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Brian Stansell replied to the topic Character Voice Game in the forum Characters 4 years, 1 month ago
Hi Jared
So, is Will from earth and gets in some form or fashion teleported back and forth? Similar to Ted Dekker’s book, Black? From the sound of the gunslinging, I would hazard a guess, Wild West or some sort of post-apocalyptic? guessing he’s a pre-teenager (12-14ish) who has a lot of anger which he displaces on his parents mostly because he doesn’t know how to handle his father’s death but he actually loved them deeply. (but his feelings for his mother turns to annoyance? derision due to her perceived weakness.)Yes, there is some similarity, but I think it is more akin to the Narnian concept, rather than Dekker’s Circle series (Black, Red, White & Green and the subsequent Beyond the Circle duology). Dekker’s extraction is a dystopian future. Mine is more like the concept of the mystical Wood between the Worlds in Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, though with a spin on it that avoids embracing a concept like the fictive multi-verse of Marvel. This Mid-World place is instead an “Intra-verse,” and I’ll leave that concept right there to avoid too many spoilers.
Will is, in fact, 14, and lost his father in the Middle-East due to an attack from a counter-insurgency unit called the Wolf Brigade, ostensibly an ally during the Mosul siege, but later turned against them. He is angered by the betrayal. Like the other character, GrumBlud, he seeks his own path to getting payback. GrumBlud gives up his former humanity to become what he is, and as such is incurable. Will is emotionally pointed that direction but is not yet without the possibility of turning around. Both seek revenge and their own idea of justice, appointing themselves as judge, jury, and executioner. In my WIP, Will splits from the group and gets captured by GrumBlud until he is rescued. In some ways, GrumBlud is a kind of character like Gollum in LOTR, much changed by his own obsessions. Will is given a chance to see what he may become if he doesn’t surrender his angry obsession. In the LOTR Frodo captures Gollum, and comes to realize the Ring will eventually turn him into something like Gollum, if he doesn’t resist the desire to possess it, rather than destroy it.
Romans 12:9 says God owns vengeance. To take it for ourselves is to steal something that belongs to God, and appoint ourselves as judges, when we are guilty of the same or similarly egregious crimes.
If a person stands before a judge and receives a sentence from the judge who themselves are guilty of the same crime for which the person is being convicted, that is not justice but hypocrisy.
God’s justice is right, because He has no sin, and can either grant us mercy or full consequence. His justice is always satisfied and carried out, either to be expended upon the guilty or to be expended and satisfied by Himself as our innocent sacrifice.
There is another important reason this 2nd character is named “Will.”Luke 22:42, Christ in Gethsemane, prayed:
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me – nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”The question Will must ask himself is, do I belong to myself, or am I God’s “Will”. If He is God’s “Will” he must surrender the vengeance he seeks into God’s keeping, to allow his own crimes to receive “Mercy”.
These represent that struggle. One has surrendered to selfishness, one is on his way to that crossroads.
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