You ever have that moment when you look at something you made, a lifetime ago and think “oh, oh honey no” Because I’ve had a few of those, and I’m having one now and I think I’m going to use the internet to figure it out.
When I started writing MBWLAYWGS I had no idea what it was going to be, what it was going to mean to me, and that really shows through in the best and worst ways, but one thing I did put a lot of thought and time into is the characters, which, yeah, I would hope so, wouldn’t you? But, what I mean is, that was one area where I’ve not had many regrets, or things I wished I’d done differently. I think Lauchlan and Corbin are well written, well fleshed out, and that they act as excellent narrative foils for each other. I set them up to be sort of reflections of each other, equal and opposite, the same but reversed, I put them through so many similar trials and tribulations, but ones that shaped them in such drastically different ways that you might not realise how similar they are at first glance, and when I was deciding on what they looked like, I worked that in too.
I set up Lauchlan to be tall and imposing, and beautiful, but then gave him crippling anxiety that rendered all that either irrelevant or him unable to see it for what it is. When I was putting Corbin together in my mind, I wanted to make a character that stood out, and was unconventionally attractive. I made him short, broad, and stocky, covered thick curling hair (shag carpeting included to match,) expressive dark brown eyes set in a pale face, a broad jaw and a proud aquiline nose.
Yeah I just went and described a jewish stereotype, didn’t I?
I want to reiterate, in case my tone is not clear, that I stand by my choice. My crisis doesn’t arrive from the fact that I believe all these traits to be attractive whilst they also happen to be ascribed to Jewish folk, my crisis is, do I ignore this? Or do I try and fold this into his character? Am I a good enough writer to touch this subject with the *everything* going on right now? Christ I even circumcised him, and mentioned that explicitly in a rather important scene, so at least some people might have drawn that conclusion years before I opened up my eyes and saw the forest for the trees.
It could work, is the thing, it could work very well.
Corbin’s reason for doing most of the idiotic things he does, is for want of community, for want of any kind of connection with the people around him, and what is religion, what is culture if not a means of connection? But oh if it isn’t such a vulnerable point of connection, one so vulnerable it’s bone-shakingly terrifying to him, right to his core.
I wouldn’t retcon him into having been raised in a religious environment (in his household, religion was, like most things, only applicable when it suited his parents for it to) but, people lapse for many reasons, people marry out, people try to pass, people are orphaned and fall through the cracks. He worked in a dockyard, hard work, with hard people, he would have been called names, before, slurs too, some he knew intuitively, some he’d have to have made his on inquires about (Well are we? (Of course fucking not, Jews have money idiot)) and then he looks around at his house, a sea of dark curling hair and dark eyes and crooked noses and thinks, are you sure? Would it be so terrible? (God knows it couldn't possibly be worse) But he sees the way the world is, sees the hate they're shouldered with for no good reason, lives with the mundane horrors that a life of Victorian poverty is; it’s numb, blind callousness, the uncaring truth of it all, and thinks to himself that no loving God would let the world be made this way (and if they did, he thinks he’d rather burn than thank him for it,) and then Eloise dies and nothing matters anymore. He’s not shackled down by someone who loves him but not enough to leave with him, by responsibility and expectation, and he flies fast and loose for the first time and into more trouble than he ought to have survived, he’s jaded and he’s naïve, and he finds the Sailor’s Bolthole and thinks, nevermind that, this is my people, this is my place right here (you’re too old, you’re too ugly, we don’t want you here anymore,) and then the Dragon, and then the Mule, and then he’s alone again, with walls round his heart thicker than Hadrian’s and yet still he wants, he wants, he wants (they couldn’t get past the walls.)
So sometimes he goes to the Jewish quarter, down in the slums like the ones he grew up in, there’s a supplier there who gives him the best price on ammonia and lye he can get anywhere and he sees that all those quips about riches and greed hold about the same amount of truth in them as those of the well-bred civility of English gentlemen. They keep their own language, even when it earns them foul looks and muttered comments, their calendar, their custom, and it earns them such spite, and yet they hold to it, and it holds to them. (He remembers laying in a sleeping train with a dark skinned carnie, whispered lessons in Polari curling round his ear, their strange, spoken cant, half Italian, half rhyme, half Rom till the sky turned rosy with dawn and he never hears the words again, remembers Peaky telling him stories, half salvaged of a century before, of London Molly-houses and drink and joy (Baptisms with gin! Can you imagine? Oh they don’t do festivals like that, not anymore, not since scotland yard) remembers New Years and Guy Fawkes and Holy Weeks as a blur of cocktails, and back alleys, and looks growing glazed, and cold, and bored.) He supposes some things must be worth holding onto.
He wonders what it feels like. To be part of that. To be hated for being part of that. He doesn’t know how to ask. (They wouldn’t want him anyway. (No one ever does.))
He'll be back in a fortnight.
Gah, you see what I mean? It fits, it works, there’s meat there, but, christ I know nothing of Jewish people or Jewish culture, nevermind how it was in the context of the period, and, I don’t know if I have the energy to tackle that, or the resources frankly. This is an area in which I have such a simplistic level of knowledge I wouldn’t even know where to start. Furthermore, I don’t think the story has space for it? Not MBWLAYWGS and not Dog Roses, that one at least I have planned out and it’s too close to it’s end for Corbin to be trying to find his roots now, and, it’s not the sort of thing I think I ought to half arse. So do I leave it? Do I edit out the circumcision bit? God knows that’s a bit of a squick that comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really amount to anything in the scheme of things. I made that decision at the time since I’d been reading that it was beginning to become popular in England for “hygiene” reasons, ie quackery and puritanism, and it seemed fitting for him at the time, now I’m not so sure.
I also don’t to pull a Rowling here, and try muscle in diversity credit for something without actually committing to it. If this is going to be a thing, it should be at the core of the story, but what story? I don’t know! I’m not the right author for this, but hell if anyone else is gonna write it, but I don’t even have an idea for a proper story yet, just a feeling I want to explore, but, gah! That’s not enough, but I don’t want to let it go now, either, because I think there’s something special in it and oh boy do I have Feelings about it now.
