- Weakness and need
- The main character of my story is blinded by his overt assertion that saving ‘some’ is better than a lengthy process to save all. Sort a utilitarian, basic mindset towards altering the setting of dystopian authority. He has never known equity and stability and therefore is ignorant to the importance of welfare, choosing rather to blow it all up and hope for the best because he feels a revolution must immediately happen. Rather, he needs to be patient and learn the reflexive danger of choosing to destroy rather than rehabilitate. He must encounter situations that force him to slow down, reconsider, and approach his goal to liberate his homeland with a bit more nuance and care. WEAKNESS = disenfranchised ignorance NEED = tangible experience with social welfare
- Desire
- He desires a free, safer, and more harmonious environment for himself and others. Despite his initial assertion that destruction of the regime is better than persecution by them he does genuinely desire a world free from them. Though, the methodology shall change as the story goes on.
- Opponent
- The main opponent is the figurehead of the regime. He is all encompassing, representing the overwhelming might and control of the regime itself. He serves as the face of the machine and is a being of pure malice; however, he is accepted by some due to ignorance of other opportunity or fearful acceptance. His goal too is to promote the welfare of the capital but at a malicious cost towards decency, welfare, and social harmony. He is articulate, handsome, intelligent but brutally vindictive, using the legitimacy of the ‘law’ as a reason to punish.
- Plan
- The plan initially takes form as a ‘blow it all’ type deal. The idea being that oppression is worse than failing at retaliation or a half-way revolution. However, the theme isn’t one of malice begets malicious destruction but rather malice begets rehabilitative force.
- Battle
- The final battle becomes less about bloodshed then and more about altering the perception of masses, enabling the majority of citizens to revolt through their actions and thoughts. There is violence, death, and bloodshed; however, the leader of the regime is truly defeated not in death but by the protagonist filming his mock ‘execution’, forcing the antagonist (regime leader) to violently spew his warped opinions and truths when he believes he is on death’s doorbed. Defeating the villain isn’t about defeating the regime leader, but rather about challenging the idea of the regime itself, relegating its social pressure to an archaic idea in the minds of the oppressed. That enables the self-revelation.
- Self-revelation
- The self-revelation being that further violence is a vehicle for change not an answer. The protagonist must fight the regime, but in order to defeat the regime the authority as a concept must be challenged and defeated. If not, another leader rises, another regime forms, and the empire continues with a new name, face, and policy. Rather, the protagonist’s revelation becomes focused on restorative practice of inequitable systems by empowering the masses rather than elimination of violence and oppression by overwhelming violence.
- New equilibrium
- The regime leader is defeated, but more importantly so is the vice grip of the regime, allowing a new form of social institution to take form. One of greater equity and welfare. This morally upright and more ‘wonderful’ society is not the result of cutting off the head but rather a result of destroying the body of the regime’s power by exposing the ill-intent at its head. Here we see the symbolic dynamic of forcing the leader to admit his malice upon defeat rather than a pure execution of the leader beginning a new regime.
4 Passages on “Weakness and Need” (My protagonist is actually female ^^^ I used the wrong pronouns up above)
“Maggie drove her knuckles against the large bolts jutting from sheet metal on her bedroom wall. Her fingers pressed into the heads until they turned white, wincing she finally released the pressure, allowing blood to flow back.
‘It’s no better than punching rock, hun. One of these days you’re gonna push it to far and really hurt yourself.” whispered Harriet.
Maggie turned to face her mother. Examining the distraught bunching in her face as Maggie shook her fingers.
‘I’ll be fine ma- it just pisses me off Charles can keep lowering rations while smugly telling each sector the Colony is thriving.’
‘Besides…’ she smirked, ‘When was the last time you saw a real, live rock?’
Harriet looked puzzled, inquisitively furrowing her brow as she let herself become deeply lost in thoughts of the past. Thoughts of her childhood, before Maggie’s birth and before the Colony’s inception. Thoughts of Earth and all its bounty: real rocks, smoggy sky, the punishing rays of sun beaming through a dissipating atmosphere.
