A Human becoming a Dragon?

Well you could do it, but it would require one of two things:
Either your human is directly identifiable (and therefore completely alien to dragons, and they should react this way) and then your drahons are completely alien to the reader
Or your Dragons are absolutely identical to what Humans really are, and you have to find an excuse for Merru (Kind of a strange name for a human, by the way. Maybe he has been given this name by Attranath? Then this name is likely to have a story, which you should tell.) being so different from them.

If the story is to have a Sci-Fi back-ground, I can think of an easy way to do that. Once again two possibilities.
Merru's body is that of a human. Ever heard of "Alien Abduction"? This is the case. He is a human trapped in the body of a Human. And he hates it. He has been abducted by Dragons and has wished to remain among them because there was seemingly nothing for him back on earth, or any other alien race having commercial relations with the dragons abducted him and sold him as slave, experimental subject, exotic pet, anything.
Second possibility still involves "Alien Abduction" and a copy of his brain and brain waves pattern. He still has a Dragon body, brain included, but it functions on the Human model it has been modified to follow.

Honestly, I don't know how a race that ignores as much as possible Physical violence would A) ever get to develop any science, since most of science evolutions derive from hunting and war inventions and B) have gotten to eat flesh. If they were herbivors before getting big brains, then it is likely that they got those bigger brains because of an addition of proteins and energy. You could always argue that there is that special tree that gives them all the food they need, from leaves, stems, roots and bark, but it would then ruin the very concept of learning to FIGHT together. if the only reason of a family unit for bearing three to eight adults at any one time is for always having one of them nesting the egg(s), then what are the others occupied to? they are not hunting, since their food GROWS. And it's not likely the tree is fleeing. A limited amount of this special tree is bound to result in a limited population. And therefore not much evolution in it.

The only biological reason any species evolve is for a need in food. These lizard birds evolved in bipedals, because their food was higher, but that only happened once they got rid of their predators, unless you plan on having them play the roadrunner part. They devolved their wings into big thin long hands, because fly was not needed anymore to flee from their predators (collision of a comet?). They got access to more diverse and energetic food, and developped bigger brains. Then they just scattered at the surface of earth, like Humans. And then, the surface of their world wasn't big enough to hold them out of reach from each group. Then came fights for territories and food sources. This triggered intelligent behavior because of wars. And once they mastered war, they could have civilisations. I'm still at bogus why only ONE would remain. Either it was the more belliquous, and got rid of all others, or it decided war was not an option anymore because it hads nearly wiped them from the surface (yeah right. We couldn't do that, so I don't think anything else will, since we are constructing them on human whims...)

Then, fighting is still a part of tradition, from those times when it was a necessary part of survival. If the society has evolved in a form where the "polynuclear families" are spread across a territory in order for each to have its own food source, albeit under someone's banner, then I guess that, as in American Indian clans, the teaching takes place inside the group, and is NOT left to some outer office. Therefore NO SCHOOL. Too bad for this part of the idea.

Then how does the intermingling of the different clans take place? Maybe there is, as you said, some big ball sometime (longest night of summer, second tuesday of spring, anything...) or there is a trial, precisely the one we are trying to write about. Where does the fighting against the others take place? Maybe the dragons always had some psychic powers. Through their evolution they tended to loose these powers, because they weren't needed anymore, since they could use something else to get food. And only those with those abilities can be chiefs of clans.

The ability is about to project some illusions. This was previously used to trick animals into being killed one way or another, and then it was used to make war. Illusions made a powerful weapon for those who knew how to harness it. Maybe they are not only illusions. Maybe there are tangible effects too? Like Yu-Gi-Oh's casting of monsters? damn. I was so sure something nice and original would come out of it. And we're still going back to this old theme...

Anyway. It would explain the strategist, at least. It could also explain the need for a hunter-survivalist, someone with high adaptativity. This one would be sort of the noise of the group, only one able to differentiate the illusions from real stuff? the only safeguard when the mind barriers of the shaman fall down? Then what is the role of the follower? In what way does his faith alter the outcome of battles? Possibility to fall back on ancient beliefs linked with the magic of dragon blood shed to enhance the illusions. maybe give more "flesh" to them, make them more tangible, or longer so...

