Joseph Smith the Horror Story
So I was re-reading D&C 122 recently and for no reason at all I started thinking about Joseph Smith’s story from the mob perspective. It would make a great grim fantasy.
There is this guy that you think is doing evil and leading numerous others into evil, so much so that you have to bend and break your own rules to get him, but he keeps wiggling out in one way or another. He gets worse. He’s semi-openly practicing perversions, etc. Finally you get him! But somehow his movement takes his death as a martyrdom and they become even bigger and more effective.
Most fantasy plot arcs suffer when the Big Bad is defeated but the story wants to go on. What comes next? Normally you either have Secret Even Bigger Badder who was behind the scenes of the Big Bad, or else you have Pale Copy Imitation Big Bad 2. Both are hard to do in a satisfying way that doesn’t make the original plot arc seem meaningless. But having the guy’s death inspire a movement to greater heights ala Jesus Christ and the EDS or Joseph Smith and the LDS would be logical and fulfilling. It wouldn’t work for straight heroic fantasy but something semi-grim that had a little more realism and psychological complexity could really pull it off well.
There are three ways you could do it. First, you could tell the story straight. The villain really is the villain and so on and the rise of his new movement really is a bad thing but the heroes grapple with how to deal with it since apparently ‘cutting off the head’ wasn’t the answer. In this kind of story, you would probably want to have the first story arc where they defeat the Big Bad happen pretty soon so the audience wasn’t extremely invested in defeating him as THE plot arc. The trick here would be to subtly give some hints about why people find the movement compelling. You could also ‘grimify’ by making some of the complications that let the villain escape be people on the hero’s own side who sometimes go to far.
Second, you could tell it inverse–the reader eventually discovers that the ‘heroes’ aren’t and that the protagonist is actually a villain. The guy they killed was the real hero. This way of doing it probably works best for a pure heroic fantasy.
Third, I think you could it as a tragedy. The bad guy really was the bad guy but the heroes were impetuous and foolish to think that just executing him was the way to stop his evil movement. By doing so, their own bad judgment was cemented his evil movement in a way that they cannot solve.
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Zen
November 3, 2025
Fantastic. I think the second option works the best, though all are feasible. There are things in Church History that Tolkien would have been challenged to pull off.
“In one of those tedious nights we had lain as if in sleep till the hour of midnight had passed, and our ears and hearts had been pained, while we had listened for hours to the obscene jests, the horrid oaths, the dreadful blasphemies and filthy language of our guards. …
“I had listened till I became so disgusted, shocked, horrified, and so filled with the spirit of indignant justice that I could scarcely refrain from rising upon my feet and rebuking the guards; but had said nothing to Joseph, … although I lay next to him and knew he was awake. On a sudden he arose to his feet, and spoke in a voice of thunder, or as the roaring lion, uttering, as near as I can recollect, the following words:
“‘SILENCE, ye fiends of the infernal pit. In the name of Jesus Christ I rebuke you, and command you to be still; I will not live another minute and hear such language. Cease such talk, or you or I die THIS INSTANT!’
“He ceased to speak. He stood erect in terrible majesty. Chained, and without a weapon; calm, unruffled and dignified as an angel, he looked upon the quailing guards, whose knees smote together, and who, shrinking into a corner, or crouching at his feet, begged his pardon, and remained quiet till a change of guards.
“I have seen the ministers of justice, clothed in magisterial robes, … while life was suspended on a breath, in the Courts of England; I have witnessed a Congress in solemn session to give laws to nations; I have tried to conceive of kings, of royal courts, of thrones and crowns; and of emperors assembled to decide the fate of kingdoms; but dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains, at midnight, in a dungeon in an obscure village of Missouri” (Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, ed. Parley P. Pratt Jr. [1938], 210–11).
Zen
November 3, 2025
Another one that goes hard, is “Noah came before the flood. I have come before the fire”.
Just imagine this as your enemy.
G.
November 4, 2025
One way to do that in a fantasy story that occurs to me is that the protagonist mistakenly think that the guy proclaiming the catastrophe is going to cause the catastrophe so they’re trying to defeat him, and then they discover that he is just prophesying it
E.C.
November 4, 2025
You know who did that third plotline? Brandon Sanderson, in his first Mistborn series. He set it up very well, too, and managed to end it in a way that made everyone heroes of their own story, without failing to show the consequences of their actions.
E.C.
November 6, 2025
We have a new Apostle! Elder Gerald Causse has been ordained as of November 6th:
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/gerald-causse-called-quorum-of-the-twelve-apostles