General writing fiction discussion thrad.

[Littlewing]

<spoiler>

At the top it’s “Fat Tony” who is like one of the main individuals in charge of like the underground circuit and is like a kingpin, mafia leader which is difficult in a world where guns and knives are not very common place.

And then that is Bono the clown, which is like this weird archaeologist, nomad type character kind of like a combination of John Constantine and Lobo, but does not really have any super powers and is not funny at all really, he’s quite dryl sarcastic and stoic. His nemesis is like this “old times” guy with a big handlebar moustache and top hat who kidnapped his girlfriend and left her on the railroad tracks tied up as a hostage and generally always tried to tamper with his life.

The guy kicking the red and orange guy is the main character I guess at first.

Then the guy in the Mohawk I just called him “skull-kid” for now cuz I dunno, I guess he slime a Mexican luchador cruiserweight catholic from Mexico (in my mind) who becomes best liaisons and partners with Bobo the clown, they are both nomads and vagabonds. They don’t entirely fit in the story I guess, like what’s with bobo? But I invented him when I was just 5 years old due to my perplexity and fear of clowns. </spoiler>

 

[Littlewing]

Please read this fan fiction "Mist of the Wings", by my friend Karla Garry. She's an autistic friend of mine and Sarah Serenity, and we all wish to get our work noticed by Square Enix so they may let us work with them more closely on future Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy projects.

I hope you like it!

Oh that’s crazy I made my main character with red and blue eyed as well,

Also that reminds me I think I’m going to buy a cloud cosplay costume so I can get the wrist uses they’re really cool and wear them when I am playing music.

Those are custom graphics as well I imagine, that’s quite impressive, I don’t have it in me really dilettante. You should try RPG maker it’s really fun also f you like writing worries it’s good to have viciously compelling things to garner interest like artwork of some kind like that above, in the world of social and multi media though I am not an expert.

I thought this was funny here is another one, I have read a plethora of comic books, manga, watched anime and cartoons and they’re based on kind of cliche ideas but I thought it was funny how I based them on their specific coloured outfits and is based slightly on Double Dragon , mortal Kombat, Street righter and martial arts things. Like green guy becomes a ninja after he is involved in a mysterious and tragic circumstance and event and then stops being their complete ally and has hard to differentiate motives and agendas. (Kind of like snake eyes for G.I. Joe, cliche) because also the Ken ryu and mortal combat thing is funny,

I was also thinking Gatchaman because I love that series as well, hence the blue boots and white pants.

 

[Shademp]

May have overdone it a bit just now when looking into the psychology of war.

Spoiler: Warning: War stuff, possibly triggering

I want to cover my bases when studying the psychology of war, the impact it has on soldiers, in particular those who end up doing a lot of killing. It's relevant to the stories I want to write. Given the gargantuan gravity of the topic, it is only appropriate to learn as much as possible and hear all perspectives. So as part of this long-term project I looked up YouTube videos of war veterans talking about their experiences. Most of them were solemn and very matter-of-fact. Some were introspective.

But I wasn't quite prepared to hear the recollection of a person who enjoyed killing as though they were in a video game...and who then used his war stories to get laid. The soldier was brutally honest about this perspective. This is going to haunt me ever so slightly because it's not really the perspective I *wanted* to hear. It's one thing to hear stories from people who are traumatized or neutral, but to hear from a person who glorifies the experience? That's sickening and terrifying on a different level.

Was this person a psychopath, completely lacking a conscience? Or was he a sociopath, possessing a weak conscience and deciding not to care? Or perhaps most scary of all... What if he is neither and merely operates on the psychology of tribalism, caring perfectly well about those people close to him but caring nothing for those of other nations?

I expect it will be many years before I write the fictional tales I want to tell. There is simply too much to study and too many pitfalls if you want to seriously dive into topics like PTSD, the ugliness of war and the contexts surrounding it.

I just hope that the journey towards putting ink to paper, and getting to the point of feeling that my text isn't lacking in moral depth, won't lead to my psyche being damaged in the process.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I've got some great books for you, Shademp, as this is a topic which is also interesting to me:

"War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" by Chris Hedges
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us_Meaning

"Acts of War: The Behaviour of Men in Battle" by Richard Holmes - I can't recommend this one too highly
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1493456.Acts_of_War

"My War Gone by, I Miss it So," by Antony Lloyd
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4360.My_War_Gone_By_I_Miss_It_So
This last one I had to advise the school librarian to remove from our school shelves. You can believe I'm no supporter of censorship, but nobody under 18 should be exposed to this book. It describes everything. Book reviewers would probably describe it as "raw and unflinching". Don't read it unless you have a strong stomach for horror.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

@Shademp

There was an article in Scientific American in 2010 about soldiers who enjoy killing, if you are interested in checking it out.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/why-soldiers-get-a-kick-out-of-killing/

I don't think it is at all surprising that sadists and psychopaths gravitate to careers that allow them to kill and torture with relative impunity. Some of them might mask it behind a facade of jingoism, but most of the time it is, as with most human behaviors, all about power. True fanatics can be ruthless, but a display of gleeful bloodlust indicates that a person's violence is driven by more than a sense of duty. The sadistic soldier shows up in many (non-propagandistic) war movies (the "Get some!" guy from Full Metal Jacket comes to mind). He is usually throwing around racial slurs and other dehumanizing language and openly can't wait to rape and pillage. TVTropes even has a page for it and describes it as "truth in television."

