History Literature / TheTenetsOfFutilism

* OneHundredPercentAdorationRating: Sasha and Joe's minions all adore them to the point of obeying their more 'questionable' orders virtually without question.

* TheOmniscient: Both Crescis and Decrescis.

* PromotedToParent: [[spoiler: Sasha and Joe begin taking care of Austin and Caroline upon their parents' deaths.]]

* AfterActionHealingDrama: The scene where Joe saves [[spoiler: Sasha from bleeding out through the use of a cigarette lighter after he stops his parents from killing her.]]

* AttackDrone: [[spoiler: The book ends with the protagonists being killed by one.]]
* AwesomeMcCoolName: Sasha's eventual title of "Harbinger".
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Sasha's words to Joe after he [[spoiler: saves her from being tortured by his parents.]]

* FormerTeenRebel: Sasha. She started acting out around the time her father. Once, she was sent to juvie for stabbing another girl. The expertience "straightened her out" to the point of making her anxious, unsocial, and prone to hysteria. It also gave Sasha a deep-rooted fear of the authorities.

* NotSoDifferent: One of the novel's major themes is how generations mirror each other. By the end, Sasha and Joe share quite a few similarities with Gregory and Annabel. Both couples lead cults, order their followers to preform dangerous tasks, and abuse Austin and Caroline in some sort of way. In both cases, a woman lures a man to adopt a belief system out of love. Sasha her ends up with a man related to the woman her father truly loved.

* MarriageBeforeRomance: Sasha and Joe get married only to appease the Futilists they seek shelter with. Their initial plan is to get divorced after leaving. However, Sasha and Joe eventually decide there would be no point in doing so if they're going to stick together anyways. Hints of romantic feelings between them are shown prior to their marriage, but they're minor. The deuteragonists only latch onto each other after Sasha discovers Joe is related to the woman her father loved. They start getting especially close after [[spoiler: Joe saves Sasha from his parents]].
* NotSoDifferent: One of the novel's major themes is how generations mirror each other. By the end, Sasha and Joe share quite a few similarities with Gregory and Annabel. Both couples lead cults, order their followers to preform dangerous tasks, and abuse Austin and Caroline in some sort of way. In both cases, a woman lures a man to adopt a belief system out of love. Sasha her ends up with a man related to the woman her father truly loved.

* MarriageBeforeRomance: Sasha and Joe get married only to appease the Futilists they seek shelter with. Their initial plan is to get divorced after leaving. However, Sasha and Joe eventually decide there would be no point in doing so if they're going to stick together anyways. Hints of romantic feelings between them are shown prior to their marriage, but they're minor. The deuteragonists only latch onto each other after Sasha discovers Joe is related to the woman her father loved. They start getting especially close after [spoiler: Joe saves Sasha from his parents]].

* AbusiveParents: Annabel and Gregory. At first, it doesn't appear too horrifying. Their cult teachings instill the idea that ambition usually leads to disappointment, so it's best not to dream of everything better. They emphasize contentment over the pursuit of a greater happiness. This translates into their children to spend their days working fields for no reason other than to get them used to hard work and stop them from getting too optimistic. Later, however, Annabel and Gregory go as far as [[spoiler: forcing Austin and Caroline to watch them torture Sasha as a sort of lesson.]] Despite everything, they still seem to legitimately love their children to a certain extent.

-->Colorado. The land of popped ears and chilly air and breath like white smoke. We were sitting at a red table outside a [=McDonald's=], eating cheap burgers and nuggets. It was cold out. Jackets were necessary. But the view, that which the locals dining inside forsook, was completely worth it. All around us were mountains capped with snow and gray stone. Elk stared at us from the edges of their aspen groves, and endless flocks of birds flew overhead. The wind whistled. There were fields of frost-tipped grass. Little pink flowers that looked almost like dots. In the distance, I could see a lake halfway covered in ice.
--> We're here to see the sights.

->"I want to tell you a happy story. I want to tell you about a girl whose biggest concern is the quality of her sex life. I want to tell you that all the makeup I’m wearing, my new black dress, the paint on my fingernails, they’re all for fun. For a guy I like who likes me, too. I want to tell you the balloons, the streamers, they’re all for a birthday party. Too bad those would be lies."

''The Tenets of Futilism'' is a 2014 literary novel. A day after the Mayan apocalypse scare, Sasha Collins lands a job as a senator's secretary. It’s cut short when she and a night cleaner named Joe find the senator's body hanging above his desk. Curious as to why he killed himself, Sasha decides to take the senator's journal. It leads her to uncovering a government conspiracy bent on dumbing down the American citizenry. Fearing retaliation for knowing too much, Sasha and Joe flee to the latter's cultist family for safety. That arrangement inevitably goes awry.

* OneHundredPercentAdorationRating: Sasha and Joe’s minions all adore them to the point of obeying their more 'questionable' orders virtually without question.
* AbandonedHospital: [[spoiler: After taking Sasha, Annabel and Gregory choose one as the venue for their 'game'. There’re vines creeping up the walls, an overgrown courtyard, gang signs, and abandoned equipment, including the operating table Sasha is strapped down to. When Joe arrives, he is told has an hour to find Sasha, their followers will be attempting to stop him, and he will be watched through cameras mounted on RC cars. Sasha is also tortured with scalpels, her screams echoing across the building through speakers.]]

** It's a pretty safe bet that Sasha’s mother was one, too, given the contents of the letter she wrote to her daughter. She's not shy about admitting she hates Sasha.

* AcheyScars: Sasha never quite recovers from [[spoiler: having her arms and stomach cut up by Joe’s parents]]. Even after the wounds close and scar, she still occasionally feels them sting.
* AcousticLicense: Sasha and Joe seem perfectly able to have conversations in crowded areas without speaking loudly or whispering into each other’s ears.

* AwesomeMcCoolName: Sasha’s eventual title of "Harbinger".
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Sasha’s words to Joe after he [[spoiler: saves her from being tortured by his parents.]]
-->[[spoiler:"You came for me," I said, the words coming out stunted and weak, but true. "I can’t tell you how thankful I am. You came for me even though I’m just a boring, lonely girl you met under a corpse."\\
"You’re more than that."\\

* BecauseISaidSo: Sasha’s attitude late in the novel. She starts believing that anything she does is justified on account of her being Crescis' "Harbinger". Her followers tend to agree. Joe doesn’t always seem convinced, but he loves her too much to speak out against Sasha or try to pull her out of her delusions.
* BilingualBonus: The names of Crescis and Decrescis were ripped from the Latin text "Carmina Burana". In the context of the poem, they mean "increasing" and "decreasing"’.

* BloodSpatteredInnocents: While it might not involve them being literally splattered with blood, Austin and Caroline don't get off easy. Firstly, they [[spoiler: are forced to watch their parents horrifically torture Sasha in a run-down asylum.]] Secondly, they [[spoiler: see Sasha shoot their mother. Their father kills himself shortly afterwards by slashing his own throat, thinking life without his wife would be pointless.]] Thirdly, they [[spoiler: look on as Sasha orders her bodyguards to kill Vanessa.]] Such experiences don’t exactly make for happy children.
* BookEnds: Both the (majority of the) first chapter and (all of the) final chapter take place on December 21st. Christmas is mentioned in both. [[spoiler: The book’s beginning and ending paragraphs are both a character saying they want to tell the reader a happy story.]]

* ChekhovsGun: The letter from Sasha's mother is a minor one. She receives it shortly before the novel opens. Though Sasha considers opening it several times, she never reads it, preferring simply to imagine what it says. Joe does, though. [[spoiler: The contents are just as hateful as Sasha could've imagined . After reading the letter, Joe asks Sasha if she wants to know what it says. She declines, but allows Joe to let her in on one detail. He tells Sasha it mentions dying alone. This strengthens Sasha’s already strong paranoia concerning the subject, the results of which are listed below under DyingAlone.]]
* TheChosenOne: After [[spoiler: discovering Joe was the cousin of the woman her father really loved,]] Sasha begins to believe she is Crescis' chosen "Harbinger". As the novel progresses and more crazy coincidences occur, she becomes more entrenched in this belief, going so far as to think she is destined to tell the world about the good news of Crescis’ triumph over his brother. By proxy, this also gives her a moral license to do whatever she wants. Joe and Frank become just as convinced as she does.
-->"She's Crescis' Harbinger. We all know it now, because we’ve seen it in action. Everything she touches becomes better. When she walks on dying grass, it soon becomes healthy. When she tosses pennies into fountains, not even the most frugal person could call it wasteful. She radiates the Great Waxing’s free blessings."

* ConvertingForLove: There are hints that Joe doesn’t really believe in Crescis like Sasha does, and only pretends out of love.

** First, there are the Futilists. They’re led by Joe’s parents and can be best summed up as "diet nihilists". They believe that trying to improve one’s situation is, well, futile and leads to nothing but disappointment for all but the lucky few. The cult doesn’t try to convince recruits of its ability to make them happy. Rather, it aims at making its followers merely content through hard work, obedience, and quiet acceptance of whatever their fates may be. To them, living in passive contentment is better than "rising and diving, the floor becoming lower every time". Though it’s not explicitly required, most Futilists tend to believe in Crescis and Decrescis, the gods of fortune and misfortune. Since said gods decide everyone’s fates, Futilists that no one is truly responsible for their actions, a quite attractive concept to the guilty. Other religions like Christianity claim to give the means to pay back one’s sins. Futilism says they were never sins in the first place.
** Second, there are the Waxers, a cult founded by Sasha and Joe around halfway through the novel. It’s essentially a "nicer" offshoot of Futilism. They believe Crescis defeated Decrescis on December 21st 2012 when he prevented the Mayan’s apocalypse from occurring. With the god of fortune reigning alone, everything that has happened since that date has been for the better. Well, according to Sasha and Joe. They aim to convince drug addicts, rape victims, and widows alike that their troubles occurred for some sort of good, yet presently unrealized end. Their followers absorb themselves into such teachings in order to suspend their own disbelief, ultimately becoming very loyal. By the end, however, Sasha and Joe primarily use them as a tool to act against the government.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Annabel and Gregory get rather angry upon learning Sasha was only pretending to be a Futilist, always intended to eventually abandon them with Joe, and attempted to turn their other children against them. Anger would be understandable. What’s not is [[spoiler: kidnapping Sasha, setting up an elaborate "game" involving torturing Sasha in a derelict building, and forcing Joe to try to save her life with the intention of him failing.]] Luckily, their plan didn’t quite work out, though [[spoiler: Sasha still ends up having enormous scars where she was cut.]]
** Frank’s former girlfriend, Eva, did something similar before the novel opens. [[spoiler: Annabel and Gregory orders Frank to strangle her to death in retaliation. He obeys.]]
* DrivenToSuicide: Senator Ralph White thought the world was going to end on 12-21-12, so he spent his savings on purchasing an absurd amount of gourmet foods so he could go out eating like a king. But the world didn’t end. The Senator soon realizes he’ll be shamed when the word gets out that he wasted all his money on something so petty, so he hangs himself to avoid dealing with the fallout. His suicide is the catalyst for the novel's plot.

** Joe's parents, Gregory and Annabel, are the leader of the Futilist cult. They force their children to spend their free time doing meaningless work and teach them not to dream or aspire to anything greater than the road directly ahead. They also offer "lessons" to correct divergent behavior. For Joe this meant [[spoiler: kidnapping his wife, driving her to a remote, abandoned hospital, and giving their son a limited amount of time to defeat their followers and find her, all while his wife’s tortured screams blared through the speakers.]] Even as children, Austin and Caroline are depressed and hopeless. Their oldest brother, Frank, is an example of what can become of a child indoctrinated in Futilism. Quiet, stuck in his ways, almost without a will of his own. It's no wonder Joe trying escaping to Boston.
* DisappointedInYou: Gregory and Annabel’s reaction to Joe’s "betrayal" is more disappointment than anger. Rather than harming him directly, they aim to "teach him a lesson" in order to mold him into the son they want.
* EldritchAbomination: Crescis and Decrescis are said to be fate gods who inhabit another dimension and are wholly incomprehensible by humans. They’re rarely described through anthropomorphic terms. It’s up for debate whether or not they actually exist.
* EmotionlessGirl: Annabel is an older example. The only time she’s ever shown exhibiting any emotions is when Sasha looks through her wedding photos.

