Oh, interesting! I would love to talk of this more in person, cuz that is super-complicated!
At the moment, I find myself wondering what values/qualities Scheherazade kind of represented in Golden Age Islamic culture, and whether the way to be respectful would be to really focus on that as a characteristic of hers. Like how if I were to write Johnny Appleseed, say, I would think about how he kind of represents the American value of exploring a wilderness and taming it while still deeply loving the land, and have that be both a major part of his character and a way that he's particularly American (And might have other characters comment on how it's also problematic because his version of love is real love, but also has the dark side of wildly changing and possibly destroying many qualities of the thing he's claiming to love.) If that makes sense. If you got it right, it would be really cool, because she would be representing values you yourself don't necessarily hold, and she's Scheherezade, so she'd be awesome.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-02-02 12:48 pm (UTC)At the moment, I find myself wondering what values/qualities Scheherazade kind of represented in Golden Age Islamic culture, and whether the way to be respectful would be to really focus on that as a characteristic of hers. Like how if I were to write Johnny Appleseed, say, I would think about how he kind of represents the American value of exploring a wilderness and taming it while still deeply loving the land, and have that be both a major part of his character and a way that he's particularly American (And might have other characters comment on how it's also problematic because his version of love is real love, but also has the dark side of wildly changing and possibly destroying many qualities of the thing he's claiming to love.) If that makes sense. If you got it right, it would be really cool, because she would be representing values you yourself don't necessarily hold, and she's Scheherezade, so she'd be awesome.