Now, why would Attranath be given a pet? No. Wrong question. If the contest is about getting the bare essentials of a team to form a family unit, then pets should not take part into that contest... No cheating, only the family in the making. Then Merru cannot be a pet. What can He be? Maybe he really is Huuman after all? A curious one? There is this novel by robert Silverberg. "Letters from Atlantis", I think. It was about sending one's psyche through time into another body, in order to learn from Atlantis, prime. Maybe this is what happened.

The humans, for a reason, have come to be aware of planets in the universe on which life could spring. they have researched it for a while. The person inhabiting Merru's body is a lonely student with a passion for both the stars and this conscience travel thing. maybe you've read Bernard Werber's Thanatonauths? They are exploriong death through extracorporeal activity. Maybe the same technique has been used. or something quite similar. He has searched for extraterrestrial ilife, has found an ET intelligence, and has chosen to stay a while to learn about them. But as he settled, Merru was already on his way towards the Contest, and he had to act like everything was normal to him.

Maybe Lieann is also a human who has made the same travel? but a woman? thus explaining why he acts like a woman? No. It has already been defined that dragons are evolving. Although I still don't see the reason for this to happen, life can be funny at times.

Back to Merru. Merru was already friend with Attranath before being "intruded" by his human host. Attranath only told him all he should be aware off, or maybe he acted like he knew everything, like in the first book of roger Zelazny's Ambre Princes saga... Any way, he has gone unremarked and has started to take a liking in Attranath and the group they are travelling with. As having always been an outcast, it feels good for once to be accepted. That is, until he finds their way of doing things does not suit his personal tastes, and decides to go on his own again, making Attranath follow him because of their already growing stronger friendship. Maybe Attranath DID find something changed, but felt it was rather for the better?

damn. Maybe it is because it is getting late, but I can't get hooked to this story. this is just too... difficult to swallow. Mind you, it may be so because it does not bear the proper wording. I swallowed Silverberg's and Werber's easily. So why not this one? Because of the alien landscape and people. Stupid, Dragons are in fact very much like us, or so I understood. It should work.

So I sum it up. Or down.

A human sent his consciousness across the universe to an inhabited planet, and found a host to study the population at his leisure. being rather a loner, he was rather pleased to find that he had already friends. But was also worried that he would have to take an active participation into a contest for the ruling of a part of the world, in which a new clan would be formed. He liked the idea anyway. Until he found out that the people he was teamed with were doing things so alien to him and his beliefs that he had to leave them. His being alien helped him think out of the box, and made him more adaptable than other indigens. He trained a friend with him, Attranath. Attranath is only interested in becoming a faithful follower of a strong Shaman.

The Contest for superiority has begun, and it has gathered youths from all over the country, males, females and betas. Only males take part in the contest (?). the leader must show his ability to dsiplay tangible illusions in order to defeat his avdersaries tangible illusions. The contest is all about that.

After ravennin has fled his former formation with the strategist of it, lieann, they meet Attranath and Merru who have fled theirs for the same reasons of "barbary". They choose to gather and create their own clan.

The rest happens as previously posted.

Getting better?

Not sure where your concerns about food and violence came from - I never said the dragons were herbivores, in point of fact I said Ravennin was good at hunting. *confused* The whole species doesn't have to be pacifist, I just want the book to focus on a fairly non-violent slice of dragon life. There are lots of books written about humans in real life which have little or no violence, surely we can do the same with dragons. You want to focus on the totemic duels because that is something flashy and familiar to you, but if I were going to write something like that I might use a combat or two as the major turning point and climax, but most of the book would be training for the combat, romance, verbal sparring, and exploring the worldbuilding.

