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story ramblings
10 years ago
General
So I've been trying to rework some of my stories to turn them into an actual novel I'd like to try to submit to a real furry publisher by fall.
This means that the 19-chapter version of my story that's currently up under the name "Surface" will probably end up being my second draft which will have led to what will become my upcoming third draft. It will stay up, but several chapters will have to be removed for the final version, a few will have to be added, and parts of the existing ones will have to be rewritten to make it more cohesive and to the point. I've been going over some of the changes that will need to be made for it. I've been meaning to write the last chapter of the Rakim series - I know exactly *what* I want to do with it but I'm not sure of *how* to do it yet. I've been writing it in my head for months, but every time I try to, I can't concentrate and I start stressing out about other things in my life or getting depressed or otherwise distracted, so this is what you're getting for now until I can push through that instead, because I really don't want to rush through and fuck it up.
This contains SPOILERS for my novel I suppose!
Most of the tournament will have to be taken out. While I love to write elaborate fight scenes as an exercise because it's fun, having too many dampens their impact on the overall story, so they need to be spaced out more so that it will really grab the reader's attention when there is one more, as something that will have consequences each time. The tournament was useful to write because it forced me to think more about who these characters were, how they'd interact and where they were coming from in a familiar setting, where it didn't matter as much if I failed. However, the final version should only have the fight scenes from But Not Gone, Flame War, Still Life, Milgram, Before A Fall, Join the Dance, and Face the World - I still don't think the plot can make do without those in particular, though! The tournament will still be canon, but as apocrypha.
The Rakim series will definitely be included, maybe with very few tweaks but not many. To a large extent it was the one missing piece that ties the rest of the narrative together. By interweaving it with the Mano, Klein and Mnemos stories, I hope to encourage the reader to compare and contrast how they deal with people, gods, and objects, with the ways in which they can be similar or different based on the situation.
I had to make some decisions with Rakim that may raise questions. I tried to do some research about Muslim trans youth IRL, but of course everyone's experience is going to be different. I've seen the "mish-mash" approach raise concerns over Asian characters, so it seems I should address it: he's not from any *particular* country, because I wanted to keep possibilities open, but at the same time it has to be believable that he comes from a specific one. Sufism is from Iran, and silat - often a Muslim martial art that some won't even teach to non-Muslims - is from Indonesia and Malaysia. So Irshad would either have to have been Iranian but learned silat from a foreign master, or to have been from Southeast Asia, but to have studied Sufism out of spiritual interest. It's a bit of a stretch but hopefully not enough to break it as believable.
The Sufi metaphors around the moth to the flame are central to the story's extended metaphor, so they can't be taken out. There is a legitimate Iranian fighting style - Kung Fu Toa - even invented based on Sufi metaphors. But! ... I find silat a lot more aesthetically pleasing, I'm much more familiar with its techniques and strategies, and its interplay of danger and beauty seemed fitting for Rakim's themes. I also didn't want to pin down which country they were from because, frankly, I wanted to be able to imagine that he and Irshad could have come from *any* of the countries we've bombed and won't accept refugees from. That's my main reason for not picking an "official" country.
Elizabeth needs to be more likable! I realize I didn't make her as likable as she could be because it's hard to get attached to characters that you know are going to die, but it's also really important for me to push through that. As an atheist I want a character that represents atheism in a likable way, and I want readers to understand why Mano was attached to her, why it hurts her so much that she'd be gone, and just how she gained such a posthumous following. I need to make sure to disconnect her depression from her atheism, and explain it has more to do with the abuse she endured and carries, to describe her relationship with Mano in better detail, and how her political ideals play into her gender fuckery never really materializing for what it is, until it's too late.
I rushed through too many parts that were hard to write about in the name of expediency. My characters experienced crushing loss - they need to actually talk about what it means to them to process it, or the ending is at least partially robbed of its impact. I need to have more situations in which Mano is struggling because of how hard it is to exist as a fish in their society, to show that the villain's cult is tapping into very real resentment that's caused by problems that affect her every day. On some level, the villain sees himself as "at least doing *something*," whereas he sees Mano as doing nothing. The middle way of direct action, between terrorism and slacktivism, isn't always cut and dry, and it's easy to tell people to have more patience for problems that don't affect us - but it's also easy to look for shortcuts to our problems that leave other underprivileged people in the dust.
