Current Projects

Current Projects

Vivax 31 Dec 2012 21:12

Hello,

At some point or another the little kid in me who was fascinated with Native American folklore took over and has dominated my creative process. At the moment I have 3 pieces I'm working on.

1) "Your Backpack": This is something I pushed out and had people read but it devolved into a "Most Dangerous Game" stock plot. The original idea I had started with was that a seemingly random person had been chosen as the target of a hunt by the figure "Ongwe Ias" the eater of men. Traditionally Ongwe's identity has not been firmly established and may refer to a race of giants, semi-human cannibals or individuals with the name Ongwe Ias. There are two solutions to a confrontation with any version of Ongwe Ias, killing it or acting in a hospitable manner. If you are nice to Ongwe he/it will become more and more human until he literally joins your family.
The idea is that Ongwe has been driven insane by both hunger and loneliness and has tried to satiate either or both of these needs by kidnapping somebody and dragging them back to where Ongwe lives.

2) Cultural Appropriation/Turtle Island: This is a more long-term project. The idea is that the genocide (literal and cultural) of the indigenous population of the Americas has driven the characters, concepts and setting of the oral traditions away from our universe. Turtle Island was a shared idea that the continent of North America rested on a giant turtle in an enormous sea. In this scenario Turtle Island is no longer properly part of the universe but not entirely divorced from it, a reservation, a ghetto for the stories of the First Peoples. In their place the stories and figures of the conquering peoples and dominant American culture have taken their roles. This one is going to be tough.

3) Lab Journal: This is an idea that I had while walking three miles today in the snow while listening to a podcast on sequencing primate genomes (I am a weirdo). It's a lab journal of a biologist who is trying to discover the impact of magic on living things. How does a killing spell kill? Is it the same for every organism? What about cell cultures? Can I isolate the metabolic pathways that grant a person sight-beyond-sight? Etc.

Any feedback or advise would be appreciated.

Re: Current Projects

Jack Manganese 01 Jan 2013 01:25

Disclosure:

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I also have some Native American themed stories that I'm working on. There is a finished draft in my sandbox, which I completed just this morning. I am not going to link to it because I don't want to hijack your thread. I am telling you this, so that if my story appears in the near future, you won't think I am trying to upstage you.]

Suggestions:

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1. I think the easiest way to short-circuit the "Most Dangerous Game" cliche is to write the story from the point of view of Ongwe Ias. I think it would be interesting if the style of the text changed to match the state of Ongwe Ias (disjointed sentences and "caveman-speak" while he is more monsterous, transitioning to child-like writing as he becomes more human, and then normal text as he reaches humanity). Of course that is also a bit of a cliche, but with so much already written, it's hard to totally avoid it.

2. I'm not entirely sure where you are going with this one.
a. If you are thinking of stories set in the Turtle Island universe, I'm not sure how that would be different than just telling the stories in a pre-colonial setting.
b. If you are thinking of writing about the impact on the Native people of having their stories leave ("In 1967, Coyote finally left for Turtle Island. He was the last of the Old People…"), that might work well. There are parts of Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" that might help with this idea.
c. If you are thinking of writing Native legends as if they have been taken over by the white man ("How Father Big Mac Fed the Automobile People"), you should (1) take care to be respectful, and (2) probably… um… sneak into my sandbox and read the entry labeled "triode", where I have done something similar. : )

3. I don't know about this. Applying the scientific method to magic usually ends badly. If you can sucessfully analyze it with science, you have removed the element of wonder, and have bascially turned magic into a sci-fi phenomenon (see also: "midi-cholrians"). I'm not saying it can't be done, but I don't know how to do it. I will confess that I've written stories where high-level mathematics is used to analyze magic in a thaumatological way, but since most people view math and magic as similar animals, I feel like I can get away with it. : )

I hope this is helpful. I would love to read any drafts that you produce.

Re: Current Projects

Vivax 02 Jan 2013 00:47

1) This is a great idea and basically the way I'm going to go about doing Ongwe's story.

2) This is more an idea for a setting, or rather one part of a setting. The setting is The Archipelago, or The Majestic Isles, a region that is tied to (and made of) the collective ideas and themes that populate human storytelling. Turtle Island in particular was intended to be a series of stores that explored themes that have popped up in Native American literature, and film. For example the movie Smoke Signals was a comedy about life on and off the reservation created by Native American filmakers. While the film is lighthearted in tone there are some deep, dark threads that run through the movie. How does one define oneself? How do your forgive the failures of your forefathers and immediate family? What are the impacts of stereotypes on how one defines oneself? What is life on a reservation like? How do you navigate the outside world?
What I had wanted to do was to take these themes and build them into a setting. Only in this case it is a reservation of ideas. What happens to a stories then the storytellers are no longer in control of the zeitgeist?

3) I'll find a way. Oh boy will I find a way.