in order to write a Hindu character, it helps to actually know something about Hinduism. *headdesk*

[edenfalling]

So I have been picking at "Intervention" again -- that is my absurdly self-indulgent Star Trek: AOS story about a Red Cross starship crew who respond to a distress call from a colony planet, plunge into trying to identify and cure an unknown plague, and then get ambushed by a pirate fleet. The Enterprise will make a cameo near the end, and I am trying to hook in as many mentions of the universe rules and background so it will read like fanfic instead of original fiction, but really, it's mostly an original science fiction space opera story. (It's currently at 12,675 words in rough draft, if anyone cares.)

Anyway, the point is that somewhere along the line the story developed a subtheme about religion as a focus in times of crisis. I think this is partly because the colony is sort of a Christian fundamentalist Utopian experiment -- I stole the setting from an original space opera world in which the religious background of one main character is very important, and in "Intervention" it became a quick way of handwaving the colony's Neo-Luddism -- but mostly it's because unless there's a pressing reason not to, a lot of stories I write pick up either religious themes or themes about religion (which are not necessarily the same thing, btw).

So I had to go back and look at my characters and figure out their religious stances. With a couple, I already knew -- Inez is liberal Catholic, Nico is fairly relaxed Sunni Muslim, Adam is a product of Simplicity's Calvinist-tinged Christian fundamentalism no matter how much he thinks he's rebelling against it -- but I had no idea whatsoever about Kath, Jahiem, or Zhi-ren; Elakwa and Hegev aren't human; and Jayavanti... well, I suddenly realized that it would be the height of arrogance (not to mention stupidity) to keep writing without doing research on Hinduism as a living religion (rather than Hinduism as a source of legends I sometimes get to tell in RE lessons).

This will make the story better and hopefully keep egg off my face, but man, what a tangle.

(I don't mean to make Hinduism sound exotic and difficult, btw! Every religion is a tangle. I just have cultural familiarity with Christianity -- and some subsidiary familiarity with the other two Abrahamic religions -- whereas I have no cultural groundwork to rely on when approaching Hinduism.)

*wanders off to read more about Shaktism and the historical bhakti movement*

Comments

[slowmercury.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a really interesting story--I don't know Star Trek very well anyway, but isn't one of the themes "it's a very big universe," which would mean that there's got to be tons of interesting things happening to people who aren't the stars of the series.

That's a very eclectic group of religions, which makes sense for an intergalatic Federation that started on Earth. Do you think any of these religions have changed to be more tolerant of each other in the future?

[edenfalling]

"Intervention" is what happened when I took a prompt from valles_uf -- a small ship standing off a pirate fleet in order to protect a colony planet, with the Enterprise still several hours out of system -- and combined it with some characters and world-building elements from an original space opera sci-fi/fantasy epic I got halfway through outlining in my teen years, and then never did much of anything with. While I was doing some initial research to figure out whether the Red Cross already canonically existed in the Star Trek universe, I discovered that apparently the main interstellar medical agency in the Federation is Starfleet Medical -- which means that all medical research is essentially run through the military. That bothered me a lot, and made me think that introducing the Red Cross was even more important. :-)

The religious orientations of the crew are even more eclectic when you add in the ones I didn't specify above. Kath is atheist and Jahiem is evangelical Christian, which makes for an interesting marriage. Zhi-ren has no opinion on the existence or non-existence of any god/s, but his general worldview is a mix of Taoism, Confucian traditions, and fragments of Protestant Christianity. Hegev's religion has some similarities to old Norse traditions -- it's polytheistic, has a martial ethic, and emphasizes fate and the facing of one's fate. (And it's far from being the only Tellarite religion!) Elakwa... well, I need to do more research on Betazed before I say for sure. *wry*

I am sure all religions will continue to have intolerant strains, no matter how marginalized said strains become, because the seeds of intolerance seem sadly entrenched in human nature. But I think the Red Cross does a lot of psychological screening on its employees/volunteers, especially the ones who are going out on long patrol routes, since 6-15 people on a small ship for over a year -- even with stopovers at colonies and space stations -- is a recipe for disaster if they can't get along.