Project 30 challenge, day 3
Progress report
I wrote for my 10 minutes today, and not much more. In total, I wrote 180 words, which was not quite enough to get me to where I’d left off with the skeleton on day 1. But before writing, I went for a nice walk in the cooling night air and got some inspiration for an important character who will show up at the catalyst moment that gets the plot going.
Factoid
In exploring the problem of evil, there has to be someone on the opposite side of the argument from Roselia. Someone who will push and prod at her inquiries and force her to reckon with her beliefs. Someone who has had the opposite life trajectory of Roselia. Like a collision of Iron Lung’s darkness and Project Hail Mary’s brightness.
I don’t know much about this character yet, as I haven’t reached the part where he steps onto the page. But while on my walk today I figured out how he ends up in the position he does, so I have his starting point. I just have to get Roselia there to really start the story.
Inspiration – Grim and Dark
Since about November last year I have been interested in the tabletop war game Warhammer 40,000. I think it started with watching the Astartes fan film, which I didn’t understand at all at the time, but was still enthralled by it. There is so much going on in that universe it would take far to long to even skim the surface, but there are a couple of concepts I’m thinking about in relation to my project.
The first is that WH40k can technically be considered inside the divine horror genre (see my day 1 post). There are gods within this universe, but they are horrifying chaotic beings of extremes, and are essentially manifested from the collective and widespread desires of people in the universe (usually in a negative way). Then there’s the Emperor of Mankind, who sits mostly dead on a throne psychically protecting humankind from the chaos gods, with a very grim and very dark religion all centered around the idea that “the emperor protects”, and all the violence and suffering in the empire (and there is a lot of that) is for the continued existence of humanity. But war is never-ending in this universe (it is a war game after all), and there is no real hope for a good future.
The second idea is the space marines, who are just really cool. Big hulking soldiers in massive power armor that shakes the ground with every step who are really good at fighting, what’s not to love? But there’s an underlying horror that I find fascinating. Because the space marines are not just soldiers, they are fanatics, and they basically suffer some of the worst torture in order to become space marines, with only the very strongest even surviving the process. They fight for the emperor and for humanity, but they often commit atrocities in the process, with little regard for the little guy who may accidentally get in their way.
This kind of character would serve as great foil for my religious nun character.
Thoughts to share? I have a contact page now!