I am more curious where Rory will end up on the hierarchy. He has the raw ingredients for a solid alpha or a solid bravo. Already having older brothers gives the character an easy out to develop into a bravo, but also has protective alpha instincts. Yet, his hesitation to start a fight could be read as either a delta tendency or alpha situational restraint. Guarding the dormatory threshold scene seemed a developmentally alpha moment.
I don't have a lot of time right now to consume entertainment or reading for fun, but boy when I do, what I have read is absolute slop. This also transfers over to movies. 95% of the time, the hero of the story is a gamma. Gone are the days when you would read the story about an alpha or delta protagonist, the protagonist is almost always a gamma. It's shocking to the point of being utterly ridiculous. And then, even when the protagonist is an alpha or delta, like a historical figure, they try to turn that historical figure into a gamma. The few stories that do not follow this stupid pattern, are massively successful.
“Harry and Dorian are built from opposite raw material, and the difference is not ‘sad orphan vs. happy boy.’ It’s the difference between a child whose worth was withheld and then handed back inflated, and a child whose worth was never in question.”
Thank you for compelling me to rethink my estimation of Charles Dickens after decades of reading. Paradigm shifting!
After reading the first Harry Potter book to my two sons, this sounds like a great, better alternative... Are there any plans for a German edition at a later point in time?
Loved Rowling’s books as…surprise…a teenage girl. As an adult, have preferred the adult characterization and moral complexity of some of the higher quality fanfictions over the original works.
This looks like a very fun alternative!
Vox, I can’t keep up with your output now that you are AI enhanced- too many kids, not enough reading time. Can I assume this is faster going than your scientific and philosophical works of late?
I’m not even a fiction reader and the idea of a rational, true to reality take on this much abused story archetype is heartwarming.
An actual chosen one would be shaped by the experience of actual superiority. Something beyond the ken of most writers of the genre. Curious to see how it plays out from a more suitable authorial perspective.
Right? Someone subjected me to another "special boy the minute he steps into some other secret world with dragons and shit" story and I had to let her down easy, and explain that, no, it's not cool that some kid gets transported to another realm and automatically has better sword skills after 30 seconds of practice just because he's the special boy.
Sounds interesting, but it also sounds like the write up is claiming the main character is likely to be or become a gamma, which entails a lot of undesirable things. I would make it a day 1 purchase as Castalia is publishing it and the subject matter's interesting, but if we expect gamma as the main character...that's not exactly a good thing. Though I guess it can still be instructive and interesting...?
I do notice the alpha lads tend to age up really fast in stories, whether narratively or magically. Gene Wolfe's Wizard Knight and Fawcett comic's Captain Marvel are stories about kids with lion hearts that magically get adult bodies to match what's already inside them. Neither Able nor Billy Batson has a painful story arc about being acknowledged or climbing up social ranks, it was mostly about the consequences of throwing around their weight without wisdom.
Is it easier to write an alpha character or a sigma character? Seems a lot of fantasy authors would simply structure their alpha chapters as buffoonish bullies reminiscent from being picked on during their childhood years. Their sigma characters would simply be gammas with nice sunglasses.
There's a lot people can manage even without understanding anything at all by using formula and stereotypes. A more skilled author can do more with such things, or with their understanding but there's quite an acceptable quality that can be reached without even having a creative bone or much understanding of humanity.
Unsurprisingly the works of such people suffer when they reach beyond their abilities, their limitations. The Harry Potter books themselves are good examples of this.
The greatest saboteur of depicting alphas is twisted mentality or the pathological desire to subvert.
You will note that these are generally fatal for stories the more they infest a given person.
The romantasy author partly makes man of monster because of it not being politically correct to have the hots for fictional alphasigma male grindset sadist ceos (she can fix him) currently.
Doubtless the crocodile will at some point devour the writers of the muscled crocodilemen too and there'll be some big farcical blow up.
Still, can't help but have the odd feeling that romantasy is ripe for counter subversion.
Not quite superversion, but...
It's an obvious open back door. There's a lot you can sneak in under the wolfpelt.
True, but some can do it far better than others. Best analogy is comparing a $5 scarecrow vs. a $300 mall mannequin. Some characters are written with more life. Especially in the 1st person perspective. A much more personal style of character development.
If actors use the method acting technique to assume roles, the writing equivalent would be something like method writing. When the writer can conceptualize very different people and their actions from himself. AKA assume their personalities.
