What is your story about, thematically?

@Freezair,

Get out of my head!

The author may have intended for certain themes and messages, and the author's word definitely holds more weight to what the meaning of their own work does than anyone else, but an author's work is often influenced by their own biases, beliefs, etc more than they often intend to be, or are even aware of.

I don't think my stories have particularly focused themes. I certainly don't start stories with themes in mind. Boy Aurus started because I wanted a perpetually perky and naive immortal boy. Magical Los Angeles started when I wanted to write a bunch of laws governing the supernatural and the star was gonna be FBI agents.

I guess Boy Aurus' theme is about dealing with (or attempting not to deal with) change and feeling insignificant because Aurus always treats things the exact same way, but his friends always change on account of not being immortal (he pretty much fits the insanity definition of "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result").

Magical Los Angeles, at some point I decided the themes are about just trying to get along, but it's a bit vague how well that comes across. And maybe that humans are about the same anyway, since everyone is doing completely mundane things despite the presence of all the magical things who have no masquerade.

@Flyboy: Naaah, it's comfortable in here. But you should sweep out that one corner more.

If you're referring to the part that's supposed to do math, we don't like to talk about it much. It's... shunned.

~shudder~

Mine is basically about ideas, and how they're dangerous. To elaborate, Beethoven Was an Alien Spy is a major part of the back story, and Carl Sagan becomes the target of what looks like a Cargo Cult. (Of taller-than-human blue cat-aliens. Did I mention the Metafiction?)

edited 24th Feb '12 10:03:27 AM by Yej

Pillar of Heaven has several different themes, some of which directly influence the plot, and others that directly influence the mythos.

A)Despite every attempt we make to prevent this, all civilizations follow the Course of Empire. No society is immortal, and the fall of empires is necessary for humanity to grow. This Has Happened Before, And Will Happen Again, if you will. Humanity's exploration of the galaxy has made them realize that it has a lot of history, and a lot of alien races have lived and died there. B)Humanity is insignificant, and without any kind of faith, the universe bears no meaning. Humanity, then, can only "create" meaning through the exertion of strength over others and the Universe. But no matter how hard we try, the Universe cannot bend to our will no matter how hard we try to brutalize it, and nothing we do can significantly alter the Universe.

Regret, Atonement, Existentialism

The fact that some angst doesn't pass in a weekend.

edited 25th Feb '12 2:46:54 PM by Vyctorian

It turns out 'Promises' isn't about teen lovers getting back together in their 40's, that's just the plot.

Twenty years ago a friend pointed out a 'hero' is someone who changes due to events - Sam Gamgee is the real Hero of Lot R

In 'Promises' Gabriel is able to learn that friendship is both ways; he doesn't have to look after his friends all the time, and he can allow them to help him.

Lucy, the love interest, has a minor theme in that she learns that she is strong enough to look after herself, and she doesn't need to enter bad relationships just for the sake of a relationship.

I didn't know this when I started writing, and they have come through as I write. Just writing this post has made me realise that the two themes are complimentary. At one point he almost destroys the relationship when he spots the mutual 'Knight in Shining Armour' syndrome, and is determined to do the right thing for her.

Determination, along with it's potential downsides. ("If focus too much on getting something, you may not realize when it's no longer worth the effort.") All the characters show signs of this, and some take it further than others.

...and...

"Does free will really exist? And if not, where does responsibility fit in?" Specifically, with regards to A.I. and Cloning Blues.

edited 25th Feb '12 5:59:01 PM by RTaco

Friendship, and be against all odds.

Comng of age and grief majorly

I've come to the conclusion that, in simplest terms, my two stories actually play off one another as nice opposites:

Innocence Lost is about a world where hope has died, when the societies present rightly could have still been saved—whereas, Midas is about a world where hope still burns, even though the remaining societies are in fact quite a bit beyond hope of salvation.

edited 29th Feb '12 4:14:10 PM by Flyboy

Sanity, the interplay between people's relationships and their impressions of each others' behaviour, truisms played out in practice.

Wether or not they fit in the definition of themes, the messages that my stories carry tend to pretty dark and cynical. Or rather, they have a dark "feel" or tone to them. A hopeful hero armed with the power of friendship won't be defeating any bad guy in there, in fact the only reason the big bad won't win is because he doesn't really have a goal to achieve, he's just entertaining himself because that the only thing that makes sense since everything is meaningless. I guess some could see a pro-feminist message in having a female supreme deity, but even that isn't all puppies and rainbows, she's aloof, uncaring, lazy and kind of a jerkass, which I think is also another explored theme : what kind of person would an omnipotent who pre-dates existence be ? All of "creation" is just a bunch of lights that popped out of nowhere someday, why should she care ?

At this point, it's largely about the need to avoid Black-and-White Insanity.

Theme was the first thing I tried to come up with. It gives me a foundation.