I have a tendency to rely too much on subtext as a shortcut, but we live in a low-context culture, not in a high-context one - people here don't reflexively decode symbols to that level. I need to play up the Daoist aspects of Klein's story, why he had to be a skunk rather than something else. I need to eventually make him confront the clothing industry's practices that basically spurs on his story more directly than simply by escaping from it, and by extension all judgments about others based on their clothes "making the man" and appearances in general (tying it to Rakim's thematic). I need to make the contrast between poetic animism and Boko's collecting as a metaphor for the rejection of the accumulation of capitalism more explicit. I need to follow Klein's trajectory from Boko to Brazil back to the Bolgia, and expand on Bridges and Fugue's backstory in their own chapter, because they have relevant repercussions later on.
The metaphor of Bridges the otter "getting at" what's good in an "urchin" who can be "hard to approach, but with a chewy center" needs to be spelled out, the "object" theme explored through Fugue's stitching practice on plushies, and the "precision" aspect of his OCD should be a logical factor in why he eventually refuses to "let God sort them out" even when Atlan tells him to do so. Klein being responsible for someone losing an arm makes his story a great complement to Rakim's, just as being queer religious immigrants connects Rakim to Mano. Mandrake also needs an "origin" chapter, where I talk more about his spiritual, family and professional struggles, and describe his resulting humanizing approach to logotherapy. I need to talk about him being a Jewish otter, thus refusing to eat shellfish - the favorite food of otters! - even though he's a homosexual, to emphasize the ironic frequency of the opposite leeway/strictness interpretations, plus gay history with therapy. Diaz is important because what happens to him through Boko is the "dark" version of what happens to Rakim through Ogun.
I need to actually talk about what's similar but very different between Fishism and candomble! Or the opportunity to have Klein fight the Fishist lobster is practically wasted, beyond a more cursory stab at determinism. And yes, the red fish Betta from Flame War is the same one who attacks Soma in Before A Fall. She starts out as a 'good' or at least neutral character, deliberately to become a villain in the second half, to show how becoming deeply embittered can take someone from passionate activist to rampaging sociopath without really noticing where the shift is happening to you. I don't want the Fishists - I didn't include that as the name but that will definitely be it - to come across as random nutjobs, since on some level I'm comparing every religion at its inception to them. I want them to come across as legitimately pissed off, but not really knowing what to do about it, so latching on to something that comes along that tells them what that could be, even if it might be "questionable," because all belief has to negotiate to which extent that compromise is acceptable or not.
What if you were alive at a time when someone was trying to make a religion based on the words of an atheist you loved, but to turn it into a religion of violence against their enemies? You'd probably try to stop them, wouldn't you?
This means that the 19-chapter version of my story that's currently up under the name "Surface" will probably end up being my second draft which will have led to what will become my upcoming third draft. It will stay up, but several chapters will have to be removed for the final version, a few will have to be added, and parts of the existing ones will have to be rewritten to make it more cohesive and to the point. I've been going over some of the changes that will need to be made for it. I've been meaning to write the last chapter of the Rakim series - I know exactly *what* I want to do with it but I'm not sure of *how* to do it yet. I've been writing it in my head for months, but every time I try to, I can't concentrate and I start stressing out about other things in my life or getting depressed or otherwise distracted, so this is what you're getting for now until I can push through that instead, because I really don't want to rush through and fuck it up.
This contains SPOILERS for my novel I suppose!
Most of the tournament will have to be taken out. While I love to write elaborate fight scenes as an exercise because it's fun, having too many dampens their impact on the overall story, so they need to be spaced out more so that it will really grab the reader's attention when there is one more, as something that will have consequences each time. The tournament was useful to write because it forced me to think more about who these characters were, how they'd interact and where they were coming from in a familiar setting, where it didn't matter as much if I failed. However, the final version should only have the fight scenes from But Not Gone, Flame War, Still Life, Milgram, Before A Fall, Join the Dance, and Face the World - I still don't think the plot can make do without those in particular, though! The tournament will still be canon, but as apocrypha.
The Rakim series will definitely be included, maybe with very few tweaks but not many. To a large extent it was the one missing piece that ties the rest of the narrative together. By interweaving it with the Mano, Klein and Mnemos stories, I hope to encourage the reader to compare and contrast how they deal with people, gods, and objects, with the ways in which they can be similar or different based on the situation.
I had to make some decisions with Rakim that may raise questions. I tried to do some research about Muslim trans youth IRL, but of course everyone's experience is going to be different. I've seen the "mish-mash" approach raise concerns over Asian characters, so it seems I should address it: he's not from any *particular* country, because I wanted to keep possibilities open, but at the same time it has to be believable that he comes from a specific one. Sufism is from Iran, and silat - often a Muslim martial art that some won't even teach to non-Muslims - is from Indonesia and Malaysia. So Irshad would either have to have been Iranian but learned silat from a foreign master, or to have been from Southeast Asia, but to have studied Sufism out of spiritual interest. It's a bit of a stretch but hopefully not enough to break it as believable.
