I've been distracted in the evenings by something else I'm working on. Kind of a sophomore piece, if you will. Something that grew out of the ideas I was trying to establish with Fade, and that will still be there. I just wondered what would happen if I took it to the extreme. I really wanted to play with the roles of "good" and "evil" with Fade. You were to question whether Holt himself was a good guy. But not really in the blatant Punisher kind of way. More subtly. But I was wondering, what if you took that to the literal end?
So I started working up this idea...I drew some storyboards, which is where this was going. I could scan them. But the idea was to take the "ultimate" evil, the devil himself, and make you root for him. I know this has been done before. Dexter is a good example. But I don't want to do it that way. No demons, no scary stuff from the devil at all. I've in fact spoiled the ending. Because I wanted to write it as a superhero story, with you rooting the whole time for this hero who does everything right according to the annals of superhero-dom. Only in the end you find out, much to your surprise--and his, for that matter--that he is in fact the coming of the devil from Revelation. He didn't know this, though he finds out. I admit taking inspiration from some of the interpretations of the gospels that say Jesus was choosing Judas rather than prophesying when he said "one of you will betray me". What if the reason the devil stood against god was not at all what you thought it was? What if he did it because he thought that God wasn't doing enough to help people? What if he was an extreme bleeding heart, who felt for everyone who hurt, and decided that the way the world was running wasn't right? Who fits the definition of good then?
Granted, this has been explored many times before, too. Even Star Wars had Vader taking power in order to make a "better" place. But even then, those characters are usually obviously evil. Here, you might even say that my devil was obviously good. In the end, though, he is still the Enemy, because he stands against the big plan. He takes free will away from people. Worse, he takes accountability and responsibility away by being the ubiquitous hero. It'd be a perfect RPG type of growth, too. From ordinary man who is sick of hurt and death, to a superhuman of extreme power. With the exception of course of anyone who reads this, I'd love to do it as a Bruce Willis is dead, or "Would you kindly" revelation. That way, you don't get lost in the religious aspect of it, just like Sixth Sense never bothers explaining much about death or the afterlife.
Anyway, that's enough of a ramble...
Added at: 03:54
Also, I thought of this idea a while ago, and only recently revisited it. I shelved it for a while. Why? Partly because I was worried as a card-carrying liberal that the idea could be interpreted as a conservative libertarian manifesto, which I don't mean it as at all.