Stories to Never Tell

I guess that every writer is like me in that the ideas one gets for stories vs. the stories that actually get written constitute a far greater number than anyone on the outside would guess.  We all know that some ideas just aren't very good, and then there are those that just kind of stick with you for a while and whine at your brain that maybe you should write them, but you refuse for whatever reason. 

I actually have an idea that's been with me for years that I might write - if I get into a close enough relationship with the right people and get their support. As it is, I'm actually afraid of hurting people with my ignorance if I attempt it.  It deals with sexuality and religion (but moreover about personal sacrifice and how it can backfire) and I think you know right with those words why it's been on the back burner of my brain for the last five or six years now, never actually penned. This is the "never-written story" that's stayed with me the longest, which means it might get written if I ever luck into what I feel would be the proper research needed for it to live. 

A story idea that I've come up with more recently is even trickier:  It deals with my love of fantasy - of impossible things, of wonders happening to people, whether they want them to or not.  If you read the stories posted on my blog, you know my predilections.  The idea was first sparked when I was thinking about The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.  It's, to date, the most recent game in the Legend of Zelda game series - a 25-years strong videogaming franchise that will never die, but I don't want it to because I'm in mad love with these games... I was thinking of making a post on one of the message boards for the series I go to about the "discovery of impossible" things that run through this series. 

Skyward Sword has something of a joke on an earlier title, Twilight Princess in that TP had a researcher character who was scoffed at by his peers for his belief in a City in the Sky, which you *find* in the game.  Skyward Sword is the reverse of that:  A prequel in the ur-mythology of the series that has Link (player character) having been born and raised in a city in the sky and the Surface, even as it plays a role in the society's religious mythology, is seen as something only eccentric people believe in.  They still believe in their patron Goddess, but fail to believe in a key part of their origin myth because no one has seen it and it seems impossible to them that anything might exist beneath the Sea of Clouds...  Thinking about this bit of interesting mythos, something in my brain went "Hey! Link discovering the Surface in his world is kind of like if someone in our world found out that Ken Ham was right!" 

Just an utterly impossible thing.  After getting into a conversation-thread Slacktivist about Ken Ham and Young Earth Creationism (for those of you who don't know who Ken Ham is - look him up... or don't.  He's a vocal advocate for trying to force science into an absolutely literal reading of the first chapters of the Bible).... After that and after viewing today a video by Bill Nye (The Science Guy)* telling Creationist parents to please not pass their beliefs onto their children and quietly die off (okay, so he didn't say it so harshly and he was stressing the importance of evolution to an understanding of life-science for our future doctors and inventors), well... it brought up my fantasy idea again. 

I think polls about American attitudes are skewed on this subject, or, at least there are probably more people who believe in mainstream science who say they don't because they don't want to be kicked out of their churches... Do pollsters ambush people as services are letting out or something?  I flirted with the YEC thing myself when I was teen-aged and stupid, convinced by elders and TV people (but strangely enough, not my parents) that I had to give up science and sense to follow what my heart wanted to follow.  That was all I'd ever heard: "If you want to follow Jesus / believe in Christianity / not go to Hell, you have to believe God created the world in six days."  I believed in "God" before - in a sort of "something out there," but not within a specific religious structure before. Thankfully, my teen / adult Sunday School teacher was a Theistic Evolutionist and that put a crack in the idea of un-science and brought me full-circle into a person who doesn't think having spiritual beliefs means one abandons science.  He didn't "preach" though - to the YECs in the church. He figured "We're all brothers/sisters here" and felt no need to preach his ideas on God and science to them.  I don't know if he was being gracious and polite, or if this was unbelievably sad.

In any case, just like the guy in the Zelda game who tells you to pray for good luck and protection a one of the bird-shrines around the sky-island (it's a game-save system), and clearly hopes the Goddess is smiling upon him -- who later jaws on about how he's never believed in the Surface... There are tons of people who believe the "substance of the myths" without believing them literally when it comes to popular religion.  Therefore...

I think writing a fantasy tale about someone discovering something that proves the YECs right just to shake up and screw with the brains of everyone in the world would be a neat thing to write.  As a fantasy.  An archaeologist discovers dinosaur-saddles or something.  Time-travel happens and people go to the past and see stupid stuff.  The crazy stuff that not even a lot of religious people who treasure the myths believe in anymore being true? WTF?  Whoa!  Part of me wants to get my research on and get out a pen and just scrawl down weirdness, but... no...

No, just no.

There is *no way* I could write a wild fantasy like this without it being mistaken for propaganda even if I go out of my way to *make fun.* 

You see, a fantasy author can write a story about a bunch of kids discovering a dragon in our world, or a forest full of unicorns, or real and present practical magic.  I vaguely remember a film from my childhood that was about a family adopting a Bigfoot.  You can do stuff like that in fantasy - people discovering impossible things. 

But other things that would make for awesome fantasy?  It doesn't seem like such ideas *can* come without politics and other damaging things. 

I find it sad to find my creative spirit hobbled like this, but maybe stupidity is as good a restraining bolt as any to keep stupid things from being created.

Anyone brave or foolish enough to want to try to co-write an extremely controversial fantasy novel with me?



*I grew up watching Bill Nye.  It is a tragedy that his show is no longer on the air. It was quirky, funny, and man, I learned stuff from it!  I learned about rods and cones in the eye from that show and about the mesosphere... I may not have become an important scientist or engineer, but common-knowledge is always good and I'm sure the show inspired people to get into science careers.  I remember it as one of the best kidutainment shows ever.