Friday, July 18, 2014

Post-Dreams of Stars: Back to the Point

Back in May I brought up, briefly, the original point of my story Dreams of Stars, but there was always more to the story than that.  The grand quote at the beginning of that article was the original point, but not the sole point and in the end, not really the point of the story at all.

As I said,  the idea was to define the bounds of power, extreme power, power beyond what most people can possibly imagine, including me.  And it all began because of the forums for a site called Spacebattles, where they love to debate various fictitious elements fighting each other.  There's also a tradition of one-ups-man-ship, and people tend to add their own fictional creations to the pile in an attempt to outdo everyone else.  I decided I wanted to join the fray and started designing a character that was unbelieveably powerful, one that wouldn't even need to fight to win, but couldn't be beaten, ever.  Then I gave up on introducing it to the board because I realized it would be outdone by someone else.  Still, I went forward with the character and gave it a name:  Deborah Ignigus.

Which means, effectively, that Dreams of Stars is actually an origin story for that one character, but it was also meant to set up a baseline in which Deborah's full power could be established.  The problem is that as the story went on, I started thinking about what adventures Deborah would go on in the future and ran into a stumbling block:

She was too powerful.  Even if she was only at the same level as L'lorne (and she's much more powerful at her peak), what could stop her?  The only thing keeping L'lorne in check is the fact that everything else didn't work, but for Deborah, that wouldn't be an issue.  She basically could NOT lose, making any story featuring her kind of dull, with no mystery, no suspense, no danger.  Mary Sues face greater dangers than what Deborah would have faced.

So the point of the story was to establish a character with an origin story, a character I couldn't really do anything with without making some serious compromises and even then, it wouldn't work.  By the time the story was finished the point of it was, well, gone.

With the original point gone, what is the point of the story now?  I don't know.  I know what I originally intended, but it's not there much any more.  It's just a story, a story that really has no point other than simply being something I wrote.

Even without a point, I'm still glad I could finish it and share it with those of you who read it.  Next Wednesday I'll have more to say about Dreams of Stars, and the Wednesday after that, but in the future, I think I'll post some more of my writings.  Very little is as complete as Dreams of Stars, so expect half finished pieces, or fits and starts.

Next week, back to webcomics.  See you then kiddies.

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