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Post by veritasseeker90 on Feb 16, 2009 23:34:25 GMT -5
The main character in the story I'm currently playing favorites with, is a shapeshifter. To really ask the question I'm wanting, I need to give a brief overview of the story line (which I warn you is very vague at best):
The underlying story is about four people's search for the Garden of Eden, in a not so distant future. Mixed into that, is the shapeshifters.
My shapeshifters live without dying from old age, but they can be killed. So there are many, very old ones.
I would love to tie them into the Garden, meaning, make the first ones have something to do with the actual Garden of Eden, but I'm a little lost as to how, or even what, I could do with it.
Suggestions? If you need me to elaborate, I can sure try.
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Post by J Jack on Feb 17, 2009 0:35:21 GMT -5
You could have a group of ancient ones who were descendant from the trees or something, descendants of guardians of the garden, something like that. Each one could have their own traits and personality, the bitter apple tree, sweet strawberry bush, wise moss, stout and angry rock or something. I know it sounds corny but if you did it right I bet it would work. Just a suggestion of course.
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Post by mongoose on Feb 17, 2009 1:19:18 GMT -5
What's the purpose of having shape shifters in the story? Is it because they contribute a particular skill to a particular mission or organization? Is it to explore philosophical difficulties via their unique difficulties? Is it to give everyone else in the story someone to discriminate against, or perhaps to revere? Is it just because you think they're cool, and want to explore what their lives, culture, philosophy etc. would be like, if they were real? Are they a metaphore for something we all, or many of us deal with?
In my writing, the purpose of a character's presence in the story determines their involvement in the plot, and ultimately, everything else that happens in plot itself. So I don't have to sit and ask myself, "What should my Native American character do?" I already know he wouldn't be Native American at all, except that I need a character who will be marginalized and discriminated against on the basis of his culture, ethnicity and faith. Ergo, a Native American. His purpose in the story determines both what sort of person he is, and what he will do about it.
I COULD have used someone of any ethnicity, culture and faith, or left those things entirely up to the imagination of the reader if I just wanted a skilled soldier. He could have been from the Louisiana bayou, Appalachia, the deserts of New Mexico, or the Alaskan bush, and might as well have been white or something. But my story is ABOUT how someone from a marginalized people group, believing falshoods, deals with a hostile and fallen world, ultimately finding truth and rising to a position of leadership. His purpose necessitates that he be Native American, and that he journey from a marginal faith in his tribal religion to a committed faith in Jesus Christ, which is the theme of the story.
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Feb 17, 2009 8:40:13 GMT -5
Hi, Veritas, and welcome to The Anomaly!
Your story idea sounds very cool.
I think you're pretty free to make these four whatever you want. Once your readers have agreed to read a story about shapeshifters and the Garden of Eden, they're going to be open to whatever you want to do with the premise. Just keep it internally consistent.
As for who these four are, why couldn't they be some hitherto unheard-of kind of angel? Maybe they were lesser caretakers of the Garden whose job was messed up by the Fall?
I'm also thinking of the wonderful little guys in Time Bandits. They were the people/angels who "helped" God during creation. (That's a great movie, by the way.)
Jeff
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Post by seraphim on Feb 17, 2009 10:24:17 GMT -5
Conventionally speaking when you say shapeshifters I automatically think werewolves, nordic mythology or of something associated with shamanism. In the case of werewolves that condition in more modern storytelling is linked to some kind of transmitable curse or disease...like vampirism. Shamanism involves (at least the perception) of sometimes changing form to that of an animal or merging senses with an animal for some particular purpose useful to the clan/tribe (finding game, finding medicine, etc.) Nordic mythology shows us characters, both gods and mortals who by use of an appropriate species cloak may for a time take on the body and life of wolf or bear or otter or some other creature. With there there was the danger of getting trapped or at least forgetting that one could take off the cloak and change back. Then there are the global traditions of the swan may and its variants (heron maid, porpoise woman, etc.) which is also a "cloaking" story, and of course you have the dryadic traditions of the Hellenic mythology. One of the precient theological issue that is implied in the nordic stories is that our form is not just incidental to our personhood. To be a bear is to be a bear. To be a man is to be a man, and the form of one man is not the form of another man. So a man who becomes a bear in some sense ceases to be a man. This state of affairs rests upon the understanding that our humanity exists in union with our materiality. The body is not just a temporary shell that is cast off when used up...else the bodily resurrection is pointless. It is part of who we are. The soul apart from its body is not whole and not in a natural (for it) condition. So to change bodies is to change who we are. So to write a story about shapeshifters for whom that is a natural condition/ability will have to deal with this issue in some manner. One possiblity I suppose is that you can propose a muliti-dimensional universe in which one face of the creature could be seen at a time, depending on which one was turned to this one. Another might be to speculate an amorphos creature (like the Thing) who can take on varioius forms at will...with the question is it just an outward mimicing, or inside and out. And speaking of the Garden of Eden and werewolves, vampires and the like, check out this real world vampire of a plant...a plant that literaly stalks (not celery) its prey. Now there's a new angle for a vampire story...or even a shapeshifter story....imagine dyadic dodder...hmmm.
