PostGlimpse

Dive Deep into Creativity: Discover, Share, Inspire

Bennuma Notes - Blog Posts

2 years ago

A Couple of Notes

In The Crossing (current WIP novel) I hesitate to refer to the camp of travelers as refugees or exiles, since although they left their home in order to escape war and being threatened (also raided, plundered, etc) by local armed forces and mercenary types... they weren't specifically evicted or told to leave, nor forced out because of their culture, race, beliefs, or any other such sort of thing. Not... directly.

It was more like, they wanted to remain peacefully neutral and not join the fighting, and being in small unfortified villages and hamlets in the countryside, they simply were easy targets for people who wanted to pick up supplies in quick raids... because of where they lived, and not because of who they were (except for their choice to be neutral). The survivors of the raids found these conditions intolerable, and decided to pack up and leave instead of moving to join any of the (sort of) neighboring fortified burgs that were at war with each other. This doesn't quite fit with a lot of what I read about current common definitions of 'refugees' and I don't wish to confuse people nor in any way minimize the plight of people in the real world on planet Earth who have become refugees or exiles because of their religion/beliefs, culture, ethnicity, or other sorts of differences. I also hesitate to refer to them as 'nomads' because although they have taken up a nomadic sort of existence, it is more of a temporary thing (they hope) like pilgrims or pioneers traveling out of necessity while they seek out a new home to settle in, and not an inherited, cultural way of life like I think the word 'nomad' usually denotes. Likewise, I don't want to refer to them as 'travelers' because it seems in some parts of Europe, that word (in English) specifically is used (perhaps as slang) to refer to the Romani people and their cultural way of life, which is also not what is going on in The Crossing. Sometimes in hash tags I am putting 'traveling people' because I am not sure what else to refer to their current nomadic sort of way of life as, since although they might accurately be referred to as a type of pioneers (in Bennuma) that term could also be confused with a specific time period and the geographic area of North America... and similar issues with the term 'pilgrims' exist, in addition to that term typically also designating having religious reasons for traveling, or 'making a pilgrimage'.

Perhaps eventually I might figure out what would be a term to use that I'd consider ideal, or at least acceptable. For now, it's something of a muddle to me.

Also note: regretfully, I cannot currently be sure to post updates to the Crossing WIP novel @bennuma-crossing according to a regular schedule (as also, the informational, sometimes-containing-short-stories, worldbuilding sort of background blog @legends-of-bennuma) but I am trying to do so without huge gaps in time between posts. After section 1.7 of The Crossing, I plan to get into what I currently consider to be chapter 2... the novel being more or less a first draft, someday after the thing is completed perhaps the novel will be divided differently chapter-wise, I don't know yet... admittedly I sometimes get in a muddle over where to make chapter divisions.


Tags
Loading...
End of content
No more pages to load
Explore Tumblr Blog
Search Through Tumblr Tags