I like that you have a clear vision of what you want to say in your story, @LordWarGod . My only concern would be that it might get a tad 'preachy.' Be careful that your story's purpose isn't TOO clear until the end comes, if you want your readers to stay immersed. Otherwise, more power to your arm. There are many people who are not going to enjoy this story, but that's not the point, is it? Write what you want to say, but my advice would be to let the theme evolve. Don't hammer people over the head with it. It makes a much stronger impact if the readers figure it out for themselves. They may go away unhappy, but they'll be impressed.
I don't understand. Bad things "tend to happen" to those who are passive; good things "tend to happen" (or are "made to happen") by those who are active. The real lesson I would extract is that passivity and inaction allow for the dominant of the meek by the aggressive; action and pro-action allow for the prevention of evils (great or small) and give rise to the possibility of personal success (and the pride and happiness associated with self-made fortune). No, I think your fiction is divorced from reality. It's more accurately the portrayal of a determinist or a nihlist's mindset than it is objective reality. In reality; for every shadow there must be light; and good things tend to happen to those that make them happen, while bad things tend to happen to those who are passive and reactive. Every life-failure I know of made predictably stupid decisions and put themselves in terrible situations where something awful was bound to happen. Meteor strikes are extremely rare to the point of not even needing to be planned for. Every life-success I know of was a thoughtful, mindful, and pro-active person who chose to embrace free will rather than live like a tumbleweed in a deserted field.
Humans never do anything without a motivation. We are all biologically hard wired to react to the world around us. The example given of shooting a person for brushing up against them may seem to be a wasteful act with no reason. One can actually argue that the killer was so traumatically impacted by the invasion of his space, he reacted the only way he knew. The reason behind the trauma is not obvious. Some things in life do not allow explanation. In order to get it, we would have to delve into the killer's past. It is easier to say what a bad person the killer is and move on. We as a species generally want to focus on the good things while minimizing the bad. Another killer may stab someone repeatedly because he gets an adrenaline boost from the act. Why does he get that boost? The violence is tied to an event(s) in his life where he received a positive experience(s) while digesting a negative event(s). One simplistic example: he was eating his favourite candy when he saw his father butcher a hog. While more than one person may experience the exact same situation, it does not mean every one of them will turn into vicious killers. We have to pair the experience with the biology. You might say so what. My point: it is easy to just chalk every bad action up to a bad person or a bad universe. It does not make a very good read. You have an opportunity here to create a dialogue on your position. You could examine why people do the things they do in this situation by creating antiheroes. You could contrast those characters with the heroes and so allow your readers to decide what life is really like. I do go on. You may not want this dialogue as I am thinking you want to teach people your viewpoint. If this is your ultimate end, I have to abstain from your works. Good luck.
You're right about the fact that reasons that may appear abysmal to us will make complete sense to the person that perpetrated the crime or act. I do delve into reasons, I delve into the emotional aspect, the culture, the upbringing, their experiences as they were brought up interacting with one another. I'm not disputing that at all, what I am saying though is that the universe is one huge grey area that is up for interpretation by pretty much anybody and no single interpretation is an accurate depiction of the universe. I'm trying to say that morality and ethics really mean naught in the end, it means something to us but that's because we constructed it. I believe I may have confused many people here with how I worded my philosophy, it seems that I've given the impression that I write things like "X woman got raped to death, then she killed herself, the end." Whereas I usually go deep with the graphic details and explain the emotions involved, explain what the aggressor is feeling and why the aggressor is doing it, explain what the victim is feeling and so on. I usually create a build-up to that event, I put them in situations that are unavoidable such as a woman being the only female in a sex starved group of men. Or perhaps a child on a world that cannot sustain life or grow food, so cannibals will eat the child so they can survive themselves and I won't just paint them as super-evil faceless people, I'll show the human side to them.
I am glad you clarified your meaning. It helps me see the work differently. You make it easier to listen to your argument. I still disagree with your overall premise. I would say that post is your selling point for your novel. You have certainly opened up your potential readership in my mind.
