Writing adventures
Oct. 2nd, 2010 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gryphonseggGuess what? My matriarchy-with-magic-water story now has a plot! Well, two plots, actually, and I'm hoping I can bring them around to being interrelated. There's some detective type stuff going on, but there's an overarching plot that might best be summed up as "lol ur succession!" I'm trying to decide on names for the main character's mentor and for the members of equivalent to the royal family (and also decide which ones really are trying to kill each other and which ones are just misunderstood).
I'm just going to let everyone who's interested know right at the outset that I understand why some readers might be put off by how much the cultures I'm depicting glorify motherhood and teaching/mentoring/nurturing. (Well, it's mostly one culture for this story, but the main character's mother immigrated from a different country, and I have a bit of backstory that involves her culture, plus there might be foreign travel in the main character's future. Most of the cultures there are like this to some extent.) But I have my own reasons for choosing to set things up this way, the most important being that I don't want to give the impression that the world in the story is any worse than ours. Mammalian reproductive biology being what it is, and attitudes toward adult men being what they are in the secondary world, sex selective infanticide would be really, really common if it weren't for widespread belief in the sacredness of childrearing and caregiving even when the child is a boy. Sex selective infanticide in the opposite direction has occurred and continues to occur in IRL, but I don't think most people are aware of just how common it used to be. If I did go the route of making motherhood not that big a deal in the secondary world and let it be fairly normal for characters to decide they just can't be bothered with surplus males, I'd end up with a situation that is, objectively, no worse for boys than RL history is for girls but that looks a lot worse to the casual reader.
So instead, I went with a world where every child a woman has increases her status. Of course, upper class women don't do that much direct caregiving (they still get credit for other women's work, though-- it's called privilege for a reason), and most hope to have more girls than boys because girls are expected to grow up to have additional achievements that increase mama's status even more while the best that's expected of most boys is marrying well. And there are many ways for a woman who can't or doesn't have children of her own to raise her status and her mother's, but not so many for a man. In this world, women without children do often feel not quite good enough even if they do have lots of other achievements, and women with children often feel really stressed and tired because they're expected to be good mothers and heads of families and have outside achievements as well and basically do and have and run everything. As for men, well, a family of five sons and no daughters might not be considered terribly sad, but it's considered sub-optimal, especially if it happens to a hereditary ruler. Because patriarchy hurts men too, but not as badly as it hurts women, and matriarchy hurts women too, but not as badly as it hurts men.
I'm just going to let everyone who's interested know right at the outset that I understand why some readers might be put off by how much the cultures I'm depicting glorify motherhood and teaching/mentoring/nurturing. (Well, it's mostly one culture for this story, but the main character's mother immigrated from a different country, and I have a bit of backstory that involves her culture, plus there might be foreign travel in the main character's future. Most of the cultures there are like this to some extent.) But I have my own reasons for choosing to set things up this way, the most important being that I don't want to give the impression that the world in the story is any worse than ours. Mammalian reproductive biology being what it is, and attitudes toward adult men being what they are in the secondary world, sex selective infanticide would be really, really common if it weren't for widespread belief in the sacredness of childrearing and caregiving even when the child is a boy. Sex selective infanticide in the opposite direction has occurred and continues to occur in IRL, but I don't think most people are aware of just how common it used to be. If I did go the route of making motherhood not that big a deal in the secondary world and let it be fairly normal for characters to decide they just can't be bothered with surplus males, I'd end up with a situation that is, objectively, no worse for boys than RL history is for girls but that looks a lot worse to the casual reader.
So instead, I went with a world where every child a woman has increases her status. Of course, upper class women don't do that much direct caregiving (they still get credit for other women's work, though-- it's called privilege for a reason), and most hope to have more girls than boys because girls are expected to grow up to have additional achievements that increase mama's status even more while the best that's expected of most boys is marrying well. And there are many ways for a woman who can't or doesn't have children of her own to raise her status and her mother's, but not so many for a man. In this world, women without children do often feel not quite good enough even if they do have lots of other achievements, and women with children often feel really stressed and tired because they're expected to be good mothers and heads of families and have outside achievements as well and basically do and have and run everything. As for men, well, a family of five sons and no daughters might not be considered terribly sad, but it's considered sub-optimal, especially if it happens to a hereditary ruler. Because patriarchy hurts men too, but not as badly as it hurts women, and matriarchy hurts women too, but not as badly as it hurts men.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-02 10:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-02 10:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-03 01:27 am (UTC)And, wow, I love the idea of convoluted royal-succession shenanigans going on under this model. At least illegitimacy would possibly be rather less of an issue?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-03 01:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-03 08:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-03 02:34 am (UTC)Meanwhile, Princess #2 married her childhood sweetheart, who had an impeccable pedigree and lots of powerful relatives, and started having babies. First a boy. Then another boy. Then a miscarriage. Then another boy, who was rather sickly. Then another boy. A distant cousin died in a freak accident, leaving behind four healthy daughters and a widower who was only 33 years old. There was talk that she should divorce her husband and marry someone who had fathered daughters before. The second most family in the land began to experience internal strife. Some of them wanted to offer another son to the royal family. Others were still bitter about the past insult and wouldn't hear of it. That family split into two factions, neither being half as powerful alone as they had been together, and in the end it was all for nothing because Princess #2 refused to take the divorce option and had two more sons. When F1 Queen I died, Princess #2 ascended the throne.
By the time the main character is old enough to understand these things, F1 Queen II has five living sons and no daughters. She's married off her four oldest sons to the four women who were most likely to cause political trouble otherwise. The youngest son has vowed never to marry and is a scholar at this institution that was founded by a highly eccentric lady who believed in giving boys the same education as girls. Princess #3 is waiting in the wings with daughters of her own. At first, it seemed that the trouble would be a two-sided conflict: Princess #3 and her daughters vs. the ambitious daughters-in-law. But recently, the two morganite nieces have decided they might have a chance of getting that pesky addendum to their parents' marriage repealed. The scholarly youngest son looked up historical precedents, reread the relevant documents with his lawyer goggles on, and realized they did have a case. Then he decided he might as well make a case for himself. He's found historical precedents from other countries, and he realizes that even if a decision is made in favor of allowing a male ruler, he's still got four older brothers. So he puts together this verbally impressive and sociopolitically horrifying case arguing that it's possible for a man to be fit to lead, but it's very unusual, and he's a super special awesome possum snowflake with the mind of a woman, so it makes sense to let him rule alone but not any of his brothers because he's so much smarter than all the other boys. It's not clear how much of this is a shameless power grab and how much he really buys into Exceptional Man Syndrome. Oh, and he's promised one of his younger cousins that if he takes the throne, he'll make her his heir, so she and her mother are going easy on him because now he's their back-up plan if their own case for being the proper heirs doesn't pan out. But things really get out of hand when one of the older brothers disappears, and suspicion naturally falls on his younger brothers and their wives. And their aunt and her daughters. And the daughters and granddaughters of their other aunt. And the tattered but still wealthy family whose star fell because past marriage arrangement failures. The main character and her mentor--an old, childless woman who has made her reputation as a consulting detective--get called to find the missing prince alive or, if the alive part is absolutely impossible, to find him dead from natural causes, even if the natural cause happens to look like stab wounds to the untrained observer.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-03 03:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-03 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-05 08:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-05 09:08 pm (UTC)