My current story has the theme of Growing up/Moving on to the next stage in your life. But it also deals with remembering and embracing the past.

Apparently it's now about the ineffectiveness of the superhero as an instrument for change. The defining moment of the story kinda came out of left field just now: a "Reason You Suck" Speech from one of the characters who's essentially treated as cannon fodder in the canon to one of the main characters.

It basically boils down to "This is a war, and you either fight like it's a war or you get nothing done and people keep dying."

The consequences of apathy and ignorance in a world where no man or nation is an isolated island anymore is a big one. Partially inspired by seeing hordes of over-privileged first world internet tuff-gai morons who assume that if they ram their heads up their ass and merely yell "GRRRR ALL POLITICIANS AND EVERYONE WHO ARGUES ABOUT POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY ARE ALL THE SAME AND OF EQUAL MORAL EQUIVALENCE" to make themselves seem "above the crowd" and "learned".

The lasting effects that jingoism, ideological intransigence, and sectarianism have on the both the larger scale of whole worlds and the various dissenting groups that inhabit them. A large part inspired by William Blum's Killing Hope and the questionable things the American government did in order to fight the "Red Menace" after the second World War.

Mythic cycles of violence reincarnate in the (in-book) modern era. Yeah, the whole "WAR... WAR NEVER CHANGES" line is older than that mould-encrusted abomination sitting in your fridge but I'm hoping to explore this idea as something beyond a merely catchy slogan. This was something inspired a large part by Warhammer 40000: in spite of its futuristic sci-fi setting, a lot of the warfare that goes on is highly reminiscent of the violence of ages long since past and it's something I'd like to explore further on in a more thematic or philosophical way within my works. Ideas such as warfare as a ritual of transformation and transcendence in and of itself (an idea I picked up from extreme metal) and how ancient archetypes and tropes of war reappear within even the most high tech of battlegrounds and what this implies about the people fighting it.

Personal ideological stances and beliefs versus the real world. Basically everything we hold dear to ourselves as large parts of or socio-philosophical identity and whether or not what they're built on is meant to last or merely just emotional comfort meant to keep us unaware and ignorant of the inner workings of the larger systems we are all a part of. Inspired a large part by watching facebook arguments, oddly enough.

Elitism. Probably just because I'm a snobby elitist asshole myself (mostly in a musical sense), but the book will focus on how a lot of cultures and ideologies undergo a sort of long-term decay and lose their original "meaning" or "spirit" as a growing crowd of morons and higher powers looking to exploit their moronic-ness essentially create a self-replicating cycle of dumbing down a greater idea for an increasingly lower common denominator.

Humanism and humanitarianism, oddly enough in spite of the above. Mostly linked to the first, second, and third in the sense that it's portrayed mostly through the deep wounds that world (or "planetary") powers leave on the not-so-fortunate and how they can be dealt with through ironically enough, sometimes the same strange tactics that caused them in the first place.

Heavy metal. Lots and lots of metal. Mostly in the form of a lot of ships, weapons, characters, planets, locations and so on being very blatant underground metal references.

I have to say that I approve of this.

I've begun adding themes for my individual main character arcs, in addition to the work as a whole, though they tend to be pretty similar.

Some recurring themes in most of my stories are:

• Social rejection.
• Responsibility and guilt.
• Moral dilemmas.
• Philosophical questions such as "Is there a God?" or "Does free will exist?"

One of my project's main themes is Discovery and adventure, another of my project's main themes is revenge, and my most recently announced project has themes of Revolution and it's hardships.

I mostly go for...

• Alienation and consequences it leads to
• Total lack of 'good and evil' in contrast with characters that believe themselves to be 'good'
• Degeneration of morals and ethics, or total absence of them to begin with
• Childhood trauma
• Self-destruction brought by one's firm hold to an ideal or sense of duty
• Love, and a character's failure to identify it, or to properly perceive it (for example, a woman who cannot understand the feelings she has for her bodyguard/caretaker/adviser who's at least 20 years older than her. This is in the sense that she does not know in what way she loves him; as a lover, a brother, a father, etc.)
• Hatred as a strong motivation that can lead one to achieve great things and commit the worst of atrocities

All these in a fantasy setting with people throwing fireballs at each other every five minutes.

edited 16th Apr '12 8:05:36 AM by arreimil

I have so many stories cooking up in my head, many of them simply pulpy action stories or melodramas or series of interactions between a cast of characters with many different kinds of personalities and no specific themes.

However, in some of them I have started to spot some themes.

• Bitterness and unwillingness to forgive
• Betrayal
• Power
• Fall from grace
• Redemption
• Friendship
• Love

edited 19th Apr '12 4:06:55 PM by NathanielTheSeeker

taking a level in badass. More specifically, my stories are about growth, redemption, and getting off one's bum and doing something about the things they don't like.