* GoodIsNotSoft: While he’s usually polite and mild-mannered, Dante is not above [[spoiler: trying to kill Sasha and Joe once their cult gets out of hand. He's shown to be a capable fighter even as an old man, able to fight his way through a number of body guards and win a fist fight with only one good hand. Frank and Joe only barely manage to beat him together]].

* MarriageBeforeRomance: Sasha and Joe get married only to appease the Futilists they seek shelter with. Their initial plan is to get divorced after leaving. However, Sasha and Joe eventually decide there would be no point in doing so if they’re going to stick together anyways. Hints of romantic feelings between them are shown prior to their marriage, but they’re minor. The deuteragonists only latch onto each other after Sasha discovers Joe is related to the woman her father loved. They start getting especially close after [spoiler: Joe saves Sasha from his parents]].

* HealItWithFire: [[spoiler: Joe uses Sasha’s lighter to cauterize the massive wounds his parents caused her, saving Sasha from bleeding to death.]]

* LackOfEmpathy: Sasha quite possibly suffers from having this. It's known that she wasn't in any major romantic relationships prior to Joe. All the time she spent alone and her stay at juvie didn’t do her much good. Once, Sasha states that the inability to truly care for others is a symptom of too much time spent alone. Her love for Joe, while intense, often comes across as rather selfish. Sasha rarely seems to care about people for their own sake. By the end of the novel, she certainly feels little empathy towards all the followers she uses like cannon fodder. The big piece of evidence against Sasha being incapable of true human tenderness is her scene with Caroline in which she tries to encourage the girl to aspire towards greater things despite the risk. However, Sasha also eventually becomes largely apathetic towards the children.

* RetiredBadass: Dante is a polite, retired man who appears unassuming at first glance, but he's also a decorated veteran who once fought beside Sasha’s father. He's stayed physically fit, too.

* SoBeautifulItsACurse: While Sasha doesn't directly claim this, early in the novel she’s under the impression that men are only interested in sleeping with her. She quite resents that fact.

* SwitchingPOV: The book alternates between Sasha’s and Joe’s perspectives on a chapter-by-chapter basis. [[spoiler: The final chapter switches between them every paragraph, before finally culminating with their points of view becoming one.]] In addition, various news articles and entries from the Senator's journal are shown.

* ThereIsOnlyOneBed: After arriving at the home of Annabel and Gregory, Sasha and Joe are assigned the latter’s old room. It only has one twin bed. At first, they take turns using it, but start sleeping together after they develop feelings for each other.

* WideEyedIdealist: Sasha eventually becomes one to the point of outright delusion. By the end of the novel, she’s positive that Crescis overcame his brother on 12-21-2012, and that everything occurring since has happened for the better. Believing this is all that keeps her anywhere close to sane. When Sasha encounters evidence to the contrary (such as murders or suicides), she thinks up ways it could possibly lead to someone's benefit. For example, when one of her followers tells her she was raped, Sasha replies that it led to her attacker being consumed by guilt and pledging never to hurt anyone again. All of Sasha's Waxer followers also fall under this trope, seeing as they believe her.

* YouSaidYouWouldLetThemGo: [[spoiler: To Gregory and Annabel's surprise, Joe manages to reach Sasha within an hour. They had previously made a deal saying they would let her go if he managed to do so. Despite Gregory, refuses to release her. This doesn’t make Annabel or Frank happy. They convince Gregory to stick to the terms of their deal, seeing as they value honesty.]].

%% * ZeroContextExample

[[quoteright:212:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_tenets_of_futilism_cover_tvtropes_919.jpg]]

->"I want to tell you a happy story. I want to tell you about a girl whose biggest concern is the quality of her sex life. I want to tell you that all the makeup I’m wearing, my new black dress, the paint on my fingernails, they’re all for fun. For a guy I like who likes me, too. I want to tell you the balloons, the streamers, they’re all for a birthday party. Too bad those would be lies."

''The Tenets of Futilism'' is a 2014 literary novel. A day after the Mayan apocalypse scare, Sasha Collins lands a job as a senator's secretary. It’s cut short when she and a night cleaner named Joe find the senator's body hanging above his desk. Curious as to why he killed himself, Sasha decides to take the senator's journal. It leads her to uncovering a government conspiracy bent on dumbing down the American citizenry. Fearing retaliation for knowing too much, Sasha and Joe flee to the latter's cultist family for safety. That arrangement inevitably goes awry.

!!This novel includes examples of:
* OneHundredPercentAdorationRating: Sasha and Joe’s minions all adore them to the point of obeying their more 'questionable' orders virtually without question.
* AbandonedHospital: [[spoiler: After taking Sasha, Annabel and Gregory choose one as the venue for their 'game'. There’re vines creeping up the walls, an overgrown courtyard, gang signs, and abandoned equipment, including the operating table Sasha is strapped down to. When Joe arrives, he is told has an hour to find Sasha, their followers will be attempting to stop him, and he will be watched through cameras mounted on RC cars. Sasha is also tortured with scalpels, her screams echoing across the building through speakers.]]
* AbusiveParents: Annabel and Gregory. At first, it doesn't appear too horrifying. Their cult teachings instill the idea that ambition usually leads to disappointment, so it's best not to dream of everything better. They emphasize contentment over the pursuit of a greater happiness. This translates into their children to spend their days working fields for no reason other than to get them used to hard work and stop them from getting too optimistic. Later, however, Annabel and Gregory go as far as [[spoiler: forcing Austin and Caroline to watch them torture Sasha as a sort of lesson.]] Despite everything, they still seem to legitimately love their children to a certain extent.
** It's a pretty safe bet that Sasha’s mother was one, too, given the contents of the letter she wrote to her daughter. She's not shy about admitting she hates Sasha.
** [[spoiler: Later in the novel, Sasha and Joe could be considered Abusive Guardians to Austin and Caroline, though their abuse takes a different form than the examples listed above. Rather than being discouraging or unkind towards the children, Sasha and Joe grow to be largely apathetic and absent from their lives. They prefer to simply assume Austin and Caroline are content being alone and watching them commit atrocities.]]
* AcheyScars: Sasha never quite recovers from [[spoiler: having her arms and stomach cut up by Joe’s parents]]. Even after the wounds close and scar, she still occasionally feels them sting.
* AcousticLicense: Sasha and Joe seem perfectly able to have conversations in crowded areas without speaking loudly or whispering into each other’s ears.
* AfterActionHealingDrama: The scene where Joe saves [[spoiler: Sasha from bleeding out through the use of a cigarette lighter after he stops his parents from killing her.]]
* AlasPoorVillain: Despite everything they did, the deaths of [[spoiler: Gregory and Annabel]] are taken somewhat somberly. [[spoiler: Their younger children appear to miss them several times throughout the novel, though they do like how much freer they are without them.]]
* AllAreEqualInDeath: The Waxer belief system states that there is no such thing as sin, for Crescis and/or Decrescis are ultimately responsible for everything that happens. This means that everyone goes to the same happy afterlife upon their death. Such assurance that all are pure and will see their entire families upon their deaths contributes significantly to the popularity of the Waxer cult. However, Sasha and Joe aren't always consistent in preaching this point (which is pretty typical for them – they often have trouble keeping their beliefs straight).
* ArtShift: The novel will occasionally shift between Sasha's or Joe's first person perspective, entries from the Senator's journal, and third person newspaper articles.
* AttackDrone: [[spoiler: The book ends with the protagonists being killed by one.]]
* AwesomeMcCoolName: Sasha’s eventual title of "Harbinger".
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Sasha’s words to Joe after he [[spoiler: saves her from being tortured by his parents.]]
-->[[spoiler:"You came for me," I said, the words coming out stunted and weak, but true. "I can’t tell you how thankful I am. You came for me even though I’m just a boring, lonely girl you met under a corpse."\\
"You’re more than that."\\
"Do you-"\\
The pain flared up for a moment. I let it a little scream. Then it resided.\\
"Do you know what the best part of living is?" I asked. "More time with you."\\
And Joe smiled back.]]
* BecauseISaidSo: Sasha’s attitude late in the novel. She starts believing that anything she does is justified on account of her being Crescis' "Harbinger". Her followers tend to agree. Joe doesn’t always seem convinced, but he loves her too much to speak out against Sasha or try to pull her out of her delusions.
* BilingualBonus: The names of Crescis and Decrescis were ripped from the Latin text "Carmina Burana". In the context of the poem, they mean "increasing" and "decreasing"’.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Feeling it to be the safest place in the Bay area, Sasha, Joe, and the children retreat to Alcatraz. Not only have they told the world about Operation Bone-White, they have further incited the American people against their government. They've pissed off powerful men. Despite their best efforts, Sasha and her family are ultimately unable to escape he government's vengeance. It comes in the form of a predator drone. The final chapter consists of Sasha and Joe sitting together outside the prison, reminiscing and staring at San Francisco while waiting for the drone to reach them. Austin and Caroline are tied up next to them. Sasha and Joe ignore their pleading to be let go, knowing a quick death outside would be better than taking shelter inside the prison and dying under the rubble the drone would reduce it to. On the bright(ish) side, Sasha dies feeling she had accomplished her wish of outdoing her father, made a positive impact on the world, and sincerely believing she will be reunited with Joe in her next life.]]
* BlindObedience: Though they may sometimes be a little hesitant, Futilists[=/=]Waxers will inevitably follow Annabel's and Gregory's[=/=]Sasha and Joe's orders.
* BloodSpatteredInnocents: While it might not involve them being literally splattered with blood, Austin and Caroline don't get off easy. Firstly, they [[spoiler: are forced to watch their parents horrifically torture Sasha in a run-down asylum.]] Secondly, they [[spoiler: see Sasha shoot their mother. Their father kills himself shortly afterwards by slashing his own throat, thinking life without his wife would be pointless.]] Thirdly, they [[spoiler: look on as Sasha orders her bodyguards to kill Vanessa.]] Such experiences don’t exactly make for happy children.
* BookEnds: Both the (majority of the) first chapter and (all of the) final chapter take place on December 21st. Christmas is mentioned in both. [[spoiler: The book’s beginning and ending paragraphs are both a character saying they want to tell the reader a happy story.]]
* BreatherEpisode: Most of the chapters following [[spoiler: Joe rescuing Sasha from his parents]] and before [[spoiler: they reach San Francisco]].
* ChekhovsGun: The letter from Sasha's mother is a minor one. She receives it shortly before the novel opens. Though Sasha considers opening it several times, she never reads it, preferring simply to imagine what it says. Joe does, though. [[spoiler: The contents are just as hateful as Sasha could've imagined . After reading the letter, Joe asks Sasha if she wants to know what it says. She declines, but allows Joe to let her in on one detail. He tells Sasha it mentions dying alone. This strengthens Sasha’s already strong paranoia concerning the subject, the results of which are listed below under DyingAlone.]]
* TheChosenOne: After [[spoiler: discovering Joe was the cousin of the woman her father really loved,]] Sasha begins to believe she is Crescis' chosen "Harbinger". As the novel progresses and more crazy coincidences occur, she becomes more entrenched in this belief, going so far as to think she is destined to tell the world about the good news of Crescis’ triumph over his brother. By proxy, this also gives her a moral license to do whatever she wants. Joe and Frank become just as convinced as she does.
-->"She's Crescis' Harbinger. We all know it now, because we’ve seen it in action. Everything she touches becomes better. When she walks on dying grass, it soon becomes healthy. When she tosses pennies into fountains, not even the most frugal person could call it wasteful. She radiates the Great Waxing’s free blessings."
* CityNoir: Sasha views Boston as depressing and lacking colors. San Francisco, however, is [[ThePromisedLand heaven on earth]] to her.
* ColorMotif: The color white is mentioned heavily throughout the novel, but it carries oddly negative connotations. The Futilists believe it to represent all of the colors in the rainbow rendered boring and dull together, which goes well with their method of wearing people down with monotony until they can feel neither happiness nor pain. This view of the color rubs off on Sasha.
* CorruptPolitician: There must be a great, great many of them given the scale of Operation Bone-White. Senator Ralph White was among them, [[spoiler: though Sasha eventually comes to think he was a good guy despite all the evidence and frames him as some sort of martyr]].
* ConvertingForLove: There are hints that Joe doesn’t really believe in Crescis like Sasha does, and only pretends out of love.
* {{Cult}}: This novel features two.
** First, there are the Futilists. They’re led by Joe’s parents and can be best summed up as "diet nihilists". They believe that trying to improve one’s situation is, well, futile and leads to nothing but disappointment for all but the lucky few. The cult doesn’t try to convince recruits of its ability to make them happy. Rather, it aims at making its followers merely content through hard work, obedience, and quiet acceptance of whatever their fates may be. To them, living in passive contentment is better than "rising and diving, the floor becoming lower every time". Though it’s not explicitly required, most Futilists tend to believe in Crescis and Decrescis, the gods of fortune and misfortune. Since said gods decide everyone’s fates, Futilists that no one is truly responsible for their actions, a quite attractive concept to the guilty. Other religions like Christianity claim to give the means to pay back one’s sins. Futilism says they were never sins in the first place.
** Second, there are the Waxers, a cult founded by Sasha and Joe around halfway through the novel. It’s essentially a "nicer" offshoot of Futilism. They believe Crescis defeated Decrescis on December 21st 2012 when he prevented the Mayan’s apocalypse from occurring. With the god of fortune reigning alone, everything that has happened since that date has been for the better. Well, according to Sasha and Joe. They aim to convince drug addicts, rape victims, and widows alike that their troubles occurred for some sort of good, yet presently unrealized end. Their followers absorb themselves into such teachings in order to suspend their own disbelief, ultimately becoming very loyal. By the end, however, Sasha and Joe primarily use them as a tool to act against the government.
* TheCynic: Futilists in general. Sasha also has shades of this at the beginning of the novel, until her [[FaceHeelTurn face heel turn]], after which she becomes the biggest [[WideEyedIdealist idealist]] in the novel by far.
* DaddysGirl: While she was hated by her mother, Sasha loved (and was loved by) her father very much. However, he always made it clear to her that he was not an ideal man.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Many of the characters have one, most of which are laid out elsewhere on this page.
* DeathFromAbove: [[spoiler: In the final chapter, Sasha, Joe, and the children are killed by predator drones.]]
* {{Determinator}}: Joe stops at nothing to keep Sasha and his younger siblings safe. [[spoiler: When his parents took Sasha and challenged Joe to try to rescue her, he unflinchingly makes his way through the [[AbandonedHospital abandoned hospital]] and kills the several Futilists who try to stop him. Joe even manages to walk off being hit by several tazers. Due to his sheer determination, Joe is able to prove his parents wrong and save Sasha.]]
* DidNotGetTheGirl: Sasha's father never got to be with the woman he really loved. Instead, he married Sasha's mother as a sort of replacement. Their marriage was not a happy one. Seeing her parents' less-than-savory relationship is what drove Sasha to be so cautious about romance and so determined to outdo her father. When Sasha finally does fall in love, she becomes terrified of breaking apart.
* DisproportionateRetribution: Annabel and Gregory get rather angry upon learning Sasha was only pretending to be a Futilist, always intended to eventually abandon them with Joe, and attempted to turn their other children against them. Anger would be understandable. What’s not is [[spoiler: kidnapping Sasha, setting up an elaborate "game" involving torturing Sasha in a derelict building, and forcing Joe to try to save her life with the intention of him failing.]] Luckily, their plan didn’t quite work out, though [[spoiler: Sasha still ends up having enormous scars where she was cut.]]
** Frank’s former girlfriend, Eva, did something similar before the novel opens. [[spoiler: Annabel and Gregory orders Frank to strangle her to death in retaliation. He obeys.]]
* DrivenToSuicide: Senator Ralph White thought the world was going to end on 12-21-12, so he spent his savings on purchasing an absurd amount of gourmet foods so he could go out eating like a king. But the world didn’t end. The Senator soon realizes he’ll be shamed when the word gets out that he wasted all his money on something so petty, so he hangs himself to avoid dealing with the fallout. His suicide is the catalyst for the novel's plot.
* DyingAlone: Sasha becomes so terrified of this fate she [[spoiler: ties up Austin and Caroline beside Joe and herself in order for them to die together when the predator missile hits]]. The reason behind this is her determination to outdo her father, who died without the woman he loved.
* DysfunctionalFamily: Sasha and Joe both have one.
** Sasha's mother, Amy, only married her father, Chris, because he was a veteran. Amy wanted the status of marrying a man with honors, not the man himself. Deep down, Chris was depressed and regretful, not proud and upstanding as his wife had hoped. To make matters worse, Chris only ever saw Amy as a replacement for the woman he really loved. Amy eventually comes to return Chris's dislike several times over, and she extends it to Sasha. It's even heavily implied that [[spoiler: Amy killed Chris by stabbing him in the neck with needles]]. She ends up in a psychiatric ward at any rate. Right before the novel opens, Sasha receives a letter from the woman. She never decides to open it, preferring to simply imagine it says nice things.
** Joe's parents, Gregory and Annabel, are the leader of the Futilist cult. They force their children to spend their free time doing meaningless work and teach them not to dream or aspire to anything greater than the road directly ahead. They also offer "lessons" to correct divergent behavior. For Joe this meant [[spoiler: kidnapping his wife, driving her to a remote, abandoned hospital, and giving their son a limited amount of time to defeat their followers and find her, all while his wife’s tortured screams blared through the speakers.]] Even as children, Austin and Caroline are depressed and hopeless. Their oldest brother, Frank, is an example of what can become of a child indoctrinated in Futilism. Quiet, stuck in his ways, almost without a will of his own. It's no wonder Joe trying escaping to Boston.
* DisappointedInYou: Gregory and Annabel’s reaction to Joe’s "betrayal" is more disappointment than anger. Rather than harming him directly, they aim to "teach him a lesson" in order to mold him into the son they want.
* EldritchAbomination: Crescis and Decrescis are said to be fate gods who inhabit another dimension and are wholly incomprehensible by humans. They’re rarely described through anthropomorphic terms. It’s up for debate whether or not they actually exist.
* EmotionlessGirl: Annabel is an older example. The only time she’s ever shown exhibiting any emotions is when Sasha looks through her wedding photos.
* FormerTeenRebel: Sasha. She started acting out around the time her father. Once, she was sent to juvie for stabbing another girl. The expertience "straightened her out" to the point of making her anxious, unsocial, and prone to hysteria. It also gave Sasha a deep-rooted fear of the authorities.
* GoodIsNotSoft: While he’s usually polite and mild-mannered, Dante is not above [[spoiler: trying to kill Sasha and Joe once their cult gets out of hand. He's shown to be a capable fighter even as an old man, able to fight his way through a number of body guards and win a fist fight with only one good hand. Frank and Joe only barely manage to beat him together]].
* GovernmentConspiracy: The novel's plot revolves around one. After finding Senator Ralph White hanging above his desk, Sasha takes his journal out of curiosity. Reading one of its entries eventually leads her to discovering the American government plans on putting excessive fluoride into the water supply, rendering the citizenry stupid, obedient, and impressionable. Turns out, all those people who were suspicious about fluoridation were on the right track. The substance ''does'' have an effect on the mind, but only in very high dosages.
* MarriageBeforeRomance: Sasha and Joe get married only to appease the Futilists they seek shelter with. Their initial plan is to get divorced after leaving. However, Sasha and Joe eventually decide there would be no point in doing so if they’re going to stick together anyways. Hints of romantic feelings between them are shown prior to their marriage, but they’re minor. The deuteragonists only latch onto each other after Sasha discovers Joe is related to the woman her father loved. They start getting especially close after [spoiler: Joe saves Sasha from his parents]].
* NotSoDifferent: One of the novel's major themes is how generations mirror each other. By the end, Sasha and Joe share quite a few similarities with Gregory and Annabel. Both couples lead cults, order their followers to preform dangerous tasks, and abuse Austin and Caroline in some sort of way. In both cases, a woman lures a man to adopt a belief system out of love. Sasha her ends up with a man related to the woman her father truly loved.
* HappilyMarried: Annabel and Gregory fall under this trope despite their cold demeanor. Sasha and Joe are also on the borders of qualifying, though [[spoiler: the amount of time they get to spend together is ultimately short]].
* HealItWithFire: [[spoiler: Joe uses Sasha’s lighter to cauterize the massive wounds his parents caused her, saving Sasha from bleeding to death.]]
* HeelFaceTurn: Frank undergoes one. After [[spoiler: Joe rescues Sasha, he becomes convinced that Futilism is wrong and that Sasha truly is blessed be Crescis. Frank has few qualms when Sasha kills his mother and his father slits his own throat. Later, he offers to give them his parents' sizeable fortune in exchange for letting him tag along. Sasha accepts this offer. Eventually, Frank becomes one of the greatest zealots of the Waxer faith, having switched from one extreme to the other.]]
* HopeBringer: Sasha and Joe fulfill this role for their followers. It wins them quite a lot of loyalty.
* IntergenerationalFriendship: Sasha and Joe have one with Vanessa. Vanessa, in turn, has one with Dante.
* LackOfEmpathy: Sasha quite possibly suffers from having this. It's known that she wasn't in any major romantic relationships prior to Joe. All the time she spent alone and her stay at juvie didn’t do her much good. Once, Sasha states that the inability to truly care for others is a symptom of too much time spent alone. Her love for Joe, while intense, often comes across as rather selfish. Sasha rarely seems to care about people for their own sake. By the end of the novel, she certainly feels little empathy towards all the followers she uses like cannon fodder. The big piece of evidence against Sasha being incapable of true human tenderness is her scene with Caroline in which she tries to encourage the girl to aspire towards greater things despite the risk. However, Sasha also eventually becomes largely apathetic towards the children.
* LandMarkingTheHiddenBase: At the end of the novel, Sasha and her family take refuge in Alcatraz Island, feeling it to be the safest place in the Bay area.
* LaResistance: The role Sasha intends her Waxers to ultimately serve.
* LightIsNotGood: The Futilists all wear white, but they're not exactly the good guys.
* MasterOfUnlocking: Sasha is able to pick locks and hotwire vehicles, skills she apparently picked up in her younger, wilder years.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: The jury's out on whether or not all the crazy coincidences featured in the book were, well, crazy coincidences or the product of divine intervention.
* MiscarriageOfJustice: Despite the Senator's death appearing to be an obvious suicide, his widow is eventually charged with his murder. The police produce evidence that she forced the Senator to hang himself at gunpoint. Sasha and Joe believe this to be a lie perpetrated by a government that doesn't want people to believe its senators are liable to kill themselves.
* OnlyAFleshWound: Though Sasha isn't able to ''quite'' walk off [[spoiler: having her arms and stomach cut up,]] she recovers rather quickly, all things considered.
* TheOmniscient: Both Crescis and Decrescis.
* PantsPositiveSafety: Throughout the first part of the novel, Joe keeps a gun concealed in his pants pocket. He surprises his family when they try to [[spoiler: take Sasha. Unfortunately, Frank manages to wrench it away from him.]]
* PleaseDontLeaveMe: Sasha's reaction when Joe threatens to leave her if she doesn't agree to [[spoiler: live with him and the children at Alcatraz]]. It shakes Sasha to the point where she eventually agrees.
* PosthumousCharacter: Sasha's father, Chris, is dead before the opening of the novel. His character is described posthumously by his daughter's words and thoughts. Eva, Frank's former girlfriend, is also mentioned on a few occasions, but not enough to get a good feel on her personality.
* PraetorianGuard: Sasha and Joe eventually acquire a small group of loyal guards who stand watch over their apartment.
* ThePromisedLand: Sasha is a little obsessed with the idea of living in San Francisco. This obsession dates back to when Sasha's father gave her a snow globe of the Golden Gate Bridge upon his return from a trip. She eventually convinces Joe to take her there. To the point of delusion, she finds it to be just as amazing as she dreamed.
* PromotedToParent: [[spoiler: Sasha and Joe begin taking care of Austin and Caroline upon their parents' deaths.]]
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: [[spoiler: Various world leaders take jabs at the United States' government after Operation Bone-White is leaked.]]
* Reincarnation: Sasha and her followers (sometimes) believe Crescis will keep their souls safe after they die. When their loved ones are all dead, he will lead together to their next lives.
* RetiredBadass: Dante is a polite, retired man who appears unassuming at first glance, but he's also a decorated veteran who once fought beside Sasha’s father. He's stayed physically fit, too.
* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: Sasha and Joe both realize and accept that many innocent lives will have to be spent in order to overthrow the government.
* RuleOfSymbolism: In place of wedding bands, Futilists wear necklaces composed of white-gold yarn and incomplete, metal circles. Doing so would be absurd if not for the symbolism behind them. Futilists see the hardness of the metal as representing the couple's initially strong bond. On the other hand, the circles' incompleteness represents the inevitability of said bond breaking. One of the Futilist wedding rituals has the betrothed place their fingers into the openings of each other's necklaces as an acknowledgement of that "fact". Ever the optimist, Sasha prefers to see it as the couple "completing" the circle rather than acknowledging its brokenness.
* SceneryPorn: The way Colorado and San Francisco are described.
-->Colorado. The land of popped ears and chilly air and breath like white smoke. We were sitting at a red table outside a [=McDonald's=], eating cheap burgers and nuggets. It was cold out. Jackets were necessary. But the view, that which the locals dining inside forsook, was completely worth it. All around us were mountains capped with snow and gray stone. Elk stared at us from the edges of their aspen groves, and endless flocks of birds flew overhead. The wind whistled. There were fields of frost-tipped grass. Little pink flowers that looked almost like dots. In the distance, I could see a lake halfway covered in ice.
--> We're here to see the sights.
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: Sasha eventually learns that Joe is [[spoiler: the cousin of the woman her father really wanted]]. Out of a desire to cover up her dad's various failures with her own successes, Sasha becomes determined to have a successful relationship with Joe, live somewhere nicely, and have a happy family. It gets to the point where she almost seems to think succeeding will put her father's spirit to rest or something in that nature.
* SexlessMarriage: A distinct possibility between Sasha and Joe, at least to begin with.
* SmallTownBoredom: One of the many, many reasons Joe left his cultist family for Boston. Of course, Boston didn't end up being great, either.
* SoBeautifulItsACurse: While Sasha doesn't directly claim this, early in the novel she’s under the impression that men are only interested in sleeping with her. She quite resents that fact.
* SpeakInUnison: Both the Futilists and Waxers have a tendency to do this.
* TheStoic: Frank and his mother, Annabel.
* SwitchingPOV: The book alternates between Sasha’s and Joe’s perspectives on a chapter-by-chapter basis. [[spoiler: The final chapter switches between them every paragraph, before finally culminating with their points of view becoming one.]] In addition, various news articles and entries from the Senator's journal are shown.
* ThereAreNoCoincidences: According to Futilists, Waxers, and the deuteragonists, everything is the work of Crescis or Decrescis.
* ThereIsAGod: Sasha's eventual reaction to the uncanny coincidences occurring within the novel.
* ThereIsOnlyOneBed: After arriving at the home of Annabel and Gregory, Sasha and Joe are assigned the latter’s old room. It only has one twin bed. At first, they take turns using it, but start sleeping together after they develop feelings for each other.
* TitleDrop: "The Tenets of Futilism" is the holy book of the cult going by the same name. It was authored by Annabel and Gregory.
* TookALevelInBadass: Joe, after heroically [[spoiler: saving Sasha from his parents and their followers]].
* TroubledChild: Austin and Caroline. Both of them have been led to depression by their parents teaching, and it's hinted that the former is still a little angry about Joe leaving them. They get worse after [[spoiler: seeing Sasha shoot their mother and their father kill himself]]. They're cheered up a bit by Sasha and Joe taking them on a tour around the country, but hit a new low after [[spoiler: their new guardians' cult turns violent]].
* UndercoverAsLovers: When Sasha and Joe take shelter in the latter's parents' house, they pretend to be engaged. This is because Futilists believe friendship with members of the opposite sex is dishonest and casual dating is pointless. Neither of them are a big fan of this arrangement at first, but their relationship does eventually become quite legitimate.
* ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption: When it comes to overturning the current, corrupt political system. Well, according to Sasha and Joe.
* WalkingTheEarth: The middle section of the novel features the protagonists traveling throughout America, discovering something important and/or meeting someone new at almost every stop.
* WavingSignsAround: There were many responses to the world learning about Operation Bone-White. Crowds of sign-waving protestors were among the first. Sasha and Joe convince their Waxers to join in, but soon encourage them to lash it in more violent ways.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Sasha and, to a lesser extent, Joe become this by the end of the novel. They seem to legitimately want to fix the United States' government and stop anything like Operation: Bone-White from ever being attempted again. To accomplish this, they're willing to cause violence. The problem is how apathetic they get towards bloodshed. Eventually, they have no qualms with sacrificing dozens of lives just to send a little message. At one point, they [[spoiler: have their followers kill two men for the crime of driving black cars, which made them suspect said men were government agents]]. They also [[spoiler: order their bodyguards to kill Vanessa after she threatened to blackmail them]].
* WideEyedIdealist: Sasha eventually becomes one to the point of outright delusion. By the end of the novel, she’s positive that Crescis overcame his brother on 12-21-2012, and that everything occurring since has happened for the better. Believing this is all that keeps her anywhere close to sane. When Sasha encounters evidence to the contrary (such as murders or suicides), she thinks up ways it could possibly lead to someone's benefit. For example, when one of her followers tells her she was raped, Sasha replies that it led to her attacker being consumed by guilt and pledging never to hurt anyone again. All of Sasha's Waxer followers also fall under this trope, seeing as they believe her.
* WitchHunt: Sasha starts essentially starts one aimed at United States senators.
* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler: The predator drones in the final chapter have no problem firing on Austin and Caroline if it means also hitting Sasha and Joe. The former believes the world will learn of their willingness to murder children, and that knowledge will lead to even greater action against the government.]]
* YinYangClash: According to Futilist theology, Crescis, the god of fortune, is opposed to Decrescis, his twin god of misfortune. The symbol used to represent Futilism is even a yin-yang symbol, only jagged and uneven at places.
* YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters: It's brought up several times that Waxers eventually come to be thought of as domestic terrorists by the government and general public, seeing as they killed the Governor of California and all. Sasha and Joe are convinced their violent actions are a necessary step to fix The United States' greater problems.
* YouSaidYouWouldLetThemGo: [[spoiler: To Gregory and Annabel's surprise, Joe manages to reach Sasha within an hour. They had previously made a deal saying they would let her go if he managed to do so. Despite Gregory, refuses to release her. This doesn’t make Annabel or Frank happy. They convince Gregory to stick to the terms of their deal, seeing as they value honesty.]].

-> ‘’I want to tell you a happy story. I want to tell you about a girl whose biggest concern is the quality of her sex life. I want to tell you that all the makeup I’m wearing, my new black dress, the paint on my fingernails, they’re all for fun. For a guy I like who likes me, too. I want to tell you the balloons, the streamers, they’re all for a birthday party. Too bad those would be lies.’’

‘’The Tenets of Futilism’’ is a 2014 literary novel. A day after the Mayan apocalypse scare, Sasha Collins lands a job as a senator’s secretary. It’s cut short when she and a night cleaner named Joe find the senator’s body hanging above his desk. Curious as to why he killed himself, Sasha decides to take the senator’s journal. It leads her to uncovering a government conspiracy bent on dumbing down the American citizenry. Fearing retaliation for knowing too much, Sasha and Joe flee to the latter’s cultist family for safety. That arrangement inevitably goes awry.

* OneHundredPercentAdorationRating: Sasha and Joe’s minions all adore them to the point of obeying their more ‘questionable’ orders virtually without question.
* AbandonedHospital: [[spoiler: After taking Sasha, Annabel and Gregory choose one as the venue for their ‘game’. There’re vines creeping up the walls, an overgrown courtyard, gang signs, and abandoned equipment, including the operating table Sasha is strapped down to. When Joe arrives, he is told has an hour to find Sasha, their followers will be attempting to stop him, and he will be watched through cameras mounted on RC cars. Sasha is also tortured with scalpels, her screams echoing across the building through speakers.]]
* AbusiveParents: Annabel and Gregory. At first, it doesn’t appear too horrifying. Their cult teachings instill the idea that ambition usually leads to disappointment, so it’s best not to dream of everything better. They emphasize contentment over the pursuit of a greater happiness. This translates into their children to spend their days working fields for no reason other than to get them used to hard work and stop them from getting too optimistic. Later, however, Annabel and Gregory go as far as [[spoiler: forcing Austin and Caroline to watch them torture Sasha as a sort of lesson.]] Despite everything, they still seem to legitimately love their children to a certain extent.
** It’s a pretty safe bet that Sasha’s mother was one, too, given the contents of the letter she wrote to her daughter. She’s not shy about admitting she hates Sasha.

* AllAreEqualInDeath: The Waxer belief system states that there is no such thing as sin, for Crescis and/or Decrescis are ultimately responsible for everything that happens. This means that everyone goes to the same happy afterlife upon their death. Such assurance that all are pure and will see their entire families upon their deaths contributes significantly to the popularity of the Waxer cult. However, Sasha and Joe aren’t always consistent in preaching this point (which is pretty typical for them – they often have trouble keeping their beliefs straight).
* ArtShift: The novel will occasionally shift between Sasha’s or Joe’s first person perspective, entries from the Senator’s journal, and third person newspaper articles.

* AwesomeMcCoolName: Sasha’s eventual title of ‘Harbinger’.

* BecauseISaidSo: Sasha’s attitude late in the novel. She starts believing that anything she does is justified on account of her being Crescis’ ‘Harbinger’. Her followers tend to agree. Joe doesn’t always seem convinced, but he loves her too much to speak out against Sasha or try to pull her out of her delusions.
* BilingualBonus: The names of Crescis and Decrescis were ripped from the Latin text ‘Carmina Burana’. In the context of the poem, they mean ‘increasing’ and ‘decreasing’.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Feeling it to be the safest place in the Bay area, Sasha, Joe, and the children retreat to Alcatraz. Not only have they told the world about Operation Bone-White, they have further incited the American people against their government. They’ve pissed off powerful men. Despite their best efforts, Sasha and her family are ultimately unable to escape he government’s vengeance. It comes in the form of a predator drone. The final chapter consists of Sasha and Joe sitting together outside the prison, reminiscing and staring at San Francisco while waiting for the drone to reach them. Austin and Caroline are tied up next to them. Sasha and Joe ignore their pleading to be let go, knowing a quick death outside would be better than taking shelter inside the prison and dying under the rubble the drone would reduce it to. On the bright(ish) side, Sasha dies feeling she had accomplished her wish of outdoing her father, made a positive impact on the world, and sincerely believing she will be reunited with Joe in her next life.]]
* BlindObedience: Though they may sometimes be a little hesitant, Futilists/Waxers will inevitably follow Annabel’s and Gregory’s/ Sasha and Joe’s orders.
* BloodSpatteredInnocents: While it might not involve them being literally splattered with blood, Austin and Caroline don’t get off easy. Firstly, they [[spoiler: are forced to watch their parents horrifically torture Sasha in a run-down asylum.]] Secondly, they [[spoiler: see Sasha shoot their mother. Their father kills himself shortly afterwards by slashing his own throat, thinking life without his wife would be pointless.]] Thirdly, they [[spoiler: look on as Sasha orders her bodyguards to kill Vanessa.]] Such experiences don’t exactly make for happy children.

* ChekhovsGun: The letter from Sasha’s mother is a minor one. She receives it shortly before the novel opens. Though Sasha considers opening it several times, she never reads it, preferring simply to imagine what it says. Joe does, though. [[spoiler: The contents are just as hateful as Sasha could’ve imagined . After reading the letter, Joe asks Sasha if she wants to know what it says. She declines, but allows Joe to let her in on one detail. He tells Sasha it mentions dying alone. This strengthens Sasha’s already strong paranoia concerning the subject, the results of which are listed below under [[DyingAlone Dying Alone.]]]]
* TheChosenOne: After [[spoiler: discovering Joe was the cousin of the woman her father really loved,]] Sasha begins to believe she is Crescis’ chosen ‘Harbinger’. As the novel progresses and more crazy coincidences occur, she becomes more entrenched in this belief, going so far as to think she is destined to tell the world about the good news of Crescis’ triumph over his brother. By proxy, this also gives her a moral license to do whatever she wants. Joe and Frank become just as convinced as she does.
--> ‘She’s Crescis’ Harbinger. We all know it now, because we’ve seen it in action. Everything she touches becomes better. When she walks on dying grass, it soon becomes healthy. When she tosses pennies into fountains, not even the most frugal person could call it wasteful. She radiates the Great Waxing’s free blessings.’’’

** First, there are the Futilists. They’re led by Joe’s parents and can be best summed up as ‘diet nihilists’. They believe that trying to improve one’s situation is, well, futile and leads to nothing but disappointment for all but the lucky few. The cult doesn’t try to convince recruits of its ability to make them happy. Rather, it aims at making its followers merely content through hard work, obedience, and quiet acceptance of whatever their fates may be. To them, living in passive contentment is better than ‘rising and diving, the floor becoming lower every time’. Though it’s not explicitly required, most Futilists tend to believe in Crescis and Decrescis, the gods of fortune and misfortune. Since said gods decide everyone’s fates, Futilists that no one is truly responsible for their actions, a quite attractive concept to the guilty. Other religions like Christianity claim to give the means to pay back one’s sins. Futilism says they were never sins in the first place.
** Second, there are the Waxers, a cult founded by Sasha and Joe around halfway through the novel. It’s essentially a ‘nicer’ offshoot of Futilism. They believe Crescis defeated Decrescis on December 21st 2012 when he prevented the Mayan’s apocalypse from occurring. With the god of fortune reigning alone, everything that has happened since that date has been for the better. Well, according to Sasha and Joe. They aim to convince drug addicts, rape victims, and widows alike that their troubles occurred for some sort of good, yet presently unrealized end. Their followers absorb themselves into such teachings in order to suspend their own disbelief, ultimately becoming very loyal. By the end, however, Sasha and Joe primarily use them as a tool to act against the government.

* DidNotGetTheGirl: Sasha’s father never got to be with the woman he really loved. Instead, he married Sasha’s mother as a sort of replacement. Their marriage was not a happy one. Seeing her parents’ less-than-savory relationship is what drove Sasha to be so cautious about romance and so determined to outdo her father. When Sasha finally does fall in love, she becomes terrified of breaking apart.
* DisproportionateRetribution: Annabel and Gregory get rather angry upon learning Sasha was only pretending to be a Futilist, always intended to eventually abandon them with Joe, and attempted to turn their other children against them. Anger would be understandable. What’s not is [[spoiler: kidnapping Sasha, setting up an elaborate ‘game’ involving torturing Sasha in a derelict building, and forcing Joe to try to save her life with the intention of him failing.]] Luckily, their plan didn’t quite work out, though [[spoiler: Sasha still ends up having enormous scars where she was cut.]]

* DrivenToSuicide: Senator Ralph White thought the world was going to end on 12-21-12, so he spent his savings on purchasing an absurd amount of gourmet foods so he could go out eating like a king. But the world didn’t end. The Senator soon realizes he’ll be shamed when the word gets out that he wasted all his money on something so petty, so he hangs himself to avoid dealing with the fallout. His suicide is the catalyst for the novel’s plot.

** Sasha’s mother, Amy, only married her father, Chris, because he was a veteran. Amy wanted the status of marrying a man with honors, not the man himself. Deep down, Chris was depressed and regretful, not proud and upstanding as his wife had hoped. To make matters worse, Chris only ever saw Amy as a replacement for the woman he really loved. Amy eventually comes to return Chris’s dislike several times over, and she extends it to Sasha. It’s even heavily implied that [[spoiler: Amy killed Chris by stabbing him in the neck with needles]]. She ends up in a psychiatric ward at any rate. Right before the novel opens, Sasha receives a letter from the woman. She never decides to open it, preferring to simply imagine it says nice things.
** Joe’s parents, Gregory and Annabel, are the leader of the Futilist cult. They force their children to spend their free time doing meaningless work and teach them not to dream or aspire to anything greater than the road directly ahead. They also offer ‘lessons’ to correct divergent behavior. For Joe this meant [[spoiler: kidnapping his wife, driving her to a remote, abandoned hospital, and giving their son a limited amount of time to defeat their followers and find her, all while his wife’s tortured screams blared through the speakers.]] Even as children, Austin and Caroline are depressed and hopeless. Their oldest brother, Frank, is an example of what can become of a child indoctrinated in Futilism. Quiet, stuck in his ways, almost without a will of his own. It’s no wonder Joe trying escaping to Boston.
* DisappointedInYou: Gregory and Annabel’s reaction to Joe’s ‘betrayal’ is more disappointment than anger. Rather than harming him directly, they aim to ‘teach him a lesson’ in order to mold him into the son they want.

* FormerTeenRebel: Sasha. She started acting out around the time her father. Once, she was sent to juvee for stabbing another girl. The expertience ‘straightened her out’ to the point of making her anxious, unsocial, and prone to hysteria. It also gave Sasha a deep-rooted fear of the authorities.
* GoodIsNotSoft: While he’s usually polite and mild-mannered, Dante is not above [[spoiler: trying to kill Sasha and Joe once their cult gets out of hand. He’s shown to be a capable fighter even as an old man, able to fight his way through a number of body guards and win a fist fight with only one good hand. Frank and Joe only barely manage to beat him together]].
* GovernmentConspiracy: The novel’s plot revolves around one. After finding Senator Ralph White hanging above his desk, Sasha takes his journal out of curiosity. Reading one of its entries eventually leads her to discovering the American government plans on putting excessive fluoride into the water supply, rendering the citizenry stupid, obedient, and impressionable. Turns out, all those people who were suspicious about fluoridation were on the right track. The substance ‘’does’’ have an effect on the mind, but only in very high dosages.

* NotSoDifferent: One of the novel’s major themes is how generations mirror each other. By the end, Sasha and Joe share quite a few similarities with Gregory and Annabel. Both couples lead cults, order their followers to preform dangerous tasks, and abuse Austin and Caroline in some sort of way. In both cases, a woman lures a man to adopt a belief system out of love. Sasha her ends up with a man related to the woman her father truly loved.

* HeelFaceTurn: Frank undergoes one. After [[spoiler: Joe rescues Sasha, he becomes convinced that Futilism is wrong and that Sasha truly is blessed be Crescis. Frank has few qualms when Sasha kills his mother and his father slits his own throat. Later, he offers to give them his parents’ sizeable fortune in exchange for letting him tag along. Sasha accepts this offer. Eventually, Frank becomes one of the greatest zealots of the Waxer faith, having switched from one extreme to the other.]]

* LackOfEmpathy: Sasha quite possibly suffers from having this. It’s known that she wasn’t in any major romantic relationships prior to Joe. All the time she spent alone and her stay at juvee didn’t do her much good. Once, Sasha states that the inability to truly care for others is a symptom of too much time spent alone. Her love for Joe, while intense, often comes across as rather self. Sasha rarely seems to care about people for their own sake. By the end of the novel, she certainly feels little empathy towards all the followers she uses like cannon fodder. The big piece of evidence against Sasha being incapable of true human tenderness is her scene with Caroline in which she tries to encourage the girl to aspire towards greater things despite the risk. However, Sasha also eventually becomes largely apathetic towards the children.

* LightIsNotGood: The Futilists all wear white, but they’re not exactly the good guys.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: The jury’s out on whether or not all the crazy coincidences featured in the book were, well, crazy coincidences or the product of divine intervention.
* MiscarriageOfJustice: Despite the Senator’s death appearing to be an obvious suicide, his widow is eventually charged with his murder. The police produce evidence that she forced the Senator to hang himself at gunpoint. Sasha and Joe believe this to be a lie perpetrated by a government that doesn’t want people to believe its senators are liable to kill themselves.
* OnlyAFleshWound: Though Sasha isn’t able to ‘’quite’’ walk off [[spoiler: having her arms and stomach cut up,]] she recovers rather quickly, all things considered.

* PleaseDontLeaveMe: Sasha’s reaction when Joe threatens to leave her if she doesn’t agree to [[spoiler: live with him and the children at Alcatraz]]. It shakes Sasha to the point where she eventually agrees.
* PosthumousCharacter: Sasha’s father, Chris, is dead before the opening of the novel. His character is described posthumously by his daughter’s words and thoughts. Eva, Frank’s former girlfriend, is also mentioned on a few occasions, but not enough to get a good feel on her personality.

* ThePromisedLand: Sasha is a little obsessed with the idea of living in San Francisco. This obsession dates back to when Sasha’s father gave her a snow globe of the Golden Gate Bridge upon his return from a trip. She eventually convinces Joe to take her there. To the point of delusion, she finds it to be just as amazing as she dreamed.
* PromotedToParent: [[spoiler: Sasha and Joe begin taking care of Austin and Caroline upon their parents’ deaths.]]
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: [[spoiler: Various world leaders take jabs at the United States’ government after Operation Bone-White is leaked.]]

* RetiredBadass: Dante is a polite, retired man who appears unassuming at first glance, but he’s also a decorated veteran who once fought beside Sasha’s father. He’s stayed physically fit, too.

* RuleOfSymbolism: In place of wedding bands, Futilists wear necklaces composed of white-gold yarn and incomplete, metal circles. Doing so would be absurd if not for the symbolism behind them. Futilists see the hardness of the metal as representing the couple’s initially strong bond. On the other hand, the circles’ incompleteness represents the inevitability of said bond breaking. One of the Futilist wedding rituals has the betrothed place their fingers into the openings of each other’s necklaces as an acknowledgement of that ‘fact’. Ever the optimist, Sasha prefers to see it as the couple ‘’completing’’ the circle rather than acknowledging its brokenness.

--> ‘’ Colorado. The land of popped ears and chilly air and breath like white smoke. We were sitting at a red table outside a [=McDonald’s=], eating cheap burgers and nuggets. It was cold out. Jackets were necessary. But the view, that which the locals dining inside forsook, was completely worth it. All around us were mountains capped with snow and gray stone. Elk stared at us from the edges of their aspen groves, and endless flocks of birds flew overhead. The wind whistled. There were fields of frost-tipped grass. Little pink flowers that looked almost like dots. In the distance, I could see a lake halfway covered in ice.
--> We’re here to see the sights.’’
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: Sasha eventually learns that Joe is [[spoiler: the cousin of the woman her father really wanted]]. Out of a desire to cover up her dad’s various failures with her own successes, Sasha becomes determined to have a successful relationship with Joe, live somewhere nicely, and have a happy family. It gets to the point where she almost seems to think succeeding will put her father’s spirit to rest or something in that nature.

* SmallTownBoredom: One of the many, many reasons Joe left his cultist family for Boston. Of course, Boston didn’t end up being great, either.
* SoBeautifulItsACurse: While Sasha doesn’t directly claim this, early in the novel she’s under the impression that men are only interested in sleeping with her. She quite resents that fact.

* SwitchingPOV: The book alternates between Sasha’s and Joe’s perspectives on a chapter-by-chapter basis. [[spoiler: The final chapter switches between them every paragraph, before finally culminating with their points of view becoming one.]] In addition, various news articles and entries from the Senator’s journal are shown.

* ThereIsAGod: Sasha’s eventual reaction to the uncanny coincidences occurring within the novel.

* TitleDrop: ‘’The Tenets of Futilism’’ is the ‘holy book’ of the cult going by the same name. It was authored by Annabel and Gregory.

* TroubledChild: Austin and Caroline. Both of them have been led to depression by their parents teaching, and it’s hinted that the former is still a little angry about Joe leaving them. They get worse after [[spoiler: seeing Sasha shoot their mother and their father kill himself]]. They’re cheered up a bit by Sasha and Joe taking them on a tour around the country, but hit a new low after [[spoiler: their new guardians’ cult turns violent]].
* UndercoverAsLovers: When Sasha and Joe take shelter in the latter’s parents’ house, they pretend to be engaged. This is because Futilists believe friendship with members of the opposite sex is dishonest and casual dating is pointless. Neither of them are a big fan of this arrangement at first, but their relationship does eventually become quite legitimate.

* WalkingTheEarth: The middle section of the novel features the protagonists travelling throughout America, discovering something important and/or meeting someone new at almost every stop.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Sasha and, to a lesser extent, Joe become this by the end of the novel. They seem to legitimately want to fix the United States’ government and stop anything like Operation: Bone-White from ever being attempted again. To accomplish this, they’re willing to cause violence. The problem is how apathetic they get towards bloodshed. Eventually, they have no qualms with sacrificing dozens of lives just to send a little message. At one point, they [[spoiler: have their followers kill two men for the crime of driving black cars, which made them suspect said men were government agents]]. They also [[spoiler: order their bodyguards to kill Vanessa after she threatened to blackmail them]].
* WideEyedIdealist: Sasha eventually becomes one to the point of outright delusion. By the end of the novel, she’s positive that Crescis overcame his brother on 12-21-2012, and that everything occurring since has happened for the better. Believing this is all that keeps her anywhere close to sane. When Sasha encounters evidence to the contrary (such as murders or suicides), she thinks up ways it could possibly lead to someone’s benefit. For example, when one of her followers tells her she was raped, Sasha replies that it led to her attacker being consumed by guilt and pledging never to hurt anyone again. All of Sasha’s Waxer followers also fall under this trope, seeing as they believe her.

* YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters: It’s brought up several times that Waxers eventually come to be thought of as domestic terrorists by the government and general public, seeing as they killed the Governor of California and all. Sasha and Joe are convinced their violent actions are a necessary step to fix The United States’ greater problems.
* YouSaidYouWouldLetThemGo: [[spoiler: To Gregory and Annabel’s surprise, Joe manages to reach Sasha within an hour. They had previously made a deal saying they would let her go if he managed to do so. Despite Gregory, refuses to release her. This doesn’t make Annabel or Frank happy. They convince Gregory to stick to the terms of their deal, seeing as they value honesty.]].

--> ‘’[[spoiler: ““You came for me,” I said, the words coming out stunted and weak, but true. “I can’t tell you how thankful I am. You came for me even though I’m just a boring, lonely girl you met under a corpse.”
--> “You’re more than that.”
--> “Do you-“
--> The pain flared up for a moment. I let it a little scream. Then it resided.
--> “Do you know what the best part of living is?” I asked. “More time with you.”
--> ‘’And Joe smiled back.]]’’

--> ‘’ Colorado. The land of popped ears and chilly air and breath like white smoke. We were sitting at a red table outside a McDonald’s, eating cheap burgers and nuggets. It was cold out. Jackets were necessary. But the view, that which the locals dining inside forsook, was completely worth it. All around us were mountains capped with snow and gray stone. Elk stared at us from the edges of their aspen groves, and endless flocks of birds flew overhead. The wind whistled. There were fields of frost-tipped grass. Little pink flowers that looked almost like dots. In the distance, I could see a lake halfway covered in ice.

* ChekovsGun: The letter from Sasha’s mother is a minor one. She receives it shortly before the novel opens. Though Sasha considers opening it several times, she never reads it, preferring simply to imagine what it says. Joe does, though. [[spoiler: The contents are just as hateful as Sasha could’ve imagined . After reading the letter, Joe asks Sasha if she wants to know what it says. She declines, but allows Joe to let her in on one detail. He tells Sasha it mentions dying alone. This strengthens Sasha’s already strong paranoia concerning the subject, the results of which are listed below under [[DyingAlone Dying Alone.]]]]

-> ''I want to tell you a happy story. I want to tell you about a girl whose biggest concern is the quality of her sex life. I want to tell you that all the makeup I’m wearing, my new black dress, the paint on my fingernails, they’re all for fun. For a guy I like who likes me, too. I want to tell you the balloons, the streamers, they’re all for a birthday party. Too bad those would be lies.''

''The Tenets of Futilism'' is a 2014 literary novel. Mere days after the world was supposed to end, Sasha Collins gets a job as a senator’s secretary. It’s is cut short when she, along with a cleaning guy named Joe, finds the senator’s body hanging above his desk. Curious as to why the senator killed himself, Sasha decides to take his journal. It leads to her uncovering a rather disturbing conspiracy. Fearing retaliation from the government, Sasha and Joe flee to the latter’s cultist family for safety. That goes about as well as you’d expect it to.

* AbandonedHospital: [[spoiler: After capturing Sasha, Annabel and Gregory chose one as the venue for their ‘game’. There’re vines creeping up the walls, an overgrown courtyard, gang signs, and abandoned equipment. First, they strap her down to an old operating table. When Joe arrives, they tell him he has an hour to find Sasha, their followers will be attempting to stop him, and he will be watched through cameras mounted on RC cars. Then they go on to torture Sasha with scalpels, her screams echoing across the building through speakers.]]
* AbusiveParents: Annabel and Gregory. At first, it’s not quite horrifying. They just discourage their children from hoping for a future and tell them honestly about the harsh realities of the world. Later, however, they go as far as [[spoiler: forcing Austin and Caroline to watch them torture Sasha, intending to ‘teach them a valuable lesson’.]] Despite everything, they seem to still legitimately love their children, even if in sick sort of way.
** It’s a pretty safe bet that Sasha’s mother was one, too, judging by the way she talks to her daughter in her letter. She’s not shy about saying she hates Sasha.
** [[spoiler: Later in the novel, Sasha and Joe could be considered Abusive Guardians to Austin and Caroline, though their abuse takes a different form than the examples listed above. Rather than being discouraging or unkind towards the children in their care, Sasha and Joe are apathetic and largely absent from their lives. Whenever they think about checking up on them, they brush the issue away by saying ‘they’re watching cartoons’, preferring to spend their time with their spouse or managing their cult.]]
* AcheyScars: Sasha never quite recovers from [[spoiler: having her arms and stomach cut up by Joe’s parents.]] Even after the wounds close and scar, she still occasionally feels pain in them.

* AfterActionHealingDrama: The scene where Joe saves [[spoiler: Sasha from bleeding out through the use of a cigarette lighter]] after he stops his parents from [[spoiler: killing her.]]
* AlasPoorVillain: Despite everything they did, the deaths of [[spoiler: Gregory and Annabel]] are taken rather somberly. [[spoiler: Their younger children]] claim to miss them several times afterwards.
* AndManGrewProud: Not men, but the nameless inhabitants of the Former Universe. According to Futilist cosmology, they became so obsessed with pleasure that they built arcane machines to go far beyond the limits of their senses, machines which eventually destroyed their universe.
* ArtShift: The novel will occasionally shift between Sasha’s first person perspective, entries from the senator’s journal, and third person newspaper articles.

--> [[spoiler: ''“You came for me, Joe. Thank you. I ruined your Christmas, ruined your life. I’m just a boring, lonely girl you met over an old hanging corpse, but you never gave up on me.”'']]
-->[[spoiler: ''Joe put a finger on the broken circle around my neck, made it unbroken.'']]
-->[[spoiler: ''“You’re more than that.”'']]
-->[[spoiler: ''I smiled in a pool of my own blood.'']]
-->[[spoiler: ''“These last few months have been the best of my life. No matter what happens, I want you to know I love you."'']]
* BecauseISaidSo: Sasha’s attitude late in the novel. She seems to think that anything she does is justified on account of being Crescis’ ‘harbinger’, and her followers agree. Joe doesn’t seem quite convinced (as with everything concerning the Waxer cult), but he loves her too much to speak out against her or pull her out of her delusions. Well, generally.
* BilingualBonus: The names of Crescis and Decrescis were ripped from the Carmina Burana. In the context of the text, they mean ‘increasing’ and ‘decreasing’.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Sasha, Joe, and the children have been forced to live on Alcatraz Island for months, feeling it’s the safest place in the bay area. Not only have they told the world about Operation Bone-white, they have further incited the American people against the government. They’ve pissed off some powerful men, expect retaliation, and have prepared their best for it. But their best was not enough. The government’s vengeance came in the form of a predator drone. The final chapter consists of Sasha and Joe sitting together outside the prison, reminiscing and looking at San Francisco while waiting for the drone to reach them. Austin and Caroline are tied up next to them, pleading to be let go. Sasha and Joe ignore them, knowing a quick death outside would be better than taking shelter inside the prison and dying under the rubble the drone would reduce it to. On the bright(ish) side, Sasha got her wish of dying alongside people she loves like her father, felt she had made up for all his mistakes and made a positive impact on the world, and sincerely believes she will be reunited with Joe in her next life.]]
* BlindObedience: Though they may sometimes question them, Futilists/Waxers will inevitably follow Gregory and Annabel’s/ Sasha and Joe’s orders.
* BloodSpatteredInnocents: While it might not involve them being literally splattered with blood, Austin and Caroline don’t get off easy. Firstly, they are [[spoiler: dragged along by their parents for months as they come up with their revenge plot.]] Secondly, they [[spoiler: are forced to watch their parents horrifically torture Sasha in a run-down asylum.]] Thirdly, they [[spoiler: see their older brothers shoot their parents, who proceed to bleed to death.]]
* BookEnds: Both the (majority of the) first chapter and (all of the) final chapter take place on December 21st, and Christmas is mentioned in some way in each. [[spoiler: The book’s beginning and ending paragraphs are both Sasha saying she wants to tell you a happy story.]]
* BreatherEpisode: Most of the chapters set in Philadelphia.
* ChekhovsGun: The letter from Sasha’s mother is a minor one. She receives it shortly before the novel opens. Though Sasha considers opening it several times, she doesn’t until the end. [[spoiler: It’s as hateful as she imagined. The worst part was it predicting Sasha would die alone. This intensifies what was already one of her greatest fears, the results of which are listed under [[DyingAlone Dying Alone.]]]]
* CigaretteOfAnxiety: Sasha has a few in the beginning of the novel, before she kicks the habit.
* TheChosenOne: After [[spoiler: discovering Joe was the cousin of the woman her father really loved,]] Sasha begins to believe she is Crescis’ chosen ‘harbinger’. She becomes even more entrenched in this belief as the novel progresses and more crazy coincidences occur, going so far as to think she is destined to tell the world about the good news of Crescis’ triumph over his brother.
--> ''Now I know I’m Crescis’ harbinger. Everything I touch becomes better. I toss nickels at the homeless, and by the next week they’re no longer there. They leave because things finally started to work out for them. My blessing is free, given by the Great Waxing’s grace. I walk on dying grass, and soon it’s healthy again. When I notice a dead flower it’s dug up and replaced by a living one. I even believe the broken circles around mine and my husband’s necks have even started to come together, millimeter by millimeter.''

