Brainstorming for new story- A near future society of scientific vampires grooming youths as blood livestock
Entry posted by W_L in Writing Stories
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I thought I'd write out my story ideas from a recent brainstorming session:
-Firstly, the genre would be speculative fiction/science fiction about a near-future society, based on the recent advances of young blood transfusion and convalescent plasma therapy, which President Trump and key advisers supported versus mRNA vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. It's one of the areas that traditional regulatory guidelines might not have caught up to the data, which indicates this approach might be highly effective for general population immunity.
-It's a dystopia, but how do you get from our current world to one where wealthy and powerful elders begin farming human beings for literal immortality
- Incentivize certain groups to become dependent on your enterprises, reducing the free flow of capital. Essentially, it's monopolization based on crony capitalism, we've started seeing formations of such groups in technology and finance, i.e. can a restaurant or a private plumber, carpenter, or electrician operate without credit to obtain goods or tools. Controlling intellectual or monetary capital, the principle is the same
- Create a crisis to stimulate decentralization. If you offer different segments of various groups and interests benefits, you can maintain an upper hand by keeping civil administration fragmented and impotent. Say the country is being invaded by a foreign power or have a surplus of illegal immigrants who cannot be expelled and cannot be used as labor force, the offer of being "livestock blood donors" might be appealing. (Around 3 million illegal immigrants exist in the US right, would be hard to get rid of by force, but not hard to convert into human material under the right conditions)
- The modern vampire society is run like a feudal state, where there's a nominal king from the elder vampire elites, but each vampire group/corporation/bloc would have more power than any appointed leader of the king.
- Such a society should not exist in a vacuum, other world powers should also be interested in similar practices, creating "Pop" wars, where populations from various countries are extracted to satisfy blood quotas.
- Religion and moral fluidity- Religious drift occurs over time, especially among the Judeo-Christian religion to allow for the use of blood livestock. Catholic and Protestant beliefs are co-opted by a new religion with various tenets that conform to the new social order, just like Medieval European Christians changed their pagan practices by changing gods to Saints for worship among other things.
-Main Character- He should be part of a family of "freeholders", a term meant for those independent business owners and farmers in society. I imagine a boy in his early teens, around 12-13. He is deaf and does not have access to a hearing aide, nor was he taught sign language due to the poor educational standards in this society. Thus, the boy must rely on a notepad and pencil to communicate to others. He's skinny and bullied a lot by other freeholder.
Update 1.1 Main Character- I am going to age up the male protagonist to 23 years old and change his background. Instead of being deaf (my other ongoing project's MC is deaf and I am using Sign language in that one) he'll be visually impaired (like myself, I am blind in one eye). He's the bastard son of the Queeney patriarch, an important family that manages and enhances the "blood livestock" for prospective buyers. Freeholders will be changed as people who can buy and train blood livestock for profit under contract with more powerful groups, making them akin to independent ranchers of our current world who operate on contract basis to raise cattle to larger meatpackers.
New plot points:
6. The "vampire"/Lords of this world can custom order their blood livestock for various performance enhancements, i.e. say you want blood that has better oxygen flow like an athlete, you can have select special stock, which is trained for it. We see that right now with various athletic training programs that target specific bodily functions with top athletes and specialized livestock for certain tastes are common like the famous Wagyu Kobe Beef cattle raised in Japan that fetches thousands of dollars for an A5 rating.
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Now the question is how can I write a story that will allow the protagonist to make a difference in such a dystopian world?
Yes, I could do the trope of him meeting one of the "blood livestock" boys and build a relationship, but then it would feel like I am writing a reinterpretation of an antebellum drama with the injustice of slavery. This isn't the old issue of slavery, it's more nuanced and societally complex, the arguments for human mortality is not something to toss around without some forethought.
That's where I was stuck in brainstorming the story
Edited by W_L
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