Anonymous asks:
The Incas were pretty brutal imperialists themselves, on the level of Romans and Mongols. I’m 1/16th Maidu (The rest is Asian), and I’ve started plotting out a story about something akin to an indigenous Spartacus. The first book is about establishing the brutality the conquered peoples endure under Inca rule, the introduction of Spanish newcomers who may be able to help them throw off the Incas, and the beginning of the rebellion.
At the end, most of the rebels are killed, and the remaining flee to the Spanish for help. In the second book, the rebels and the Spanish work together to free the conquered tribes from the Incas, who, realizing that their empire is crumbling, tighten their stranglehold on their empire. In the third book, the Spaniards reveal their true colors, and now the tribes have to band together with the Incas to drive the Spanish out, and end up succeeding.
Since the rebels are allied with the Spanish in the first two books and the Incas are presented as brutal imperialists, how do I avoid coming off like I support the Spanish conquest, and how can I realistically and sensitively portray a group of people having to ally with the remains of the empire that had once subjugated them?I’ve done foreshadowing, I’ve shown the Spanish only helping the rebels because they get to help themelves to Inca gold in the process, and it takes a long time and a lot of work for the Incas to gain the trust of the other tribes when the time comes to kick out the Spanish.
A Matter of Craft (Narrative Framing and Plot)
Melanie will get into this more, but I just want to touch on the absolute utmost importance of how you frame dissent within working with the Spanish, and how you treat a plurality of opinions within the group of characters the protagonists interact with. You might also have to genre blend, pulling more from psychological horror so you can get a better vibe.
Because you’re going to want dissent, and you’re going to want to have a wide variety of opinions. One of the ways I can flag an author’s politics is how they handle differing opinions around a topic, because in a pro-colonial work, those dissenting opinions would be squashed out and everything would be fantastic and the protagonists would end up as allies of the Spanish and be “the good ones”, rewarded for their loyalty because that’s a massive fantasy for why people align with fascism.
However, you can foreshadow this really well by having those who dissent not be punished, narratively. They might be disagreed with in the story, but the narrative doesn’t punish them for having that dissenting opinion. By this I mean: have them not be killed, have the group not cast them out, have them be right and become an important figure later.
I’d worry about making a character too much of a Cassandra, where everything they said came true but nobody believed them—but instead, really, really dig into how they might come to the wrong conclusion but be really close to the answer, or how their dissent will be handled in a way that allows for a psychological thriller bent where something is wrong, people notice, but it’s not going to get validated right away.
Them not being directly on the nose and figuring out how they’d come to the conclusion is going to go a long way to make the book better, and to have those who understand the optics to see things.
Playing up the fear and terror and relief might also get you much farther, because by painting everyone as desperate, you end up in a humanized scenario where they are more willing to compromise morals they would’ve had if it wasn’t for the Inca. No teachings are followed perfectly, and it takes a lot to break people down, but people can definitely be broken. This also sets up a sort of reverting to morals once they’re out from under the Inca, where they’re safe from the old threat but… oops, new threat that they invited in.
On the Spanish side, I’d suggest a combination of “boiling the frog” and a certain extremism when it comes to what they expect in return. Because the Spanish won’t simply help. They’ll demand payment, and likely slaves themselves, and sure at first it seems like the necessary cost for getting rid of the Inca… but. But.
You could also play with the Catholicism of it all, because there’s so so so much religious backing to the Spanish, and the way that it breaks their Indigenous practices could also be a source of alarm bells. People could willingly convert, “willingly” convert, or distrust this new religion. I’ve heard it said that some people will always convert to the religion that is on the “winning” side, or more powerful side, because clearly that religion is working for them. Not all, but some.
You’re going to want to have exceptionally strong character work where everyone is human, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and there is so much plurality in everything with massive respect to those who disagree. Those two factors are your best bets, prose-wise, to get somewhere.
