Daniel Greene
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Theme and setting
🕑 Added 2019-01-07 23:56:57 +0000 UTCSo I have to find a careful line with what I reveal here. I do not want to show my compete hand and have my end product to be something that everyone can see coming due to how much of a "sneak peek" I have let out.
That being said I want to bring you an insight into certain elements I have decided to assist in the formation of some wider theme/setting of what is being written.
In my experience, the idea of blind loyalty to a figure is usually assigned to a stories "evil" elements. This is due to obvious reflections to our own history. Fanaticism to authoritarian figures has resulted in some of humanities darkest times.
Simultaneously, there is usually some form of ego, or message of "greater than the others" given to those who serve these authoritarian figures. See the crusaders who were told they were serving god, or the Nazis who falsely thought they were 'the superior people'.
Obviously I am not bringing anything new here in terms of story telling elements in the fantasy genre. Nazi/crusader parallels can be seen for more evil fantasy armies than not.
That is not the parallel I want to explore. I want to look into an idea that has the religious justification of the crusades, with the ego, and belief of "greater than others", of the Nazis. The idea of manifest destiny.
Back when the America's were first being explored, lands were stolen and hundreds of thousands slaughtered due to the idea of "It is our right to do so, and we are better than these indigenous people."
Obviously I am not going to be so direct. There will not be recreations of historical events like those shown in "The Poppy War". Instead, the motivations that drove those real people to believe the atrocities they were committing were right will be similar to the driving force of our protagonists.
Yes, the protagonists.
I want the reader to be set in the middle of the type of culture that promotes and cultivates this type of evil action. Following characters who are either fanatically loyal, or expressing doubt to in imperial will.
Clearly this will not be binary. Binary is not human. People's loyalties fluctuate and evolve no matter how deeply engrained into a society they are. It would also be lazy and predictable to have a characters loyalty to the empire match their morality. I do not want everyone who serves the empire gladly to just be some evil stooge, and everyone who rebels to be the ultimate good.
Rebellion also breeds fanaticism to a dangerous degree.
I know this is a sudden stop to exploring those ideas, but I do not want to say more. Just be assured these elements will not be so obvious as I am making them sound here, and this idea is still evolving.
Best
Daniel
