Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

Hi All,

The first real novel I read was The Elfstones of Shannara. I was already an avid DnD player and that book ignited a lifelong passion for storytelling and reading for me. Had I traveled a similar road to most I likely would have been a struggling writer right out of college and who knows where that would have left me? That wasn't my path.
In college, after the Marine Corps, I wrote an assignment for a creative writing professor. She held me after class and told me there was no way a Marine could have written anything that good and demanded to know where I stole it from. I don't know if it was my youth or what but I left college and I left writing behind me.
In 1986 I created a character in DnD by the name of Arawn Mistweaver. We were playing Temple of Elemental Evil or the Original Queen of the Demonweb Pits, I can't remember which exactly but I created a character that has changed my life. I am 5'3 and was bullied quite a bit early on. The character I created was someone who could strike back. Arawn was a LE Fighter Mage who had a Yakuza like code of honor. Stay on the good side of that code and you are fine. Fall afoul of that code and he would kill you, your family, friends, and the village you came from. He was merciless.
For some reason on Aug 7th, this year, I asked myself a question. I asked, "Do the villains know that they are the bad guys?" I wondered if Arawn knew he was a bad guy? I determined that Arawn would not have seen himself that way. If that was the case, how did one become the bad guy? What road did they travel? That was it. Right then I decided I needed to write the origin story of Arawn Mistweaver.
I combined the elements of Shannara and Mad Max and wrote a story that took place in the Pacific Northwest (I lived in Gig Harbor outside Tacoma for 16 years) about 1000 years after the nuclear war that caused the fall of mankind. It's a post-apocalyptic dystopia that includes my own magic system that is based on Anodized Isotopes in the animals, plants, and people caused by the toxic radiation and a few other surprises I won't reveal here.
It is a brutal story. I take a hero, a warrior and a defender of mankind and I crush him and his psyche mercilessly with lies, betrayal, and discoveries that eviscerate his emotions. Book One is done and on Amazon in both Ebook and Paperback. I plan on 5 more books to tell the tale in full.

If you're interested check it out.

TB
T.B. Wayne

A Foreshadowing of Darkness

The best villains are definitely the ones that think they are doing good, or doing the right thing. I always roll my eyes at the ones that cackle evilly and rub their hands together while plotting their evil plans (those are fine if you want something more fun and light without needing much thought), but if you take someone like Thanos from the Avengers, who is wiping out a big chunk of the population of the universe because he feels it is overpopulated and he's actually saving the universe, then you get more interesting ethical questions to wrangle and a much more interesting story.

Like are your heroes actually the good guys? Maybe by stopping the villain they will indeed be doing more harm, by preventing the "villain" from saving the world from itself. Should we root for the villain? Or at least sympathize with him, even if we decide that he's still a bad guy, but at least he had the best of intentions even if misguided. After all people make mistakes, though if you have a collection of infinity stones your mistakes are rather more serious than those of the average person ;)

Hi Andrea,

I believe you are correct. Where is the "long term" fun in a person who is just stabbing people for pure pleasure?

You asked, "Are your heroes actually the good guys?" So they start out that way. They are part of an organization that is sending out roaming Triads (groups of three) to protect mankind from mutated creatures and mutated humans that prey upon the folks just trying to survive. As the story unfolds and betrayals emerge you begin to see a conflict in the Main Character. He is torn by his disbelief at the deceptions, lies, and betrayals he is discovering as well as finding out that humans may not be worth protecting as they continue their crimes and evils against one another. He begins to wonder if, instead of taking orders, he should be giving them. Mercilessly. When he tries it he is rewarded with success.
He does have the best of intentions, but eventually, that becomes determination that his way is the right way and perhaps mercy really is for the weak. I enjoyed his journey in the first book and it's far from over. Book 2 is going to cement some of those things and begin setting him up as a warlord and a tyrant with book three planned to see him take over in a Genghis Khan style. Books 4-6 are roughly outlined and I have a plan on how they will go as well. I am certainly writing a story where the good guys don't always win and the lines blur considerably between good and evil.