I have a shit ton of concepts for stories laying around that I am not skilled enough to fully develop. However, in my own arrogance I do believe that most of these are actually good concepts. So I decided to share some of them to see what everyone else thinks. If this goes over well, I'll post some more of them every now and then.
Today's concept is one I never titled. I was inspired to the idea by a song title. I was watching the movie Bruce Almighty, and in one scene Jim Carrey starts singing, "What if God was one of us?" That got my mind going, and I came up with this concept. It's a highly dramatic concept that ended up failing because there was one particular idea that initially was a minor thought, but then I became a little too focused on. I determined that I couldn't pull off the second thought without all the buildup from the initial concept, and I actually liked the second idea better. So eventually I scrapped the whole thing because I just couldn't figure out a way to make it work with all parts.
Here's the concept:
The main character's name is Darwin. Darwin spends most of his life in the background; never known to be remarkable or terrible in any way. Darwin can mostly get along with anyone, but doesn't really have any close friends either. He is essentially a fly on the wall in his entire existence. One day he's approached in his home by a mysterious man. He claims to be a god and offers to give Darwin his powers.
The man's name was Egon and he claimed to have been born in 1890. Egon told Darwin that when he was 28 years old, a man visited him just as he now visits Darwin. The man explained to him that there were many gods in existence, but a single god oversees and keeps the general order of things. Gods themselves are immortal and invulnerable; they cannot die. So the only way for them to pass away is to first pass on their godly powers to a new willing participant. Egon came to Darwin so that Darwin might wish to become a God, and Egon would be able to die.
Egon tells Darwin of the powers that will come to him: hearing the throughts of others, manipulating the elements, being able to alter his own body, telekinesis, and more. The only things a god at this level would not be able to do were 1) create something from nothingness, 2) interfere with free will 3) remove anything from existence. Only the single highest god has those abilities.
From this point, I will highlight the differences in the intentions of the conflicting parts I mentioned before.
In the original concept, the story was all about Darwin coping with his new-found abilities and struggling to make proper use of them. It wasn't so much a superhero story as it was about the simple struggle to do the right thing, or even to identify the right thing. Darwin would see an obligation to try and make the world a better place, but would find himself unable to interfere with his abilities without making things worse, most of the time because he either isn't quite practiced with his abilities yet, or because he doesn't think things through to figure out the extended consequences of his actions. Ultimately, he becomes tormented by his inability to help others and seeks the guidance of other gods.
He eventually figures out that despite their immortality, the gods of the past several hundred years have had relatively short lifespans. In most cases, gods choose to end their own lives at about the equivalent time of their normal human lifespan.
The point of the story was the importance of using the time you have in your life to do the best you can with what you have, and not to hold out for more than you can handle or something better that will never come. Obviously it wasn't finished, and at this point I don't think I could come up with an ending to effectively tie that all together.
The second concept, however, adds on to where the italics ended before.
Egon also told Darwin about another power he would not be giving: the ability to travel through time. Darwin was surprised that such a power really existed. But why on Earth would this be the only of a slew of godly powers that he in particular was not allowed to have? Egon shed some light to this notion.
When Egon became a god, he was an aspiring artist in Vienna. Or at least, that what he was pretending to be. He had been rejected from The Academy Of Fine Arts due to their disapproval of his unique style. A rival of his at the time had just been admitted to the school and was becoming a major figure in artistic circles. This rival was bit of a sociopath; always taking pleasure in flaunting his successes so those like Egon would dream of being him in another life. This rival seemed to get off on making Egon miserable and jealous, so Egon decided after decades of experience as a god and seeing how the world naturally developed, he would go back in time and see to it that the Academy would accept him and reject his rival, the young Adolf Hitler. He would have the life that he always wanted.
