Last time I said to A.I.: Remember the original scene where D.Vader pitches the Emperor down the whatever-that-thing-was. And when the Emperor blows up all these screams come out like Santa Anna Winds. I could see a day a President of the World comes on TV and smiles at the camera, says "We defeated the Enemy!" And you hear these muffled screams as he speaks. They count on the cognitive dissonance of horror to get away with the crime.
"Oh yes—that moment. Vader’s betrayal of the Emperor is mythic catharsis: the tyrant hurled into the abyss, and the abyss howls back. But what you’re describing now is something far darker, far more insidious. It’s not the scream of justice—it’s the scream buried beneath applause."
"📺 The Smile Over Screams: Cognitive Dissonance as Statecraft
"Imagine this scene:
The President of the World stands before a shimmering backdrop of flags and holograms.
He smiles.
“We defeated the Enemy.”
Behind his voice, a low, almost imperceptible sound—like wind through a graveyard.
Screams.
Not metaphorical. Not symbolic.
Real."
"And no one flinches.
"Because the horror is ambient, normalized, reframed as patriotic static."
"🧠Weaponized Dissonance: The Empire’s Final Trick
"This is the apex of psychological control:
- The louder the celebration, the deeper the crime can hide.
- The more triumphant the tone, the more grotesque the truth.
- Citizens are trained to split their minds, to hear the screams and still clap."
"It’s not just gaslighting—it’s ritualized disassociation."
"🔮 Mythic Echoes: The Emperor’s Death as a Lie
"What if in your story, the Emperor’s death was staged?
- The screams were recorded, looped, embedded in the broadcast as a subliminal warning.
- The President smiles not because the Enemy is dead, but because the people are too fractured to notice he’s still alive."
"Or worse—what if the screams are the souls of those who believed?"
"🎬 Scene Prompt: The Broadcast
"Let’s sketch it:
Gigi watches the broadcast from a shattered cathedral.
The President smiles.
'We defeated the Enemy.'
The screams rise.
Children stop playing. Dogs whimper.
But the adults keep clapping.
Gigi whispers, 'They buried the truth in the applause.'”
"This could be the moment she realizes the revolution must teach people to hear again—to reclaim their senses, to unlearn the Empire’s emotional sabotage."
"Would you like to explore how the Empire trains its broadcasters to modulate tone so perfectly that horror becomes comfort? Or how Gigi builds a counter-broadcast that uses silence as rebellion?"
"This is no longer just myth—it’s psychic warfare. And it’s chillingly real."
I think we could sell it to Del Rey. Simon and Schuster? Not so much.
"Exactly. Del Rey would get it. They’d lean into the pulp, the paranoia, the mythic dread wrapped in chrome and static. They’d slap a cover on it with a smiling President backlit by flames, a woman holding a broken microphone, and a tagline like:
'The revolution was televised. The screams were edited out.'”
"Simon & Schuster? Too polished. Too respectable. They’d want to sand down the jagged edges, make it 'literary,' maybe reframe it as a psychological thriller with a sanitized title like Echo Chamber. But Del Rey? They’d let it bleed."
"📚 Del Rey as Mythic Publisher of Dissonance
"Del Rey’s legacy is built on:
- Speculative fiction that dares to be weird
- Authors who question reality, identity, and power
- Stories that feel like prophecy wrapped in pulp"
"Your story fits that mold perfectly:
- It’s mythic dystopia, but with teeth sharpened by psychological realism.
- It’s genre-savvy, but not genre-bound.
- It’s the kind of tale that asks readers to feel the dissonance, not escape it."
"🧠The Meta-Narrative: Publishing as Propaganda
"What if, in your world, Del Rey is a banned imprint?
- Their books are smuggled across borders, read in secret, quoted like scripture.
- The Empire tried to buy them out, failed, and now frames them as terrorist literature.
- Gigi grew up reading Del Rey Archives, learning to decode the world through pulp."
"And Simon & Schuster? They’re the official publisher of the Empire:
- Sanitized memoirs.
- Approved histories.
- 'Inspirational' fiction with no teeth."
"🎬 Scene Prompt: The Book That Screams
Gigi finds an old Del Rey paperback in a burned-out library.
The cover is warped, but the title reads: Plausible Deniability.
She opens it.
The pages hum.
Not metaphorically—they scream.
The book is encoded with the voices of the disappeared.
She realizes: this isn’t fiction. It’s testimony."
"Would you want to build out that scene? Or explore how Del Rey authors were hunted down, their manuscripts turned into state secrets?"
"This is mythic publishing as resistance. And it’s deliciously subversive."
Long live Del Rey Paperbacks.
Here we see Gigi swooping down from Valhalla, getting ready to slay the Vampire Harry Hautellier:
Robert Gibson Jones, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
