[PAID][VN][Gay][Furry][18+] Seeking a black author and a Jewish Author

[foofox]

I am looking for a black writer and a Jewish writer to help me with an 18+ furry visual novel called Lunar.
The first episode is written and coded. Most of the art assets are done.

More information can be found here: http://foofox.furry.nz/Lunar

There are two characters which I need your help to re-work.

• Request 1: Black Writer

• Request 2: Jewish Writer

I know that sounds awfully strange, so please let me explain.

Some close collaborators identified a massive blind spot of mine which means the writing in the story needs to change in a big way. In particular, I need help with addressing race in the story.

"Why bring up race in a video game?" I hear you ask. Well, all art is political and all games are art, therefore all games are political or at least assume a political context.

In Lunar, there's a lot of background social commentary inter-weaved in the story, The story touches on two very difficult topics: race and religion. One of the ways that comes through is in the characters of Black (coded black) and Green (coded Jewish).

An alternative would be cut to these characters out of the story or try remove race commentary from the game entirely.... but I think that's dishonest. Race is a thing and it's in the story, trying to pretend it isn't is just a special kind of white-washing which goes against what the story is trying to do.

You could accuse me of "virtue signalling" or what have you but I don't see it that way. My genuine interest is to create a story that people will love and that will give people an actual experience. If I want people to have a real emotional experience, the story needs to be real and authentic. Not realistic (it's a fanciful story about colourful animals of course), but "real" as in grounded in a way that people can actually have an emotional response to.

Black is a black house cat, he is coded as a black character, partly because of the way in which cats are coded in general in the game and partly likely some sub-conscious bias on my part. He is written poorly at the moment, and even if I thought I could write him perfectly well, I think it would be inappropriate of me to try. I'm a white guy born in South Africa. I understand race from one perspective but I can't represent a black voice, not for all the good will in the world.

Green is a green lynx, when I started writing him I didn't intend him to be Jewish, but I wanted him to have a big issue with religion. Over time and through development of his story, I have come to realise that he's pretty much coded Jewish. Green is written somewhat better than Black, he's less one-dimensional, probably because he is as close to a self-insert as it gets in the game.

Anyway, I am looking for a black writer and a Jewish writer to help out.

• I will pay you (please let me know a rate per word).

• You don't have to be a furry, but that will probably help.

• The game is 18+ with NSFW furry content

• The game is mostly very gay, so if that is an issue this is not for you

• You will need to be the kind of person who likes to write stories of course

• I have to be absolutely firm that I need a black person and a Jewish person. This is because I don't think anyone who has not lived that experience can write that story authentically.

Please contact me for more information.

[Kia]

isn't drawing the black character in torn clothing and the Jewish character with expensive ones a little too on the nose?

[foofox]

isn't drawing the black character in torn clothing and the Jewish character with expensive ones a little too on the nose?

Honestly never thought of that, strange though that may sound. This is precisely why I need some help. I hope the story isn't irredeemable. Happy to make sweeping changes to make it right.

Green is a scientist (not wealthy at all) and Black a stowaway, that's why they look like they do, but as you say... when viewed through a race lens, that becomes troublesome.

I wasn't thinking race when I wrote the characters but honestly I am sure some unconscious bias played a role.

[Kia]

sometimes we go overboard with inclusion and it starts to become very jarring. You have a stowaway and a scientist, their skin color or religion are important in the story but it shouldn't be what that defines them.
Look for people whom understand struggles of being black, and people of scientific thinking, religion exist only in people's head, it isn't that important to worry about.

[Jcow97]

I think you may be overthinking a little. just reviewing the dialog, doesn't seem very problematic to me. Not sure I would have picked up on Green being 'Jewish' unless you said something. However, since you did mention it, the lore kind of makes me raise my eyebrows if I'm interpreting it to be kind of this universe's pseudo-jewish religion. But I guess it depends on the context. We could maybe talk about why it might be troublesome, depending on how you are presenting it. (in a private message, probably)

[SupersizeMyHeart]

I'd really avoid directly coding a fictional race as a 1-for-1 with a real world race. If you do, you run into the situation that Bright had, where it coded orcs as 'black' and the go-to oppressed class for the setting, even though it doesn't make sense for a race of angry monsters to have anything even similar to the same struggles as black people. If you want to have an oppressed class, that's totally fine, makes sense - oppression is universal. That's why fantasy stories where elves or whatever are oppressed usually work, because it doesn't have to do with the real-world issue of skin color.

But if you add a 'color' element to it -- trust me, it gets problematic pretty quick. For example: why in your fantasy world do the oppressed cats happen to have black fur? Come on, now. And why would they face the same struggles as real-world African Americans and African Europeans? The only way to answer that is to either say it's a coincidence (which it isn't, because you purposely wrote it with the intent to address race and made the cats black for that express purpose), or you're suggesting there's some sort of universal eventuality where black people are always oppressed by others. Which, I'm sure, isn't your intent. I could only see it working if, instead of doing a fantasy world, your story is set on Earth, with our same history, and all the humans just being cats. Then I think it would be fine. Almost like what Ralph Bakshi did with his animation in the 80s. But that means, religion-wise, you wouldn't have a group that are "coded" as being Jewish -- they'd just be Jewish.

I'm part Jewish myself (racially, not religiously), and I have to agree with the other posters. Just be smart about this kind of stuff -- and try not to overthink it too much. There's always going to be people that take issue with your story for one reason or another. I wish you all the best.

P.S. This line irks me: "Race is a thing and it's in the story, trying to pretend it isn't is just a special kind of white-washing". If you want your story to comment on race, you go right ahead. Just remember, most things in life have nothing to do with race - not all art needs to comment on it if it isn't important to the work.

[PurpleMind]

I normally don't sabotage non-music commission threads, but this sounds cool; I'd be happy to write a short demo for you!