copping out, or submitting to their limitations, when they are jealous of other people getting intimacy for free, or without drugging people, or having to put them under extra influence.

    They villains are jealous of others and want to send a message. Submitting to prostitutes and women under the influence of drugs and alcohol, will not make their message heard, and they feel they that if they do that, they will just be taking short cuts, to avoid their discrimination by others.

    As for having a large mass of them doing this as oppose to one person, the way I would like the plot to go, and have already written a lot of it out, one person cannot commit all these crimes. The way the plot unfolds, I would need at least bare minimum, four of them, but more would work better plot wise, since I need them to be at different places at different times, for it to work.

    Also, when the main detective character figures out who the villain is, I would like it to be a person in the story, the reader thought was innocent the whole time. So whatever condition that character has that is prohibiting him from getting intimacy, it would have to be a condition that the reader does not see coming, in order to be more surprised, if that would work. What do you think?

    And yes it hard for people with no social skills to form a group. Basically the leader has more skills than the others. The leader feels sorry for a loved one who is close to him, who suffers from... I guess I could use the term involuntary celibacy. So he takes pity on his loved one, but also others like him, and his kind as a whole. So it's him, the more socially skilled one, who influences a lot of others.

    As for the crimes being perhaps too vicious... do you think that the group should kill the victims? Perhaps just assaulting and traumatizing the victims is enough to get their message heard, but will it be enough?

    The group, uses masks, gloves, condoms, and whatever they can to not get any physical evidence at the scenes of the crimes. They also kidnap their victims, move them to a mystery location and them dumb then somewhere, and clean up the location every time.

    So with that in mind, does the group have to kill them? What if they left them all alive, or is that not smart, and would get them caught, even if they leave no physical evidence? Would leaving them alive, be enough of a crime to get their message across?

    As for the name of the group, I.L.F. sounding not evil enough, would the police and media want to give them a demeaning name, since it could set the group off, and could jeopardize public safety further, since they clearly have a problem with being demeaned by others?

    As for the group being sympathetic, I wanted two of the members to be sympathetic, one of them is a complete monster and actually enjoys the crimes too much, where as the other two are morally conflicted, one of them becomes disgusted after too much, and wants to end the group and surrender.

    The others not so major members are left ambiguous, cause they do not have as much time in the plot, so two are sympathetic, and one portrayed as more monstrous, out of the main three. Even though the villains do bad things, I wanted two of them to be sympathetic compared to other murderous villains in fiction, if this is possible. The reader doesn't have to sympathize, but when one of them breaks down, and wants to surrender and do the right thing, the reader still has to buy into it, rather than not believing in it at all, if that makes sense?

    What do you think?
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2016
  12. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    The Empty, slang Imps. The Forgotten, slang Frogs.
     
  13. X Equestris

    X Equestris Contributor Contributor

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    Disturbingly, this idea of "involuntary celibacy" is very much real among certain fringes of the Internet. OP already gave the reason they don't go for prostitutes, and from what I've seen of a few such people online, it's not at all difficult to understand why they can't get laid otherwise. They're ridiculously entitled. I might be wrong, but I seem to recall at least one instance of someone like this going out and targeting people because of this sort of logic.

    Edit: found a link on the case I was thinking of.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/05/27/inside-the-manosphere-that-inspired-santa-barbara-shooter-elliot-rodger/
     
  14. Mikmaxs

    Mikmaxs Senior Member

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    Okay, full stop here for a moment:
    Be very, very, very careful how you approach disabilities and handicaps here. Seriously. I cannot stress this enough.
    People with disabilities deal with enough crap as it is, and if the crux of your story is 'They decided to kill people because they're mentally handicapped', all you're doing is reinforcing negative stereotypes about them. Despite being complete bullshit, a lot of people already believe that autism leads to mass shootings, murder, etc., and when you're already dealing with what can sometimes be extremely severe obstacles to living a normal life, you don't need people assuming that you're going to flip out and start murdering everyone.

    So, yeah. Approach with extreme amounts of caution.
     
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  15. Ryan Elder

    Ryan Elder Banned

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    Okay thanks. But the villains need a reason to commit the acts, and usually these types of evil acts are brought upon by flaws. So I don't want to create negative stereotypes, but I do need to give the villains flaws, to make them be the villains that need to be stopped in the story.
     
