Hi! I hope you're doing well lately! 🙂 my question for you about the Sapphire Room is this: what's the inspiration behind the mythology of the Deis?
Hi hi!! Hope you are as well! I am definitely drowning in bar exam studying, but really trying to carve out some creativity/writing time so big big thank u for this question because wow there is so much I can say about this!!
So the first and easy answer is that I drew a lot of inspiration from present-day and historical traditions of brujeria in South America, like santeria and espiritismo, as well as more ancient myths such as those belonging to the Inca. But I also knew I wanted to create something different and distinct, and that I wanted to kind of push back against both machismo inherent throughout Latin America and against traditional conceptions of creator deities as male/masculine/paternal in many western mythologies.
When I was working on the first chapters, the creation myth just kind of came out, with the names of the Deis naturally becoming La Mamaia, La Hijaia, La Luna, etc. I kind of fell in love with the idea of an ancient deity not understanding loneliness, and a child deity full of curiosity and love that can’t be satisfied until humans are created.
There will definitely be some push back against how the Deis are described with female nouns, even though they have no gender, just because they represent more maternal/feminine qualities—though this pushes back against traditional masculine conceptions of gods, it still falls into a gender binary that I want to view critically, especially as there will be several characters who are non-binary, trans, and/or who express their gender in ways that resist binary classifications of feminine and masculine.
I’ll be posting more about the Deis mythology, as there’s still a lot to learn that the early chapters won’t fully get into, but I am legit kind of in love with the concept of it and am super excited to get to write more of it!!