Speaking of source materials, one which keeps coming to mind is _A Fire Upon the Deep_ by Vernor Vinge. This book had a species of aliens called the Tines, which existed in packs of 4-8. But each individual Tine was not very intelligent, they were units specialized in different cerebral functions, and they only became a 'person' when the units were combined into a pack with a collective mind. Now, I'm not suggesting we make dragons stupid, but what if they have to mentally (psychically?) combine to create a gestalt which is the essence of a clan? So the purpose of the school or party would be to identify which piece of the puzzle each dragon is (by aura? totem?) and arrange them into groups which could successfully create a gestalt. Some dragons would be totally incompatible with others, some would be more powerful than others, and they would have to be trained to control and use their abilities. Ravennin would be someone who has a very strong ability but is incompatible with almost everybody.

So if the gestalt were like a fighting spaceship, Ravennin would be the guns and the strong prow for ramming and enduring enemy attacks. Attranath would be the engine, and Merru and Lieann would be the sensors and AI which gathered and processed info to tell the ship what to do. Possibly there is a shortage of one type of piece and the dragons steal aliens who have that ability, and that might be where Merru came from. Or maybe he was just supposed to be a pet but having this ability is how he demonstrates that he is a person? I dunno, the whole concept is a bit mystical and new-agey for my taste, but that's just the form it came to me in while I was dreaming, so blame my subconscious. ;)

I received a very interesting book in the mail today: Vector Theory and the Plot Structures of Literature and Drama by Cynthia Joyce Clay. Particularly relevant to this thread is that she disagrees with the notion that conflict=plot, and devotes a whole chapter to explaining how the idea that a story must have a protagonist and an antagonist who fight is limiting and formulaic. An interesting statement that she makes is that a violent climax which portrays the destruction of one or both of the forces in conflict is actually counterproductive if you consider that the purpose of a work of fiction is to tell a story about change, transformation... a destroyed antagonist and an unapposed protagonist (or vice versa) haven't really been transformed. As a counter-example, she describes a novel where the two women's rivalry makes both learn and grow, until their newfound identity and power invalidates their reason to struggle against each other - one transforms into a panther and goes to live in the forest, and the other becomes a priestess and goes to live in a temple. And before the conflict they were struggling in parallel/together against their situation, just like I want my characters to be struggling in parallel/together against society. :)

In a different chapter, she says two other interesting things right in a row: In science fiction, the interest and excitement are created by figuring out just what the qualities of the aliens are and how to react to them. In romances, the interaction is to show that the hero does indeed have all the qualities the heroine wants in a man (including some which he initially lacks or which are hidden, and must be gained or found before the heroine and the plot are satisfied. I find these two statements particularly interesting, because if you combine them you get exactly what I want to write. ^_^ The characters are all in some way alien to each other: Merru is literally alien to the others, Attranath is a sheep in wolf's clothing, Ravennin is hyperterritorial, and Lieann is a beta male. So the interest and excitement in my novel should come from the characters investigating and testing each other, and being astonished to discover a best friend here and a lover there, when they expected a potentially dangerous alien. That's what the plot should mainly be about - how through meeting the others and becoming a family each is transformed to a more confident/powerful/mature/whatever version of himself. :)

Which brings us back to plotting. According to vector theory, we should imagine the 4 main characters as billiard balls, each going their own direction at their own speed, and the direction and the speed are determined by what they want, how they are attempting to get it, and what is resisting their attempts. The plot is about how these billiard balls bang into each other, are magnetically attracted to or repelled by each other, and bounce off walls and bump over obstacles. The snowflake method suggests that a plot be composed of 'three disasters and an ending'. If we substitute for 'disaster' with 'transformation'... that could work.

[Edited by - sunandshadow on May 7, 2005 12:40:25 AM]

Then I don't know how things are beginning orevolving, but I think they could end this way.

They could loose the fightand still decide to create their own clan, because not doing so would be too hard for them. It would mean to separate. Of course, doing so puts them automatically at aban of society, since they are not respecting traditions, but they won't care. They already are a clan. And they'll have to travel away from the land of Dragons in order to simply live. They truly are outcasts now, but happy with it. Maybe you don't even have to decribe it, just the aftemath...

