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My NaNovel is haunting me.
And not just because it's supposed to be the book I want to see in the world. And not just because I can't help but think that it's my responsibility to make that book happen, for other people.
The set-up goes something like this:
The people at the center of my world-building are unequivocally fantasy Jews. They are also bats, because why not. Nocturnal, carnivorous, winged and possessing of a number of physiological features that make other people nervous.
Already I've gone and violated one of my own rules, "don't dehumanize a fantasy counterpart of a living culture". This rule is very important and I'm not sure how to recover from this, considering I would just much rather write about not-humans in general. I am not sure whether making all the other people not-human helps at all. One of the main problems in the original trope as it stands is that it posits that different cultural groups are physiologically distinct to the extent they can be readily identifiable by sight. Which is racist nonsense. On the other hand, I really wanna write about Bat-Jews.
The political situation is even more ambivalent, if you can believe it. I couldn't figure out a way to balance wanting them to have a good and stable living situation, with the kind of alienation and constant cultural balancing act that I wanted to write about. Consequently two of my major characters grew up within their own cultural community, but spent most of their adulthood traveling or living among strangers. And the peer community is a kind of limited autonomy by royal decree, which is problematic (much as I hate to use that term).
One of the things I was excited to write about is the idea of a normalized third gender, so they have that. But the character that I created to explore this is one who was raised outside their community, which complicated things. This was probably a poor decision to begin with, and might be the first thing I try to reverse -- but it was such a major part of the story, I don't know how I'll manage.
Basically what happened is that I wanted 1) to have a normalized third gender and 2) to have a nonbinary gender system that is still imperfect. What this actually led to is 3) me accidentally retreading the sci-fi pattern of creating a variant social structure as a thought exercise, positing a protagonist who's a cultural misfit, and consequently "correcting" this character back to the norms of my own culture. I did not mean to do this, and I'm not certain how to backtrack -- other than removing the character altogether and replacing them with a totally different one.
To say nothing of the fact that my initial POV character (Melody) proved to be much less interesting than her twin sister. For once thing, her sister actually has a proper plot attached to her. Even if it still needs developing. Said plot also treads on some thin ice re: the land grant and the role of fantasy-Jews in the structures of power of foreign governments.
The whole thing is a mess. I can try to untangle it, but I don't know how to judge whether it's worth such an investment of time and energy. I mean. Wouldn't it be simpler to write a story about bat-people who aren't coded Jewish? Or about a nonbinary protagonist who just is, without struggling with their gender and cultural identity, assimilation, adoption, etc. etc.?
Sigh.
The set-up goes something like this:
The people at the center of my world-building are unequivocally fantasy Jews. They are also bats, because why not. Nocturnal, carnivorous, winged and possessing of a number of physiological features that make other people nervous.
Already I've gone and violated one of my own rules, "don't dehumanize a fantasy counterpart of a living culture". This rule is very important and I'm not sure how to recover from this, considering I would just much rather write about not-humans in general. I am not sure whether making all the other people not-human helps at all. One of the main problems in the original trope as it stands is that it posits that different cultural groups are physiologically distinct to the extent they can be readily identifiable by sight. Which is racist nonsense. On the other hand, I really wanna write about Bat-Jews.
The political situation is even more ambivalent, if you can believe it. I couldn't figure out a way to balance wanting them to have a good and stable living situation, with the kind of alienation and constant cultural balancing act that I wanted to write about. Consequently two of my major characters grew up within their own cultural community, but spent most of their adulthood traveling or living among strangers. And the peer community is a kind of limited autonomy by royal decree, which is problematic (much as I hate to use that term).
One of the things I was excited to write about is the idea of a normalized third gender, so they have that. But the character that I created to explore this is one who was raised outside their community, which complicated things. This was probably a poor decision to begin with, and might be the first thing I try to reverse -- but it was such a major part of the story, I don't know how I'll manage.
Basically what happened is that I wanted 1) to have a normalized third gender and 2) to have a nonbinary gender system that is still imperfect. What this actually led to is 3) me accidentally retreading the sci-fi pattern of creating a variant social structure as a thought exercise, positing a protagonist who's a cultural misfit, and consequently "correcting" this character back to the norms of my own culture. I did not mean to do this, and I'm not certain how to backtrack -- other than removing the character altogether and replacing them with a totally different one.
To say nothing of the fact that my initial POV character (Melody) proved to be much less interesting than her twin sister. For once thing, her sister actually has a proper plot attached to her. Even if it still needs developing. Said plot also treads on some thin ice re: the land grant and the role of fantasy-Jews in the structures of power of foreign governments.
The whole thing is a mess. I can try to untangle it, but I don't know how to judge whether it's worth such an investment of time and energy. I mean. Wouldn't it be simpler to write a story about bat-people who aren't coded Jewish? Or about a nonbinary protagonist who just is, without struggling with their gender and cultural identity, assimilation, adoption, etc. etc.?
Sigh.