* ClingyJealousGirl:
** Sasha becomes more and more emotionally reliant on Joe as the novel progresses, eventually getting to the point where she [[spoiler: ordered her Waxers to perform ''female genital mutilation'' upon Vanessa in the most violent and public way possible.]] Why? She thought Joe was having an affair with her. What was her evidence? Seeing [[spoiler: Vanessa]] wink at Joe, and even Sasha admits she might have just imagined seeing it.
** Joe also serves as a male example given he [[spoiler: intended to have Marvin castrated on account of ironically believing ''Sasha'' was having an affair with ''him.'']] His 'evidence'? Baselessly assuming she was really [[spoiler: with Marvin whenever she claimed to be visiting with Vanessa]] They've been doing everything together for so long that Joe becomes suspicious when Sasha merely suggests she might ''want to do something without him.'' Really, their relationship can be summed up as the worst case scenario of two lonely, romantically-stunted people falling in love. Sasha and Joe both know what it's like to be alone. Their eventual reaction to finding a person to love them is a crippling fear of losing said person. That's understandable, really. Well, until you get to the whole [[spoiler: female genital mutilation]] deal.
** Sasha’s mindset is made clear in the following passage.
--->''Loneliness feels like apathy and like an emptiness that grows and grows until you just want to scream but you don’t because there’s no one who’s listening. If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound? If a girl with no friends kills herself, will anybody care to know her last words? Loneliness is when television characters are your best friends. When you feel so, so sorry for everyone you see hurt. You cry when they cry. But, deep down, you don’t really care. You can’t. You’re not used to it. Every tear you’ve ever shed for another is just you pretending. Pretending you’re capable of loving someone besides yourself. You want to, but can’t. You pretend to feel for them because that almost makes you seem like their friend. But you’re not. You hardly even feel human, because loneliness has torn half the definition of humanity from your soul. You only have yourself.''
--->''And then, if you’re lucky like me, somebody comes around who can, in some small way, show you what it means to truly care. To love. Show you how to feel like a damned person for the first time in your life. Then he leaves you.''
--->''Unless you’re careful. I’ll make sure he doesn’t even have the chance. [[spoiler: I reached Vanessa’s house and parked outside. So did my Waxer followers.]]''
* ColorMotif: The Futilists and Waxers both like white, but have different interpretations as to its meaning. Waxers believe it to symbolize purity, tranquility, general goodness, the usual stuff. Futilists, however, take it to represent all of the colors in the rainbow rendered boring and dull together.
* CorruptPolitician: There must be a great, great many of them given the scale of Operation Bone-white. Senator Ralph White was among them, though Sasha refuses to acknowledge it in her delusion, baselessly believing him to be a ‘hero’ who ‘fought the government from the inside’.
* ConvertingForLove: There are hints that Joe doesn’t really believe Crescis defeated Decrescis as Sasha does, and only pretends to out of love.
* TheCult: This novel features two.
** The Futilists, led by Joe’s parents, are best described by Joe when he refers to them as ‘diet Nihilists’. They believe that trying to improve is, well, futile and leads to nothing but sadness and disappointment for all but the lucky few. The cult doesn’t try to convince you of its ability to make you happy. Rather, it aims to make one merely content through hard work, obedience, and quiet acceptance of whatever your fate may be. They believe being content with what you have is better than ‘rising and falling, the floor becoming lower every time’. Though it’s not explicitly required, most Futilists tend to believe in Crescis and Decrescis, the gods of fortune and misfortune. Since, according to them, they decide everyone’s fates, they don’t believe that anyone is truly responsible for their actions, a concept quite attractive to the guilty. While some religions such as Christianity claims to give the means to pay back one’s sins, Futilism says they were never sins in the first place.
** The Waxers, founded by Sasha and Joe around halfway through the novel, is essentially a ‘nicer’ offshoot of Futilism. They believe Crescis defeated Decrescis on December 21st 2012 when he prevented the Mayan’s apocalypse from occurring. With the god of fortune reigning alone, everything that has happened since that date has happened for the better. Well, according to Sasha and Joe. They manage to convince drug addicts, rape victims, and widows alike that their troubles occurred for some sort of good, yet presently unrealized, end. Their followers absorb themselves into their teachings in order to suspend their own disbelief, ultimately becoming very loyal. By the end of the novel, Sasha and Joe primarily use them as a tool to act against the government.
* TheCynic: Futilists in general. Sasha is also this at the beginning of the novel, until her [[FaceHeelTurn face heel turn]], after which she becomes the biggest [[WideEyedIdealist idealist]] in the novel by far.
* DaddysGirl: While she was hated by her mother, Sasha loved (and was loved) by her father very much. On the other hand, he always told her not to idealize him, and she took that advice.

* DidNotGetTheGirl: Sasha’s father. Seeing what it did to him is what made Sasha so determined to stick with and love Joe. She doesn’t want to end up like him, depressed and lonely in a city filled with millions of people. [[spoiler: In the end, she isn’t. Sasha outdoes him like she wanted.]]
* DisproportionateRetribution: Gregory and Annabel get rather angry upon learning Sasha was only pretending to be a Futilist, always intended to eventually abandon them along with one of their sons, and attempte to turn their other children against them. Anger’s understandable. What’s not is [[spoiler: stalking Sasha and Joe for months, kidnapping her, and setting up an elaborate scenario in which they torture Sasha with the intent to kill, all the while mocking Joe over speakers as he tries to save her.]] Luckily, their plan didn’t quite work out, though [[spoiler: Sasha ends up having huge scars where they tortured her.]]
** Frank’s former girlfriend, Amelia, did the same sort of thing that Sasha did. [[spoiler: Gregory and Amelia succeeded in killing her.]]
* DyingAlone: Sasha is so terrified of this fate she [[spoiler: tied up Austin and Caroline beside Joe and herself so they would die together when the predator missile hit.]] One of the few ways Sasha’s father succeeded was in dying beside the woman he loved. Throughout the novel she is determined to outdo him. [[spoiler: That means she has to die next to her entire family.]]

** Sasha’s mother, Amy, only married Chris, her father, because he was a veteran. Deep down, however, Chris was depressed and regretful, not proud and upstanding as Amy had hoped. She began to hate him upon realizing that, which only got worse after he became sick with cancer and she had to care for him. It gets to the point where Amy kills Chris by stabbing him in the neck with his own IV needles. Understandably, Sasha was quite disturbed by that, not that Amy would care. She also hates her daughter on account of feeling she always had her husband’s affection whereas she did not. Right before the novel opens, Sasha receives a letter from Amy. She doesn’t open it until the end, guessing it would only contain hate. [[spoiler: She was right.]]
** Joe’s parents, Gregory and Annabel, are the leader of the Futilist cult. They force their children to spend their free time doing meaningless work and teach them not to dream or aspire to anything greater than the road directly ahead. They offer ‘lessons’ to correct divergent behavior. For Joe this meant [[spoiler: kidnapping his wife, driving her to a remote, abandoned hospital, and giving him a limited amount of time to defeat their followers and find her, all while her tortured screams blared through the speakers.]] Even as children, Austin and Caroline are depressed and hopeless. Their oldest brother, Frank, is an example of what can become of a child indoctrinated in Futilism. Quiet, stuck in his ways, almost without a will of his own. It’s no wonder Joe ran away to Boston to escape.

* EldritchAbomination: Crescis and Decrescis are said to be the last remnants of the collective will of the Former Universe’s inhabitants. They inhabit a ‘dark matter singularity far beyond our three-dimensional space’, are omniscient, and control the fates of every living creature in the physical universe.
* EmotionlessGirl: Sasha initially comes off as this to Joe. It’s all a mask.
* FancyDinner: Sasha and Joe take Chad and Betty out to one as thanks for their kindness.
* FormerTeenRebel: Sasha. She was sent to juvee on one occasion, which ‘straightened her out’ to the point of being anxious, unsocial, and prone to hysteria. That's not to mention her fear and hatred of the authorities.
* GoodIsNotSoft: While he’s usually polite and mild-mannered, Marvin is ''not'' pleased upon learning [[spoiler: Sasha had her men perform female genital mutilation upon is sister.]] He goes as far as [[spoiler: telling the public that she and her husband discovered the conspiracy, hoping it would get them killed.]]
* GovernmentConspiracy: The novel’s plot revolves around one. After finding Senator Ralph White hanging above his desk, Sasha takes his journal out of undeniable curiosity. Reading one of its entries leads to her discovering the American government's plans to put excessive fluoride into the water supply, rendering the citizenry stupid, obedient, and impressionable. Turns out, all those people suspicious about fluoridation were on the right track. The substance ''does'', in fact, have an effect on the mind, but only through very high dosages.
* NotSoDifferent: By the end of the novel, Sasha and Joe share quite a few similarities with [[spoiler: Gregory and Annabel. Both couples lead cults, order their followers to preform dangerous tasks, and abuse Austin and Caroline in some sort of way.]] Of course, Sasha would never admit it.
* HappilyMarried: Chad and Betty. Though Sasha and Joe certainly love each other, they aren’t together long enough and have too many issues to really fall under this trope.

* HeelFaceTurn: Frank undergoes one after realizing his parents aren’t the honest, and therefore ultimately moral, people he thought they were. It results in him [[spoiler: betraying them, which contributes to saving Sasha’s life. Not only that, he later forges his parent’s signature in order to pull Austin and Caroline out of school so they wouldn’t be missed after Sasha and Joe takes them. His last line states he had a lot of thinking to do, hinting he might be gravitating away from Futilism altogether.]]
* HopeBringer: Sasha and Joe to their followers. It wins them quite a lot of loyalty.
* ImNotAfraidOfYou: When [[spoiler: Gregory and Annabel kidnap Sasha,]] she responds by saying she’s not afraid of them. After all, Crescis would save her from being killed. [[spoiler: ‘Crescis’ saves her from dying, yes, but not from being brutally tortured. Needless to say, Sasha’s attitude quickly once she realizes she’s not getting out unscathed.]]
* IntergenerationalFriendship: Sasha and Joe with Vanessa and Martin, [[spoiler: if brief.]] Vanessa and Martin with Dante.
* LackOfEmpathy: A possible of Sasha’s character (and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Joe’s) is that, while she would ''like'' to care about others, she is psychologically incapable of truly doing so. All the time she spent alone and her stay at juvee didn't do her much good. At the very least. Sasha had a lack of empathy in the past, considering she claims Joe gave her the ability to love and feel ‘human’ when she wasn't able to before. What’s debatable is if she actually got better. It’s notable that Sasha’s love for him, while intense, comes off as rather selfish in nature. She’s rarely worried about Joe for Joe’s sake. The big piece of evidence against this theory is her tender scene with Caroline in which she tries to encourage the girl at risk to herself (Although there’s the fact that Sasha. Then again, by the end of the book Sasha is [[spoiler: apathetic towards Caroline, justifying her lack of presence with ‘she’s watching cartoons’.]])

* LoveMakesYouEvil: Well, not necessarily ''evil,'' but willing to do almost anything for it.
* MasterOfUnlocking: Sasha is able to pick locks and hotwire vehicles, skills she apparently picked up in her [[FormerTeenRebel younger, wilder years.]]
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: The jury’s out on whether the crazy coincidences were, well, crazy coincidences or the product of divine intervention.
* OnlyAFleshWound: Though Sasha isn't able to ''quite'' walk off [[spoiler: having her arms and stomach cut into,]] she recovers rather quickly, all things considered.

