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Semi-quick analysis of my Week 579 submission, "The Wind In Their Bones": The story is a riff on anthropogenic climate change. We give hurricanes and tropical storms names as if they're people; what if they had identities/souls? The premise is basically that the souls of these people are somehow selected or ordained to become/fuel these huge weather events, and when you're chosen, your soul is plucked from the big cosmic pot and you're sent to a limbo-ish halfway house to relax and prepare for when your storm coalesces into being. There's some clunky birth ritual metaphor in there somewhere which I was too timid to develop because I was sure I'd gently caress it up, but Eleanor's kind of a midwife/matron/bed&breakfast manager. These people show up, no real memory of any past life, only this vague sense that they're being prepared for some greater purpose, and Eleanor makes sure they're comfortable and composed and have their poo poo together before they get called up to the material world to rage around the ocean as part of the natural order etc. Clem's periodic intrusions represent human influence on When Clem's trying to get under Bertha's skin, he's appealing to nature's fury at being mistreated so badly ("They're making such a mess of things, and nobody's doing a thing about it.") He basically spends his days going around to these different halfway houses trying to nudge these hurricanes into popping off early, usually by appealing to their resentment over nature's mistreatment by humans, stoking a desire for revenge. Eleanor's just trying to keep the women cool so their hurricanes spawn normally and on schedule; Clem wants flooded cities and mass destruction, though he frames this as justice ("You know you'd be putting things right," he appeals to Bertha.) Clem got a little muddy for me - on the one hand, he's somehow part of this natural order, but he's also kinda the devil, trying to corrupt nature into being driven by malice? I didn't worry about it story-wise: devil bad, poisoning planet bad, close enough. This story was important to me because a couple months ago I spent two months on a grand jury for a trial about wildfires and had a lot of time to think about the impact of human activity on the climate and the checks that are coming due. Similar to hurricanes, scientists have predicted for some time that a) we can expect wildfires to get progressively hairier, and b) it's pretty much entirely our fault. At any rate there's ample evidence that nature's doing its best to compensate for our stupidity and trying to adapt to the changes being wrought by human influence. That struggle is the story in a nutshell, I guess. rivetz fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Sep 4, 2023 |
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Sep 4, 2023 18:42
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