Aftermath

elumish:

People like writing about war, but they rarely like writing about the aftermath. And I think that’s a shame, because sometimes writing about the aftermath can be at least as interesting. There’s a lot you can do with what happens after the fighting is done, when people need to rebuild, when they need to find who they are and where they fit in a world that is different than it was when they began.

Write about interpersonal relationships, and how they changed.

Write about how people view themselves and the actions they needed to take.

Write about rebuilding—physically, socially, mentally, emotionally.

Write about the choices people made because they thought they were never going to need to face the consequences.

Write about the emotional toll that war takes, that constant violence takes, that never being able to relax takes.

Write about the physical toll that war takes, about the people who come back missing limbs or neurons.

Write about the people who lost everyone they knew and still have to live with themselves.

Write about the people who lost everything, their homes, their land, the cities, about them finding new places to call home, or not.

Write about the people who are tasked with creating a new world, and the decisions they have to make.

Write about the people who only knew war, who were born after the war started and grew up with only that, who now need to figure out who they are in a world that has no place for them anymore.

Write about the people who were heroes, who know how to be heroes but don’t know how to be people.

Write about the people who weren’t heroes, who were hated, who were disgraced.

Write about the people who didn’t fight in the war because they couldn’t, because they weren’t physically capable or because society said they weren’t suitable.

Write about the people who fought on the losing side, who sacrificed everything and still lost and now need to rebuild with nothing, who are painted as monsters when they need no worse than the side that won.

Write about the trials, for people who committed war crimes, for people who took advantage of what was going on to do what they wanted.

Write about the weapons that are finding their way into the hands of children, cheap and easy to use, because they were left behind when the soldiers packed up and left.

Write about the landmines, the unexploded ordinances, the things that governments forgot were there or just didn’t care.

Write about ten years later, or twenty, or thirty, or one, or six months, or the next day, about what people do when the adrenaline of victory or defeat subsides and they’re left with a world that they no longer understand, that they no longer know, because they spent so long trying to destroy the old world that they forgot that they would have to live in the new one.

Write about the next generation, who grew up with parents who flinched at loud noises and cousins who could remember air raid sirens, who grew up doing drills they didn’t understand because the people who made the drills couldn’t forget that one day they might have been necessary.

Write about the women who stayed behind because they had no choice, about the women who stayed behind because they wanted to, about the women who couldn’t stay behind because there was no behind, because everywhere was a warzone and they were soldiers because everyone was a soldier.

Write about the children who trained for a war that ended before they were old enough to take up arms, where all they know is violence, not peace, how to destroy a city but not how to build one or how to run one.

Write about career soldiers who no longer have a career because the war is over, there’s peace, and so they find work for the highest bidder, for the person most willing to give them a knife or a gun and throw them wherever a little muscle and a lot of violence is needed.

Write about the people who did research on things nobody should ever research, who discovered things they could never speak about, who rationalized what they did as science while knowing it wasn’t.

Write about everyday people coping with everything that happened, with things they saw and things they did and things they knew that they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy.