Purple Monster

I have been planning and plotting and looking back over some of my older writing especially that in the Punk’s Universe and I have realised that most of my protagonists fall into one if not all three categories of Monsters, Misfits and Maidens. Obviously there is a bit of the old Mary Sue concept about this. For those who don’t know what a Mary Sue is it is kind of where your protagonist or at least some character in your story is a wish fulfilment for you the author. It us concidered a but of a faux pa but actually a lot of authors us it and sometimes very on purpose. Certain action writers even put themselves in the book twice actively breaking the forth wall. If they can do it so can I and actually its a little bit more than wish fulfilment anyway because a lot of my characters have lives that I most certainly would not wish to lead and outcomes that are even worse. However I do sympathise with them, can see how they followed that trail and how they were pushed onto certain paths via social osterisation.

Humans are pack animals and so for those who are thrown to the edges there is a raw urgency to life and yet it is often from such people that the great changes spring – not necessary good changes as Napoleon and Hitler can be classed as such.

The misfits often have to find other ways to do things everyone else finds easy and so have a different way of looking at things, sometimes they can become so alienated that it turns destructive and sometimes it is the soothing balm that is needed so very very badly. Loki, Coyote, Anansi and the other myriad trickster gods are also the gods of the down trodden and forgotten, the outcasts and misfits and monsters. And its not just gods, the hero’s of subjugated people and groups are often cunning in trope – this is how they survive, this is how they prevail, how does the powerless get power? They can not use brute strength like the oppressors so it comes from somewhere else and tricks and swindling are the way – this is prevalent through bible stories to play ground come uppance.

I am a small, disabled, woman who was a girl from a poor family with strange clothing and on so on… I didn’t fit, and I was the weak person. The maiden is always portrayed as the weak and yet they co-exist with dragons, prevail over the monsters under the bed and tyrannical would be or in some cases actual murdering husbands. The maidan doesn’t have to be a virgin really when you look into it or really that young – they just aren’t perceived as having power and they are not yet a mother so may not yet have the fight in them that comes when defending young ones. But then again some maidens are mothers before they are mothers defending friends and siblings and small insects that even the teachers want to squash (yes ok it was me rescuing the spiders and crying and holding funerals for the bugs annihilated).

But also – to be honest – these characters are interesting to read and write because they are different – the difference gives a way to bust them out of the ordinary lives that though worthy may not make for such great adventures!

I have noticed the trend and so shall think on it more but it won’t stop me writing it and yes a part of it is going to be thinly veiled social commentary because to be honest its kind of hard not to have that in written works and though you might think fiction acts as the perfect escape from such things it also helps us hold mirrors up to ourselves to truly see what is happening in the world – we read and write the stories to understand the world and our places within existence.

Posted: Friday, November 10th, 2023 @ 9:11 pm
Categories: Waffle, World Building.
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