‘Not since before they announced the Colony Expedition programs. That was the last time I’d seen a real l-i-v-e rock.’ offered Harriet.
‘Exactly ma. So it ain’t like punching rocks.’ responded Maggie, ‘It’s like punching hell. It hurts a helluva-lot more.’
Harriet focused a once somber expression into a serious mask. Her eyes locked onto Maggie’s plum colored knuckles.
‘You’re alive ain’t ya?’
‘I ain’t dead but I don’t call this a living.’ chortled Maggie.
She sat up and squeezed past her mother’s chair, brushing past her into the shallow hallway illuminated in a frail synthetic glow of LEDs. She strode into the kitchen, grabbing her ID and ration cards before retracing her short steps back to Harriet’s perch.
‘I’m off ma.’
‘Where’d you be going at this hour?’ croaked Harriet.
‘To make a fucking living.’
‘FOR THE COLONY!’ she snidely added, mocking Charles’s go-to bit during times of distress on the rig.
Harriet sighed, leveling her view off to the door before spouting the same old safety speech she always would before Maggie crept out of their pod for her communal labor shifts. After all, maintaining the coolant lines was dangerous work. Just last quarter five maintenance alone lost their lives to leaks in unkept hosing units. Maggie nodded, letting the words wash over her before indulging her mother once more with a soft ‘I will ma.’
Though, Maggie had no intention of going in for extra maintenance today. She’d decided on alternative plans for the evening. She’d been building pressure in the eco-sanitation district’s piping, waiting for the right moment to strike the bulging, bruised metal. The plan was simple: let it burst. She was tired of nursing decayed piping, telling friends and family the Colony was in ‘perfect shape!’. Instead she was gonna let it blow.
‘I’ll show them’ Maggie muttered under her breath as she secured the pod’s door, entering the security panel’s lock key.
‘I’ll show them what type of beautiful existence we’re really all living in.’
4 Passages on “Battle” (I don’t think I’m gonna use this but this is a simulation of what I want to do at the crux of the battle.)
Charles’s face contorted as it reddened. His cheeks burned hot, matching the blood stain sheeting his lapel. Maggie had never seen so much malice before. She hated Charles. Hated his smug demeanor, his lies and veneer of empathy. Yet when she met his predative gaze all she felt was fear, a primal fear of an unexplainable but known threat. She felt like a mouse staring at a house-cat coiled back ready to eviscerate its prey.
‘It never had to come to this, Maggie.’ spouted Charles, spit spewing from his mouth.
Constantine stood up, grimacing in pain, ‘Maggie! Don’t listen to him.’
Charles handgun blurred the room again as he connected the but of the gun with Constantine’s already bloody face, knocking him to the ground once more.
‘See that’s the difference between me and you.’ said Charles.
‘You treasonous scum think of ruling powers as a binary as black and white- good and bad. I see further than that. I see a new planet, the continuation of our species, the protection of this ark designed to field us there. I don’t choose to hate. Rather, I make decisions to benefit of us all.’
He continued his patronizing tirade, ‘No, no, no. Not the good decisions but the necessary ones.’
Charles’s forehead steamed as he drew deep, pained breaths, clutching the grip of his firearm like he meant to crush it like a ball of aluminum foil.
‘You really think you’re aiding our existence, Charles?’ spoke Maggie. ‘What good is our persistence if we lose who we are? If we kill and kill until the last humans left are nothing but corpse’s of violence?’
Charles raised the gun now pointing it at Constantine’s crumpled body. He turned and smiled at Maggie as she pled with him to stop.
BANG! The gun’s combustion filled the room with thundering echoes mixed with the harmonies of a single bouncing copper shell like a piercing hi-hat to the pound of a bass.
‘For survival.’ he grinned.