As for the rest, sorry, I can't help any further. I just can't wrap my mind around those concepts. Maybe my english lacks the possibility to do so. Maybe I'm just to dumb to get the words, or the meaning is hidden because of ack of sleep. Anyway, it seems EXTREMELY alien to me. So much for the help. I will never see my name on one of your novels. Well, I'll just have to learn to do without.

And, just to discuss the point, I think that having decided to rush off the battlefield of opposition for both women is just a way to win in another form. They have accepted the fact that they couldn't win in their normal approach, so now, they just have done something else, innovant, to get to the next closer point of victory conditions. They will live happly everafter with their love, albeit not with their loved one, they will live alone, which wa al what that conflict was about, or anything else. They just transfered the point of their conflict.

Well, don't give up - I'm going to play with the plot structure for a few days and then ask your opinion on what I come up with. Meanwhile, did you want me to help you with some character emotion or dialogue stuff? Just explain what you have trouble with and I'll see if I can help. :)

OMG!! This is going to be even longer than the previous posts...

Anyway. Here goes!

I've been toying around with an idea about a setting. I've proposed it here and there to see how much people would be interested in it, how much it would make an interesting background for a game or a novel. And seeing how fast I could get people interested in making a game based on this, I decided to go the novel route.

This is probably going to be a genre seldomly exploited before. Let's call this "steam-fantasy"?

This story takes place in a background torn by civil war for more than twenty-five years. The King, a great mage like all kings must be, died twenty-eight years ago, and a war for his succession has begun. His son, a mage of average power took up the throne, and it provoked an uproar in the gentry because the magic powers of a Duke was almost unmatched, and according to some ancient regulation, He should have become the New King, because he was the most powerful and would therefore protect more efficiently the people. The weaker son, and officialy New King, because of heredity wouldn't step down. And from the turmoil emerged an obscure Baron, who excited the hatred of all mages in the lower people, raised an army of peasants and tried to overthrow and KILL, most important here, all magic users in the Kingdom, promising a worldwide wipe of all of them to his people. His main argument is that Mages are, basicaly, thiefs, because what they call "magic" is a way of redistributing forces and goods in a manner convenient for them (Think of hitler's way of talking about jews...). They are crooked and ugly, and probably smelly too. When they "summon" a roasted chicken, they simply take it somewhere alive, give its lifeforce to someone or something else, use the wind to blow its feathers away, and channel the sun's heat into cooking it, and everything happens in so small a time that no one will ever know who did what. SO this Baron is telling everybody that any magic user is basically a potential killer, because he has the power to do so. The problem here, is that approximately one person out of four is a magic user, it is pretty common and is used in domestic ways such as helping to saw, wash, grab a hot plate without being burned... Some more powerful mages are used to enhance the quality of the soil to improve the crops, this sort of thing. The best mages are used to make war, and summon the elements to side with them.

But the baron, being himself NOT a magic user, prefered to create some sort of "technology" which would help him with his conquest plans. He created, on his own, black powder, primitive guns, VERY primitive canons, and is actually trying to harness the power of steam. No success here yet, but the idea is here. The technology level of his army should be a blend of 16th century Spain, early 18th England and, for the look, of any fantasy setting army you could think of. Maybe with a touch of early 20th, late 19th France for the flashy look and the kind of armors that could be seen in late 15th Spain on top of that. Basically, think of conquistadores in red pants with bad guns. This is sufficient to earn them a small advantage in skirmishes, but not enough on a big battlefield. At least in the beginning. Because the baron decided to create huge factories behind his citadel, in gorges, so that no one could get to them unless they went through his castle first.

Anyway.

The story will be about, on the first hand, about a Commander in the Baron's army who is seeking revenge, absolution and motivation for his actions, and his wife and son, seeking protection in him.

