"Andromeda Weeps" Takes a Turn for the Tragic

There's the grand love between Jason and Andromeda and the kozmik love they have when she asks Jason to give up his life and stay with her so they die together and other people may live on somewhere else.

(Ed: it's a bit hammerhead on the religious metaphor)

See, collaboration, man.  We talk, we make stuff.  We don't see the story as hammerhead, tho.  The parallel is inevitable with the question she asks and we believe she really would ask it. Don't go, Jason.  If we must die then let it be together.

Note: in case you're not a regular.  It's a false alarm and no-one dies.


The song says humanity will die from the radiation for the sins of those who make the weapons.

Note: I'm seriously open to discussion of the matter because it's a massive concept insofar as people say we must continue making weapons because America needs the jobs. We do NOT want to identify the sinners in the song, only that Jason and Andromeda are not among them.

The story in the song is, in effect, altruistic suicide and dying for the sins of the weapons makers.  It was not my purpose to do this but the analogy is so obvious.  In my own story, I must honor spirit and intent but not the specific detail of the original.

Here's where Andromeda takes a turn for the tragic:

There's a part thinking I should send Jason back to the missile silo where he has to fight the No. 2 to stop him from launching the missile by himself.  He succeeds but gets his hands all burned up from disabling the missile and his No. 2 stabs him in his right side while he tries unsuccessfully to stop Jason.  Exit back to Andromeda.  Love reunited.  Jason dies.

Maybe croak her too for the maxy tragedy but that goes straight into yet another classic story line.

I don't want the song to be a weeper and making some pithy point while everyone dies is sooo Russian.

It's a cheap stunt to get people lovey for Jason and then kill him.  It's highly-dramatic but to what end.

Killing him sucks because just when people like Jason, we kill him.  Doing that draws too much attention to a religious metaphor which should be sufficient in the question:  we have to die but they don't.  Don't go.  If we take that out to Romeo and Juliet in a missile silo I will probably get murdered.

(Ed:  but it's so artsy fartsy)

Not really.  That sounds like it would be kitsch, like Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder are trying to make another deliberately-bad play and that heads immediately to "Springtime for Hitler."

The idea of killing Jason seemed interesting ... but ... why do that and create an overt reference to Jesus when, without it, people will likely make the connection anyway.

Note:  none of this is bleeding heart wishful thinking.  Baboon behavior has been intensively studied and there's a known social reaction to predators.  The troop's bouncers will move forward to a position to defend against a cheetah or some such threat which will almost certainly kill them.  Meanwhile, the troop gets away and that baboon society survives.  Ethologists called that 'altruistic suicide' and I'm sure we don't need to hammer that metaphor either.  It's all through the line of primates.

(Ed:  when you science it like that, it marginalizes what Jesus gave)

Not really.  In the Rockhouse view, it widens the gift and shows the truth through the scope of it.  That all similar creatures behave in this way shows all the more the natural truth of it.

(Ed:  you make Jesus sound like a baboon)

That might be true if baboons chose to get chewed up by cheetahs.

Caution:  we are not Christians at the Rockhouse but we all know the history.  We believe it's magical enough by itself without the magical things people added to it.

Yah, it's concluded.  It would be one splendidly emotional tragedy to kill off Jason but it would be disrespectful of Jesus in drawing such an overt reference.  Disrespect for something is fine if there's a reason but there isn't, at least not for that.  As the giant Shakespearean tragedy, it needs to go ultra-clockwork modern and it would make an exceptionally visual and dramatic image but that would be at the expense of needless disrespect.

Note:  I don't mind killing off people in my stories.  In one of them, I introduced five or six beautiful girls and killed off all of them in four minutes flat.  Tragic, it was.  You need to keep that in mind for shooting vamp flicks:  you need a lot of girls.

I was getting kind of drawn to killing off Jason and I know for emphatic fact The Raven would so kill a part like that.  Visualize, if you will, The Raven doing his own death scene.  That would be classic.

Note also:  I'm not locked into a collaboration with The Raven and Suitable Squeeze.  Nothing must happen but rather it's a visual which could become real.  We don't know if it could but it seems it just might be possible.  That's specifically not the only alternative, tho.

Rats.  It's not concluded.  There's still in part the thinking if I leave it with them living happily ever after then it's just a fookin' pop song.  This pondering may come back.  It won't slow the song because I'm working on something else more mechanical with the song in getting the vibe I like for the Trips part.

I don't want to kill them and it has to be them because killing Jason means I have to kill Andromeda as well and then it's full-boat Romeo and Juliet.  And what do we learn from Romeo and Juliet?

All together now:  we learn when you find love you will fucking die.

They say, oh, but it's so beautiful ... a rose will bloom.

Yah and immediately after the rose will get stomped and fucking die!  What's more beautiful than that.

I don't want to kill them.  That's a shitty story.

There's one more possible tragic twist but it's stealing from "Fail-Safe" if we make one of the missiles launch anyway.  The one city in the world becomes the martyr for us all.

(Ed:  make it Jerusalem)

This is heavy-handed like hitting your head with a lead brick but it's also highly gigantic.  But maybe people never considered the possibility of nukes pointed at Jerusalem while of course they do.  Israel has nukes.  It's in the game and it burns too.

I'm liking that idea.  Romeo and Juliet is in the toilet but nuking Jerusalem could work.  The reason being religion didn't prevent the nuclear weapons either.

(Ed:  what will Colonel Kurtz think about that?)

You only thought he was crazy before.  The horror, the horror!