Cognisant
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I'd like to do a sci-fi retelling/sequel of this but I need to bounce some ideas around, hence this thread.
The Tyranny of Divine Right
This is the absolute basis of the story, there's some entity that has incontestable power and thus gets to claim to be morally right even when he's not. This doesn't have to be infinite cosmic power, it could be a position of leadership like being the captain of a starship who has been captain for many millennia and the ship's population comprises billions of people, it's a big ship. But the power has to be abused somehow, in the biblical story god being The God is omniscient/omnipotent and thus everything that happens only can happen because he allows it to happen, making him an asshole not because of what he does (though there is that) but because of what he doesn't do. Going by the theme of indifference perhaps this captain has gone mad with power and decided that (allegedly for their own good) nobody is allowed to leave his ship and aboard this ship society has become stratified and stagnant. Society aboard the ship is a zero sum game, resources are strictly limited so the only way one person can be rich is for others to be poor, even the right to reproduce is strictly controlled, indeed of all rights that is one of the most coveted.
The Three Sons
The captain's second eldest son is our Lucifer analogue, I like the notion that he's a sadist born of ennui who becomes jealous of the firstborn son for some reason and predictably fails when he rebels against his father, note his father was never punishing him for being a sadist. The first son isn't analogous to Jesus or humanity, more like an amalgamation of Gabriel and the other archangels, a perfectly loyal sycophant, boring and pretentious, somehow more detestable than the sadist. The captain's eldest daughter is our Jesus analogue, she and the other daughters are sympathetic to the plight of the poor but it's a shitty oppressive patriarchal society so who cares what they think. The third son is the analogue for humanity who gets elevated to the position of second son when the Lucifer analogue is banished to live with the general population, the third son is like the captain's eighth child or something and has been living upper-lower-middle class up to this point.
Checklist for upcoming plot points:
- Humanity dude gets dragged down by Lucifer dude, maybe tricked, maybe just punished for hanging out with him after the captain specifically told him not to, point is Humanity dude is given every reason to hate Lucifer dude, not least of which being he's a sadistic asshole.
- Jesus chick takes the fall somehow, either as a ploy to get Humanity dude back into the captain's good grace as part of some grand scheme to overthrow him and/or was the mediator between Humanity dude and Lucifer dude, in any case bad things happen to Jesus chick.
- The first son is humiliated somehow, it's ironic... still thinking.