It begins with him being informed that the village in which his wife and son were living having been infected with a sort of curse, which turned all the population into sorts of flesh eating zombies. Since the village had just been taken beyond enemy lines, the hierarchy believes that it is either a weapon the magic using enemy used, or someone who tried to force his neighbours to act on his will, but couldn't master a too difficult spell. Anyway, they couldn't wait any longer, and had to send a batallion of flame-throwers (maybe a little too techno , could be discussed and turned into something less impressive, but equally burning) Learning that, our Commander, I decided to call Fargo Stiffback for the time of development, for he is undertaking a voyage and is probably a little stiff in the back, due to lifelong military commanding, decides to try to go faster than the courier, to reach his village before the burners and find a way of rescuing his wife and son before it's too late. he leaves.

Meanwhile, his wife and son come back from... somewhere (I just couldn't find a reason for them to have gone from their house. Visiting an old aunt, maybe? Or maybe they had fled in the woods knowing thatthe frontline had gone past and beyond their village?) and find the village described as previously. Knowing that they can't get more than they have on them, they hit the road and try to rally the Citadel to find their husband and father.

Fargo will reach the village but won't be able to rescue anyone, since they really have turned into a bunch of flesh eating zombies, and have to go back and wander aimlessly on the roads. He will eventually meet a woman of approximately the same age as his, but he can't tell for sure how old she is. They will travel together for a while, and feelings should evolve from this situation. She should tell him that the order, far from coming from the Baron, came from his first helper, the Archdeacon, and that He is really the reason of the loss of his family, because He is the one in charge of everything for quite a while, the Baron only being happy in his "lab". He will decide to take revenge on him by killing the Archdeacon, and possibly the Baron too.

Meanwhile, his wife and sons have travelled by sideroads, because they too have seen the uniforms going on the roads and that of the army of the Commander come down and burn their village. When they finally reach the Citadel, their are greeted by Fargo's envious Lieutenant, who tells them that he threw his demission, and is no longer in place. I think he should even try to abuse his new position and his former superior's wife too. Then the family leaves the Citadel to hit the road again.

Then Fargo comes back to the Citadel at night, uses his knowledge of the rounds and of passageways to come back to the center of the Citadel. His Lieutenant intercepts him, and believing he was coming back to get his position back, tells that his wife and son are still alive and have come to the citadel. This delays him too much to accomplish the planned murder. he goes back.

A while goes by while he searches high and low to find them, but he knows that he taught them well in surviving and hiding, and won't find them early enough. Then he decides that his best chance of having them back is to let the world know that he killed the Baron and the Archdeacon, and that he is in charge at the Citadel, so that the war will end, and they will be able to travel back safely to meet him there. A new nightly expedition is organized, and he does NOT meet his lieutenant, which does NOT delay him. When he enters the archdeacon's office, he finds him there, waiting fo him.

The discussion that follows is about the real motives for the Archdeacon's entring into the Baron's service. In fact, the Baron has poisonous ideas, but doesn't know how to speak in public. In fact, for five years now, the Archdeacon has been the only one seen publicly, the Baron being even rumoured dead. But the Archdeacon only used the baron's crusade to rid the world of a poisonous woman, his former wife, who also was a priestess, and she is the one responsible for the creation of the flesh eating zombies. But he understands that, now that Fargo has located her and has come to friendly terms with her (for she is the woman fargo has ben travelling for some time now), it will be easier for fargo to kill her, thus putting an end for the Archdeacon's dedication to the baron's crusade. that woman has been trying to perform correctly a ritual sacrifice that would give her a sort of eternal life for the past 30 years. So far, she has only successed in remaining kinda young in appearance, but by the look of the zombies, the Archdeacon can tell that she is nearing success. She must be killed soon. And so should he, in order to give fargo more leeway. So he just waits there, with a lingering smile, sorta happy to finally destroy his ex-wife. And Fargo kills him, then cuts his head, and goes back out of the citadel, unfortunately not unseen.

