Help With Important stories

[Rosegirl2014]

Hello! I would like sensitivity advice on two books I'm planning on traditionally publishing. One of them is a sort of meta-narrative about neurodivergent teens with immersive daydreaming (like I was as a kid) and how they process secondary trauma (like hearing the news of a national tragedy), but the second one is a full-blown allegory about a certain tragic event within the past 20+ years, a sort of 'symbol reclaimation' story, sparked by a moment of culture shock I experienced irl. I'm a bit worried about reactions to these two specific stories, so would it be ok to discuss and get advice about them here?

 

[pmmg]

Thats what we are here for.

 

[Rosegirl2014]

Sorry for the wall of text: TW for discussions of violence and school shooting: So, the first one, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, is an allegory for Columbine. It was sparked from a moment with my grandmother. I was about 20, so if you mentioned the word 'Columbine' to me, my mind would instantly go to the shooting. I didn't even KNOW that Columbine was originally a flower, or that the school was named after it. She brought out these seed packets of various flowers and showed me a pack of Columbines. She said, "These would be beautiful to plant," something along those lines. And when I saw the name, my heart instantly pounded. After, I thought, "A flower shouldn't elicit that type of reaction." So I did some research on the flower. My way of processing things has always been to write about it in a 'mythical' way, which is why I joined this fantasy site. The idea was sparked to have an empire of flower territories, with Duchies, Kingdoms, Principalities, and more. I wanted to make sure it wasn't a 'Tinker Bell' type kingdom of flower people. They combine the whole history and symbolism of the flower into a unique kingdom. For example, the Rose kingdom is always divided and fighting, a direct symbolism of the historical War of the Roses. Since Columbine, the flower is a beautiful symbol of wisdom and resilience, growing in mountains where flowers usually can't grow. I wanted to make this type of story: Princess Caroline Aquilegia, last of her bloodline and heir to her throne, escapes captivity and execution after a brutal attack leaves her entire family dead and her kingdom in the hands of two invaders. She rallies both the people of her kingdom and others to defeat her enemies and take her rightful place on the throne. Big thing: I want this to be an ALLEGORY, not a retelling, so I want to know if having the invaders be 'two horrible men' would be too 1:1 a recreation, even if I change names) This is sort of like an Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian or Anastasia (1997) type of 'fallen princess' story. She starts off living an amazing, beautiful, sheltered, and naive life, symbolizing how this WAS just an innocent flower before 1999. After a devastating attack leaves her family dead, she becomes a captive of the new regime, kept alive for a short time to watch her kingdom fall. She goes from sheltered princess, to captive damsel, to broken and on the run, to liberator. I wanted to lean away from 'Disney Princess kingdom' to more of an 'upper YA/adult dark fantasy novel' kingdom.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I think you're overthinking this. Though that might just be a culture thing. Since I'm not from the US, I only vaguely know there was a school shooting at Columbine, but that's where it ends for me. So it might be that.

But if you're telling a story about a princess who's fighting in a fantasy world to liberate her kingdom, then I don't think anyone would see it as a retelling of a school shooting. That's just too far removed from it. You'd have to work pretty hard to even make it an allegory for the whole thing.

What's more, if you're going for YA, then your target audience wasn't even born when the school shooting at Columbine happened. Again, I'm not from the US, so I might miss a couple of things, but a 16 year old will likely not know the details of that shooting (like the names of the attackers), if they even know it happened at all. It's a minor footnote in history.

As for specific reactions to the stories, those are hard to give without the actual text of the story. That very much always depends on the way the story is presented. Any sensitive topic can be written about, and it can't be judged from the description of the story if readers will take issue with it or not. It's all about the execution.