One of my favorite tropes for fantasy or sci-fi stories is when the big bad has a penchant for assimilating its enemies. Well. I say favorite, but it might be more accurate to say that I find it to be thoroughly compelling and a great way to raise the stakes– it being a fate worse than death, and all that. Something about collectives of cyborgs bent on galactic conquest or races of giant AI spaceships intent on harvesting all organic life just gets under my skin and does a great job of making me root for their ultimate demise.
Oddly enough, my feelings regarding zombies and vampires aren’t as strong, which leads me to suspect that what unsettles me the most is the fact that their victims end up helping them realize their schemes of total conquest, not so much the loss of humanity of each individual victim. Dying’s bad enough, but if I could avoid joining the dark side and trying to kill my friends and doom the world in the process, that would be much preferred.
And given how effective these sorts of villains can be, it’s probably no surprise that I’m trying to do the same thing with my villain for The Seven. The obvious problem with this being that I have a very distinct idea in my head of the feelings I want these creatures to evoke, and I don’t think I’m quite there yet. I want them to create a feeling of dread in the people that have to fight them, and I want that feeling to go beyond just fear for their own survival. And if I want that feeling in the characters to be believable, they need to evoke that feeling in the readers as well.
Forgive the musings of the author neck-deep in worldbuilding questions. Or, if it strikes your fancy, ask me more! It’s harder to stick with the silly ideas when I have to explain them out loud.
F.A. Hakimian 