Of factionalism and lateralism

In classical stories we get only good versus evil, light vs dark, so it's easy to have a side to cheer for. I find them quite nice actually, for me if you know how to tell a story is all that matters. For instance, I find Tolkien's sincere desire to tell his stories makes up for his clear maniqueism, and his honesty and love shown in his effort to create middle-earth greatly delights me (I feel even willing to disregard his overuse of Eagles Ex Machina).

But I've been getting too much immersed in History, which made me grasp a deeper interest to things with a historical-realistic overtone to them. Stories have been interesting me more when they calculate economical, political, social, religious, military consequences, even if slightly, just to add a background spice to it. But what I've been paying most attention lately is the factionalism of opposite forces, because I realized that most battles aren't vertical, but horizontal.

I call vertical battles the dualistic ones (usually it's against a dictatorial or repressive force), as they involve the theme of good versus evil. The World War Two is origin to several fictional stories because the history itself (or, more likely, historians themselves) puts it dualistically - the Allies are good guys, the Axis are the the bad guys.

Horizontal battles tend to be more realistic, as they ignore this dualism (even though wars usually do involve basically two opposite sides) involve several factions. It's a matter of Broken Symmetry. We don't have white versus black, but Blue against Red, which made an alliance with White Blue which is a ex-Blue colony that became independent and holds a grudge against them. Yellow doesn't quite know which side to join, as it has an economical dependency on Blue's industries, although Red has a military force much stronger, so soon there's an internal discussion with dissident opinions on which side Yellow should fight, and then you have Blue Yellow and Red Yellow, and it becomes a war in itself. So you have certain number of characters (you can count reigns and empires as characters too) who are supposed to pick a side in the conflict and there are alliances and treaties and other politicalities, which is actually just human behavior trying to adapt for the better outcome.

Sometimes I call this lateralism, which is a concept that is also against the notion of dualism. After all, itt's not a matter of listening to a heavy or a light song, a happy or a sad song. It's about songs that are different and unique on their own. It's all about spices again - you don't taste only salt and sugar. We have different cultures to spice everything, as we can have song that have a spice of arab or scandinavian or turkish.

So I feel the ideas are starting to intertwine more graciously. Gradually I'll explore the intertwist of my concepts and develop a solid and complex empire - symbolized by an onirical Sandman's Castle. But then again it will have to be careful not to be too dictatorial as to not incite polarization. Opposite forces usually long for a chance to bring about a revolution.