Well, I didn’t get anything up yesterday, but I still wrote for about three hours. I think that’s a good thing. I do want to post five days a week, but, it’s not always easy to get something up there. With this site it normally is, but yesterday was a weird, long, good day that just kept me going all day, so I never did get the chance. Again, I wrote, and that’s the important thing.
While I didn’t finish anything, or find that I had written anything I wished to put up (I want to put up quality, not just a thrown out story, I’ve regretted that) I did start to think about some odd things while I wrote. I thought about things I’d read, and seen, and how they influenced me and what they meant to me. I thought about how certain characters had come together (Arun and Kyden, for example, basically started off as rip offs of Miguel and Tulio from Road to El Dorado, but have evolved to become their own characters over the years) and my stories had evolved. And then a very odd thought struck me.
What would people find in my stories?
Now, I don’t mean, would people enjoy my stories, I think I could easily find a large audience. My stories aren’t anything special, I suppose, but they are decent and I think they would appeal to a lot of people. What I mean is that I wondered what hidden meaning people might take from my stories. What imagery or influence or ideas they might find that I never intentionally put there. I’ve heard it said that Tolkien was influenced by his experiences in the World Wars, and that he’s denied it, but that could be just rumor and hearsay. If he didn’t mean to, but people found it in there anyway, did he do it unconsciously? Are there things like that in my stories?
So, I sat and thought about my stories. I thought about them very hard and very carefully. Apokryphos seems the most innocent to me. All throughout the stories it’s about humanity, and redemption, and a personal connection with spirituality and how human’s deal with that no matter their religion. It also has a lot of my personal feelings about God in there, but in a more fantastic sort of a way. In Apokryphos, for reasons beyond my comprehension, I like to imagine God looks like Ed Asner. Something about his voice, demeanor and look seems appropriate for God. But that’s me.
So, there’s nothing hidden there that I can see people really making much of a fuss about or me denying. The stuff that’s in that really is me, I think, or at least, it is for the most part. But who knows what I can’t see that others might? The real trouble I found was accidental and in Joresch.
Let’s start with magic. The magic users of my world are beaten down. They are wise philosophers and knowledge seekers and essentially, now that I look at them, an allegory for scientists, though they were never meant to be. They were just supposed to be magic users, but if one were to look at my stories, they could draw that I had made them what they are on purpose. Now, there are of course good and bad magic users of all kinds, but mostly the good ones are portrayed, such as Finna, Cygnus and, to a lesser extent, Jacobar. Again, none of that was intentional, it was just story. Well, that’s all well and good, but things really took a down shot from there. The reasons mages have it so bad is that they are relegated to a small island because they are targeted by the major religion of the world. They are blamed for the world breaking several thousand years ago, and for the irradiation of magic in certain parts of the world that make them uninhabitable. In short, religion attacking science.
I know, right?
It gets much worse, because the main story of the first series of Joresch books deals with the mages fighting against the major religion who is trying to unite the countries of the western continent, but in reality the major religion is being run by a dark military force who only wants power. Also, the eastern continent is ruled by religious zealots who burn books, and witches, and keep knowledge in check.
I never realized I was so politically charged.
In fact, I am not.
None of these thoughts ever came to me ever until I looked at things at the end of the road. See, I’ve been working on Joresch for over 7 years now. It wasn’t even always called Joresch. The world came together, slowly and over time, and was built piece by piece while it was being role played with friends. Each piece fell where it did and I liked it or didn’t, and some of it has come from other people, including my wife. It’s not mine alone. The way things happened was totally random. There was no thought other than story, fun and character. So I have to wonder now about these books that we study. The great books of history and the world that we were forced to or wanted to read in high school and college. We try to find meaning in them, find what the author meant with this word, or why he or she described something this way instead of another way. Did they mean that this person was a communist or evil? Were they trying to imply that God wasn’t there or that women were being persecuted or that the government wasn’t giving them enough free cheese?
Maybe. And in some cases, books were written completely as an allegory for something else going on in the world (Revelations the Golden Compass come to mind, but, y’know, that’s me) or to voice political views and aspirations. But, I think more often than not, someone was just trying to write a book, and whatever happens was just for fun and probably profit.
I wonder how people will take my unholy abomination created by evil that was born without a soul, accidently devours the souls of those he kills, then sacrifices himself to save those he loves and comes back from the dead as the protector of the world?
Nah, who would buy anything that silly?
Later days.
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