Round 9.3 [The Atheist v. Atmosphere]

Hmmm... I'm not entirely sure what we're supposed to do now. I suppose it's no different than before and we start talking about the pros and cons of the various stories and character bios, but for some reason this round feels different than the others. Maybe 'cause we're one step closer to the real thang?

To all the Forum posters out there, actual and potential: Now's the time to make your voice heard. I don't know about Burley, but I love all these ideas, so I could use some outside guidance, now that we're getting into specifics. What do you like? What don't you like? Why? Again, I can't speak for Burley, but what you say will have an effect on my decisions.

Anyway:

The Atheist
Amish... In... Spaaaace! I'm a little torn by this -- I really like the alien world you've created here, and I really like some of the details. At the same time, I saw this one as an opportunity to not create a whole new world from scratch, since so many of our ideas have that already as a built-in cost. I figured, in our present world situation (wow, now there's a euphemism), issues of faith and belief are so important that we may as well take them head-on without any distancing effects.

Which isn't to say we can't use yours. Maybe a start-off point of an Amish-like community is a better opportunity, rather than my "once-religious guy isn't so religious anymore, but now he's found a new calling" idea -- I'll admit, it's a little too close to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Looks like the real problem here is that, like some of our other ideas, it's coasted in on its potential without revealing its specifics to us. (In case it wasn't obvious, my bio was pure backstory -- there isn't a moment in it that directly relates to the actual screen story, since I still don't really know what it is yet.) But is that a problem? Well, yes it is, but I'm still in love with the potential and I think I'm afraid of getting into specifics, for fear of spoiling it -- which is silly, of course, because it ultimately has to be about something and things have to happen in it. Nonetheless, I still see this as a drama (again, like an Ingmar Bergman film) with SF underpinnings -- I just wish I knew how to turn my feeling about how this story should, uh, feel, while providing specifics. I have a copy of Bergman's script for Winter Light; maybe I should read that real quick before my next response.

Atmosphere
As far as character bios go, I think this one's a dead-end. Not that I won't vote for it or I don't think the story idea isn't any good anymore, simply that I don't think there's any real difference between our two bios. Really smart guy invents something, gets blinded by something, ends up killing a lot of people, goes to jail. The rest is whether you prefer chocolate or peanut butter. I think my addition of autism makes for a slightly different twist, but it's really there to be an additional obstacle while in jail. And maybe it's one obstacle too many, or maybe the idea of an autistic protagonist is too difficult to attempt at this time. (I also really like my alchemy symbolism -- the idea of lead-into-gold as a representation of inner spiritual change -- but it's easily ported into your bio.) I dunno. I don't think I have anymore to say about this one, unless you do.