More ramblng about the Chalice thing
Jul. 2nd, 2005 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethOkay, trying a different angle.
There is a Healer, and he is the center of the story, and he shall take the shattered Chalice and make a whole one, and then go out and heal people.
At some point there has to be a choice made. Just choosing to go be a hero with a magic cup could work. But I want another layer to it. Because he is already a hero, without the cup, and choosing the magic thing should be a kind of growth.
But the most basic thing is, it can't be easy to get the cup. It should be difficult to get, or it would have happened before. A lot. And also, there would be no story. There have to be factors stopping him. To make it most interesting, there have to be people stopping him.
So, who are the opposition?
There could be some people who wouldn't want him to get the Chalice, because they are all about trashing the world and he would be fixing it up.
What kind of people?
I mean random orcs are an option, but if I want people with a motive, who actually wouldn't want him to get a magic healing cup?
Even if there is an evil army bent on world conquest, wouldn't they want to heal people on their side? And if they are without army and immortal themselves, why would they care if other people get healed?
Kronos style plague lord? Could be. Would be biowar as the enemy. Would have to have him be entirely insane though. Or, a literal embodiment of microbes. I mean every person is made up of microbes and people cells, we could just invent a demon that wasn't any people cells. Then they would oppose the Chalice purely because their people - nasty random parasitic microbial beings - want all this prime real estate without opposition. Disease as the enemy. Very straightforward, very fantasy book.
Who else?
Big pharmaceutical companies? Nasty cliche, don't want to go there.
Actually I guess part of the problem is in the source for these legends - if there is a holy grail, and it can heal people, why isn't it doing the world tour thing already? Why are all the stories about how it is all locked away? Because only the pure can get to it? I don't think I want to write that kind of story. I mean people need healing, they shouldn't have to earn it. It isn't like they earn disease.
Some people reckon they do earn disease. Either through doing things that will make them ill directly or karmically. If people see illness as a moral judgement, or a necessary part of life, or as god's will, or as part of the mechanism that lets us suffer enough to get into heaven, then they wouldn't want illness eliminated. So they might want to stop the Chalice being used to help. Especially if it wasn't a holy item of their religion. But... they would be being really obviously stupid.
See a lot of the problem is there aren't a whole lot of people running around saying 'don't heal people!' and it gets difficult making an enemy with that point of view.
Change perspective again. What is the temptation?
Stay in his nice normal science world?
There has to be something to boot him out of it in the first place, something he can't handle just with the tools available. So choosing to stay science only would be choosing to let somebody stay ill or die. He wouldn't do that. No temptation. So is very heroic, him risking his life to get the tools he needs.
What other temptation?
To deal with the problem differently?
The Chalice heals not only the symptoms but the cause of those symptoms. So when a blind woman gets blowed up from not being able to see something coming, she gets patched up and also made able to see. And that 'cause' clause can be tricksy, because it very much depends on how one perceives a problem what one would perceive as the cause of the problem.
Like, to heal someone who has overdosed, could cure them of the damage the drug had done, wipe the drug out of them, wipe the desire for the drug out of them. Wipe out desire entirely?
See the Chalice is *shattered*, meaning a whole lot of people could all have pieces. And each of those people would have a different approach to what is the 'cause' and source of the problem. Then the story would be about specialisation, focusing too small, blaming one particular piece for all ills.
It wouldn't just be about Chalice putting that cup together, there could be a whole bunch of cups around (although it would also make sense that the other, limited approaches would make more limited vessels, or use the edges of a piece as a scalpel for cutting badness out). It would be about who he chooses to *ally* himself with, what side he chooses.
And it would be about him trying to treat the whole person, help a person, not just stitch them up or give them some pill and send them on their way. So that would be why him and not some other person, because when that first magically injured person comes in to his ER he wants to know how they got hurt and how he can help, not just how quick he can move on to the next person.
I could probably write a Healer story better if I knew a bunch of medecine stories and how they work. I could watch ER or Casualty or something. But I don't think they are trying to do quite what I'm trying to do.
And also, often they are gross. There is a lot of anatomy that one should be only theoretically aware of, not seeing in shades of pink and red.
(I wrote 'physically aware' first by accident. Am keeping it in because it seems not entirely wrong.)
Lots of interesting options for the opposition.
I could mix them all up together. That would be complicated, but I am thinking novel length. That's like, many episodes, yes? I seem to think more in episodes.
Anyways, will memory this for later. Have a whole bunch of fanfic plots all debugged and waiting to be written. Shall go back to them.