Yeah but sometimes, there just isn't anybody who cares around. Sometimes, a child will just get crushed under a truck in China while the parents are distracted, doesn't mean there was any good or evil involved, it's just the cruel reality of life that some innocent child died in such a brutal fashion. That's what I'm saying, people suffer and there often isn't some hero waiting around the corner to save them. People will get kidnapped and are never seen again, nobody will save them. Somebody is being tortured to death, nobody knows where they are, this isn't Hollywood so they're likely just going to end up stuck there for the rest of their lives until they die. I don't disagree that there are people who are good and will help or save people, I never said that everybody is an apathetic person who cares only about themselves. I am just simply trying to get a message across that sometimes things just don't work out, even if you've done everything perfectly to the T. There is a quote from Star Trek and it goes something like this: "you could do everything perfectly and you could still lose the fight, that is not weakness; that is life." So when I have people getting raped, murdered or tortured, there are reasons to them, my villains aren't just pure evil caricatures, they have an entire backstory to them. For example, one of the Gods of Suffering in my story is the God of Plague named Mundus. Mundus was once a loving person that loved to play with his mortal friends and loved ones. But since he was immortal, he found that all the people he loved would wither and die within a blink of an eye. His desire to have friends that he could play with got stronger and it twisted him, warped him until all that went through his mind was keeping everything alive so he could play with them. It didn't matter if they were mindless corpses, if they moved and played with him, that was good enough. He became the Plague God and created a plague that turned mortals into the "Diseased Ones" and they essentially became rotting immortal corpses. By the way, when I said that the universe is bound to repeat it's horrors forever, I didn't mean that by people but by the heat death of the universe and it's rebirth.
I usually allow the characters dialogue do the job, I let the readers know what each character thinks and feels about something as they either ally or fight with each other. I never preach anything in my story, I just follow their lives and tell the reader what happens and what consequences/boons follow. I hate the idea of preaching as it just feels like "telling" instead of "showing" my readers. So, I am hoping that the way I write it will allow readers to figure it all out for themselves.
I didn't disagree with that, I just said that everybody has a subjective view of reality and that's my whole point. So, we are kind of on the same page here, but thank you for discussing this with me, goodbye.
I'm glad you've decided to give my ideas a chance, I don't expect everybody to agree with me because I understand that everybody's view on reality is subjective based on how they were brought up. I also think that the selling point is showing how not everything is black and white, to show two sides to everything is a rare thing in works that involve crime like rape or murder except for some rare cases.
Okay, I'm starting to see what your problem is. You want a compelling commentary, but all you have is just an anti happy ending story. Don't be ashamed if it's the latter. I mean Hans Christian Anderson turned fairy tales on their head by not having exactly good endings. I mean European fairy tales have always been dark, but they at least ended well for the protagonist until that guy came along. Mucked it all up. Aesop eat your heart out. But Hans Christian Anderson never made his stories out to be more than what they were... just fairy tales that bucked the normal trend and tropes. But also don't think it can't be a compelling commentary on the human experience, especially if that's what you really want. You have different point a view characters. I see that as an asset to making this into that kind of story. You can have different characters reacting to the end in different ways. In the real world, you have so many different people. You have people who will embrace death because they're tired of living. You have people who will continue to have faith in a creator. So finding the different points of view would be an interesting commentary.
What I want is a mixture of an epic war story and a commentary on how life is usually unfair, even if you do everything right, it can still go sideways anyway. What you've suggested is what I'm doing, right now I'm going through the backstories of one my main characters, Alastor and showing what life was like just before he was thrust into war and poverty. Alastor's backstory arc is probably one of the most disturbing parts in the book, starvation, flaying, rape, culling's and death. But this is how we learn why Alastor is the way he is, why he is ruthless and willing to wipe out billions of innocents to save trillions. I make sure to show a contrast between the mentality and emotions of soldiers and politicians. For example, I have a scene where a very powerful military commander is summoned to a council meeting to discuss about the loss of hundreds of planets, the council is completely disconnected from reality and don't realize what's happening out there while the commander becomes increasingly frustrated to the point of shouting, threatening and storming out. The war is also not the main point in the main plot, the military police's struggle with the cartel/gangs in the great-cities takes up a huge portion of the book. So, the biggest point in this story is ultimately how the characters think and interact with one another while trying to survive an apocalyptic event. Another big point in this story is that during the beginning, I have scenes showing alien civilizations wiping out entire armies ruthlessly and they talk about how evil they are, they talk about how they're unstoppable and terrifying. Then later on, I reveal that they are in fact, also fleeing the demon legions as well and they are much worse. It's much more complicated as well, the war was triggered by an ancient emperor in his bid to become a Suffering God, he figured if he pleased the Gods by bringing total war to the universe then he would be given ultimate power. And I'll likely write a couple of chapters dedicated to him and his backstory. And this is where it gets interesting, we assume that the humans are the good guys at the start. But then I reveal that in fact, it was the humans who started the war by committing genocide against entire alien civilizations, wiping them out to make way for their war factories on their planets. Then other alien civilizations caught wind of this and attacked them, hence the 1,000 year war. Actually, a lot of the chief points in this story are backstories rather than what's happening in the now. Which makes me feel confused and conflicted, should I write about their backstories and leave the current "apocalypse" plot to write in another book? Or do you think it goes well together? I really enjoy writing it, I've world-builded so much that I probably have enough material for three books.
