Sine Qua Non - Concept

I came up with this concept a while ago, developing from my growing distaste in the torture/horror genre, perhaps in combination with my continued fascination with apocalyptic fiction. 

It's true - the skew of Hollywood horror has progressed past simple schadenfreude, cathartic reaction, and inventive methods of simulating violence and devolved into torture-porn. Movies like Saw (a movie named for the fact that, in order to attempt a proper escape, the main character has to cut his foot off with a rusty saw) and Eli Roth'sHostel (famed for a gruesome scene where, as a brand of torture, an eyeball is extracted and severed while the victim is awake) capitalize on this continuing trend. Normally, I don't object to gore or violence in movies - I've always felt that it's never about what's used, but how it's conveyed to the audience. And, the current trend has turned to a horribly misogynistic conveyance. It's called torture-"porn" not just because there may be gratuitous sex involved, but because it conveys violence in a sexual manner by presenting a dominated party (typically attractive, female, usually white, and often blonde) and, literally, orchestrating scenes so that torture is dolled out and screams are uttered in the framing of someone forcing an orgasm (an obvious logical fallacy). Consider the social repercussions in a concept where a woman is violently subjugated in a forced, erotic fashion, presented to a crowd of people who are supposed to think the experience pleasurable because, well, it's not happening to them. The marketing ploy for the film Hostel II epitomizes the concept by presenting women-to-be-tortured as desired (we'll avoid a rant about the many things wrong with how the highest priced "item" on the menu features American women, making them  the  most "desirable" to see in this fashion).

Continuing on, I read a blog post a while ago written by Buffy/Angel creator Joss Whedon discussing the Death of D'ua Khalil titled "Let's Watch a Women Get Stoned to Death." It's a disheartening tale of a woman "honor" killed by being kicked and stoned by a group of men, made exponentially worse by the fact that it made itself around the globe, not for awareness or alarm, but because it was something people just wanted to see. The equivalent of a joke e-mail. Seriously, it's depressing - and it proves that this kind of thing is not just present in one culture, but nearly all that use technology. Yay. And, then I watched Tim Burton's Batman Returns and something clicked. Remember the scene where the Penguin tries to kill Catwoman by dropping her through a Greenhouse? And she gets back up, "revived," and she screams and the glass falls around her? Although, I'm not sure if Catwoman is the perfect feminist metaphor (then again, is there one?), wasn't it cool having a female figure who rose from trauma only to come back stronger (albeit, somewhat stressed psychologically, but rightfully so) and kick more ass? Remember how I said I was fascinated with apocalypse fiction?

So - I came up with an idea for a story. Essentially, a young orphan girl with no ties to her biological parents, living alone, has the amazing ability to revive herself after she dies. She can die a total of 7 times. The kicker is whenever she dies something bad happens nearby and each time she dies, the severity of the after-event increases exponentially. Assumedly, her final death would cause a world-wide disaster that ends the world. What backstory we know is provided by the opening monologue and it would start at the image at the first time she dies - on her 18th birthday. We learn that she never knew her parents, that she was kicked around orphanages and group homes her entire life. No one wanted to adopt her and she feels that anyone who came by as potentials never went through with adoption because they thought there was something "wrong" with her. By age 16, she legally emancipates herself from the foster system and gets her GED. At this point, she implies that her last group home had a detrimental environment. She lives in a small apartment in a college town. She makes a living working under the table at a dive bar and pays her sketchy landlord in cash, who happens to co-own the bar, but doesn't run it. We learn that she got the job and the apartment from the other owner, a 22 year-old who manages and bar-tends full time. She sees him as a brother figure while he may have a crush on her. When working on her birthday, a fight breaks out in the bar and a gun goes off, which shoots her in the head and kills her - matching the original image. Brother-figure drags her away from the burning bar to the alleyway, where he witnesses the miracle of her revival. She freaks out and runs home and leaves him bewildered. The next morning she wakes up to a knock on her door, revealing a lawyer with a lockbox key. Grabbing brother-figure, they go to find the lockbox, containing only a piece a paper with a symbol on it. They travel across the continent, adding friends to the group along the way, researching the origins of the symbol, how it's linked to her new-found ability, and, possibly, her own origins.

