Ambivalence, Benevolence, and Malevolence · 4:01am Nov 13th, 2018
This is another writing related idea I've been toying around with for some time.
The title is based on some musings I had on eldritch monsters and the like. Musings came to become three story ideas, related by the idea of humans interacting with vast, incomprehensible beings. They go thusly:
Ambivalence: This is the one I've actually worked on, with a working title called "Eldritch Match". It's a silly rom-com esque story about a white collar stiff who's happy to live his boring little life, with a bad boss and creepy coworkers... until he's visited by an extra-dimensional bird monster disguised as a human girl who goes by the name of Sibyl. Sibyl is the extra-dimensional bird monster equivalent of a travel agent, who has found our hapless protagonist because he's the most boring and unremarkable human in existence at that very moment; extra-dimensional bird monsters are big on boring human lives and she wants to "evaluate the resort" as it were. This revelation (and wanting Sibyl out of his hair), leads our protagonist to step out and change his life, get a girlfriend, anything to make himself less attractive to bird monster evaluation.
Benevolence: This one I haven't given too much thought to because I haven't explored much hard sci-fi, but I thought it was interesting. Basically, a deep-space exploration mission comes across an impossible planet: its right in the Goldilocks zone, has liquid water, ample oxygen, great resources, and is parked next to a bright new star that by all accounts should not have any planets formed at this point. This is because a lonely energy being crafted the planet (and many others) in the hope of attracting lesser life to make friends with. Perceptions of reality are shaken, and the explorers return to Earth with first contact and a nice place to colonize.
Malevolence: This one I like because of my history background, and having done more research on the Crusades in college than any other era of history it seems like a good start. A knight joins the First Crusade as penance for past misdeeds, and he and his fellows head out into the desert in pursuit of heretic raiders... only to meet a bunch of Muslim warriors heading out to do the same thing. Turns out the raiders are cultists hoping to use the Crusade to kickstart Armageddon, and hoped the two sides clashing in their immediate vicinity would allow them to summon an archdemon for fun slaughter time. The Christians and Muslims set aside their differences long enough to battle the cultists, and while they are victorious most of them die and some of the cultists escape. After that almost every major conflict is just another one of their attempts to summon the demon and end the world.
Just some other ideas I had. Maybe, someday, I'll do my research and hammer them out.
The third one is my favorite
If you're going to do research into the Crusades, start with Thomas Madden. The current king of the Crusades field of study is Jonathan Riley Smith (doesn't matter where in the world you go - he's the king), but he's a pretty dry read even by the standards of the field (fun fact, even historians find most historical treatises painfully boring; it's literally the stylistic expectation in the field because of the standards set a few generations back). Madden is JRS's heir apparent in the field and, rare amongst historians, is actually very readable and has some shorter books which are intended for general consumption. If you're feeling really masochistic and want to pick up some primary sources, I have some to recommend there too, but do so only after reading Madden so that you have some sort of lens through which to read the often poetic (and sometimes dubious) first-hand accounts.
4967607 Sounds like fun. It's been a while since I've done some serious history reading so it'll be good to get back on the horse, as it were.