How does a retired Marine Corp officer who’s a bravo try and develop an omega character? The Marine has been extroverted and involved with hierarchies his entire life. He loves the
comradery and working with a group. He’s never been without it and it’s served him well. How does a person think and act who finds such bonds alien and emotionally painful? That Marine might try to imagine himself with brain damage and PTSD. There might be similarities to that and omegas, but it’s not really the right fit. Despite some external personality similarities.
I’m now fascinated by how a writer’s SSH rank affects their storytelling and character development. Seems certain tells would emerge often without the writer ever recognizing it.
Even if made aware of the SSH, trying to create characters other than your own rank would appear cognitively alien. Especially the further away it is from your own rank in either direction. How would an alpha writer write an omega character or vise versa? And do so convincingly without it appearing clunky or stereotypical? Are gamma writers destined to always kill off their alpha protagonists before chapter 3?
Of course not. If alphas are dead by chapter 3, how is the gamma protagonist supposed to exact sweet revenge, which is really showing them the error of their ways while saving their woman who was cruelly tricked by the power imbalance?
I’ll say that part again. Imagine a gamma writer trying to write an alpha protagonist. How does that poor fictional alpha get past chapter 3 without meeting some gruesome end?
It's ok. I think you are still vindicated, for nothing else than it made me laugh at the observation.
I don't think gammas can really write anything but gammas. See: John Scalsi and Neil Gaiman. But there are plenty of alphas, bravos, and our own SDL who can write across the SSH spectrum. The Monster Hunter series is an example.
Vox's Selenoth/Throne of Bones series is great. He has said he was not so happy with Summa Elvetica. I suppose Aquinas probably thought his Summa had weak spots, too. I've re-read both of them.
Another, not so famous writer, is Keith Blackmore. Blackmore's Mountain Man series is very good. But I especially like his Breeds series. Based on some of the things you've commented on, I'd say you would like Breeds.
I note that most HP fans think of themselves as Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. The Ravenclaw votes seem accurate - they’re nerds. But most people claiming Gryffindor are more likely Hufflepuff. Nobody seems to want to self-identify as Hufflepuff or Slytherin.
I am 100 percent, unapologetically Slytherin. If I wrote fan fiction, I would write about how Slytherin are the good guys, Dumbledore is a pedophile, and Harry Potter is a murderer. I mean, you know he murdered Cedric, right?
"Hey, I know I'm standing over the body of my romantic rival, but it was TOTALLY this other guy who not only isn't here, but has been dead for 20 years!"
Well, an alpha might do that. More to rub it in than because he cares for a woman, but still. I mean Harry Potter aside, the whole situation is a public display of dominance. You do that when you are already a top dog and don't give a shit. Gamma bullying is typically on the hush hush, people see it, it paints a target on his back.
There’s been other discussions here about how alpha bullying is largely a myth- fueled by Hollywood films of what gammas think they would do if they were the alpha.
Alphas don’t have to extort sex. They assume, correctly, that the girls already want them anyway.
I really don’t think “I’m going to keep hurting your friend unless you date me” was ever said by any alpha ever. It’s pathetic, creepy, and gross.
An interesting difficulty structurally speaking is compared to the other ranks, a bravo.
Still want to see three different magician lead character stories, gamma, omega and sigma each being forced to leave their high tower and face the world outside. Each would turn people into unnattural things for different but similar reasons.
As for the boy with the special eyes...
What would be the most interesting direction for that?
A near miss development into an alpha?
Would as others have thought be uncommon for our times.
It's partly a matter of eirher the integrity of the story itself or...
What is it that people want or need today from such a story?
Whatever the rank, people are suffering from the path from boyhood to manhood being obscured and covered.
Yes, it's an old tale, but that's the important part that the absence of the coming of age, the rite of passage has left a hollow wound on the Neverland adults of this age.
It's part of why people cluster around even insufficient surrogate "father" figures like Tate or once, Peterson. Many gammas, but not merely just that.
Our host too, has people's mad yearning cast towards him.
Boyhood, manhood, fatherhood. Well regardless there's probably plenty of the stories, the books already thought out.
Sirius Black was done real dirty, but she probably wouldn't have been able to do that strand of story.
Quite tempted to buy the book, and as fate has it, in this teller's non liquid state of funds a bit of inflow is on the way...
It would beat buying a game to gather dust in a backlog if nothing else.
I don't even recall mere attempt to portray an alpha in modern fantasy besides ATOB. I'm guessing they were alright in LOTR, though I was too young when I read it to remember. But Boromir and Theoden were absolutely my favorite characters. By far.