  16. Mikmaxs

    Mikmaxs Senior Member

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    By all means, flaws are good, but I think "Wants to rape and murder women" is a big enough flaw. As X Equestris pointed out, this has happened in real life for the same reasons, albiet on a smaller scale. You don't need to make up extra reasons why they're the bad guys.
     
  17. Ryan Elder

    Ryan Elder Banned

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    Well their has to be some reason why they are pushed into doing it. They cannot do it, just because, otherwise that is not enough of a reason, for one person to motivate another, and then motivate another, and another, etc. There has to be a reason behind it to get the ball going rolling.
     
  18. Mikmaxs

    Mikmaxs Senior Member

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    They have the same reason that any other villain has: They're *Evil*.

    There are people on the internet who already act like miniature versions of what you're describing. Pretty much any discussion of feminism will bring them out. These aren't people with handicaps or issues, they're of sound mind and body, they're just entitled assholes.

    Maybe give them a leader whom they all rally around, and make their group more cult-ish. After all, cults are usually composed of a bunch of fairly reasonable people who were found while at an emotional low point and then pushed into the craziness of their cult by a charismatic leader who promises that what he's doing is good.
     
  19. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I wouldn't worry about trying to make any of them sympathetic. I don't think you're going to bring a character back from this. That aside, they sound like sociopaths. That, combined with whatever made them involuntarily sufficient, would seem to be enough. You could give each a different, compelling back story that helps push them there, instead of saying maybe they're autistic or have some physical deformity or whatever.
     
  20. Ryan Elder

    Ryan Elder Banned

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    Okay thanks. But there has to some sort of backstory, that would push each of them to that. If I make it so that they are that way for no reason whatsoever, the police will have no clue where to concentrate their efforts, and will not know how to catch the villains by any psychological means on them.

    When you say:
    what do you mean exactly?

    The main villain of the bunch though, I would like to concentrate more on his backstory, who's backstory, will serve as an allegory, for the others. He will try and try to get women but cannot. So I still need a reason as to why his efforts fail though, since this backstory, is what drives a lot of the plot. Even characters who reject him come back into the plot later, once he is found out. So what reason could this character have for not getting women, which would push him, other than being evil?

    Cause I still need a reason as to why he cannot get women. His failed efforts take up about a third of the storytime, so I need reason for why his efforts fail, if it's not a disfigurement, or being mentally challenged, or something. What else should I use?
     
  21. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    If he's a sociopath, maybe he just creeps women out. All kinds of red flags and he doesn't know why.

    As for not bringing these characters back, I mean I don't think you're going to be able to make a reader feel sympathy for them. First rape/killing and that pretty much ends the chances I'm ever going to be sympathetic to the character.
     
  22. Mikmaxs

    Mikmaxs Senior Member

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    You don't need them to be disabled to be unattractive to women. Maybe he smells bad and doesn't realize it. Maybe he's just creepy.
    As I said at the start of this thread, I'm a healthy adult male with reasonably attractive features and only a *little* bit of autism, and I can't seem to get a second date to save my life.
     
  23. Ryan Elder

    Ryan Elder Banned

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    Okay thanks for the input. I am sorry to hear that about you.

    What about a villain like in the movie Red Dragon? I haven't red the book, but I saw the 2002 movie. In that one, the villain is portrayed as sympathetic, even though he is a rapist killer, but he is portrayed as knowing what caused him to do what he does. Can I make my group sympathetic, the way that villain is portrayed in that movie, since he was also a serial rapist/killer?

    Plus can a person be a sociopath, if the person hasn't committed an evil act yet? Before the main villain is pushed into doing what he does, can go see a therapist to deal with his loneliness and not being able to get women, and the therapist would diagnose him with sociopathy is the reason why, even if this is before he was pushed into doing anything evil?
     
  24. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I read and liked Red Dragon. I didn't have the least bit of sympathy for the killer (Francis). I felt sorry for his childhood self during the scenes portraying his early childhood, but had no sympathy for him as the villain of the story.
     
  25. Mikmaxs

    Mikmaxs Senior Member

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    Okay, not to derail this thread, but please don't be.

    And in regards to the Red Dragon, it's worth pointing out that the reason that the villain is sympathetic is because of the trauma he suffered as a child, which lets the audience see how he got the way he did. An abused child is sympathetic.
    An MRA who's angry at women because they won't give him sex on demand is *not* sympathetic, no matter how often you say he was turned down in highschool.
     

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