Anvils You Needed To Be Dropped

Unless you mean that change requires action alongside will. I stronky disagree with those themes.

But everyone has their own opinions I guess.

edited 8th Dec '11 9:48:59 AM by FallenLegend

I would like to get back to the 'face-eating monster' anvil. Lovecraft (and some similar writers) are a bit anvil-happy, the message being that human life is utterly pointless and there is no god and no hope. A lot of people resist that particular moral so he/they have to be a bit blunt.

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. :/

The chaos list reminded me of the episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit where they took on PETA. PETA's animal rights activists espoused the view that violence against humans was justified to prevent violence against animals. Then P&T explained that PETA euthanize roughly 2/3 of the animals they 'saved' from shelters, and that one major figure in the organization uses medication that was tested on animals.

If somebody is really gung ho about committing violence in the name of a cause, consider the possibility that they like violence more than they like the cause. There's an anvil for somebody to drop...

edited 8th Dec '11 11:09:14 AM by ActuallyComma

Yet it also makes his work more effective: What is a horror story, especially a tale of the weird, if there is no inherent slant against the "protagonist" in the world of the tale?

Also, yes, there is a very big difference between a simple monster and Azathoth itself. Partly it's a simple matter of scale, but it's also a matter of whether or not the small rules apply.

edited 8th Dec '11 11:11:41 AM by JHM

Well the generally advised way to create a horror story (That Really Sells!™) is to create a believable setting, believable characters, and have them menaced by some almost-believable supernatural thing. I never really bought that: if believability is the most important thing, why isn't all horror fiction about stuff like e.g. home invasions or realistic serial killers? The threat should be more fundamental... Lovecraft et al got that.

EDIT: also re: the previous discussion, what makes eldritch abominations so very eldritch is not the threat of them ripping your face off but the larger implications of their existence.

edited 8th Dec '11 11:19:22 AM by ActuallyComma

Exactly. That's what I was kind of nodding to with "small rules": Our collective conception of physics, for example...

edited 21st Jun '17 5:25:33 AM by ArlaGrey

I like that. I've always felt that while Grey-and-Grey Morality is Truth in Television, and makes for interesting stories, it's sometimes comes at the cost of not allowing heroes to be heroes. While Black-and-White Morality does have it's flaws, I think sometimes you can find things that are one way or the other.

That's probably a weird thing to hear anyone say, but Moral Ambiguity sometimes allows for too much leeway in what is allowed, and too easily justifies I Did What I Had to Do even when it shouldn't be.

Probably the series I'm writing with the most potential to be Anvilicious is my Harry Potter next-gen fic "The Four Witches Series." The main lesson of the story is:

• People are not their parents and should not be blamed for bad things their parents did. Nor should they be worshipped/given special treatment for things their parents did.

It kind of grew up as I wrote the characters (the only thing planned at the beginning was Scorpius Malfoy being Draco's opposite because I HATE Draco and don't want him duplicated in his son), and some of it comes from the fact that I highly dislike it when next-gen fiction makes the kids act like clones of their parents (I don't mind them looking like their parents or having similar magical powers, but it's BORING when they have the same personalities). So it's basically a Take That! to the In the Blood trope.

I also have a Sailor Moon fanfic (starring Senshi with dessert names) that could probably get rather anvilicious at times with its anti-homophobia message (although I tried to balance things out by having one of the good guys be rather homophobic but not to the murderous extent of the villians).

edited 13th Dec '11 5:27:47 PM by Rainbow

I got this from another user on another forum:

You don't have to be the best, you just have to think you are.

That seems rather dubious to me.

I'd say there are professions where it's reasonably true; sports teams, some emergency services, many military posts. When it's better to act at once then it is to debate for ten seconds for the perfect response, confidence is a valuable trait.

Doubly so for things where aggressiveness is also desirable, which brings us back to the military and sports again.

Being "the best" can simply be a matter of mindset, if the person who is actually better than you has become complacent. It's not nearly so common or so easy as fiction would have us believe, but it's not a terribly unrealistic aesop...

@ Arla Grey + Handsome Rob: I agree SO much with both of your points. Grey-and-Grey Morality is great when you do it right and is close to IRL (Though the closest to me is Morality Kitchen Sink), but unfortunately many times it's done too much like Black-and-Black Morality and the heroes are made into assholes, which is why I consider them about equal but almost prefer Black-and-White Morality.

As for what I use? Well, my works tend to subvert Always Chaotic Evil and similar tropes a lot; specifically, I portray normally monstrous species as having a good side in at least some individuals. Even the "demons" in my fantasy universe, who have their morality preprogrammed from birth, have good eggs, and some are major characters. I also like to stay a little idealistic on the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism - sure, the world is full of crap, but the good stuff can make up for it if you focus on it enough, and it is very possible to make it better.

Also, I like to screw with the tropes used by antireligious authors, and portray antireligion as just another form of religious discrimination, but I try to keep that one in check to avoid offending people.

edited 14th Dec '11 5:48:57 PM by Umbramatic

OK, so your works have moral themes. Do you deploy anvils, though? That's what this thread seems to be asking.

Newton's Third Law, applied to philosophy. Every powerful movement or organisation directly forges its own death. This is most apparent in Reclamation, wherein the heroes are all spurred into action by something the Synagogue does; they kill off Iris' race, execute Jace's childhood friend/first love/etc, made Blackheart into. . . Well, what he is, and forced Keira's species into a state of existence that makes slavery look comfortable.

Good point; now that I think about it, I tend to avoid actually stating the moral unless it's a parody. However, I do plan on dropping anvils for at least some of those in future stories, and the themes are so blatantly obvious in some I've already written I may as well have dropped the anvils.

My fanwork of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic is going to deconstruct the usage of The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love as a fuel source. Friendship and love are amazing things though they can be explained, it is simply immoral to use them to fight evil.

edited 17th Dec '11 4:04:07 AM by PinkHeartChainsaw

How is it immoral to use the power of love and friendship to fight evil?

Well it isn't exactly immoral it's just not a good a plan as expected. You see turning something as personal as friendship and love into weapons aren't a good idea. Love can be lost and Friendships can be strained. Whenever your fucking up because you can't get along then finger pointing is going to be involved. Thankfully I will still have an uplifting moral that friendship can still be maintained in the darkest of times, and that it is ok to be mad at your friends from time to time.

I think the word you were looking for is 'risky' then.