Vox Felicitas V — The Tale of a Red-Hooded Psychopath and Her Plasma Blaster
On last week’s episode of Vox Felicitas, I elaborated upon the concept of ‘technobarf’ — a much fancier term for an infodump, referring specifically to the workings of technology, but also applicable to just about anything relating to creative writing. Also, I discussed last week’s (7 May) D&D session, where I took the reigns of DM for the first time. I did it again this week, concluding my two-part adventure with a bang — in the most literal possible sense, as one of the player characters managed to set off a bomb in the Big Bad’s face despite having a hole punched through his chest. His berserk lover finished the job on the BBEG with a rapier to the face.
Today, as the title may have reliably informed you, I’m going to tell you a tale about one of my finest characters in creative writing, and certainly one of the most persistent — in more than one sense. Sit back and enjoy the tale of madness that follows…
Meet Yelena Trotskaya. Born in Ufa, Bashkortostan, Mecharussia, on the 12th of July 2111, little Yelena grew up in much the same way other lower-class girls in her neck of the woods did: hard on luck owing to a lack of finances, and socially awkward as she buried herself in her passion towards nanometallurgy. She works hard at school, then at college, where she gets recommended by her tutor for a position at the illustrious New Leningrad Technological Institute. Additionally, she’s also found herself the love of her life. Come 2129, she’s eighteen years old and is on the cusp of winning the perfect life she carved out for herself. All is good!
Well, unfortunately for Yelena, happiness doesn’t come so easily in the grim darkness of the distant future, and especially not in the Frencoverse she inhabits. Turns out her boyfriend has gotten into debt with the wrong people, and when they come knocking, they kill him and claim poor little Yelena as collateral. Thus begins two weeks of hellish sex slavery in some crime lord’s dungeons, from which she eventually escapes — but not before suffering grievous injuries in the process thereof. As she’s about to breathe her last in the middle of the Siberian woods, she gets picked up by the enigmatic machine overlord who rules Mecharussia. It gives her a deal she can’t refuse.
And so starts Yelena Trotskaya’s journey into becoming a cybernetically enhanced super soldier, heavily armed with the most powerful weaponry her nation can offer her. Two years later, she’s set loose on a mission to strike down anyone and everyone who ruined her perfect life, and who now threaten her future. She’s a killing machine in the most literal possible sense, and not even the mightiest the world’s nations can throw at her have a hope of stopping her onslaught.
I first conceived of this character six years ago, at the tail end of my college tenure. When I first wrote down Yelena’s (then Elena’s — there’s a key difference) biography, I had no idea she would become one of the main antagonists of the Frencoverse, a collaborative science fiction universe I’ve been working on with a few others for the same amount of time. When I wrote her up for the first time, she was simply an enigma who merged into the background of the world as a spymistress. The backstory had been mentioned only tangentially as she took the role first as a minor opponent to the good guys, then as a deuteragonist and then back to villain status. She first fell under the spotlight proper in a storyline where she infiltrated an enemy city, only to get cornered by hundreds of soldiers — a slaughter which ended with her riding into the heart of hostile territory about a battlewalker and levelling half the city in the process. Fun times!
Then came Johnny*.
Johnny is today one of my closest friends, and we regularly have talks with each other over alcohol. Back in ye old 2015 though, the two of us were writing separate universes with similar overarching themes in similar genres. I had enjoyed (and still do enjoy) reading his works, dubbed the Sidhverse, and regularly tuned in to his stuff. I only found out he’d apparently been doing likewise with my stuff when I opened my inbox and found a message from him, asking if I wanted to work on a joint storyline together.
I must confess I was a bit dumbstruck when I first got this message. To turn this guy down would be the equivalent of Martin Scorcese personally approaching Daisy Ridley and asking her to star in his next movie, only for her to bug him off. So I thought, why not? Let’s give this a shot and see what happens.
Thus was born Access Violation — not a story for those with a weak constitution, I might add. The inaugural collaborative work of what would turn out to be an extensively planned-out crossover storyline which, had it ever reached completion, would have seen Yelena take the helm as one of the main protagonists. Even though the storyline was aborted midway through the third work, Flight of the Polunochnaya, my work with Johnny firmly set down the groundwork for the cyborg terror that is Yelena Trotskaya to become my biggest and most developed character so far.
(* = Not his actual name.)
Before you ask, yes — Yelena has returned for the next major storyline I’m working on with Johnny and the rest of the Frencoverse. In this one I’ve brought her back to her antagonistic roots, and eventually she’ll become a fierce baddie for the allies to face. But her story is, in the words of Victor Stratford (author of Clockwork Conviction and another close comrade of mine), a cautionary tale about intention morality.
The point of Yelena Trotskaya rests around the perfect life she built up for herself, and her bloodthirsty rage against the world she embarks on after losing it. She sincerely believes that life has dealt her an extremely bad hand through no fault of her own and lashes out in fury. The result, given her status and personal power/prowess, is millions dead — and you can bet only a tiny fraction of those millions actually had anything to do with her plight. But in her own words: “Innocence, not truth, is the first casualty of war”.
I present her as a complex character despite being one of extremes, because I am a firm believer in the concept that every villain should be the hero of their own story. She is steadfast in her belief that what she’s doing is right, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. Combine her indomitable drive to set things ‘right’ with the access she has to a bounty of weapons, superhuman powers and a legion of followers, and she is a far bigger threat to the world around her than the average supervillain who acts purely for the sake of evil.
If and when the boys and girls of the Frencoverse get around to publishing our works, I like to think the audiences will come to love her and her twisted, black heart. I have my hopes on Emilia Clarke putting on a Russian accent to play her in any big budget blockbuster Hollywood makes in the distant future.
Thank you for reading, be sure to applaud if you liked the story, and I will see you all again next week.
~ Harry