Because you might really have to create a scenario where the unease slowly turns to terror, and treat the first two books like a psychological horror that strings readers along because you’ve established the Spanish as gaslighting, terrible, and to be defeated later. They’re not officially a psychological thriller, but the beats established with them are that of a psychological horror villain—we know they’re evil; it’s up to the characters to realize.
A Matter of Reputation (Building Audience Trust)
This is going to sound very strange, but I’d suggest reading the book I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jenette McCurdy and taking note of the “before” section. Jenette does a very good job of capturing the obliviousness of childhood under an abusive parent in such a way adults are recoiling in horror while the narration doesn’t overtly condemn it. Fullmetal Alchemist might also be a good piece of media to examine, for how the heroes in the story all work for a very obvious literal Nazi analogue.
These books have the advantages of either a title that gives away the conclusion—all of the positives Jenette has about her mom are not as positive as they look at the time, because we know the title—or characters who have contributed to war and are haunted by it so the leadership is thrown into question right away. Fullmetal Alchemist also has a benefit of not following active war criminals.
You sound like you don’t have either advantage, and that’s hard.
Let me get it out of the way first: optics and nuance are not something you can guarantee will make people interpret a book “correctly”. There are many people and places where nuance goes to die, and you cannot erase that. There will always be bad faith takes about this story, forever.
All you can control is the quantity.
There are ways to do it better so that the people in your audience who are able to critically think will look at things and realize that you’re being kind to people who are against working with the Spanish. There’s making it that maybe they’re refusing to use Spanish tactics and focusing instead on doing what they want, while the Spanish keep pushing for things that enrichen themselves. Side-quests, so to speak, like “yes we’ll rescue your allies but do they have gold?”
This is really going to come down to craft, nuance, and being willing to face the fear of being misinterpreted in a world that is committed to bad faith racist takes.
That being said, it might be best to not have this be your publishing debut, even if you’re going indie, because it will be extremely hard for that audience to trust a newcomer.
I’m reminded of Seanan McGuire openly refusing to tell a story her dedicated fans are clamouring for—a delayed trans realization, where the boy didn’t always know he was a boy and his story would open with she/her and a deadname—because the series that character lives in (Wayward Children) was a huge breakout for her and most of the fans of that series would not trust her to handle it. She’s now added that a cis writer doing that story might not be the best idea in the current climate.
You are going to need to think extremely hard on how to build audience trust—and that very well could be something you gain over multiple books unrelated to this series to establish a pattern where you do side with the marginalized, or it could be done by having multiply-marginalized people within the books themselves that you treat kindly, like those early stragglers who might’ve been hurt by the Spanish and instead of brushing them off completely, you hear them out and build the dread of those early warnings.
I’ve definitely had to think about this for some pricklier topics I want to tackle. Sometimes books just aren’t meant to be debuts, and that’s okay. You can build up a fanbase and have people understand your viewpoint before throwing them in the deep end.
-Leigh
Present various perspectives, nuance and opinions
I deeply agree with Leigh’s point about perspective – it’s easy to look at a conflict from a distance or in hindsight and say, these guys are the good guys, those guys are bad. But people are rarely that simple.
I’m the Latine mod, but I’m also a USMC veteran, and I invite you to consider this: in war and imperialism, relationships are complicated, and multiple conflicting truths can exist at once.
We know the U.S. military had no business in Afghanistan, and that the US military operates as an imperialistic force. Yet, at the same time, many Afghan people and U.S. service members became found family through their work together. Some U.S. service members committed war crimes. Some Afghan violent ideological extremists inflicted lateral violence on their own people during efforts to drive Americans out. Some Americans and Afghans thought we should be there. Some did not. None of this cancels the other thing out, it simply reflects the reality that within any group, there are different perspectives, motives, and actions.
Bringing that nuance and complicated diversity of opinion to your story will make it richer. No group, ethnic or otherwise, moves in perfect lockstep. Recognizing the complexity of human connection and the diversity of thought within the same group will go far to mitigate your concern. Good luck and happy writing!
-Melanie 🌻