He then comes back to meet that priestess woman, with the head of the Archdeacon. She thanks him with a smile, and then knocks him out cold, seizes the head, and walks into a nearby village, beginning to perform again that dreaded ritual which will potentially allow her to become eternal, brandishing the head. The village starts to suffer at once, the shrieks of his nearby wife and son wake fargo up, and he recognizes them.

The Lieutenant decides to come up, leading a batallion of men to seize the killer of the Archdeacon, declaring that he will be the next right hand of the Baron.

Fargo stands up, goes and kisses his wife and son good bye, and jumps into the fire circle, joining the priestess into her dance of death. He is last seen pushing his sword through her chest, before the hall crumbles on them. A sort of heatwave rushes out of the building, sweeps over the village and landscape, and everything stops as it had begun, silently.

The Lieutenant finally arrives, demands explanations, only the wife of Fargo can tell him what happened. She is proud of telling everybody that it was her husband who killed the woman responsible for all this. The Lieutenant smiles a bad smile, and has her put in chains, along with her son, for being related to the mad man who slain the Archdeacon, and announces that he is the next helper of the Baron blah blah blah. (insert raving discourse here...) The wife and son are to be put into jail.

After they are gone, the wind blows the ashes aside, and a hand is revealed. It is unburned, unwounded, and suddendly clenching into a fist, struggling for some space. [End]



What i would like you to help me with, is to define the adjectives which best describe the internal character of Fargo. He seems to be obsessive, hard beaten, hard-boiled, and soldier at heart, but not extraordinarily interested in killing people anymore. He is more doing his job than saving the world. I know that I would like the Lieutenant (called Doppler Telltale so far...) to be a sort of "scar" in Lion King, you know, ambitious, unctous and mean... But as you see, the reasons for doing things are pretty fleshed out already: the main character wants to change the world in order to recover his wife and sons.

I'd like you to tell me what you think of this story. Does it need changing? Does it have plot holes? Should anything be changed altogether? Anything you think could hurt sensibilities?

Hmm. So, what would you say the moral of Fargo's journey through the story is? Does he change his attitude about anything between the beginning and the end? What does he want most? If I asked him, "What is the best approach to solving any problem?" what would his answer be?

Also, it would help if you could state in a sentence or two what the premise and theme of the whole story is.

I can't tell you much about the story itself because it's not the sort of story I like to read, and if I suggested changes they would probably push it into being a different sort of story entirely, lol. But helping you sort out Fargo's motivations, approaches, and temperament should be pretty easy. :)


BTW I had an insight of my own today - if my antagonist is society, that means society is a character with motivations and a goal. But I haven't done any character development for society. No wonder I'm having trouble describing how my characters are in conflict with society if I haven't thought about what society wants that would be opposed to what the characters want!

This thread had tragically derailed. It was irresponsible. It is disappointing to see boolean start a thread with minute interest.


Re: fournicolas

With the least words, your story has no meaning. There are characters, goals, interactions and etc, but at the end of it, it is all about nothing. S/S expressed the same in a narrower form. Sticking to my terminology, I would describe your story like this:

Thematic Content: you have this. This is the goals, plot twists and such.

Emotion Content: Pretty weak. This may be due to the fact that you are just summarizing the plots, not the emotional parts. So I think that you have this, but they are implied in your post.

Semantic Content: Non-existent. There is a very easy way to check whether a story has this or not. If you have this, you will be able to begin your post with an inquiry on an issue, a poem or a quote. You should be able to let the reader start thinking before the story even begin. I don't think you have a Semantic goal because the way you concerned about your world building suggested that you had no prior consideration to the meaning of the story.


Beyond characters

Quote: BTW I had an insight of my own today - if my antagonist is society, that means society is a character with motivations and a goal. But I haven't done any character development for society. No wonder I'm having trouble describing how my characters are in conflict with society if I haven't thought about what society wants that would be opposed to what the characters want!

This is near the realm of Thirteen Tails, a story about the cost of peace and stability through the conflict between thirteen outlaws and society.