You could call it the Apocalypse trilogy. The first book starts in the middle of the thousand year war from a human perspective. It progresses for several hundred years. Humans discover the real origin of the war and guilt becomes their undoing. The second book could be about the gods, other civilizations and the emperor's desire. The third book could be about human suffering and why they felt they deserved oblivion.
And every bit of suffering mentioned is somebody's fault. The parents neglected their children; the trucker neglected to mind the streets; kidnappings occur because the country is either too weak or too passive in defending itself against the kidnappers; etc. Point is, every problem you mentioned is man-made and therefore requires man-made solutions. Passive resignation simply means subjugation to those who are willing to actually do something about it. Is it a coincidence that self-determination is the creed of the world's strongest countries while passive resignation is the creed of the defeated and dependent? Power comes from a strong mindset; and a culture with a strong mindset will rule ones with weak mindsets. That is so rare and unlikely I need examples to believe that. Though possible, I have yet to meet anybody who did what was right and lived morally correct who then bit the bullet at the end. Usually the guys with enthusiasm, ambition, and self-discipline achieve lifetime success while those who are lacking are only partially successful. And likewise bound to repeat the pleasures and glories. Another "god" in an identical scenario could have seen the passing of history over thousands of years in a more paternalistic light and thus felt more compelled than ever to protect and preserve that light. Different people experience the same thing differently; and the two sons of the drunk live radically different lives because one chose to not drink alcohol and live responsibly while the other chose to copy the drunk and thus live and die like the drunk. I know I'm a bit late responding to this, but I think it's still worth hammering how a different mindset can experience the same thing yet see it and interpret it differently. And also, on top of that, how those who try and fail are the ones who are capable of success while those who fail to try cannot even fathom success, and so are either jealous of the successful or passive actors to them.
Yeah, I was thinking of trying out something like this, to split it across three books. But I don't like the whole "guilt becomes their undoing", it isn't one collective group, there's different groups with different opinions/ambitions/motivations with the humans, they don't think alike. I'm thinking that perhaps the first book might be about the backstories, second book would be about the apocalypse then the last book would be about the aftermath and The Last God that emerges from the ruins of the old world. I don't know yet though, but your suggestions are pretty good.
Yes, I agree with what you've said here. If you read my reply above to Kallisto, you'll see that my story does touch on the points you make here. Even so, there are many cases in real life where bad things can happen to even the most kindest and morally good people who has never done anything wrong, that's a theme that my story touches on throughout. Good people will get fucked over a lot because in a world like this one, the only way to get ahead is to stoop lower, otherwise you'll just be taken advantage of and disposed. That's not to say that people wouldn't appreciate these things, it's just in a dog eat dog world, that's how things are. Reality is so vastly different from what we'd like to think it is.
I didn't mean 'soapbox preaching,' which of course I imagine you don't do. I just meant don't make your nihilistic theme too obvious. If, for example, you allow the reader to think that hey, maybe things MIGHT turn out 'okay'—and then they don't....? That is likely to make a much stronger impact than creating an Eeyore attitude right at the start. If that makes sense. The reader is likely to keep reading because they are hoping things will work out. When things go bad at the end they might be disappointed or upset, but the lesson will be learned. There are no 'good' endings. Only the journey itself (the love you mention) makes it bearable.
