28 July 2012
I wanted to experiment by combining genres that have been, to the best of my knowledge, mutually exclusive. On the front line you have the typical "adventure book" type manuscript that moves you from page to page based on the decisions you make. Then you have Erotica literature, which is widely rejected, primarily due to loose ethics, which makes the quality of the story-telling be somewhat shallow. The intention is to combine both genres in order to achieve a cumulative effect by using the best traits of both worlds.
Going further into Erotica, I wanted to try-out less paved pathways by adding an element of Horror which, I believe, manages to stray the audience from naive "hack and slash" adventures which, albeit taking place in the grimmest of times are still narrated in a prude manner - literally, coating the ghastly bits by words of wisdom and acts of valour: women are never raped, children are never killed and everything else is held in an apparently mellow setting.
"The Amazons" is thus a literary experiment that attempts to provide a new genre as a combination of the previously mentioned ones. While in classical adventures you benefit of choices such as: "slay the dragon, do not slay the dragon", "The Amazons" gives you choices such as "does the story turn you on?" and adapts to the feelings and reactions of its readers.
Furthermore, the story makes use of a virtue based system that I have adapted from the Ultima-series of adventure games. Contrasted to classical adventure books, the virtue system that I have derived does not contain any "fatality"-type moves. In other words, you never die and the decisions that you take in your quest are neither "wrong" nor "right". The outcome is deduced by a series of questions which have no "right" or "wrong" answers.
For example, consider this situation: "You are entrusted by your Lord to deliver a purse of coins to somebody. On your way you meet a beggar. Will you give him some coin from the purse?" Assuming that the purse contains the only currency you have, there is no "right" or "wrong" answer to this question - by any moral standards. If you do not give the beggar a coin, then you are honourable to do your duty. If you do give the beggar a coin, then you show compassion. "The Amazons" adapts around this type of questions which are loosely derived themselves from Buddhism or Christian cardinal virtues.
The Amazons - Making Of (Overview) • Opuss № I