Can we have a fantasy book where alphas don't die though? I mean kill one more alpha, and I'm giving romantasy a try.
Well I was 8. I thought girls were icky and most certainly didn't know what a gamma or delta or a bravo is. But my mother had gotten me Harry Potter before LOTR, and damn it I made the difference between good and bad.
Probably easier if you think of him as a Lieutenant - at least, with the reasonably old fashioned definition of "an official empowered to act for a higher official".
Pretty clear where Faramir lies. And the clear characterization resonates.
I am more curious where Rory will end up on the hierarchy. He has the raw ingredients for a solid alpha or a solid bravo. Already having older brothers gives the character an easy out to develop into a bravo, but also has protective alpha instincts. Yet, his hesitation to start a fight could be read as either a delta tendency or alpha situational restraint. Guarding the dormatory threshold scene seemed a developmentally alpha moment.
Is this one also AI?
I don't have a lot of time right now to consume entertainment or reading for fun, but boy when I do, what I have read is absolute slop. This also transfers over to movies. 95% of the time, the hero of the story is a gamma. Gone are the days when you would read the story about an alpha or delta protagonist, the protagonist is almost always a gamma. It's shocking to the point of being utterly ridiculous. And then, even when the protagonist is an alpha or delta, like a historical figure, they try to turn that historical figure into a gamma. The few stories that do not follow this stupid pattern, are massively successful.
“Harry and Dorian are built from opposite raw material, and the difference is not ‘sad orphan vs. happy boy.’ It’s the difference between a child whose worth was withheld and then handed back inflated, and a child whose worth was never in question.”
Thank you for compelling me to rethink my estimation of Charles Dickens after decades of reading. Paradigm shifting!
After reading the first Harry Potter book to my two sons, this sounds like a great, better alternative... Are there any plans for a German edition at a later point in time?
Right? I have two sons too. And they aren't ready for LOTR yet.
Loved Rowling’s books as…surprise…a teenage girl. As an adult, have preferred the adult characterization and moral complexity of some of the higher quality fanfictions over the original works.
This looks like a very fun alternative!
Vox, I can’t keep up with your output now that you are AI enhanced- too many kids, not enough reading time. Can I assume this is faster going than your scientific and philosophical works of late?
Faster than the philosophy. About the same speed as the evolution due to the need for more cleanup.
Are you still needing readers?
Sure, the book is already being one-starred by non-readers. It would be good to get some actual reviews by genuine readers up there.
I’m not even a fiction reader and the idea of a rational, true to reality take on this much abused story archetype is heartwarming.
An actual chosen one would be shaped by the experience of actual superiority. Something beyond the ken of most writers of the genre. Curious to see how it plays out from a more suitable authorial perspective.
Right? Someone subjected me to another "special boy the minute he steps into some other secret world with dragons and shit" story and I had to let her down easy, and explain that, no, it's not cool that some kid gets transported to another realm and automatically has better sword skills after 30 seconds of practice just because he's the special boy.
Sounds interesting, but it also sounds like the write up is claiming the main character is likely to be or become a gamma, which entails a lot of undesirable things. I would make it a day 1 purchase as Castalia is publishing it and the subject matter's interesting, but if we expect gamma as the main character...that's not exactly a good thing. Though I guess it can still be instructive and interesting...?
So it seems what you're saying is...
Well crap. Do you think the protagonist will end up a gamma?
Why would you ever ask a writer how the story is going to end?
Read it, or don't read it, but if you don't read it, you don't get to discuss it.
Point taken. I’ll grab a copy and refrain from the speculation until I’ve actually read the work.
You almost certainly want to stay very far away from the Monster Control Incorporated novels...
You’re right. Reflecting on my enjoyment of MCI and your correction, I see I was making a category error. I’ll let the text speak for itself.
Not very gentlemanly of him.
I do notice the alpha lads tend to age up really fast in stories, whether narratively or magically. Gene Wolfe's Wizard Knight and Fawcett comic's Captain Marvel are stories about kids with lion hearts that magically get adult bodies to match what's already inside them. Neither Able nor Billy Batson has a painful story arc about being acknowledged or climbing up social ranks, it was mostly about the consequences of throwing around their weight without wisdom.
Will it be worthy of leather?!
That's not up to me. We'll see what people think.
