McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Mind control to further plot?
OZ:
I seem to remember reading a short story about this many years ago. The main character manages to sneak up on the villain (mostly, if I remember correctly, because he was so insignificant that the villain was not paying attention to him ). He ends up taking the villain's powers ( I believe they were machine based ) and becoming every bit as evil as the villain. It was the old "absolute power corrupts absolutely" idea. I wish I could remember the story and read it again. There was a lot more complexity to the plot than what I have related here, other characters and what not.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on May 15, 2012, 02:52:44 AM ---On the other hand, a main character having to be smart enough to go up against an enemy who could command anything at a time and figure a way around that would be way neat if you could make it work. (Lots of distractions is how I would approach it. lots and lots of distractions.)
--- End quote ---
Aha, but does it require active attention, or are we talking implanted suggestions? The more clever you want the MC to be in circumventing the mind control, the more specific and detailed you need to present the power. It is the limits of the power, its boundaries and loopholes, that will determine what he must do to get around it.
If you ever get the chance there is an anime called Code Geass that is a great look at mind control. A high school kid gets the ability to instill one unbreakable command in a target via direct eye contact. Its all about that very thing; being clever to work around a supposed absolute mind control. At first he tests the limits, like telling a girl to scratch a tally on the school wall every day (to see ow long it would last). Several years later and he has taken over the world (stories that follow the villain are so fun) and she is still happily scratching a single line on this wall (no covered in them) every morning before getting on with her day.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Quantus on May 15, 2012, 12:44:50 PM ---If you ever get the chance there is an anime called Code Geass that is a great look at mind control. A high school kid gets the ability to instill one unbreakable command in a target via direct eye contact. Its all about that very thing; being clever to work around a supposed absolute mind control. At first he tests the limits, like telling a girl to scratch a tally on the school wall every day (to see ow long it would last). Several years later and he has taken over the world (stories that follow the villain are so fun) and she is still happily scratching a single line on this wall (no covered in them) every morning before getting on with her day.
--- End quote ---
On a similar theme, I recommend Greg Egan's novel Quarantine, the first-person protagonist of which has a loyalty mod implanted in his brain, and deals with it rather cleverly in ways I'd rather not spoil.
Figging Mint:
--- Quote from: Quantus on May 11, 2012, 04:34:04 PM ---In my mind all of those are just a matter of shrinking the stage, not really removing the meaningfulness. In the context of the character level interactions, which at that point is most of the story, those minor choices matter, in the story's , even if they wont matter tomorrow, or when they leave the island or whatever. But take away the element of choice (or illusion of it, in my cynical view of US reality TV)and you loose that very hope your talking about.
--- End quote ---
Correct, but emotional involvement does _not_ scale to the same measure as the significance of actions.
Since we are empathic and sympathetic beings, we care more about emotional arcs than about the strict resume of what a character will do within a given plot. So we can shrink the actual scale of realistically significant actions down to vanishingly small, while at the same time keeping a full range, an efflorescent diversity if you will, of emotional engagement.
You could call this "The Emotional Narrator", I suppose. Hope is perfectly preserved (unless I wish it not to be) by the Emotional Narrator's own optimism (aka delusion) about real world actions and their significance.
I find this level of narration both realistic and in keeping with today's politicized news propagation - in this day and era we none of us expect unemotional perception, let alone narration of real-world actions and their significance.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: (FM) on May 15, 2012, 06:33:58 PM ---Correct, but emotional involvement does _not_ scale to the same measure as the significance of actions.
Since we are empathic and sympathetic beings, we care more about emotional arcs than about the strict resume of what a character will do within a given plot. So we can shrink the actual scale of realistically significant actions down to vanishingly small, while at the same time keeping a full range, an efflorescent diversity if you will, of emotional engagement.
You could call this "The Emotional Narrator", I suppose. Hope is perfectly preserved (unless I wish it not to be) by the Emotional Narrator's own optimism (aka delusion) about real world actions and their significance.
I find this level of narration both realistic and in keeping with today's politicized news propagation - in this day and era we none of us expect unemotional perception, let alone narration of real-world actions and their significance.
--- End quote ---
I dont disagree with any of that (except the bit about the news; i expect quality journalism, i just dont ever get it anymore :P)
The thing is, in most of those sort of Swept Along stories I can think of there is still the conflict, the challenge to that delusion, the moment where the Optimist chooses to persevere or to abandon
Unless you mean actual documentary style writing, just with an emotional slant. Thats a whole different kind of writing, and not what I generally reach for, I was meaning things in the more traditional story fiction type.
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