The Sufi metaphors around the moth to the flame are central to the story's extended metaphor, so they can't be taken out. There is a legitimate Iranian fighting style - Kung Fu Toa - even invented based on Sufi metaphors. But! ... I find silat a lot more aesthetically pleasing, I'm much more familiar with its techniques and strategies, and its interplay of danger and beauty seemed fitting for Rakim's themes. I also didn't want to pin down which country they were from because, frankly, I wanted to be able to imagine that he and Irshad could have come from *any* of the countries we've bombed and won't accept refugees from. That's my main reason for not picking an "official" country.
Elizabeth needs to be more likable! I realize I didn't make her as likable as she could be because it's hard to get attached to characters that you know are going to die, but it's also really important for me to push through that. As an atheist I want a character that represents atheism in a likable way, and I want readers to understand why Mano was attached to her, why it hurts her so much that she'd be gone, and just how she gained such a posthumous following. I need to make sure to disconnect her depression from her atheism, and explain it has more to do with the abuse she endured and carries, to describe her relationship with Mano in better detail, and how her political ideals play into her gender fuckery never really materializing for what it is, until it's too late.
I rushed through too many parts that were hard to write about in the name of expediency. My characters experienced crushing loss - they need to actually talk about what it means to them to process it, or the ending is at least partially robbed of its impact. I need to have more situations in which Mano is struggling because of how hard it is to exist as a fish in their society, to show that the villain's cult is tapping into very real resentment that's caused by problems that affect her every day. On some level, the villain sees himself as "at least doing *something*," whereas he sees Mano as doing nothing. The middle way of direct action, between terrorism and slacktivism, isn't always cut and dry, and it's easy to tell people to have more patience for problems that don't affect us - but it's also easy to look for shortcuts to our problems that leave other underprivileged people in the dust.
I have a tendency to rely too much on subtext as a shortcut, but we live in a low-context culture, not in a high-context one - people here don't reflexively decode symbols to that level. I need to play up the Daoist aspects of Klein's story, why he had to be a skunk rather than something else. I need to eventually make him confront the clothing industry's practices that basically spurs on his story more directly than simply by escaping from it, and by extension all judgments about others based on their clothes "making the man" and appearances in general (tying it to Rakim's thematic). I need to make the contrast between poetic animism and Boko's collecting as a metaphor for the rejection of the accumulation of capitalism more explicit. I need to follow Klein's trajectory from Boko to Brazil back to the Bolgia, and expand on Bridges and Fugue's backstory in their own chapter, because they have relevant repercussions later on.
The metaphor of Bridges the otter "getting at" what's good in an "urchin" who can be "hard to approach, but with a chewy center" needs to be spelled out, the "object" theme explored through Fugue's stitching practice on plushies, and the "precision" aspect of his OCD should be a logical factor in why he eventually refuses to "let God sort them out" even when Atlan tells him to do so. Klein being responsible for someone losing an arm makes his story a great complement to Rakim's, just as being queer religious immigrants connects Rakim to Mano. Mandrake also needs an "origin" chapter, where I talk more about his spiritual, family and professional struggles, and describe his resulting humanizing approach to logotherapy. I need to talk about him being a Jewish otter, thus refusing to eat shellfish - the favorite food of otters! - even though he's a homosexual, to emphasize the ironic frequency of the opposite leeway/strictness interpretations, plus gay history with therapy. Diaz is important because what happens to him through Boko is the "dark" version of what happens to Rakim through Ogun.
I need to actually talk about what's similar but very different between Fishism and candomble! Or the opportunity to have Klein fight the Fishist lobster is practically wasted, beyond a more cursory stab at determinism. And yes, the red fish Betta from Flame War is the same one who attacks Soma in Before A Fall. She starts out as a 'good' or at least neutral character, deliberately to become a villain in the second half, to show how becoming deeply embittered can take someone from passionate activist to rampaging sociopath without really noticing where the shift is happening to you. I don't want the Fishists - I didn't include that as the name but that will definitely be it - to come across as random nutjobs, since on some level I'm comparing every religion at its inception to them. I want them to come across as legitimately pissed off, but not really knowing what to do about it, so latching on to something that comes along that tells them what that could be, even if it might be "questionable," because all belief has to negotiate to which extent that compromise is acceptable or not.
What if you were alive at a time when someone was trying to make a religion based on the words of an atheist you loved, but to turn it into a religion of violence against their enemies? You'd probably try to stop them, wouldn't you?
