This is probably a loaded question considering what is happening in the world:
When the Octovirate came to power in the empire, did they try to âunion bustâ the social rights movement that demanded that the working class should have a say over things that affect them like taxes and protections from abuse from the upper class?
Another reason for Beau to hate those pompous a**holes?
The short answer is no, because thatâs not what theyâre interested in.
The long answer is⊠Iâm gonna be real with you. While the allegorical elements of the Octovirate are unignorable just simply because of who they are and the position they hold, I donât want to get too deep into real-world allegory or details like that because this is fantasy and while there IS political drama in spindle I donât want to get bogged down in it because I want to write a fun fanfic and not something that depresses me. Especially because I love writing awful villains who are interesting characters and that means I want them to be genuinely compelling and not just Hate Sinks. Like they will be Hate Sinks because theyâre awful, but for them to be the antagonists that I want them to be theyâre not going to be doing evil horrendous stuff just for the sake of it so everyone can hate them on sight. Like that will happen, but I love to write villains who are difficult to just straight up kill because they hold sway over the people and to do that in a way I personally find compelling, they need to be, in some way, coming off as partially right and not just doing things that the audience will point at and boo.
Like when I say spindle has political intrigue, itâs the kind of stuff thatâs in the Astrid fic or whatâs going on in CR4. It HAS real world allegory, but it is also very fun and cool to watch/read about and not just in a âI canât wait to see these guys loseâ kind of way. I write villains not for the sake of hoping theyâll lose, but for the struggle of the heroes to WIN. It becomes frustrating for me when youâre dealing with tyrannical villains that make you go âjust shoot them.â
Iâm not trying to be rude or abrasive, but I just want to point out that I love my villains and I want to write them being scary and cool, even if they inevitably lose at the end and while joking about how awful they are or how much they suck is fine (lord knows I do it with Ashley and the Somnovem who are pathologically unserious to me out of context but are TERRIFYING in the narrative), Iâm just not comfortable mapping a lot of specific real world political agendas onto characters that I want to be able to write as fun and interesting villains that get a lot of people behind them, especially since they spend a lot of time as background villains who are shady and making the Soul and Caleb wary as shit but are not the immediate priority, and thatâs all I can say without straight up spoiling.
Tl;dr: to make the Octovirate work as antagonists the way I want them to be, they have spent seven years doing genuine good in the Empire and thatâs whatâs scary about them.
