...As in, not last night, but the night before, Friday night, prior to Saturday.
It's not necessarily all I had to talk about, but it's the thing I feel most like doing for today at least.
Basically, the story (the dream became a fullblown one, as per the norm) dealt with a fallen angel as the protagonist.
To put it into more words: God in this setting is known to exist to all of His eternal children. (Humans, as mortal children, don't know He exists for sure.) But He's an incredibly distant figure. As in, basically the stern father: He knows everything which will happen, but does nothing to stop it from happening. He does care about all of His children, both ethereal and mortal, but He does so with this distance.
He will not coddle someone. He will not intervene and mess with the laws of nature to spare disasters from happening. He will, perhaps, subtly warn people. But He does not directly do acts of divine intervention. Prayers to Him can be useful: if someone prays to Him to have the capability to see something through ("please God give me strength to survive this", for instance), then He may lend some slight support, but this is not guaranteed. If someone prays to Him to give a miracle because they can't find a solution, He probably isn't going to answer, but there's always the minuscule chance He decides that it is in fact necessary.
This led to many angels questioning God. God's choice of what to do and what not to do in regard to humanity ended up leaving angels feeling like something needed to be done, so when one of God's three archangels decided to defect, it started a rebellion.
(Note that, as per the norm, strictly speaking, all ethereal beings are genderless. God lacks a gender, and so too do angels, but God is referred to as a He for convenience and angels tend to have a gender they prefer to appear as, so they are called he/she as appropriate.)
The protagonist was meant to be the main general of the war against the rebellion. She would basically be directly under the two loyal archangels in the hierarchy: their best warrior and fighter, their best strategist, and a really big deal, the highest position available to a normal angel like her. As in, third-in-command. (Well, fourth, since there are two second-in-commands.) With first being God. Who doesn't really bother to intervene. So effectively second (well, third) in command.
...Yet in the last moment, God, sensing her cruelty, decided to instead pick her rival for the position, which led her to be incredibly bitter, to the point where she defected, and became the right-hand-woman of the rebellion, fighting against God.
Her side had the numbers advantage with about the same power between the sides per angel. This put her in the position where her side was actually winning the war against God, even without her help, and she helped make it all the more decisive. (By the way, an angel is normally immortal except to another angel; an angel killed by an angel will essentially merge with the archangel they are loyal most to. This is incentive for both sides to actually avoid killing one another, as it makes the factional leaders stronger. An angel can if in mortal form be killed, of course--but they simply return to the ethereal normally.)
...However, in a decisive battle, her rival actually managed to defeat her. (Plot-wise, this had the effect of turning a surefire win for the rebellion into a stalemate, because she was necessary to press the advantage and her rival being on the field without her would keep God from losing.)
And instead of being captured or killed, her rival decided to do something else: strip her of her powers, and leave her trapped in mortal form with absolutely no magic in the mortal realm. This is where the plot really kicks off. (Most of the above is backstory; the prologue kicks off with the battle, and the results with her losing it.)
She basically has to deal with all of her attitude problems and learn how to survive, since she is incredibly out of touch with the mortal realm. But over the course of the dream, while she was several times repeatedly pushed to the breaking point, she did undergo character development, especially thanks to a guy she met.
The story spanned years (as in, there's significant plot every step of the way but I kept going until she had multiple children with her oldest being a ten year old daughter), and over that time her competency tends to improve as her empathy and understanding does. She's the adventuring team's strategist (this being a fairly medieval fantasy setting, she later becomes part of a wandering band), and later learns to fight quite well using mortal methods.
At one point, nearing the end of the story, she faces a threat that none of her friends can overcome, even with her best efforts to help them, and she stands nearly powerless herself, being the last one capable of stopping the threat yet even her efforts failing. Every trick she had, not working. In that moment, she genuinely prays to God to give help, which He does give, by restoring her powers.
It's later revealed to her that God, of course, saw this all as the natural conclusion from what would happen if He didn't make her the general, and He said the position would be hers now if she so desired to have it--specifically because now she was the type of person worthy of holding that position.
I realize the plot isn't exactly the most of original of concepts, but give my subconscious a break; it was a lovely show to watch and legitimately made me wish I could write the full story for it, because I think that my particular take on it would still be interesting. This blog post has done a really poor job of articulating the conflict, and more importantly, is absolutely abysmal at explaining her basic character, and how she evolves over the story, and the nature of the message to be had, which isn't nearly as preachy as this blog post would have you believe, but that's just the thing, my words make you think that from the description even though I know the actual story isn't like that so for now you'll just have to take my word for it that it's not cringe-worthy, except for the parts that are intentionally so.