Simple "Good people will get fucked over a lot because in a world like this one, the only way to get ahead is to stoop lower, otherwise you'll just be taken advantage of and disposed. That's not to say that people wouldn't appreciate these things, it's just in a dog eat dog world, that's how things are" is massively contradicted by how the bloodiest war in human history ended. In short: two dudes with big armies decided to stop being assholes and try to out-nice each other in a bid to win over the populace. Eventually Lu Kang died of old age and his Empire failed to realize the strategic brilliance of his plan, thus doubling down on brutality and warmongering. Meanwhile Yang Hu lived on and successfully won over large swaths of the Wu Empire through both his martial talent as well as his ability to win over the general country (nobles, peasants, and generals alike). The Wu Empire crumbled by its own hand, and the Jin Empire united China because of some crazy egghead who decided benevolence might end the 100 year + war that claimed the lives of a hundred million people. Sure, there's shit in the world, but the guys who are both skilled and virtuous tend to win over all should some crazy guy decide it's worth while to use his talents while simultaneously being a nice far-sighted guy. Many wars ended simply because the willingness to fight was lost, and the victor was simply a more likable and respectable guy than the loser.
You're using real life examples when the bad guys in my story are typically planet/galaxy sized demonic horrors that corrupt and eat everything and follow the five Gods of Suffering that each represent a Suffering of the universe. I don't think any of your logic applies here, the people are going to gravitate towards the ones that can protect them and that's not the Suffering Legions, is it? It's going to be the High Sovereignty, since that's the only civilization that actually somewhat gives a shit to a certain degree. While I understand what you're saying and I get it, it's just not applicable to a world that's ending. There is just the living and then there's the evil demons that emerged from a hellish dimension that rips through everything. And the living have internal conflicts, politics, starvation, gang/cartel wars with the military police, armed forces fighting off alien civilizations and so on. It is absolutely chaotic and that's why nobody has time to extend acts of kindness. But despite this, people still extend acts of kindness anyway and these people are often the ones that get fucked over. I have a scene where a man belonging to a gang on a refugee ship secretly give children food and one day, he gets caught doing this by his gang and he is literally torn limb from limb and the remains of his corpse is thrown to the starving masses on the ship. In turn, the starving masses thank the gang for their generosity. WW1 and WW2 is child's play compared to what happens in my world, even Warhammer 40k is child's play. So, being the fairer and the kinder of the two isn't going to get anyone to places when you need more ruthlessness and willingness to commit acts of genocide to keep the forces of evil at bay for a few weeks longer.
Since you're writing total fiction with nothing to with reality, sure. However... Size of scope doesn't matter; the bloodiest war in human history could have taken place in England alone and the point still remains; evil is bad conquering, good is quite good at it. Therefore if your fictional world operated realistically, some dude with a big brain and empathy could rally up an army and both beat the Demons on the field and win the people under their yoke. The point is simple: real life provides many precedents of heroism gloriously overcoming the evil. And if you want your story to have grounds (which is necessary to effectively teach a point), it must operate by real-world rules or otherwise identifiable parallels to the real world. Otherwise it's like saying "in my dream world of magic and demons, all the good guys lose because the demons hacked into the server and enabled GOD MODE! *drop mic*"
I don't think you understand anything I'm saying here, your issue seems to be that my demon army is unstoppable. There are tons of heroism in my world, heroes are rushing to the front-lines sacrificing themselves to slow down the advance of the demons so people can escape. I'm sorry that you want the demons to be beatable but that's how I've designed them, they are supposed to be unbeatable. In fact, one of the most powerful demons from my story that can enter the universe is called a Death. A Death is a giant wispy sheet of rotting, diseased flesh and this demon is as big as multiple galaxy clusters in length and width. What does it do? It causes everything that comes within a couple of light years of it to rot and wither away, to increase the aging process of whatever is near it so quickly that it causes them to wither away in seconds. Great Abominations, gigantic diseased humanoids that range from the size of a small country to a planet and the big ones cannot be killed by anything but a Wreath; that's a weaponized gamma ray burst that the High Sovereignty uses which can instantly wipe out an entire star system in seconds. Those are some examples of demons that exist in my world and there are many more of them. You're trying to say that I should follow real life rules but if a Great Abomination existed in real life, we wouldn't have fought for 500 years, we would have been wiped out within the first few minutes of it arriving on Earth. I don't get your logic here, I've explained to you the situation that's going on in my world and you somehow want me to wave a magic wand that gets the "good guys" to win? The story is about the High Sovereignty and the humans living under it trying to survive the apocalypse.
