Anvils You Needed To Be Dropped

Believe it or not, people are capable of being anarchists without the influence of teenagerhood.

I do!

But anyway, ignoring the potentially hilarious political debate that could easily ensue here, I'll temporarily re-rail the conversation.

Whether I intend to or not, weird little philosophical things leak into my work, bit by bit, some of them not even things that I espouse so much as think work within the story. For example:

• Absolutes are terrifying. Truth, love, belief, wisdom, compassion: Taken to a certain degree, all of these things become utterly repugnant.
• Most things are relative or subjective. What you consider to be negative is not what another person considers to be negative, and taking either as granted can be extremely dangerous.
• The supernatural is called that because it is that. The normal rules do not apply; therefore, treating it with normal logic will screw you over. Royally.
  • Which is not to say that trying to understand the world better is a bad thing. Science is a wonderful thing. Just don't expect it to save you from the things outside the firelight.
• People can do exceptionally vile things for completely altruistic reasons, and beneficial things for completely reprehensible ones. So it goes.
• You can tell just as much about yourself through lies or fiction as you can when speaking with complete honesty, if not more. The way someone lies is critical.

edited 2nd Dec '11 12:17:21 PM by JHM

I have somewhat of an anvil:

Negative punishment does not work, and causes more trauma than solves.

I think the execution makes it a bit of a Space Whale Aesop, but ah well.

Well, I guess you'll be killing my friend's dad then (formerly a SWAT medic, now a... patrol cop, I think?) and my parents (small business owners).

Let's see...

• War is horribly vicious, but furthermore the ultimate expression of every known facet of humanity, from how it can bring a society together to how it can tear one to shreds.
• People are not inherently evil, but they are inherently selfish.
• Morality is relative.
• Idealism is admirable but incredibly dangerous for people in power to try and deal with.
• Science and technology have no moral value, but are dangerous and to be distrusted anyway due to the aforementioned human selfishness. Guns don't kill people, selfish pricks with guns kill people.
• Violent revolution is a horrifically bad idea, but is sometimes inevitable, despite almost always ending very poorly.

Actually, it's more of a they're class enemies and inherently untrustworthy than a Kill Em All.

When I wrote businessowners, I wasn't really thinking of those that own a bar or a Mom'n'Pop store... More to CEO, major shareholders and those who run large firms. Y'know, those actually rich, not just well off.

edited 2nd Dec '11 4:16:44 PM by SavageHeathen

Being an anarchist is like believing in the tooth fairy. It only works as long as your parents give you money.

More seriously I have immense respect for the ability of hierarchical systems to destroy less-hierarchical ones since that's pretty much the history of human conflict summarized.

edited 2nd Dec '11 4:48:25 PM by Night

Dammit, that's just too long to quote properly as a forum sig...

I will second USAF in saying I wish I could sig that line, Night.

Anyhow, I'd have to say for my works, "Balance in all beliefs" because all the extremist characters meet really terrible ends.

I think if you set out to write a story as a tool to propagate a message or philosophy, you run a major risk of author tract. But if you write a story to express a powerful and sincere moral feeling you have, the anvil tends to drop a lot more naturally.

The main points I'm trying to express in what I've been doing lately are:

• The universe is at once beautifully mechanical and brutality capricious
• Compassion, joy and spiritual peace are a result of successfully dealing with this fact, not just trying to escape it

They're useful morals and at present rather buried beneath stories about 'fate' and everything working out if you try hard/obey the prevailing dogmatic dictates.

Although I have doubts about my execution. Sure, cosmic horror is a fairly acceptable metaphor, but I'm not sure 'the universe is cruel BECAUSE IT'S FULL OF FACE-EATING MONSTERS' is quite the message I want to communicate.

I thought the point of the FACE-EATING MONSTERS was more "the universe is so cruel and mysterious, how do you know there aren't face-eating monsters in it?"

There actually are creatures in the world that will gladly eat your face. How does that make you feel? Cosmically horrified?

Not really, because if ever any showed up in my vicinity I could kill them with a gun. There's a difference between 'generically hostile nonhuman' and 'terrifyingly powerful Eldritch Abomination'.

Thank you for pointing that out - as I recently discussed on the Random Questions thread, a lot of people have trouble with the difference.

This anvil is the one I would like to drop.

edited 3rd Dec '11 8:36:00 PM by GAP

In my first two works about the military-state Sentria...

War Is Hell. Although Sentria runs on the military and takes the greatest pride in its troops, war is not for glory or praise; it's sad, and it only ruins lives on both sides of the conflict.

Family is more important than anything. Helping your kin in a time of need is essential.

A person is a person, no matter how or where they were born. (As an answer to Cloning Blues, but I'm sure it would apply elsewhere).

No matter how bad a situation looks, never give up.

In my most recent work...

Faith can be a powerful thing. Organized religion isn't bad.

Although there are always going to be corrupt churches, people are human. They have flaws and virtues.

Redemption is possible without death.

While I would like to call bull on the first statement—look up Buenaventura Durruti, if you will—but the second, however horribly depressing, is pretty much a given.

It's more or less accepted, even in anarchist circles, that whatever military you have has to be run on strictly hierarchical principles. Otherwise it just pretty much doesn't work.

Here's some of my Anvils/Aesops/whatevers (from multiple different series, so it's not like they're all jammed into one novel):

• Autism is not the terrible thing the media makes it out to be. Autistic people can be (and are) intelligent, productive members of society. Autism is just a human variation, like hair color or skin tone.
• Just because you don't think something is normal, that doesn't mean it needs to be gotten rid of.
• If you treat an entire group of people badly, some of them will strike back violently, the ones who do that are not necessarily bad people.
• Those with the ability to fight back have the responsibility to fight back.
• Eugenics is bad. Doesn't matter what you're trying to remove from the gene pool. It's bad.

• What is normal is relative, what is normal to you may not be normal to another person.

• A family is much like a chair, if one leg is taken from the chair then the whole chair falls.

• Life is indeed hard but it is not bad.

• Is it true the real world is filled terrible things but it is also filled with wonderful things as well. Also, people are not as bad as you might think.

• Your parents will always be your parents no matter how old you get. While that can be annoying, at least you will never be by yourself.

Except if they die or disown you.

They'll still be your parents, you probably just want be talking to them anymore.

Which completely defeats the purpose of

Only if you have to be really difficult and take the word 'never' absolutely literally

I think it's an important note to make. Especially when you take note of the many dysfunctional families on this site.

Reading Heathen's post, I drew a conclusion: we seem to have very different ideas of what leads to the best outcome.

My list of popular and unpopular aesops: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13221722320A23582300&page=1#6

His list of popular and unpopular aesops: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13221722320A23582300&page=3#68

It's like Order Versus Chaos personified. Except instead of between Badass Anthropomorphic Personifications with Physical God-esque powers, it's... a pair of nerds on the internet. Somewhat less epic. :/

edited 8th Dec '11 8:52:51 AM by Eventua