It's not necessarily all I had to talk about, but it's the thing I feel most like doing for today at least.
Basically, the story (the dream became a fullblown one, as per the norm) dealt with a fallen angel as the protagonist.
To put it into more words: God in this setting is known to exist to all of His eternal children. (Humans, as mortal children, don't know He exists for sure.) But He's an incredibly distant figure. As in, basically the stern father: He knows everything which will happen, but does nothing to stop it from happening. He does care about all of His children, both ethereal and mortal, but He does so with this distance.
He will not coddle someone. He will not intervene and mess with the laws of nature to spare disasters from happening. He will, perhaps, subtly warn people. But He does not directly do acts of divine intervention. Prayers to Him can be useful: if someone prays to Him to have the capability to see something through ("please God give me strength to survive this", for instance), then He may lend some slight support, but this is not guaranteed. If someone prays to Him to give a miracle because they can't find a solution, He probably isn't going to answer, but there's always the minuscule chance He decides that it is in fact necessary.
This led to many angels questioning God. God's choice of what to do and what not to do in regard to humanity ended up leaving angels feeling like something needed to be done, so when one of God's three archangels decided to defect, it started a rebellion.
(Note that, as per the norm, strictly speaking, all ethereal beings are genderless. God lacks a gender, and so too do angels, but God is referred to as a He for convenience and angels tend to have a gender they prefer to appear as, so they are called he/she as appropriate.)
The protagonist was meant to be the main general of the war against the rebellion. She would basically be directly under the two loyal archangels in the hierarchy: their best warrior and fighter, their best strategist, and a really big deal, the highest position available to a normal angel like her. As in, third-in-command. (Well, fourth, since there are two second-in-commands.) With first being God. Who doesn't really bother to intervene. So effectively second (well, third) in command.
...Yet in the last moment, God, sensing her cruelty, decided to instead pick her rival for the position, which led her to be incredibly bitter, to the point where she defected, and became the right-hand-woman of the rebellion, fighting against God.
Her side had the numbers advantage with about the same power between the sides per angel. This put her in the position where her side was actually winning the war against God, even without her help, and she helped make it all the more decisive. (By the way, an angel is normally immortal except to another angel; an angel killed by an angel will essentially merge with the archangel they are loyal most to. This is incentive for both sides to actually avoid killing one another, as it makes the factional leaders stronger. An angel can if in mortal form be killed, of course--but they simply return to the ethereal normally.)
...However, in a decisive battle, her rival actually managed to defeat her. (Plot-wise, this had the effect of turning a surefire win for the rebellion into a stalemate, because she was necessary to press the advantage and her rival being on the field without her would keep God from losing.)
And instead of being captured or killed, her rival decided to do something else: strip her of her powers, and leave her trapped in mortal form with absolutely no magic in the mortal realm. This is where the plot really kicks off. (Most of the above is backstory; the prologue kicks off with the battle, and the results with her losing it.)
She basically has to deal with all of her attitude problems and learn how to survive, since she is incredibly out of touch with the mortal realm. But over the course of the dream, while she was several times repeatedly pushed to the breaking point, she did undergo character development, especially thanks to a guy she met.
The story spanned years (as in, there's significant plot every step of the way but I kept going until she had multiple children with her oldest being a ten year old daughter), and over that time her competency tends to improve as her empathy and understanding does. She's the adventuring team's strategist (this being a fairly medieval fantasy setting, she later becomes part of a wandering band), and later learns to fight quite well using mortal methods.
At one point, nearing the end of the story, she faces a threat that none of her friends can overcome, even with her best efforts to help them, and she stands nearly powerless herself, being the last one capable of stopping the threat yet even her efforts failing. Every trick she had, not working. In that moment, she genuinely prays to God to give help, which He does give, by restoring her powers.
It's later revealed to her that God, of course, saw this all as the natural conclusion from what would happen if He didn't make her the general, and He said the position would be hers now if she so desired to have it--specifically because now she was the type of person worthy of holding that position.
I realize the plot isn't exactly the most of original of concepts, but give my subconscious a break; it was a lovely show to watch and legitimately made me wish I could write the full story for it, because I think that my particular take on it would still be interesting. This blog post has done a really poor job of articulating the conflict, and more importantly, is absolutely abysmal at explaining her basic character, and how she evolves over the story, and the nature of the message to be had, which isn't nearly as preachy as this blog post would have you believe, but that's just the thing, my words make you think that from the description even though I know the actual story isn't like that so for now you'll just have to take my word for it that it's not cringe-worthy, except for the parts that are intentionally so.
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