The difference between your description and mine is the focus. You focus on achieving a dynamic, I focus on the meaning. You are running the same risk of having a nicely-dressed and well-acted puppet show that means nothing. It seems all you really care about is building a fish tank so you can put fish in and watch them swim.

"A diverse bunch of misfits come together as a team/family and overcome society's prejudices and preconceptions"

can be translated to:

"A diverse bunch of fish come together as a team and overcome the new tank's wrong temperature."

For the sake of clarity, this is a premise of Thematic and Emotional level. Not directly at the Semantic level. Premise with Semantic content is not required for a story. But compared to the norm, a story without it is a lot worse. Most what if stories have a meaning other than the catch-all 'about prejudice and preconceptions'.

If you fishify Thirteen Tails:

"a story about the cost of peace and stability through the conflict between thirteen tropical fish and the fish tank's wrong temperature."

It turns into a fable story, but the meaning doesn't go away. This is the distinction between the Semantic Level (High level design, the meaning) and the Literal Level (Low level design, the presentation).

You can also do an reverse transform, from:

"A presentation of a social problem through the eyes of fishes struggling in a fish tank of a wrong temperature."

To:

"A presentation of a social problem through the eyes of the students struggling in their school against a certain school law."

Note that this is the same formula as Lord of the Flies or Battle Royale. But in order for this to work, you need to identify what exactly the social problem is, and why is it related to the reader (it shouldn't be some kind of fantasy just for the sake of being different). In Battle Royale, the social problem is the decline of value of human lives in face of exploding human population. This is an issue that can independently provoke thoughts and arguments. You can tell that the whole movie is a presentation of this issue.

This kind of design is beyond characters, dynamics, plots, and drama.


Re: Vector Theory: Transformation

You can easily derive the same understanding by noticing that "Confronting a villain" is a Thematic resolution, while a "Transformation" is a Semantic resolution. A Semantic resolution is better for the story because the reader is reading something meaningful. The statement however was still too narrow, because Transformation is not the only kind of Semantic resolution, and Semantic resolution is not required to present an issue. A lot of times, presenting the issue itself enough, the story doesn't need to provide a solution.

[Edited by - Estok on May 10, 2005 1:57:48 AM]

It may be because I am noty an english native, but...

What do you mean, exactmly, by "semantic" content? I thought semantic was related to words, not to meaning...

And, Estok, in fact, I don't think this thread has gone so far from its intended point. You have in fact been able to witness through the exchange between SnS and I the way a discussion between two exterior POV happens. It is quite similar to an inner argumentation, unless there is more than one internal voice (three in fact). If you put this in front of what has been previously written as internal monolog, you may think of this as external dialog, and learn something from it, even if it takes place on a VERY different level from the intended and original one of working on only three words.

[Edited by - Fournicolas on May 10, 2005 1:38:07 AM]

In fact, I checked, and in my dictionnary, semantics has this definition:
"1. of or pertaining to meaning, esp. meaning in language.
2. of or according to semantics as a branch of linguistics or of semiotics."

Unless I missed something, I am lost.

As for the summary of this story, i think it can boil down to something fairly simple, although I know it wasn't exactly clear anymore at the end what the intended goal was in the beginning.

A man is faced with an impossible choice: either he abandons his wife and son to death, or he destroys the revolution and his principles in the same time to save those he loves.

So obviously at first he chooses the third solution which allows him to keep both his family and principles, which is to run faster than the courier, and when he understands he won't be able to, he falls back on the second choice, which is to eliminate the leader(s) of the rebellion. It will leave him pointless, since he dedicated his whole life to it, but he will have his wife back.

Having got the leader dead, he understands that his wife and son will be safe nowhere until the task previously undertook by the leader is finished, and thus resolves to killing the real reason of the problem, saving definitely his wife and son. Unfortunately, in the end, he can't save his own butt, but has successed in saving his family.

Yes, everything boils down to this. How far can a man go to accomplish his desires? What can he renounce to protect his family?