Meanwhile, word of a girl who dies and comes back to life has reached the undercurrent of America. Using cellphone pictures to identify her, twitter to communicate her coordinates, youtube videos, and other internet-based communications, a growing society interested in killing her to see what happens follows on her heels during their journey. Of course, they eventually learn that horrible things will happen whenever she dies, and that only serves to full the fervor. They could be anybody, making allies hard to come-by and providing a slew of adventures while dealing with some of the issues I mentioned feeding into this idea.

Sine Qua Non is a latin phrase, meaning "without which it cannot." It's a legal term describing a "cause-in-fact" relationship or an essential action/condition preceding a given result. It has a certain layered nuance in the story above and it's the perfect title for this set of stories

I think it will work best in graphic novel format.

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The Cultural History of Whoville - Intro

Over winter, I formed a fascinating idea concerning "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." A little strange? Maybe. But, I thought it'd be funny (how odd - one of my primary motivators). I decided to parse out an origin story, a religion, and even a civil war leading up to the events in the famed Dr. Seuss narrative. I guess there's nothing else to do other than get into it. So I'll post below:

- Introduction: It’s Alive! -

Life begins with water. Genesis stories from most cultures start out solely with the elements water and air, and the Who’s culture is no different. Theirs just happens to involve frozen water falling from the sky. There’s no scientific mystery behind the formation of snowflakes. But, despite the recent discovery this book is based around, what still remains puzzling is, “How can life spring from something so simple as crystallized water fragments?” Albeit, crystallized water fragments plummeting towards certain destruction? It is an intriguing problem seemingly discovered by complete accident. Had it not been for the eccentricities of a certain Swedish scientist, the current dilemma may never have been explored at all.

For those unaware, Dr. Svenni Thürgen was the man who discovered existence of the Whos and the Grinches, their close relatives. Doctor Thürgen, funny enough, was not researching anything to do with snowflakes, but instead microbes with your standard reflective microscope. He just happened to do his research outside. Dr. Thürgen always said, “I was born in the snow, I’ll die in the snow. And, dammit, I’ll do my life’s work in the snow,” – a statement that proved too true when he died from a bear mauling a short six months ago. To many he was a laughing stock and a “crackpot”. Not because he was odd or preferred to work in the cold, but because he was trying to prove that from living organisms we could, one day, harvest the same energy responsible for creating our own universe. Fortunately, as fate would have it, a solitary snowflake would unknowingly fall onto one of his slides and his observations would take him far, far away from his “energy sapping” theory and onto something far more mysterious (and less life-threatening).

            The life and death of an entire species unfolded before Dr. Thürgen’s very eyes; in comparison to human time, the process occurred almost instantaneously. Dr. Thürgen was not sure exactly what he saw, though he knew he saw something new, different, and worth showing the world. Dr. Thürgen’s methods are still unknown, but he was eventually able to capture a snowflake with out destroying or melting it and digitally record the happenings inside. The discovery of intelligent life was found, not on planets beyond or depths below, but literally right above our heads and underneath our toes. Certainly, this was a shocking revelation not many could accept a whole ten years ago. But, Dr. Thürgen grabbed the attentions of many and from his original recording we were able to discern the history behind a set of these creatures and convey them to you just as they had experienced it. Below, you’ll find that story compiled from the notes of Dr. Thürgen and his scholars and presented in narrative form. From beginning to end. From conception to its destruction.

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Welcome to the Forging Earth

My exploits within the blogging community as a whole are fairly new. Most of my experiences encompass a little blog known only as These Gentlemen - a discussion of arts, politics, and life. As grateful as I am for being a part of such a fantastic group of scholars and writers, I decided I need another outlet for my more creative impulses. Where These Gentlemen is very much a discussion about what is, The Forging Earth will explore, generally, what isn't.

So, welcome to The Forging Earth: A Grounds to Form. Here, you'll find my attempts to cultivate my creative writing capabilities into something digestible. My goal is to develop. Grow. Forge my writing from a rough, raw material into refined art. Mostly, I'll be posting fiction or rough concepts to build and work from. I won't be able to post everyday, but I will post as often as possible. Of course, I encourage you to read, comment, and discuss freely and openly. The best way for my writing to grow is to receive healthy, constructive criticism. I only ask that if you decide to do so, put your name to what you say.

Welcome to my proving grounds. Feel free to step around.

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