Darwin was stunned by this news. He had been reading time travel stories since he was a kid and they always had the same rule: do not alter the past. Yet with that rule came one virtually universal exception: if you travel through time, you MUST kill Hitler. While absorbing the weight of this information, Darwin could not help but notice the charm hanging from a chain around Egon's neck, a particular symbol of faith and heritage. This man, this GOD before him told him not only that he traveled through time to change the past, but that it essentially gave rise to Hitler's reign! Suddenly the mysteries of the Holocaust were known to him. Scholars questions for decades when Hitler became an anti-semite, and the answer stood before Darwin now. It wasn't a pure racial hate; it was an extreme jealousy. Jealousy Hitler had of Egon, the Jew who had the life he always wanted. Egon saw the understanding flow through Darwin's eyes, followed again by confusion. Darwin finally expressed his new concern.
"But you can still travel through time can't you? You can fix it. You can go back again and give him his old life back. You can go back and kill him before he takes things too far. You can save all those people. Why haven't you?"
Egon looked to the floor with shame, and offered a pitiful excuse. "I have seen the world that came of Hitler's artistic success, and I have seen the world that comes of his genocide. It may seem difficult for you to understand, but this timeline is...better for humanity."
Darwin was stumped. There is no possible way that Hitler's Holocaust made the world a better place. The very thought of it disgusted him, but before he could express himself Egon continued.
"World War 2 was a purge for the entire world. Racism and antisemitism were not obscure minorities in the time before Hitler, and without World War 2 they remained long after that time period."
Egon explained that without such a heinous act to bring to light the evils of this train of thought, the world put up with its prejudices for a century longer. Whether people directly admitted it or not, the movements for civil rights and equality around the world were aided by humanity's contempt for the Nazi regime. Without the Nazi's to be universally hated, these movements gained fewer supporters and were unable to find resolution through non-violence. Several countries, including the US, erupted in civil wars by the 1970s, and the bigots won with bloodshed. Societal progress moved in different areas due to the different views of the people in those times. The age of the internet and technology that we enjoy now never happened. People were more hateful, more violent, and more regressed. It was an ugly time period, but Egon confessed he never even noticed until he saw the alternative.
It's because of his actions that Egon refused to hand over the power of time travel. He knows that Darwin will not agree with him and will try to change the past and therefore change the future. So Egon's terms are clear: Darwin will have every power a god can have except for this, if he so chooses.
This option was purely focused on the idea of breaking the "kill Hitler" rule of time travel. It fascinated me that such an exception to the "don't change the past" rule was so universally accepted, so I wanted to explore an idea where this rule and exception were called into question. The problem was, I really couldn't find any sort of purpose or direction for the story with that idea. It was an interesting thought, one that garnered a lot of thought and exploration, but ultimately had no payoff. So again, I just gave up after realizing I couldn't make it work.
Fun fact about this story: after coming up with the second idea, I did some light research into the art school that Hitler was rejected from and found an artist that was admitted around that time. When I found Egon Schiele, I knew I wanted to use his first name as an allegory. While I did not find out anything about his religion or anything to suggest he personally knew Hitler, The fact that he was admitted within two years or Hitler's rejection coupled with the fact that Schiele died young (age 28) as a victim of a widespread flu epidemic made it seem like a perfect fit. His young death provides a historical parallel point where he would need to disappear after becoming a God, and the fact that it was a common viral outbreak was even better since nobody would ask many questions about his untimely demise in those circumstances. And no, my story would never have given a last name, so as to let the people who research every minutia of details make their assumptions without actually using that person in the story.
So now that you've heard the pitiful bits of my failed story, what do you think? Was I right to abandon the project, or did I really have something here?
Side note: the summer class I was taking ends this week. So next week I'll be starting the campaign project I mentioned in the past.
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"It's really not that complicated. I'm the pimp, you're the hoe."
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Today In Music (July 8th)
Firewood by Witchcraft released on July 18h, 2005. Also released on this day:
- Nude With Boots by Melvins (2008)
- "Bring The Noise" single by Public Enemy & Anthrax (1991)
- "Unstable" single by Adema (2003)
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