Lofbast Archives

Main Themes

I've got to start somewhere. My first idea was to talk about the main character and who the other side of the coin is, but I'll do that another day. If these are the main themes of the book, then I need to understand them better than anyone else.

Theme 1: The Villain Wins

The prologue (if I decide to keep it) establishes that there are villains, and there are also monsters. Those two categories are not synonymous here. At face value, the image that comes to my mind of a monster is more mindless and primitive than the image of a villain. A monster brings on terror, and a villain brings on horror. Terror is defined as "a state of intense or overwhelming fear" (Merriam-Webster) and horror is defined as "painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay" (Merriam-Webster). Very similar definitions here, but the part that serves my point best is the 'overwhelming' vs. the 'painful.'

Terror (overwhelming) is in the moment. It is the fear that is felt when you can see the tsunami wave coming and you are right in its path and there is no stopping the wave and there is no saving you. It is the fear when the monster has already seen you, when it is snarling in your face and you have no escape. You cannot think of anything else, you cannot consider anything else. Adrenaline is pumping and your body and mind are concerned only with survival, be it yours or someone else's. It is wild, it is impulsive, it is ruthless. There is no time to consider the consequences.

Horror (painful) is retrospective. It is the fear you felt when you watched Holocaust documentaries or 9/11 documentaries or videos from the Palestinian genocide. It is the fear when the damage is done and it does not matter whether the villain is alive or dead because time cannot be unwound. No amount of punishment can fix what has been broken. There is no relief, there is reassurance. It is cold, it is calculating, it is sharp. The consequences will haunt you forever.

So this divide serves as a distinction between 'monster' and 'villain.' Monsters and villains can be on the same side. Monsters and villains can be on opposing sides. One person or entity might be able to oscillate between monster and villain. One person or entity might not be either as far as the narrative is concerned.

In this series, the villain wins. The main character, E, finds herself desperate to escape a monster, her father. The villain of the story offers E sanctuary, stimulation, protection, and education in exchange for reasonable labor. She knows the villain is a villain, but her desperation leads her to believe that the choice is justified and that there is no better alternative. When E accepts this offer and adapts to it, the villain then offers her a deal. Through manipulation and bribery, the villain recruits E to their cause and creates a villain out of her. E chooses horror over terror and her goals motivate her to serve a villain rather than suffer under a monster. The main character sides with the villain in order to defeat the antagonist, the monster, going so far as to kill her own father to do this. E is willing to accept being an agent of horror as long as she is not a victim of terror.

The villain is entirely aware of this. The villain wanted E's father to die (or at the very least be removed from power) regardless of whether he was a monster or not. However, the villain was smart enough to understand the situation from E's perspective. The villain framed her desires as a beneficial course of action for E and used the monstrous tendencies of E's father to justify her goals, even though the monstrous tendencies were not the villain's initial motivation. The villain used E to accomplish her goals and turned her into a murderer. The villain and E are both well aware that becoming a murder is an evil thing to do, but the villain accepts this as long as her target is defeated and E accepts this as long as the monster goes away.

Theme 2: Power and Abuse

In western culture (of which I am a part), children represent innocence. Due to their lack of ability to comprehend good and evil (right and wrong), some religions have an approximate or established 'age of accountability' before which a child will not be held responsible for their sins or transgressions. A human child is also relatively powerless. Human brains take approximately 27 years to develop, so especially in the first years of life, human parents take on the responsibility of supplementing the critical thinking functions that their child's brain cannot yet carry out. Any parent will probably tell you how often they have to repeat phrases such as "don't eat that" or "biting people is bad" or "sleep is good for you." Remember, this is what adult brains have to tell themselves on the regular, but we have the convenience of doing so internally. In essence, parents have to exert power and control over their children to keep them alive until adulthood, making children some of the most powerless people alive.