seriousfic

So, I think I'm going to at least try to pull the trigger on this post-apocalyptic story I've been working on. I at least want to get done playing Psychonauts (I've been trying to get my Xbox controller to work on my PC, since this game is obviously meant for the controller, but no joy) and finish a few more fics, but I've really got it tightened into something 'me-ish'. Hopefully it's a short story and not something that's going to balloon up to 200K, which thus far has only happened once, but...

I don't know, I've read a lot of Western stories and apocalypse stories and I think I've got a handle on what I want to do with the genre(s). I've been reading this one book which has a nuclear holocaust and then there's magic and the Devil and Nazis and since it's the apocalypse an insane asylum gets broken open and so there's an army of psycho killers running around, and I think the interesting thing for me is that all this "horror stuff" takes away from the horror. Like, c'mon, there aren't really insane asylums full of people who would knife-murder you if they had half a chance. And so it's a question of how far you want to push it before you get too far away from the central question of "what would I do in this scenario?" Because once the scenario gets too unrealistic, the horror the characters are feeling is just gone.

So I've got in mind scenes with, like, dead babies and feral kids, stuff that's way far away from the usual bathos and pop culture references, and I'm just hoping it will play, because I've got a stomach of iron when it comes to that stuff. It's hard for me to tell how the audience will react because I'm just like "bring it on."

Hell, I've even got this theme/subtext thing, which is the idea of the middle class being wiped out (or turned into monsters. Save that for your thesis, kids) and this post-apocalyptic world where all these social outcasts like Winter's Bone white trash and gangbangers and religious cults are the ones who are able to band together and survive, while the safe, sane, normal people get wiped out. And you have the ultra-rich people who've literally built this gated community which is now a de facto fortress and this hero who, in our world he's a freak for knowing how to hunt animals and skin stuff, but after the bomb drops, he's a legend. So hopefully that'll end up being a little more interesting than just "yay! Zombies! Here's some fucking gore, geeks!"