Is it easier to write an alpha character or a sigma character? Seems a lot of fantasy authors would simply structure their alpha chapters as buffoonish bullies reminiscent from being picked on during their childhood years. Their sigma characters would simply be gammas with nice sunglasses.
There's a lot people can manage even without understanding anything at all by using formula and stereotypes. A more skilled author can do more with such things, or with their understanding but there's quite an acceptable quality that can be reached without even having a creative bone or much understanding of humanity.
Unsurprisingly the works of such people suffer when they reach beyond their abilities, their limitations. The Harry Potter books themselves are good examples of this.
The greatest saboteur of depicting alphas is twisted mentality or the pathological desire to subvert.
You will note that these are generally fatal for stories the more they infest a given person.
The romantasy author partly makes man of monster because of it not being politically correct to have the hots for fictional alphasigma male grindset sadist ceos (she can fix him) currently.
Doubtless the crocodile will at some point devour the writers of the muscled crocodilemen too and there'll be some big farcical blow up.
Still, can't help but have the odd feeling that romantasy is ripe for counter subversion.
Not quite superversion, but...
It's an obvious open back door. There's a lot you can sneak in under the wolfpelt.
There's undoubtedly a hunger.
True, but some can do it far better than others. Best analogy is comparing a $5 scarecrow vs. a $300 mall mannequin. Some characters are written with more life. Especially in the 1st person perspective. A much more personal style of character development.
If actors use the method acting technique to assume roles, the writing equivalent would be something like method writing. When the writer can conceptualize very different people and their actions from himself. AKA assume their personalities.
How does a retired Marine Corp officer who’s a bravo try and develop an omega character? The Marine has been extroverted and involved with hierarchies his entire life. He loves the
comradery and working with a group. He’s never been without it and it’s served him well. How does a person think and act who finds such bonds alien and emotionally painful? That Marine might try to imagine himself with brain damage and PTSD. There might be similarities to that and omegas, but it’s not really the right fit. Despite some external personality similarities.
It should be easier to write an Alpha. Women do it all the time. But otherwise, yes, you're absolutely right.
Certainly in the realm of romance fiction.
I’m now fascinated by how a writer’s SSH rank affects their storytelling and character development. Seems certain tells would emerge often without the writer ever recognizing it.
Even if made aware of the SSH, trying to create characters other than your own rank would appear cognitively alien. Especially the further away it is from your own rank in either direction. How would an alpha writer write an omega character or vise versa? And do so convincingly without it appearing clunky or stereotypical? Are gamma writers destined to always kill off their alpha protagonists before chapter 3?
Of course not. If alphas are dead by chapter 3, how is the gamma protagonist supposed to exact sweet revenge, which is really showing them the error of their ways while saving their woman who was cruelly tricked by the power imbalance?
I’ll say that part again. Imagine a gamma writer trying to write an alpha protagonist. How does that poor fictional alpha get past chapter 3 without meeting some gruesome end?
Ah, didn't read the protagonist part. You might have a point.
It's ok. I think you are still vindicated, for nothing else than it made me laugh at the observation.
I don't think gammas can really write anything but gammas. See: John Scalsi and Neil Gaiman. But there are plenty of alphas, bravos, and our own SDL who can write across the SSH spectrum. The Monster Hunter series is an example.
Vox's Selenoth/Throne of Bones series is great. He has said he was not so happy with Summa Elvetica. I suppose Aquinas probably thought his Summa had weak spots, too. I've re-read both of them.
Another, not so famous writer, is Keith Blackmore. Blackmore's Mountain Man series is very good. But I especially like his Breeds series. Based on some of the things you've commented on, I'd say you would like Breeds.
Once Vox revealed the pattern, I think back on my childhood, and the crappy Gamma storylines my psyche was subjected to, and feel violated.
Oh, I feel vindicated big time.
I note that most HP fans think of themselves as Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. The Ravenclaw votes seem accurate - they’re nerds. But most people claiming Gryffindor are more likely Hufflepuff. Nobody seems to want to self-identify as Hufflepuff or Slytherin.
At least not openly. 😂
I am 100 percent, unapologetically Slytherin. If I wrote fan fiction, I would write about how Slytherin are the good guys, Dumbledore is a pedophile, and Harry Potter is a murderer. I mean, you know he murdered Cedric, right?
"Hey, I know I'm standing over the body of my romantic rival, but it was TOTALLY this other guy who not only isn't here, but has been dead for 20 years!"
