Monday 17 February 2014

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.