Killing and torturing are the consummate acts of power because they involve complete subjugation of another person's entire existence to one's own. Erich Fromm wrote, "The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other animate creature) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Another way of formulating the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism is to transform man into a thing, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life - freedom." Most people, thankfully, don't want that power and are sickened by experiencing it. But a smaller number of people crave it and thrive on it.

I think everybody has an inner sadist, to a greater or lesser extent. We all get off on flexing and lording things over others. That's just part of having an ego. So it's not that the sadistic instinct is *alien*, but it becomes rampant and out of control in certain individuals, usually due to certain types of childhood experiences coupled with neurological and genetic predispositions. You will find these people among the ranks of *any* position that enables them to exert power over others - politics, banking, middle management, teaching, prison staff, the military, et cetera.

A study was conducted where people who had just experienced rejection were given the chance to make another person drink some amount of hot sauce. They were told that the subject didn't like spicy things. Surprise-surprise, the people who were still smarting from a wounded ego were wayyyy meaner with the hot sauce than the control group. And the people who were identified as having high rejection sensitivity were the meanest of all. When you feel small, you can feel bigger by making someone else feel small. And killing another person - holding their entire being your hand like a glass ball and then dropping it from a height and going "whoopsie" - is at the far end of that continuum.

This article has some fascinating insights as well: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150130-the-man-who-studies-evil

I'm definitely not a psychologist, but sadism is something that I explore quite a bit in my writing, so I thought I would weigh in.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Oh, I'm glad this thread has been revived!
Those are great sources, Mobius, and I will read them with interest. The reasons why people commit atrocities, in war and out of it, are always fascinating.

Coming at the psychology from another angle, a common experience of armies that use conscripts is how difficult it is to get people to kill other people, even in self-defense. It's been a challenge for armies like the American army and the British army to train their conscripts to shoot to kill. The innate taboo against harming others is strong in most human beings. The "ratio-to-fire" value of as little as 3 in 10 soldiers ever firing their weapon at an enemy has often been reported, although historians have recently started challenging it as inaccurate (and unbelievable!).

When an army is made up of volunteers rather than conscripts, the number of psychopaths and sadists relative to ordinary people is going to go up. And I don't know.... if we have to have armies, which I suppose we do, maybe it's a good thing that a group of human beings exist who are psychologically fitted to the task. Better than taking ordinary men and women, training them to violate their deepest instincts, and leaving them with PTSD.

One thing that has stuck with me from the "Acts of War" book is how much soldiers on both sides during WWII hated flamethrowers. It was something about the inhumanity and unfairness of the weapon. A man armed with a rifle can do nothing to defend himself against a flamethrower. Apparently when they took prisoners and found a flamethrower, they would often kill him even when they spared the others. And yet I don't suppose flameflowers volunteered for the job.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

I don't know if this is the right thread, but does anybody here have experience with lit mags?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

What kind?

 

[Mobius Stripper]

What kind?

Any that are interested in publishing poetry and/or short stories by unestablished authors, and that don't charge a fee for submissions.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Do you know the Writers and Artists' Yearbook?
It's a directory of literary agents, publishers, magazines, competitions etc... It's UK focused but has sections on Canada, Australia, NZ and the USA (afaik).
You need a paid subscription to access the website, but your local library will probably have a hard copy in its reference section that you can consult for free.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

I actually had questions about cover letters. Like would it be too amateurish to mention that one of my stories was selected for a feature on DeviantArt? Or to include a link to my poetry Tumblr? I know they want to know about previous publications and achievements but I don't know if it matters how "professional" your accomplishments are, especially because I am NOT a professional and very clear about that. I have never been published outside of undergraduate magazines back when I was a student.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I don't know. I think it would depend on the magazine. There are probably some high falutin' ones who'd be snooty about it, but my guess is that most publishers these days are well aware of the power and importance of social media. Someone with a hundred thousand followers on their poetry blog would get snapped up immediately because the publishers would see a ready-made market there.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

Someone with a hundred thousand followers on their poetry blog

Well that ain't me

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Is there anybody who isn't a celebrity already who has 100,000 followers on their poetry blog?

 

[Mobius Stripper]

Is there anybody who isn't a celebrity already who has 100,000 followers on their poetry blog?

I honestly don't know how anyone gets any followers on anything.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

Okay, y'all. This has been driving me crazy for the past few days. I want to know if there is a word for the narrative mode in which a first-person narrator addresses a second character directly. It is similar to epistolary, but the addressing is taking place through stream-of-consciousness rather than a letter. I'm beginning to think there is no specific term for this style because I can't find anything, but there really should be because it has a significantly different effect from traditional first-person narration. It is a uniquely intimate way of storytelling.

Example, from Speak by Louisa Hall:

Spoiler

Another example, from "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang (Chiang is also doing some temporal shenanigans with the future tense here, but ignore that):

Spoiler

Edit: So five minutes after I posted this here, somebody in one of my writing discords found it for me. It's called "First Person Direct" or "First Person Direct Address."