Looking for some help.

[Daniel]

As an ending, though, I think I like it.

[B_M_W]

The best thing about this is that you could make it as non esoteric as possible, unlike earlier works. Sure, you could talk about the Machine, and maybe put a hint in there about the BIP, but it would be really great to do this and stay away from the culture of the sixties.

[Daniel]

I guess my plan was to drive home the point in terms that the average reader would be familliar with.

Referencing things in terms of concepts like The Machine and the BIP would probably put off a great many folks who hadn't come to terms with those concepts, much less understood what they were.

Baby steps.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

Yeah, in no way attempt to imitate RAW.

[Daniel]

RAW = ?

[LMNO]

Robert Anton Wilson.

[Daniel]

No, I think I was going to stay away from the Illuminatus! approach.

I wasn't aiming for silly, esoteric, or global conspiracies.

[B_M_W]

Yeah, in no way attempt to imitate RAW.

Thanks for saying what I wanted to but instead said crappily.

[Daniel]

Nah, you did fine.

Especially since I was the dunce who had to ask who/what RAW is.  :-D

[Jenne]

Spelunking round here is your friend, Dan da Man!

[Triple Zero]

I can think of 2 very influential books of recent years that resulted in global phenomenon. The only trouble is, both books were unfeasibly stupid. (Being 'The Atkins Diet' and 'The DaVinci Code').

What works have created changes lately? What lessons can be learned from them? What mechanisms could be employed?

so i wonder, what's against the hollywood ending?

ok i would rather have the hero fail miserably and get squashed as well (gives me more closure than they lived happily ever after) but if you're aiming at popularity .. ?

[Daniel]

I'm looking to find a cross between "the hero dies" and a Disney ending.

I hate Disney endings, but I also want to leave the reader with a sense that it's not all entirely futile.

[LMNO]

I can think of 2 very influential books of recent years that resulted in global phenomenon. The only trouble is, both books were unfeasibly stupid. (Being 'The Atkins Diet' and 'The DaVinci Code').

What works have created changes lately? What lessons can be learned from them? What mechanisms could be employed?

so i wonder, what's against the hollywood ending?

ok i would rather have the hero fail miserably and get squashed as well (gives me more closure than they lived happily ever after) but if you're aiming at popularity .. ?

In my mind, if they feel good about the ending, people tend to become complacent.  We want to wake people up, not perpetuate their sleep.

[Triple Zero]

(this may have already been suggested but) possibly the right kind of ending would be then with the heroprankster dying/getting squashed/locked up/etc, but having waked up a lot of people, following in his footsteps, jaking the fuck out of the rest of the world.

or you can do the nyarlathotep-ending:

Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods — the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.

nobody will like that.

maybe you should do the scooby doo ending.

[LMNO]

(this may have already been suggested but) possibly the right kind of ending would be then with the heroprankster dying/getting squashed/locked up/etc, but having waked up a lot of people, following in his footsteps, jaking the fuck out of the rest of the world.

or you can do the nyarlathotep-ending:

Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods ,Äî the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.

nobody will like that.

maybe you should do the scooby doo ending.

I need to have that Lovecraft quote on my tombstone.