There is a Healer, and he is the center of the story, and he shall take the shattered Chalice and make a whole one, and then go out and heal people.
At some point there has to be a choice made. Just choosing to go be a hero with a magic cup could work. But I want another layer to it. Because he is already a hero, without the cup, and choosing the magic thing should be a kind of growth.
But the most basic thing is, it can't be easy to get the cup. It should be difficult to get, or it would have happened before. A lot. And also, there would be no story. There have to be factors stopping him. To make it most interesting, there have to be people stopping him.
So, who are the opposition?
There could be some people who wouldn't want him to get the Chalice, because they are all about trashing the world and he would be fixing it up.
What kind of people?
I mean random orcs are an option, but if I want people with a motive, who actually wouldn't want him to get a magic healing cup?
Even if there is an evil army bent on world conquest, wouldn't they want to heal people on their side? And if they are without army and immortal themselves, why would they care if other people get healed?
Kronos style plague lord? Could be. Would be biowar as the enemy. Would have to have him be entirely insane though. Or, a literal embodiment of microbes. I mean every person is made up of microbes and people cells, we could just invent a demon that wasn't any people cells. Then they would oppose the Chalice purely because their people - nasty random parasitic microbial beings - want all this prime real estate without opposition. Disease as the enemy. Very straightforward, very fantasy book.
Who else?
Big pharmaceutical companies? Nasty cliche, don't want to go there.
Actually I guess part of the problem is in the source for these legends - if there is a holy grail, and it can heal people, why isn't it doing the world tour thing already? Why are all the stories about how it is all locked away? Because only the pure can get to it? I don't think I want to write that kind of story. I mean people need healing, they shouldn't have to earn it. It isn't like they earn disease.
Some people reckon they do earn disease. Either through doing things that will make them ill directly or karmically. If people see illness as a moral judgement, or a necessary part of life, or as god's will, or as part of the mechanism that lets us suffer enough to get into heaven, then they wouldn't want illness eliminated. So they might want to stop the Chalice being used to help. Especially if it wasn't a holy item of their religion. But... they would be being really obviously stupid.
See a lot of the problem is there aren't a whole lot of people running around saying 'don't heal people!' and it gets difficult making an enemy with that point of view.
Change perspective again. What is the temptation?
Stay in his nice normal science world?
There has to be something to boot him out of it in the first place, something he can't handle just with the tools available. So choosing to stay science only would be choosing to let somebody stay ill or die. He wouldn't do that. No temptation. So is very heroic, him risking his life to get the tools he needs.
What other temptation?
To deal with the problem differently?
The Chalice heals not only the symptoms but the cause of those symptoms. So when a blind woman gets blowed up from not being able to see something coming, she gets patched up and also made able to see. And that 'cause' clause can be tricksy, because it very much depends on how one perceives a problem what one would perceive as the cause of the problem.
Like, to heal someone who has overdosed, could cure them of the damage the drug had done, wipe the drug out of them, wipe the desire for the drug out of them. Wipe out desire entirely?
See the Chalice is *shattered*, meaning a whole lot of people could all have pieces. And each of those people would have a different approach to what is the 'cause' and source of the problem. Then the story would be about specialisation, focusing too small, blaming one particular piece for all ills.
It wouldn't just be about Chalice putting that cup together, there could be a whole bunch of cups around (although it would also make sense that the other, limited approaches would make more limited vessels, or use the edges of a piece as a scalpel for cutting badness out). It would be about who he chooses to *ally* himself with, what side he chooses.
And it would be about him trying to treat the whole person, help a person, not just stitch them up or give them some pill and send them on their way. So that would be why him and not some other person, because when that first magically injured person comes in to his ER he wants to know how they got hurt and how he can help, not just how quick he can move on to the next person.
I could probably write a Healer story better if I knew a bunch of medecine stories and how they work. I could watch ER or Casualty or something. But I don't think they are trying to do quite what I'm trying to do.
And also, often they are gross. There is a lot of anatomy that one should be only theoretically aware of, not seeing in shades of pink and red.
(I wrote 'physically aware' first by accident. Am keeping it in because it seems not entirely wrong.)
Lots of interesting options for the opposition.
I could mix them all up together. That would be complicated, but I am thinking novel length. That's like, many episodes, yes? I seem to think more in episodes.
Anyways, will memory this for later. Have a whole bunch of fanfic plots all debugged and waiting to be written. Shall go back to them.