Elsie Chapman’s first novel, Dualed, sounds like a cross between a bad Hunger Games ripoff and the stupidity of someone who has never actually thought about what it’s like to be an identical twin. It’s about a city where people prove their worthiness by killing their identical twins, who are raised apart from them.
The stupidity hurts. Why is one half of the population murdering the other half? Are they in a competition for scarce resources? In that case, why keep both twins around at all? Why not selectively abort or turn to infanticide?
Furthermore, the ableist and eliminationist implications of this are disturbing, to say the least. If one twin has a disability and the other doesn’t, there are many ways in which the twin without the disability could exploit the other’s disability to kill him/her off. Has the author thought about the bias against disabled people inherent in her worldbuilding? To be clear, I have no problem with ableism in worldbuilding. I do have a problem, however, with ableist bias in worldbuilding done by an author without a grain of self-reflectiveness.
You know, if you really wanna run with this “kill your twin” premise, why not attack the inherent ableism head on? Give both twins disabilities. One could be a deaf person with agoraphobia and an anxiety disorder. The other could be a person with depression, narcolepsy and binge/purge syndrome. Then they could grow to be friends. Maybe they would even fall in love. They would decide that this whole “kill your twin” thing was, in fact, incredibly stupid and struggle to make their own lives in a society that a) expects them to try to kill each other and b) devalues people with disabilities anyway.
Man, that would be a much better story!
2 Comments
Yeah I’m possibly on board with every birth being exactly twins and every person’s “destiny” being to kill their twin (or be killed by them), but only if it is actually going somewhere as a metaphor/allegory/some other meaningful exploration of an idea, concept, or issue.
There seems to be a cave-dwelling, clannish, feral fear in our collective psyche that is so richly worth exploring and teasing into our greater consciousness and discourse… instead we get endless masturbatory pandering to it without any kind of useful examination. Sigh.
My first two thoughts on this premise: “Welp, dystopian stories usually involve someone being entertained by the exploitation of others.” And, “Proving ‘worth’ to others by performing some terrible task is basically what happens with hazing.” I figure there’s some allusion to modern society promoting the notion that self-hatred is the key to being liked by others. The fairytale ending would be like you said, they get along and team up to take down the bad guys. Twist ending: killing your twin doesn’t guarantee that you survive either. The twins have some connection where both will die if one is murdered, or the people that the twins have to “prove themselves” to will kill the surviving twin anyway… again, more entertainment at the cruel expense of others.
On the note of twins, I’m vaguely reminded of a book called “The Cure”, where everyone was lovers with their fraternal twins, then would beget twin children of their own. In this dystopia, everyone wears masks, and music is forbidden. When one guy starts tapping out a groovy rhythm (for lack of better terms; I read this more than 10 years ago), his punishment is to be immersed in a time-travel-y, “matrix”, brain simulation. He’s “sent” back to the times of the black plague, where he is a Jew (who I think liked to play the violin). As history showed us, villagers sought scapegoats to try to control the plague, and the guy and his family (in the simulation, I mean) are trapped in their house and burned alive. When the guy comes out of the brain simulation, the authorities are all, “Nyeh, this is why we can’t have nice things.” I don’t remember all the details precisely, but the book ends with the guy and his twin taking off their masks and deciding that they’re going to stand up for the beauty of being different and an individual.
On the note of fucked-up cruelty in dystopias, I started a story several years ago that was an ableist scenario (forgive me if I’m using the term incorrectly; I’m not well-educated on all the ists and isms lately). Simply put, the mentally ill (and I guess non-neurotypical too) weren’t seen as humans but rather as animals… to the point that they were kept as pets by “regular” people. The situation arose due to the lack of education of what mental illness is, greed from drug companies, money issues, and lack of empathy by those in power. When the story starts, the situation had been the norm for several years, at least a generation or two, so no one was questioning it.
The story arose from my frustrations with my own medical history and my history of dealing with asshats. People can be expletive-words when they can’t/won’t/don’t see an equal human being in front of them. The villain is an even worse expletive-word than the bulk of his society, being a sadist and lover of manipulating others. Ugh, I hate this guy; just remembering all that he is pisses me off. Thing is, the heroine (one of the “pets”) goes along with the villain’s misdeeds because she has no one to support her. She did try fighting but gave in when the nice guy in the story refused to stand up for her. Anyway, even in a terrible situation, there will always be another element that can make things worse.
Sorry about the really really long comment. I usually avoid social issue discussions, because I know there’s a chance that me misspeaking will create a big stressful mess. Pardon me if I have misspoken or triggered troubling memories or such. Remembering how awful (the premise of) my story was has kinda cautioned me away from proof-reading what I typed. It probably didn’t convey into the text, but… it’s terrible. Hey, at least my therapist likes to hear about my stories, hehe. Ok, I’ll stop now, because I have probably made my point (if I had one to begin with) with all this text and such. Also, it’s 3:30am, woo.