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Post by veritasseeker90 on Feb 17, 2009 12:36:46 GMT -5
Thanks for your answers! The questions asked will help me better learn what exactly I'm wanting to do with the book. Here's some answers to the questions, I can answer off the top of my head. Mongoose: I was actually thinking they are Guardians of sorts. My main character, Onyx Rowe, has lived his whole life among those of the poor and the "untasteful's" of the human world. But he's also a loner. Jeff: That thought had actually crossed my mind, but I didn't know if it would be wrong in a morally and religiously (sorry for the lack of better words right now) way. I'll have to play around with the idea a bit, but you gave me permission to use it.
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Post by J Jack on Feb 17, 2009 13:44:08 GMT -5
Was it this forum that discussed that the Garden might be mars? I think it was and I brought that point up at church and among my friends, only one person actually accepted the idea and questioned me about the theory we had discussed, everyone else dismissed it, almost rudely.
"You're an idiot and that's stupid, God would never do that"
That was the jist of the replies...but how do they know what he would and wouldn't do? Pet peeve right there, you don't have to agree, but you can tolerate and have friendly debate about ideas, that's how the world was built is it not?
Off topic, sorry, the thought occurred to me when I was thinking about the Garden.
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Post by veritasseeker90 on Feb 17, 2009 13:53:09 GMT -5
Very true, and it's a pet peeve I also share.
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Post by seraphim on Feb 17, 2009 14:33:45 GMT -5
Well they are right, it's an absurd idea, everyone knows the GoE was formerly located on Venus which was destroyed in retaliation for the catestropic bombardment of Mars with Astra by the ancient Venusians...or Aphroditians as the few survivors prefer to call themselves nowadays. They had the last laugh bittersweet though it was, sucking away most of Mar's water to make Earth a bit more comfortable for them leaving Mar a cold desert just as the Martians had made a burning desert of Venus. Robert Frost, a Venusian in part on his mother's side (according to one reliable source) wrote a poem about it.
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Post by mongoose on Feb 17, 2009 16:30:16 GMT -5
When people dismiss ideas in such a way, I am prompted to ask myself or anyone who will pay attention to me, why would they not give the idea due consideration? And if I can figure out why someone doesn't want to consider an idea, maybe I can begin to look for some common ground and a way of continuing to dialog with them, if such is a goal of mine. Here's some possibilities that pop into my head, though I would not propose that any of these are good reasons:
-They don't want to think -They're afraid of the implications for theology, and/or for their theology in particular, if the idea holds any weight -They really believe A, and you're proposing X, and the two appear to be mutually exclusive. So why even consider X? (this seems most likely to me. They think they know the garden is hidden here on Earth, between those three rivers, with an angel standing guard with a flaming sword. How could it be on Mars? Why even think about where it is, since we know we can't find it? And why think about space? There's nothing out there for people seeking the Kingdom of God! Or so one line of thinking might go.) -They're conservative, and you're liberal, or vice versus, and so nothing you say is worth considering
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Post by J Jack on Feb 17, 2009 17:37:08 GMT -5
Good points, I think it's mostly fear of the unknown. Us here in this forum are like minded in the sense that we are willing to test our limits and challenge what we know. Most people are too afriad of what's out there, too afraid of the new, afraid to push limits and test what they think they know. Personally, I get no greater rush than a good debate with someone who really knows what they are talking about. Winning is not making them believe your side, the reward is reinforcing what you believe, or tearing it apart with something you may have never considered.
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Post by Divides the Waters on Feb 19, 2009 0:39:46 GMT -5
I think that most shapeshifting species leave a little to be desired, but that may be because I think magic, as a whole, is overused, even in fantasy. I think in order to be truly a shapeshifter, a creature must be of some other substance than matter as we know it, or at least there must be some plausible explanation regarding why the rules of physics do not apply to them.
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Post by seraphim on Feb 19, 2009 9:45:44 GMT -5
Part of the implausability I think likes in its characterization as being an instant to quick transformation from a few seconds to a few minutes at most. Now it shapeshifting required a period of dormancy in a coccoon while the body essentially liquified and reassembled itself that might make it a little more believable as a biological process.
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Post by veritasseeker90 on Feb 19, 2009 14:06:10 GMT -5
Here's a thought that came to me this morning:
Molecular restructuring. I vaguely remember reading about a theory that everything on a Sub-atomic level could be changed, if we could learn how.
My thought is, the soul/spirit (whatever you choose to call it) cannot be changed, but the body, if by molecular restructuring, can.
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Post by seraphim on Feb 19, 2009 15:30:49 GMT -5
hmmm. Can't buy that premise theologially. As I see it that would create too much of a disconnect between the soul and the body as if the body is merely a vessel and the soul as a seperate entity is the real person...the wine doesn't change just the bottle. However, if the body is the material expression of the immaterial soul and that they are one in a very intimate and indissoluable way then if there is a change in body the soul has changed as well, and the person who was has effectively been annilated, not just physically but existentially.
However if what you are talking about is just some nanotechnology realized version of plastic surgury then the objection is withdrawn.
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