Also James Potter is a gamma who got the girl with stalker like persistence and then got them both killed by acting like a secret-king retard.
Wow, had no idea. I thought he was the quidditch captain guy.
Now when the Vernon talks about the Potters being freaks, it suddenly makes plenty sense.
James Potter and the Girl he Sexually Extorted, then Impregnated and Got Killed, After he Finally Wore Down her Resistance
For the extortion attempt,
see Order of the Phoenix Chapter 28, wherein James says he’ll stop bullying Snape if Lily will date him
Well, an alpha might do that. More to rub it in than because he cares for a woman, but still. I mean Harry Potter aside, the whole situation is a public display of dominance. You do that when you are already a top dog and don't give a shit. Gamma bullying is typically on the hush hush, people see it, it paints a target on his back.
I have to disagree.
There’s been other discussions here about how alpha bullying is largely a myth- fueled by Hollywood films of what gammas think they would do if they were the alpha.
Alphas don’t have to extort sex. They assume, correctly, that the girls already want them anyway.
I really don’t think “I’m going to keep hurting your friend unless you date me” was ever said by any alpha ever. It’s pathetic, creepy, and gross.
Growing up is realizing Voldimort likely would’ve saved the Wizarding World.
Ok, hat, I change my answer. Looks like Slytheryn is where the party is.
Hey, I'd be with Hufflepuff. These are the only guys who sound like they skip class and party.
What does that have to do with the SSH?
If you want boys to grow up to become men who slay dragons, then give the boys stories of how young alphas, bravos, and deltas slay dragons.
The young delta boy is the father of the delta man. Same for the others.
"Am I an Alpha-Sigma-Delta?"
People misapplying the labels they want to be with the ones they are
Somehow Robert E Howard wrote the most compelling Alpha in all of fantasy, and then shot himself because his mother died. How did he do it?
He was murdered, obviously. He dug too deep.
Are you serious? I really really hope that’s true.
Now I too want to know if this was an off handed joke of an answer, or a serious take that bears digging into....
Vox started off the thread by noting how it's easy to write an Alpha.
One suspects Sigma pot-stirring.
An interesting difficulty structurally speaking is compared to the other ranks, a bravo.
Still want to see three different magician lead character stories, gamma, omega and sigma each being forced to leave their high tower and face the world outside. Each would turn people into unnattural things for different but similar reasons.
As for the boy with the special eyes...
What would be the most interesting direction for that?
A near miss development into an alpha?
Would as others have thought be uncommon for our times.
It's partly a matter of eirher the integrity of the story itself or...
What is it that people want or need today from such a story?
Whatever the rank, people are suffering from the path from boyhood to manhood being obscured and covered.
Yes, it's an old tale, but that's the important part that the absence of the coming of age, the rite of passage has left a hollow wound on the Neverland adults of this age.
It's part of why people cluster around even insufficient surrogate "father" figures like Tate or once, Peterson. Many gammas, but not merely just that.
Our host too, has people's mad yearning cast towards him.
Boyhood, manhood, fatherhood. Well regardless there's probably plenty of the stories, the books already thought out.
Sirius Black was done real dirty, but she probably wouldn't have been able to do that strand of story.
Quite tempted to buy the book, and as fate has it, in this teller's non liquid state of funds a bit of inflow is on the way...
It would beat buying a game to gather dust in a backlog if nothing else.
Shoot me an email. I'll send you a review copy.
Thank you.
Sent under snowyheartsteller. Will review on Amazon after reading.
🤌
I don't even recall mere attempt to portray an alpha in modern fantasy besides ATOB. I'm guessing they were alright in LOTR, though I was too young when I read it to remember. But Boromir and Theoden were absolutely my favorite characters. By far.
Can we have a fantasy book where alphas don't die though? I mean kill one more alpha, and I'm giving romantasy a try.
You don't read Romantasy or Urban Fantasy. Lots of Alphas there.
Gandalf is an excellent Sigma.
Faramir was one of my favorites. He was probably a Bravo.
Not probably, definitely.
Well I was 8. I thought girls were icky and most certainly didn't know what a gamma or delta or a bravo is. But my mother had gotten me Harry Potter before LOTR, and damn it I made the difference between good and bad.
Probably easier if you think of him as a Lieutenant - at least, with the reasonably old fashioned definition of "an official empowered to act for a higher official".
Pretty clear where Faramir lies. And the clear characterization resonates.
Seems like a good, fun alternative to Harry Potter to read to my little guys. Thanks Castalia.