It's a while since I posted one of these, so here is a piece about another short story from my collection Fluctuation in Disorder (it is also available as an individual e-book).
'Necrologue' was envisioned purely in terms of the voice, not an approach I often take. There is little detailed development of its environment, though, like 'Thicker than Blood', it is post-apocalyptic, or at least post-collapse. Choosing this familiar dystopian trope was not intended, as it often is, to instigate a speculation on how a person survives in such an environment. 'Necrologue' uses a disruptive event in order that things—specifically, the main character’s view of the world—do not fall back into the same places that they were in before.
The nature of the disruption is generic, as is the main character: the Necrologue is unnamed, and their voice is quite simple: they are extremely angry. The unspecified catastrophe experienced by the society they live in was followed immediately by the rise of a religion that happened to have the best line at the time. But while the Necrologue was disrupted in common with everyone else, they were jolted individually out of conformity to the new regime and religion by a chance occurrence.
Throughout the entire story the protagonist remains angry, foul-mouthed, and antagonistic. They take a great pleasure in infuriating every bureaucrat or cleric at every chance, and use incessant profanity to outrage expected norms of behaviour.
At the same time, they consider the ethics or lack thereof in the world in which they live to be of overweening importance, and have dedicated their whole life to ensuring that those who have died are not forgotten, especially those who were not valued in society. They take great pride in this achievement, as being their most meaningful form of resistance.
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