Control: The Omniscience Cult — First Half Symbolism/Irony

I, Dalton Lewis, wanted to deconstruct the first half of the Omniscience Cult. Finnegan told me over the phone that several people blogged about their progress on their stories or games or kickstarted projects and gave regular updates. I thought that sounded great — so here we go.

My first theme was the traditional war between the outsiders and the moral community. This is a central irony for almost every horror story — someone hates some aspect of the moral community so much that he tries to kill as many people as possible in an act of rebellion. In Dracula this is reverse colonialism, in Frankenstein the monster is a scientific creation and therefore unnatural, and in The Turn of the Screw it’s just a mental illness. This one needs something like that — this one being nerds and geeks who face hatred and fear from the accepted members of the moral community. I had previously written extensively about dramatic, heroic geeks who fought back against a villainous moral community. I decided to evaluate the opposite — write a story about a moral community that is trying to figure out how to be moral and good and includes a diverse group of people who are stopping the geeks who freak out and kill as many innocent people as possible. I had a noble, good geek who wanted to fight all the bad guys, much like my other books — and I killed him in the first chapter. I did this because I wanted to explore someone else: the cool guy.

You know him: the guy everyone likes, who’s nice and kind to everyone around him, who’s a good person above and beyond everything. He is Easton in this story, and I wanted some people to resent him, but I wanted to show that he can and does exist. There are some people who are kind and good and good with people and who mean well and who give back to the world around them. I wanted to evaluate everyone’s responses to this character, Easton, and his powerful girlfriend, Melissa. I’ve known some wonderful people who are considered attractive and kind and giving and wanted to write them as a character: someone who gives to everyone around him.

Constructing a moral community and a monstrous force that is against the moral community is a key part of every horror novel. I wanted to construct a story in which Satan and Satanic imagery is connected to a sellout — a sellout in which one responds to being bullied and having a hard life by killing people. I know it’s a simple thing, but my life in high school was pretty terrible. A lot of people’s lives were pretty terrible in those years. That doesn’t give us the right to wander around stabbing the popular girls to death in a friend’s basement. The way we respond to terrible adversity is a strong theme for this novel. I think that Satanic imagery is conventional and yet effective. I don’t know where I’m going with it yet — but I know that I need to say something intelligent about what makes these outsiders so upset. Clearly something is wrong with the moral community that these unpopular outsiders are turning to Satan and killing innocent people.

Another theme: Fathers mean something to me. I have a dad, a good guy. He is a tennis coach who is a good person who is always nice to me no matter what. He feels the need to be the cool dad in every single situation. I love that. I wanted to have a wide variety of fathers in this story and each one creating a different type of child in the teen characters. I thought that would make for an interesting wrinkle to the story. For example, Nolan, a gay rebel, has a dad who works hard and hates his monotonous, dull life and expresses that by drinking heavily after work — but he’s not openly abusive or evil or rapey. Nolan’s mom, meanwhile, has disowned him due to his homosexuality. I wanted to show that because it sometimes happens and therefore should be expressed in fiction.

There’s another father figure that I wanted to include: Lucifer Morningstar, Satan himself. I wanted the evil geeks to think of him as a role model and father figure and try to learn from him. I thought of this as a key part of the story: who we choose to learn from, who we adopt as a role model, and what these people teach us about our lives. Lucifer teaches hatred and fear and mocking the innocent and weak. I wanted my characters to learn that. The reality is that people suffer every day and it rarely gets solved. I want to write a story that reflects that — instead of a story with a happy ending.

I don’t know where I’m going with the story but think that I have some interesting ideas about the moral community and fatherhood. I, Dalton Lewis, have to consider writing a book with a downer of an ending: that seems like what might happen at the end of this story. I want a logical conclusion to the events instead of a tacked-on happy ending. Maybe I don’t always believe in happy endings. We’ll see where this story goes.

Thanks, and take care, friends.