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Full disclosure: This is another post off a note that I don’t remember the meaning behind. All I know is that it has to do with Chasing Bedlam.
Now, I think I know what I was talking about here. After looking at various dystopian stories or anything that involves a dark, harsh world, I’ve found that there are two important elements. There is the HORROR of the reality that the characters call home and the HOPE that they will either survive or improve it. One always seems to be following a hero or group that will make things right, but they travel through some of the worst scenarios the author can throw at them. This works to make the reader/viewer empathize with the characters’ need for hope while struggling in situations that we’re thankful are fictional to us.
I don’t know how well I did this with the Bedlam books. There are some horrific things like the cannibals, gangs, slave traders, and other dangers. Yet, Lloyd can count for one of these monsters too. Cassidy and Lloyd not being interested in anything other than survival reduces the ‘hope’ part of the equation. Is it still there? To some extent, but I don’t think it’s a conscious one. The characters can be pretty dark in their mindsets, especially when it comes to death. They play to the horror and accept it as their world instead of trying to change it. Makes me wonder if monsters can have hope or will it have to be twisted. I’ve had to think about what can take the place of that since most dystopian heroes use hope as the thing that drives them. All I can come up with is surviving from one day to the next.
Another question that comes up under this is: How far can one go with the horror before you lose people? For example, I’ve seen a lot of people complaining and giving up on the Walking Dead for a very gory scene. Not into the show myself, but it seems the horror went too far. Yet, it’s also believable. Humans are capable of great deeds of good and evil, but we really hate seeing the worst ones get shown in fiction. This is a challenge for me when I’m working in a world like the Shattered States. For some reason, fantasy worlds get away with more because the humans aren’t Earth humans or the victims aren’t human at all. Putting it in a familiar setting brings to mind that one’s self and loved ones could be the victim. Possibly even the perpetrator. It counters the hope because a reader/viewer is suddenly horrified by the act. Technically, it shatters the hope, which could be the intention of the bad guy. The challenge here is that the author might have a higher threshold for horror than the audience. One could even have a lower threshold, which starts the issue of being ‘spineless’ when it comes to hurting characters.
So, this is a choppy subject that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. Stumbling onto it by accident doesn’t help. What do you think about hope and horror, especially in dystopian stories?
Legends of Windemere 
I’ve never really liked the kind of blood and gore horror and grossness of things like Zombie movies/stories, or even the blood and guts of watching Dr. G. dissect bodies on the autopsy table. I guess I saw too much of blood and guts in real life in my nursing career, so make-believe pales in comparison and often isn’t very realist. And realistic just reminds me of work. I love me a good psycho-thriller though, “Silence of the Lambs” is one of my all-time favorite movies.
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They don’t do psycho-thrillers much these days. Seems gore is dying down too.
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Having read “Crossing Bedlam” the hope part was that the two of them would accomplish Cassidy’s promise to herself. The Horror did not seem all that horrible. Those who got it deserved it so I was okay. Of course, I can’t speak for other readers.
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The horror was rather mild at times. Although, one has to wonder about that deserving thing. I can see another version of the story having Cassidy and Lloyd as bad guys. The thing about Bedlam is that most of the characters have reasons karma should kick their butts.
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True. 🙂 I’m liking your lead up promo stuff.
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Thanks. 😀
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🙂
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Playing hope and horror off each other is a good plan. It doesn’t have to be the only plan. Sometimes an environment is just that, other times it becomes a character in the story. (Dante’s Peak comes to mind.) This doesn’t have to be unique to dystopian settings either. Hope is always part of horror stories, even if it isn’t expressed openly. I’m glad to see a toning down of blood and gore. Some stories require a bit, but it doesn’t have to be graphic, and we’ve become numb to the shock value. In movies it got so bad that story was sacrificed for gross outs.
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We’ll see how toned down it is. Some stories do need blood and gore like war movies and most vampire stories. I do agree that movies have gone too far and brought it to comedic proportions though.
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I’ve enjoyed both genres without a sea of blood in them. John Wayne seemed to win WWII pretty regularly without it. Frank Langella’s Dracula is still my favorite of the Dracs, and it was pretty minimal there too. The Mummy got the point across without writhing entrails involved. B & G are a tool that should be used sparingly. That way they retain their best value.
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Interesting. Wonder if there’s a generation thing connected to blood and gore. Like younger people need more to get a rise. That sounds oddly sadistic.
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I know my wife’s crowd was into it, and I’m about five years older. Video games might drive a lot of interest for the younger crowd too.
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Funny thing about video games. The non-gory ones outnumbered the gory ones when I was growing up. Yet it’s one of the big targets for my generation’s behavior.
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They were born when I was a teenager. I remember standing in line at our local pizza hangout for a turn to play Pong. It was the first and only one in town. We even had an Atari, upscale stuff.
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I started on the Atari. Think it was when fighting games started that the complaints came in. Was always more into action brawlers than one on one fighters.
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I’m playing a WWI game on my new setup. So far it involves biplanes, but there is a lot more to it.
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I was terrible at plane games. At least if the required landing. The dog-fighting was fun though. Then I’d fail by landing upside down or crashing into the side of the landing pad.
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Don’t have to land in this one. It gives kind of a cinematic version of that. Although, I’m usually blown out of the sky long before I need to land.
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Just like Snoopy.
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Curses, foiled again.
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I don’t know if I’d say horror movies are about hope, though. The great characters, like Ash, Ripley and Connor, are those with a survival drive more than hope.
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