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Debating about shelving Monster Crowd: yes or no?
🕑 Added 2023-11-05 15:03:18 +0000 UTCHello everybody,
I'm sorry this is not an update about the November pic. Work is keeping me busy as hell and I haven't been able to make any progress since the sneak-peek posted the other day.
This message is instead about Monster Crowd, the story I pitched to Crazy-Wolf to turn into a graphic novel. Due to the tragic current events happening in the Middle-East, I am unfortunately debating about shelving that story once again, since releasing it now could be the equivalent of opening a can full of worms.
Honestly, I've been debating about posting this message for days, and I've been rewriting it over and over again. Sometimes I'm like "who cares, it's not a big deal: I'll just release Monster Crowd anyway". But not a single day passes without hearing about more deaths in Gaza, the rise of antisemitism, the rise of islamophobia, marches in support of Palestine, marches in support of Israel, with both sides becoming more and more vocal an definitely irreconcilable...And me in the middle who seems forced to pick a side. Heck, just me writing this message will trigger some people I believe.
So I feel that releasing a story that pretty much opens up with my protagonist, a Jewish kid and holocaust survivor, would be adding insult to the injury: it's the worst timing ever to release it.
I’m still not 100% certain yet, even though I’m leaning towards one decision as you can guess, but I would like to know your opinion as well before I commit, and this message will remain public so everyone can give me their input. I'll have to re-explain a few things about the plot since not everybody reading this is a patron of mine, but I'll try to keep it as brief as possible.
My question is simple: do I keep working on Monster Crowd and release it, or should I shelve it to avoid being insensitive?
Also, obviously, because of the nature of this message, please keep civil in the comments: I won’t tolerate personal attacks, hate, insults, towards me nor other users. I will also delete any comments that clearly take a stance on this conflict while antagonizing the other side: this is NOT a debate about what is currently happening in the Middle-East.
My free time is already super limited to very few hours per week, so there's no point for me to keep working on Monster Crowd if I decide to shelve it. However, if I shelve it again it’ll likely be for several years, even indefinitely maybe. By the way, some people suggested in the past that I could simply radically transform the story, or dismantle it into bits and pieces that will be put in other stories: that is absolutely out of the question. I either release the planed story that I sent to Crazy-Wolf, minus a few tweaks to improve it and fix plot holes based on his suggestions, or nothing at all.
Crazy-Wolf passed away in 2014, only 5 months before his 30th birthday, so we’re close to the 10thyear anniversary of his passing, and while we barely had any time to work on Monster Crowd, he was all in: he wanted to work on it, he wanted it to succeed because he saw some potential in it. So ever since his passing, I’ve promised myself to release Monster Crowd in a way or another in memory of Crazy-Wolf. I started reworking on it a few months ago, rewriting the prologue, and I REALLY want to share this story...However, I understand there are bigger things at play here, and that not everything revolves around me and my own wishes.
The story is around 15 years old.
I was in my early 20ties when I first came up with it so I'm not pretending it's an amazing piece of work, far from it: it's just a something that could fit the shonen category as an anime. A bit of steampunk, a bit of pulp, evil vampires and nazis, and silly anime humor...
BUT...I ended up with a very varied cast. The protagonist is Jew (of origin, but clearly atheist), survived the holocaust as a kid but lost his parents in the process. His past is part of his character arc and trauma, I can not change it without impacting the story.
His best friend is more religious (a catholic...and a closeted gay: Crazy-Wolf wanted that).
And as for the third protagonist and “love interest”, she’s Muslim...
Did I also mention I'm no expert in world religions nor history, which is its own can of worms ("how dare you write outside of our own experience? That's appropriation you fascist! Shame!")
At some point I was even thinking about naming this story Coexist or Coexistence, but I didn't because it was so so so corny and cringe...Just like Monster Crowd's story ultimately.
So just to make it clear: despite this very varied cast, at no point Monster Crowd is supposed to be heavily political, and I have NO plans to change that.
At most, Monster Crowd is as political as X-Men or Fullmetal Alchemist: metaphors and allegories that echo real life events. I simply wanted to have teens of different walks of life, ethnicity, gender, religion, etc, coming together to ultimately face some evil threat because the power of friendship will prevail over everything else, and so on and so forth: you get the idea.
I already knew 15 years ago this story could turn into an extremely sensitive topic that will trigger many people for a bunch of different reasons, and I finally decided to change a few things some months ago. The story's setting was always set in some sort of alternate Earth (since the whole cast are furries), so gone are our world symbols and religions...but the setting is still highly inspired by what happened during our history and all the parallels are there.
What I’m trying to say is, I could set the entire story in another galaxy with spaceships and aliens, it wouldn't change anything: there's a fascist regime that committed a genocide and you’ll be like “oh, and those guys/aliens clearly represent Jewish, those other ones Muslims, and those other ones this and that...”.
On one hand I do not wish to offend or hurt anyone with Monster Crowd. On the other hand, I I feel that soon or later some people will argue that releasing Monster Crowd now, without making obvious parallels to the current events, as if pretending nothing is happening, would be extremely insensitive. They'll say that at the very least, due to the nature of my story, I should make a public statement where I clearly state my stance on the current conflict (pro-Israel or pro-Palestine) and condemn the other side.
And no matter which stance I take, I'm bound to completely antagonize a lot of people since tensions are really high.
The irony is the only true political aspect of Monster Crowd is that everybody sucks at the end, and that the world is more complicated than a binary black & white view (tiny spoiler, sorry!), but that’s not good either. Being neutral, or calling for peace and cease fire on both sides (not just one: both), or saying "everybody sucks here: leave me out of this mess" is being guilty of not siding with the "good side", turning a blind eye, and being the enemy.
Yeah, just writing this and not picking a side is bound to make me a few enemies...
I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking this. I feel that no matter what I do some people will be heavily triggered by Monster Crowd, even more than I ever feared before...What I do know is that I do not wish to change my story to make it more political. I won't tell you which side you need to support, where you need to send donations or "thoughts and prayers".
I won’t for Crazy-Wolf. I want to tell the story I sent him. The one that made him say “yeah, I like it, let's work together on it".
So these are my choices:
I either release it, and likely face backlash no matter what I do.
Or I shelve this story once again. And this time it’ll probably be for good, because I don’t think it’ll be possible anymore to release without creating an even bigger backlash due to the state of the world. Or maybe in 15 years or so, if I’m still alive.
You tell me what you think of all of this.
Comments
Kenj91
I say too keep going for it man. :D
Yaba
I say just keep working on it. Saddest thing is to let a never released project become lost
