A World Slightly off its Axis

I'd like to take this entry to get a bit into my influences and ideas behind the world of October 20. It is a world that's very much like our own, but with a few, very key differences. And that's before you factor in the horrible monster our heros have to contend with.

In alot of ways, it is an idealized world, seen through the eyes of yours truly. And by that, I don't mean utopia in any shape of the concept. It is still a dirty, brutal world, full of just as much pain, regret and bad decisions as the real one, but it is also a world where implausible things become feasible, not in the way that it's intended to break the reader's immersion, but to suggest a reality that is almost, but not quite mundane. Where impossible isn't neccesarily a definite.

Perhaps the most significant example, and the thing I'm the most conscious of, is the role and position of women in the Oct20-verse. Now, I am not a feminist, but I frequently find myself disturbed with the way society treats women. The amount of uneccesary  hurdles they have to contend with, and the stories you hear genuinely unsettles me. I realized that if I was to write a completely realistic universe, the emphasis of my story would be different than the one I want it to be. It would be alot more about the struggles Catherine had to cope with as a result of her gender, rather than as a result of the curse laid upon her and Rai. So, to combat this, I found inspiration in an unlikely source:

Paul Verhooven's Starship Troopers.

And by that I don't mean the militaristic, and all-encompassing fascist societal norms running through it. I mean the pleasant, almost naive equality between men and women in that movie. I wanted my universe to take its cues from that. There are still feminine and masculine values, there are still natural differences between the sexes. But I removed alot of the hurdles I mentioned earlier. It is, boiled down to its essentials, a world that is slightly kinder to women.

Something that is also very important in the world buidling, and something I fear I've not been totally clear on so far, is that to the ones not affected by Cat and Rai's curse, there is no such things as monsters. If they were ever to talk to someone uninitiated about it, they would get exactly the same look you'd get if you did the same. The notion is preposterous. Which, again is vital. It creates the sense of isolation that weighs on them. They can exist in human society, but for the last ten years, they have not really been a part of it. Every aquaintance is a fleeting one, every relationship superficial, out of fear of hurting others. It tears at the human  psyche, and as the story progresses, may drive them to do something horrific, from which there is no return.

Or, you know, everything could be fine.

Today's fanart is by Ethan Kocak, the very talented writer and artist of The Black Mudpuppy.

Character Spotlight: Raimundo Andres Goicochea

Character Spotlight: Raimundo Andres Goicochea

In the second of the character spotlights, I take a look at the second half of our dynamic duo, the Argentine freerunner Rai.   

In the very beginning, Rai was a very different character. A surly, stoic Brazilian, who I quickly realised was an unsympathetic bore, who brought nothing really interesting to the story. I've mentioned before that this was initially supposed to be Catherine's story, (in alot of ways, it still is) and the other characters were either fairly incidental, dead, or like Rai, charisma vacuums.  I started over, and didn't keep much more than the name. I moved his country of origin across the border to Argentina, I made his character model leaner, gave him a kinder face, and more tired eyes, in an effort to maybe tell parts of his story through just his appearance. I took inspiration from an Italian football player, Claudio Marchisio when giving him his look. He has a strange combination of fatigue and intensity in his eyes, which I really felt would be a good base line for Rai's look. 

The backstory his face fails to tell, was initially told in flashback. If you look at the first few pages, you'll see it plainly laid out where he's from, what he used to do, and where it all went wrong. This method worked, to a point, but as more of his past came up, I really wanted to now hint at it, rather than come out and say it. When his past was revisited by Ansgar and his revelation about Rai's crime, I tried this technique. You learn that Rai has a foster brother, whose family took him in the periods when, as Rai said, "my mother couldn't take care of me." The reason for this, I left to the reader. I found it a much more impactful way of giving the character his past. 

As for his present, there are a few things to note about Rai. He's more emotional than Catherine, for instance. She's, to a certain extent, emotinally cauterized, in that while she does allow herself to feel, and feels as strongly as Rai, she is more in control. Rai will often let himself be ruled by emotion. Without actually giving him a diagnosis, he experiences higher highs, and lower lows, and is less equipped to effectively deal with them. 

In that respect, given the situation they find themselves in, you can justify calling him the weaker of the two. His saving grace is his physicality. I wanted him to be the physically superior of the two, and ended up giving him a skill that Catherine lacks, namely his freerunning. When looking at the story way back, I found that Catherine was by far the central character, and I do concider her the main protagonist. But I wanted Rai to have his moments in the limelight as well, and the second chapter, as it now develops, is largely about him. The reason for this, I won't get into, since that would be spoiling it, but he may find himself severely isolated  

Today's fan art is by the creator of The Black Mudpuppy, Ethan Kocak.