Trees and those wacky Persians' faith and things

[snowgrouse]

Forgive me if I've mentioned it before--I honestly can't remember--but I'm still torn about this idea of a spiritual Jaffar/Princess fic I want to write. One where she has a spiritual crisis about what she sees as Jaffar's polytheism, the way any religious medieval person would, and is seriously worried about whether her husband would be cast into

Comments

[capriuni]

That is a great vision, in every sense of "great"

[snowgrouse]

It was very profound, yeah.

[acitymadeofsong]

That's beautiful and intense! What a gorgeous way of representing her struggles and her sorrow and her ability to survive them through love.

If you do end up writing about them working through their spiritual dilemmas, I'd probably get something out of that, because I've been through that experience of fear that your loved ones might end up in Hell. It's terrifying. And I'm sure it must've been so much more terrifying in the Middle Ages where religion and Heaven and Hell were everywhere in society. I don't think you should worry too much about whether you'll alienate readers, though, because it is about satisfying your needs in the end, not about The Audience. Fic that comes straight from the author's heart always ends up being better than fic designed for mass appeal, in the end.

[snowgrouse]

It's funny that you're complimenting it because I didn't consciously create it! The dream did a good job of that.

I'm basically balls-deep in this whole medieval Islamic metaphysics stuff AGAIN--from reading Ibn Arabi's stuff and then going through Bird of the Wilderness and AAAAH. So I don't know if stuff is going to come out, but I kind of still don't want to write Falcon 3. At least not if I don't get better somehow. Which is unlikely. And they'd have to die at the end as well because that's how the story would go. SOON I WILL END UP KILLING ALL MY DARLINGS AND I DON'T WANT THAT.

[ataslightangle]

Ooh, I'd totally read a Jaffar/Princess fic about polytheism and angsting over damnation. It'd be really interesting to see how/if/why their views and opinions differ on the matter, in context with the time and space that they live in and such.

[snowgrouse]

The Falconverse is the one where most of the mystical stuff happens, and as it's all from her POV and she is more traditionally religious than Jaffar, I just keep thinking there might be some conflict at some point. Islam isn't as anti-wizardry as Christianity (for instance, King Solomon is portrayed as the greatest of wizards because his power came from God), but Jaffar mixes and matches so many things and built things that looked like Hindu idols, so, well. At one point, they go over a Tantric volume about prolonging life through male/female energy-swapping and there are parts where he helps her out of her depression with Buddhist teachings, stuff that the Barmakids would've been well-versed in. But as people tend to get more pious with age and sometimes become really stuck-up about it as well, I do wonder if she isn't just... plagued by worry, especially as Jaffar is 25 years older than she is. And I don't want to spoil the previous stories for you, but there are things that would cast doubt on the certainty of him making it to

[ataslightangle]

Mmm, it's not too difficult to imagine that she wouldn't be *quite* as freethinking as Jaffar when it comes to something as heavily embedded in their culture as religion. I suppose she would have been indoctrinated from birth. And I seem to remember in TKWF she's basically entirely self taught in relation to everything else, so perhaps there's still a twinge of fear of hell and such things from her upbringing? The passing of time does seem to have an influence on that sort of worrying on people... I was sent to a *very* Christian primary school and I remember as my great grandmother aged I started praying for her, even though I had absolutely no solid belief in Christianity. I guess it can almost become a 'just in case' sort of thing when the mind is plagued by worries and doubts. Well, I mean religion is such a comfort to so many people for that sort of thing

[snowgrouse]

The Barmakids were really open-minded and took in wisdom from people of all faiths, so that's one of the reasons there were rumours of them not being proper Muslims. They were all pretty pious Muslims from what I understand, though, despite those rumours, and known for their hospitality and kindness and generally being too good to last. And since Yahya hosted those philosophical debates between scholars from different religions, people would've started to whisper--so it wasn't all that hidden back then because the point was wisdom rather than arguing about doctrine