Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/41452
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

(Warning, mention of sexual abuse!!)

In the near future where humans have polluted and radiated the Earth so much that animals and plants have been going extinct at alarming rates and humans themselves are becoming genetically mutated and developing strange abilities, a fascist dictatorship has taken advantage of the growing fears of the common people, seized international power, and imprisoned millions of genetic mutants.

Analise, the main character, and her friends are mutants, and are housed in a remote facility in the Appalachian mountains, where they are brutally and cruelly experimented on by government scientists. When the son of the dictator arrives to oversee experimentations and threatens to have Analise terminated for mouthing off and basically causing a prison riot, she and her friends escape and take him hostage.

Analise's backstory is tragic, as are most of her companion's backstories. Her little brother was killed in a firebombing, and her parents were murdered by state police when she was collected and shipped off to be imprisoned. Many of her friends were willfully given up to the government by their families because of the fear and stigma towards mutants.

Chapter One begins with Analise comforting the youngest of the group, nicknamed Poet, because his friend, gifted with the power of foresight, broke out of her cell and allowed herself to be caught and beaten to death by guards.

The first chapter also details the intense trauma that one of the group members undergoes, being objectively the most powerful of the group as she is an atmokinetic. She is raped by one of the guards, chained by her limbs in her cell, kept malnourished and dehydrated so she cannot attack guards, and subjected to the most extreme physical experimentation and torture out of all of them.

~

TL;DR: MC and all of her friends are horrifically abused and oppressed since day one, Chapter One.

With all of that said, is my story and this premise too intense and depressing? Are these many layers of misery inflicted upon innocents too much for a reader to handle? Is there such a thing as a story being too dark? Is there a fine line between dystopia and downright too much tragedy and sadness, and have I crossed it?

Original score: 13