Saga of the Soul Dungeon

This is, obviously, not a chapter. Sorry about that, though I did just put one on Patreon, as finishing that chapter was what provided sufficient impetus to write this.

So, I've been gone a while.

I could blame lots of things, and life certainly has impacted how much time I've been able to devote to this, but the largest impact has been emotional.

Now, for context, I am dealing with autistic burnout, which makes everything harder. Among the many challenges, is emotional regulation. Autistic people can come off cold, emotionless, etc... to people at times. This is a layer of ice over a boiling lake.

Rules, procedures, structure, etc... are used to keep us within boundaries that are safe for both us and society.

We learn early, as children, that the level of emotion and connection that we would naturally share are not considered to be normal or appropriate, and that the social rules of the world are not particularly kind to those that try to share and connect too much. (This is not limited to autism, to be fair, a number of neurodivergent manifestations have issues connecting too much or too little). The social rules, are, in fact, rather mysterious and strange, with lots of underlying assumptions that normal neural hardware does without needing to think about it. Instead, we can learn those, but they will always take more work, and new situations will requires extra effort to overcome.

Regardless of that, in burnout, my emotions, my responses, and so on, are heightened.

And into that situation dropped the last chapter.

Now, I knew that the chapter would be controversial. I felt that my reasoning for why this was a natural path for the guard profession to take was sound, and a number of commenters did pick up on the underlying social commentary behind both the farming nobles and the implications of the noble's power changing the role of what a guard is for.

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That does not appear to have gone over that well. My rating dropped by 70 places in a week. Having watched that rating over the course of quite a long time, I can say that that is not normal. It means that quite a few people decided to either give low ratings, or change existing ratings to something lower. For context, in the course of the last month and a bit more where I have posted nothing at all, my rating has only dropped an additional 30 places as other works have edged me out. The fact that I made it clear I was gay from the beginning, and that there were gay characters, apparently not enough to warn people when actual gay attraction is demonstrated or integrated into the social dynamics of the novel.

So... yes, i had a visceral emotional reaction to that. Not engaging was the most healthy and mature thing I could do, so I simply left this alone until it was safe for me to engage with. I would not have been able to engage with this a respectful and detached manner before. I didn't delete my fic and walk away, so I consider that a win.

And for all that I did receive a number of comments complaining about the gay content, that was not explicit in describing sexual acts in any way, the direct mention of Tam liking breasts, etc... which was more direct received not a single mention.

So, my hope to examine the societal conventions of their society and the implications of those in power not needing guards for their personal protection, etc... did not work out as I had intended.

We see this trope in fiction all the time, as a matter of fact, which is why I thought a deconstruction of it would be interesting.

Swarms of guards, getting progressively more challenging, until you face the noble, king, etc... and, of course, they a level above their guards in power...

Which begs the question of why the guards are there in the first place.

Sure, there are some mundane reasons, such as simply keeping the common people out of property, away from children, etc... but if the person in power, themselves, doesn't need the guards, then having them around becomes a matter of convention. Or the guards serve additional purposes.

So, this space is now for discussion. Both of the societal conventions of my world, fiction and tropes in general, and also for our own world.

I'll post the next chapter next week.