State of the Realm 2011, Part Two

And so, the report. To continue from where we left of yesterday, here is part two of the full 2011 SoTR report. 

There is also my favorite of Loveraft’s sayings, the ever popular line;

That is which eternal lies,

And with strange eons, even death may die.

It’s a splendidly bizarre verse that perfectly fits any discussion of out-of-this-world kind of stuff. You wonder what it means for death to die. Of course in my story death is embodied in a physical body, so it would presumably be more realistic in my story to think killing death would be possible. Although I’ve mentioned that line a few times throughout the story, I haven’t even really attempted any explanation or provide any meaning behind it.

Another part of the lore associated with Lovecraft has to do with the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods. But also attached to the Lovecraft lore are the Elder Gods. The Elder Gods concept is disputed because it seems to contradict the idea of the Outer Gods. The Outer Gods are not good or evil, but self-interested and somewhat stupid, so their careless actions just happen to be detrimental to humanity and life in general. The Elder Gods are supposed to be the counter to the Outer Gods, thus leading to the idea of good vs. evil. However, Lovecraft himself cast the Elder Gods as simply opponents to the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones. The Elder Gods are no more or no less good or evil than the Outer Gods. Their actions simply coincide with humans more often.

What does any of that have to do with what I’m planning? As you can probably guess already, I’ll be putting those Elder and Outer Gods into my story. As you also can probably guess, the Nine will fill that role.

I’ve been toying with how I want to frame that aspect of the story. As it stands I am leaning towards making the Nine into Elder Gods. To do this, I would have to generate Outer Gods, otherwise who were the Elder Gods fighting? To reconcile this aspect, there is an option. I’ve already established that no one knows for sure what happened to the Nine. This is much the same way no one knows what happened to the Great Old Ones, just that they’re sleeping in places all over the universe. So why not use the Great Old Ones? Quite frankly they’re too weak. If I do take the Lovecraft route, and I make the Nine the Great Old Ones, then I would have to make them subservient to some other more powerful set of beings. You could see how that would complicate and already complicated story. On the same token, if I made the Nine into the Outer Gods, then there would be an issue of having to generate a group of slightly less powerful beings under them. In effect, either option would result in tying down the Nine too much to obligations that the Elder Gods are not a part of.

So, how do you solve the issue of the Elder Gods and the Outer Gods in this story? The answer I’m toying with revolves around Izanami. I was already trying to work out an idea I had in which Izanami (Yin/Izanami from Darker than Black, Nia/Dark Nia from Gurren Lagann, and Sakura from the various Clamp incarnations) was the instigator behind not only the original conflict within the Nine, but may be responsible for continued troubles they have been going through. It’s not too much trouble then to modify that concept and instead cast Izanami more in the role of Nyarlathotep. That shouldn’t be a large jump since I was thinking of adding the Nue to her background anyway. But, if I do take the Nine and construe them as the Elder Gods, and then construe Izanami as one of the Outer Gods, the balance I established by having nine would be ruined, thereby requiring the restoration of that balance via a new member of the Nine. I’m still sticking with the limit of nine because the prevailing desire would be to reconstruct the total number of Lovecraft’s original number of Elder Gods.

Therefore, to reconcile my desire to preserve the old balance I had before this new Lovecraft idea came about, I would then have to return to the original idea of the Six. What that would mean is I’d go back to the original idea I had when I created the group Anzu was affiliated with. That idea originally had six individuals, and I worked up to nine. What I’m thinking of doing now is going back down to six, either consolidating the ideas I had for the other three with the six I choose, or converting those three into a new group of six to act as the Outer Gods to the original six in the role of Elder Gods.

That then leaves the question which of the Nine will become the Six, and which will be part of the other Six? More importantly, what will they be called? At first I was considering going with the whole Risen and Fallen thing that I introduced as the Ascended tale, but that gets us back to the whole good and evil dichotomy that I’m trying to make not so blatant. The outer and elder naming also rubs kind of too much of a hierarchical structure, as does inner and outer which I considered afterwards. Each can be justified if need be. Elder and outer is Lovecraft’s naming, so it would stand to reason that a grouping representing the same concept would follow the naming scheme. Inner and outer can be tied back to the Sailor Moon dichotomy between the Inner Senshi and Outer Senshi, where as the outer appeared stronger initially but were not really any more important than the inner. I also considered going with plus and minus. This idea goes to Medaka Box, adding a little bit of Full Metal Alchemist ideas about all is one and all is nothing. For now, the group representing the Elder Gods will be known as the First Six, and the group representing the Outer Gods will be known as the Second Six.

At the moment, the First Six consist of Anzushiro, Euphiemia, C.C. and Drusilla for certain. The Second Six for now consist of Izanami and Lilith for certain. That leaves Hancock, Rahzenshia Rose, and Nehellenia. I think I’ll likely move Rahzenshia to the Second Six, but that’s complicated by my having her and Anzushiro so strongly connected. Nehellenia and Hancock are complicated because while they don’t have any particular allegiance one side or another, I did build their backgrounds on a desire to connect everyone together. I like their backgrounds, but may have to dismantle them entirely. This is particularly the case for Nehellenia, whose reformation of personality was supposed to be a critical part of her character.

All in all the verdict is still out on the way that this new idea will develop. There is still the distinct possibility I abandon the idea altogether if it becomes too much of a pain to try and work out. Furthermore, the point at which I even need to really worry about it is so far off that it doesn’t make sense to try to pigeonhole myself into a definite answer. I’m not changing the idea that they don’t yet have all their memories. And if they don’t have any memories of who they used to be, much less being separated by entire universes, then there’s no conflict to resolve, and thus no story. Working through some of these stories first is more important at the moment than tying them together in the meta-story.

In the second half of the year my story progress became more haphazard. I say that not in the negative connotation of it being poorly written – at least not any worse than before – but in the sense that there was no focus on completion of any one project. I got road-blocked in Book IV again, and the new Book VII has stalled out around its 8^th chapter (chapter 87). That isn’t too bad in terms of progress seeing as that’s over half a book (157 pages) in only about six months. But, I haven’t moved forward since then. I’m not too worried though. It will be done next year. I don’t anticipate a lengthy delay in that regard.