Maybe I picked up something wrongly earlier on. In your story, your characters KNOW there is no escape? That puts a different spin on it. There is no hope AND THEY KNOW IT? Is that what your story is doing? In a way, that's kind of like reality. We all know we are going to die and everything and everybody that we love is going to die. So we have to fill in the time in between in some way, AND/OR concoct some sort of 'afterlife' where everything will be restored in some way? Hmmm. Have you done that for your characters? Given them an 'afterlife' to look forward to? It would be an interesting thing to throw into the mix. Some believe there is an afterlife and some don't?
Only a few characters know there isn't any escape for certain but a lot of characters have a feeling deep down that there isn't any escape as well, they don't explicitly say it out loud but they all know it too. There is technically an "afterlife", when you are infected with the Plague God's "Great Rot", just before your transformation, you will hear a faint song in the distance. Then everything will be happy again, you will see your loved ones again, the world will be peaceful and colorful once more, no more war or hatred. But in reality, you're a bloated rotting flesh-bag that will continue to walk for an eternity, killing any living thing. Your friends and family also live the same fate, they are monsters themselves but nobody is aware of this. A blissful immortal existence with a horrifying reality that nobody will ever realize or know about. It's the closest thing to an actual "afterlife" or a "heaven" in the universe. The other Gods aren't as merciful to the souls reaped when one dies, so I can't really imagine anyone would consider that an afterlife. I think I understand what you're trying to suggest, you're trying to suggest a cathartic happy ending where even when everything has been lost, there is still something positive at the end like an afterlife. Unfortunately, I don't plan for there to be one. Everything dies in the most horrible way possible because that's what would happen in reality if such a thing existed. I know readers will hate this but that's the point of it all, it's supposed to be a grim ending for a grim world. Maybe I'll allow some survivors but I'm not sure how to even make that possible, the entire universe is literally filled up with these demons until there is no more space left right at the end, like a great flood that washes all life away.
I'm getting the impression that your story suffers from a serious issue with balance between setting and characters. You have what I can only describe as a very large setting for a story. It involves large amounts of history and characters and worlds outside our own. And that's not a problem. I personally love world building myself. I do enjoy big worlds to experience and explore. But I will admit that they don't maintain intimacy with the characters very well. At least not consistently throughout the story. You'll still have those moments, sure, but the intimate view of the characters and their condition doesn't encompass the entire story. If you read a book like The Road, it's a very intimate story with the characters, but it takes a minimalist approach with its setting. There's not a lot put into explaining anything that's going on. In fact, it even goes out of its way to avoid explaining what happened. It says a big explosion and left it at that. That lack of explanation allows for the story to zero in on the two principle characters. The same goes for I have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It doesn't explain the main antagonist AM all that well. It simply explained it was a computer built for war and that was it. Didn't bother to explain how it could do much of the things it did do in the story, because that would distract from what the author was trying to say. Any stories that examine the human condition, in fact, do take this minimalist approach with its setting regardless of what their conclusion is. Watch a few episodes of the Twilight Zone to see what I mean. For example, one episode called The Midnight Sun where the earth is moving closer to the sun. Why is it moving closer to the sun? I don't know. The show doesn't explain it, because it doesn't have to. The Twilight Zone very rarely, if ever, bothers to explain much beyond the situation itself. It never gets into any sort of vast history of any of the extraordinary worlds that it explores. It just focuses down on one or two characters. One thing that Steven Spielberg's film War of the Worlds did correctly is not attempt to keep audiences up to date with how governments and the military were responding to the alien threat. It just focused on the characters and that was it. In other words, when writing a story, there's always a trade off when it comes to where you choose to spend your time. If you want to have a big world with a lot of history and politics and stuff, then you have to accept that it may not feel as intimate and thus not as effective in examining the human condition. Each time you thrust your readers into the wider world, you pull them away from the critique of the human experience. And no, you can't around this by simply making a longer story. So if you want to do a bigger world, okay. Great. But if you want something like The Road then a bigger, wider world is not a good idea. In fact, it's a mistake to even consider sequels. You notice that many of those stories I mentioned don't have sequels. That's because the only reason why a sequel would be done, would be in author's attempt to reclaim the interpretation of the story and that's just vain.