* PantsPositiveSafety: Joe has a gun concealed in his pants pocket. He surprises his family with it the first time they try to [[spoiler: make Sasha pay for insulting them,]] which allows him to escape alongside her. He later uses it to [[spoiler: save Sasha after his family managed to kidnap her on their second attempt.]]
* PleaseDontLeaveMe: Sasha’s reaction when Joe threatens to leave her if she does not [[spoiler: come with him to live at Alcatraz.]] So much so she eventually agrees.
* PosthumousCharacter: Sasha’s father, Chris, is dead before the opening of the novel. His character is described posthumously by his daughter’s words and thoughts. Amelia, Frank’s former girlfriend, is also mentioned on a few occasions, but not enough for a good feel on her personality.
* PraetorianGuard: Sasha and Joe have a group of completely loyal bodyguards who follow them everywhere (asides from their workplaces) in public. They even stand guard outside their apartment at night.
* ThePromisedLand: Sasha has been obsessed with living in San Francisco ever since her father gave her a snow globe of the Golden Gate Bridge upon returning from a trip there. When she leaves Boston with Joe, Sasha asks him to take her there, but he decides to go to Philadelphia instead. [[spoiler: They do end up moving there after Joe rescues Sasha from Gregory and Annabel. Sasha considers it to be as wonderful as she imaged.]]
* PromotedToParent: [[spoiler: Sasha and Joe to Austin and Caroline, upon their parent’s death.]]
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: There’s a short one from Sasha to Gregory and Annabel after they realize that she’s not really a Futilist. It, combined with the realization, made them ''quite'' upset.
* Reincarnation: Sasha and her followers believe Crescis will keep their souls safe after they die. When their loved ones are all dead, he will lead together to their next lives.
* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: Sasha and Joe realize that many innocent lives will be lost if the government is to be overthrown. They accept that, the former more coldly than the latter.
* RuleOfSymbolism: In place of wedding bands, Futilists wear necklaces composed of white-gold yarn and incomplete, metal circles. It would be absurd if not for the symbolism behind it. Futilists see the hardness of the metal as representing the couple’s initially strong bond. On the other hand, the circle’s incompleteness represents the inevitability of said bond breaking. One of the Futilist wedding rituals has the betrothed place their fingers into the openings of each other’s necklaces as an acknowledgement of that ‘fact’. Ever the optimist, Sasha prefers to see it as the couple ''completing'' the circle rather than acknowledging its brokenness.
* SatanIsGood: In a way. Decrescis isn't the god of misfortune just for the sake of evil. He believes that the hedonism brought upon by Crescis will eventually lead to the end of this universe, just as it was to the last one.

--> '' The Colorado mountains. The land of popped ears and chilly air. We were driving up an incline. Now down a hill. The moment you leave the interstate, the roads become curved and harsh. But the sights are so worth it. All around us were mountains capped with snow and gray stone. Elk stared at us from the edges of their aspen groves, and endless flocks of birds flew overhead. The wind whistled. There were fields of frost-tipped grass. Little pink flowers that looked almost like dots. In the distance I could see a little lake still halfway covered with ice. There were streams at the center of every valley and lakes halfway covered by ice.''
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: Sasha eventually learns that Joe is [[spoiler: the cousin of the woman her father truly loved.]] She becomes determined to love him, live somewhere nice, and have a happy family in order to make up for her father’s various failings in those areas. It gets to the point where she almost seems to think succeeding will put his spirit to rest or something in that nature.

* SmallTownBoredom: One of the many, many reasons Joe left his cultist family for Boston. Of course, Boston didn’t up being great, either.
* SoBeautifulItsACurse: While Sasha doesn't directly claim this, early in the novel she’s under the impression that men are only interested in sleeping with her, and resents that.
* SpeakInUnison: Both the Futilists and Waxers have a tendency to (creepily) do this.
* TheStoic: Frank.
* SwitchingPOV: The senator’s journal entries are written from, well, the senator’s perspective rather than Sasha’s. They shine light upon his motivations and attitudes shortly before his death.
* ThemeTune: In one chapter, Sasha and Joe go to a concert hall to hear Pēteris Vasks’s ‘Lonely Angel’ piece for violin and string orchestra. Sasha says it reminds her of herself and her current situation. ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ by Mariah Carey is mentioned near the beginning of the book and in the last chapter.
* ThereAreNoCoincidences: Only the work of Crescis and Decrescis. Well, according to the Futilists and Sasha.

* TitleDrop: In-universe, ''The Tenets of Futilism'' is a book authored by Gregory and Annabel that lays out their cult's beliefs.
* TookALevelInBadass: Joe, after heroically [[spoiler: saving Sasha from his parents and their followers.]]
* TroubledChild: Caroline and Austin. Both of them have been led to depression by their parents teaching, and the latter is still upset about Joe leaving them. They get worse after [[spoiler: seeing their older brothers kill their parents.]]
* ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption: When it comes to getting the current politicians out of office. Well, probably. There’s a chance they might decide to resign before it comes to that, but Sasha and Joe sees that as unlikely.
* WalkingTheEarth: The characters travel for much of the novel, discovering something important/meeting someone new at almost every stop.
* WavingSignsAround: There were many responses to the world learning about Operation Bone-white. Crowds of sign-waving protestors were among them. However, not all of them stay peaceful, starting with one Sasha calls out for being ineffective. Instead, she suggests traveling to the state capitol, wait for the governor to come out, and ‘’hang him on the tree.’’ While many of the protesters weren't cool with the last part, enough of wanted the governor dead to get the job done. His death along with Sasha’s words add fuel to the fire, and protests start turning violent throughout the country. It’s unclear whether or not they accomplished anything but vandalizing businesses and harassing police. What’s known is that, by the end of the novel, sections of San Francisco had been set ablaze by the angry mobs.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Sasha and, to a lesser extent, Joe become this by the end of the novel. According to them, the only way to ensure the government doesn’t try to pull something like Operation Bone-white again is to replace it with a new one. They end up transforming their Waxer cult into a sort of revolutionary group, though they accomplish little save chaos.
* WideEyedIdealist: By the end of the novel, Sasha is entrenched in the belief that Crescis overcame his brother on 12-21-2012, and that everything that has occurred since has been for the better. Much of her sanity depends on that belief. When Sasha encounters evidence to the contrary (Such as murders and suicides), she thinks up ways it could possibly lead to someone’s benefit. For example, when one of her followers tells her she was raped, Sasha replies that it led to her attacker being consumed by guilt and pledging never to hurt someone again. All of Sasha’s Waxer followers also fall under this trope, seeing as they believe her.

* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler: The predator drones in the final chapter have no problem firing on Austin and Caroline if it means also hitting Sasha and Joe. Sasha hopes the world will learn of this, and that knowledge will lead to even greater action against the government.]]

* YouSaidYouWouldLetThemGo: [[spoiler: To Gregory and Annabel’s surprise, Joe manages to reach Sasha within an hour. They had previously made a deal saying they would let her go if he managed to do so. Despite that, they refuse to release her. This doesn’t make Frank happy. All his life he had been taught honesty, and seeing his parents rattles him so much he decides to turn on them. His actions help lead to his parent’s death and Sasha’s salvation.]].

----

* ClingyJealousGirl: Sasha becomes more and more emotionally reliant on Joe as the novel progresses, eventually getting to the point where she [[spoiler: ordered her Waxers to perform ''female genital mutilation'' upon Vanessa in the most violent and public way possible.]] Why? She thought Joe was having an affair with her. What was her evidence? Seeing [[spoiler: Vanessa]] wink at Joe, and even Sasha admits she might have just imagined seeing it.
--> Joe also serves as a male example given he [[spoiler: intended to have Marvin castrated on account of ironically believing ''Sasha'' was having an affair with ''him.'']] His 'evidence'? Baselessly assuming she was really [[spoiler: with Marvin whenever she claimed to be visiting with Vanessa]] They've been doing everything together for so long that Joe becomes suspicious when Sasha merely suggests she might ''want to do something without him.''
--> Really, their relationship can be summed up as the worst case scenario of two lonely, romantically-stunted people falling in love. Sasha and Joe both know what it's like to be alone. Their eventual reaction to finding a person to love them is a crippling fear of losing said person. That's understandable, really. Well, until you get to the whole [[spoiler: female genital mutilation]] deal.
--> Sasha’s mindset is made clear in the following passage.
-->''Loneliness feels like apathy and like an emptiness that grows and grows until you just want to scream but you don’t because there’s no one who’s listening. If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound? If a girl with no friends kills herself, will anybody care to know her last words? Loneliness is when television characters are your best friends. When you feel so, so sorry for everyone you see hurt. You cry when they cry. But, deep down, you don’t really care. You can’t. You’re not used to it. Every tear you’ve ever shed for another is just you pretending. Pretending you’re capable of loving someone besides yourself. You want to, but can’t. You pretend to feel for them because that almost makes you seem like their friend. But you’re not. You hardly even feel human, because loneliness has torn half the definition of humanity from your soul. You only have yourself.''
-->''And then, if you’re lucky like me, somebody comes around who can, in some small way, show you what it means to truly care. To love. Show you how to feel like a damned person for the first time in your life. Then he leaves you.''
-->''Unless you’re careful. I’ll make sure he doesn’t even have the chance. [[spoiler: I reached Vanessa’s house and parked outside. So did my Waxer followers.]]''

* ChekovsGun: The letter from Sasha’s mother is a minor one. She receives it shortly before the novel opens. Though Sasha considers opening it several times, she doesn’t until the end. [[spoiler: It’s as hateful as she imagined. The worst part was it predicting Sasha would die alone. This intensifies what was already one of her greatest fears, the results of which are listed under [[DyingAlone Dying Alone.]]]]

* SatanIsGood: In a way. Decrescis isn't the god of misfortune just to be a [[Jerkass jerkass.]] He believes that the hedonism brought upon by Crescis will eventually lead to the end of this universe, just as it was to the last one.

* Cult: This novel features two.

* MasterOfUnlocking: Sasha is able to pick locks and hotwire vehicles, skills she apparently picked up in her younger, wilder years.

* FormerTeenRebel: Sasha. She was sent to juvee on one occasion, which ‘straightened her out’ to the point of being anxious, unsocial, prone to hysteria, and gave her a fear/hatred of the authorities.

* Precursors: The inhabitants of the Former Universe, according to Futilist cosmology. Cold-blooded and initially blind, the Nameless were first a tribal race warring for the right to live near to the thermal vents, which (As the Former Universe lacked stars) were the only source of heat at the time. Eventually, they discovered fire, which led to peace, their species evolving eyes, and rapid advances in science. The Nameless go on to become hedonistic and obsessed with pleasure. This gets to the point where they start creating more and more arcane technology to push the limits of their senses, until they eventually manage to blow their universe up in doing so.

* SoBeautifulItsACurse: While Sasha doesn’t directly claim this, early in the novel she’s under the impression that men are only interested in sleeping with her, and resents that fact.

* GovernmentConspiracy: The novel’s plot revolves around one. After finding Senator Ralph White hanging above his desk, Sasha takes his journal out of undeniable curiosity. Reading one of its entries eventually leads her to discovering the American government plans on putting excessive fluoride into the water supply, rendering the citizenry stupid, obedient, and impressionable. Turns out, all those people suspicious about fluoridation were on the right track. The substance ''does'', in fact, have an effect on the mind, but only through very high dosages.

* GovernmentConspiracy: The novel’s plot revolves around one. After finding Senator Ralph White hanging above his desk, Sasha takes his journal out of undeniable curiosity. Reading one of its entries eventually leads her to discovering the American government plans on putting excessive fluoride into the water supply, rendering the citizenry stupid, obedient, and impressionable. Turns out, all those people who were suspicious about fluoridation were on the right track. The substance ''does'', in fact, have an effect on the mind, but only through very high dosages.

* AcheyScars: Sasha never quite recovers from [[spoiler: having her arms and stomach cut up by Joe’s parents.]] Even after the wounds close up and scar, she still occasionally feels pain in them.

* AcheyScars: Sasha never quite recovers from [[spoiler: having her arms and stomach cut up by Joe’s parents.]] Even after the wounds close up and scar, she still occasionally feels great pain in them.