“Question based on reading this book:
It’s still en vogue to depict a fat, gluttonous king.
Do you think the body positivity things will make this a less common trope?
I get it, the king is fat while the people starve, however, I do think there are probably other ways to show that, honestly.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with a fat asshole of a king, I just wonder if there’s a way to depict a no-fucks-given ruler other than by showing him eating a big turkey leg, probably also using it to point at stuff while he talks. There certainly is, right? Highly fashion conscious? Vain? Counting and recounting his cash in ways that don’t make sense?
I think what I’m asking for is something unique, and it DOES get to the heart of this book:
This book is one that I don’t think anyone would understand, however, you can rely on your audience having seen certain sci-fi, post-apocalypse scenarios at this point, so you can probably just throw some of that in there with impunity. But when you have a story that’s too “Pull this from here, this from there, and everyone will get it due to prior experience with the material,” it leaves me feeling like, “Well…I’ll just skip this and go to the source.”
There is ONE really good idea embedded in here: maybe this other planet is fucked up because in order to be the kind of person who’d just fuck off to some shittier planet, you have to be fucked up yourself.
It’s a theory of short-term human evolution: so many of us are fucked up because back in the day, being fucked up enough to run into a battle or to do some other crazy shit did end up allowing for the survival of your bloodline, so those genes got passed down, where a gentler, more studious group of people may not have ended up passing down their genetic material.
Neat, huh?
Especially because I just saved you reading this book.”