Hello! I have a writing question!
I have something of an eternal crossover WIP that I'm extremely fond of that interprets the events and characters of a film I love (for the purposes of this ask, A) as occuring in setting B. The awkward thing I have run into is that B disproves Literally All Religions, and two of the major characters of A are widely considered by the fandom to be non-practicing Jewish (one due to unreliable Word of God, one due to coding). The majority of sympathetic characters in this WIP, regardless of background, view the entities inhabiting the setting as dangerous natural phenomena rather than gods (since they lack sapience or agency), and a running theme is that all the things that make humanity what it is (including culture, art, history, etcetera) are absolutely NOT pointless, since they're what bind us together and give us hope and the drive to continue in the face of adversity (that said, this is not a story about religion). Is there anything else I can do to mitigate possible unpleasantness?
Jewish-coded characters from Fandom A in a Fandom B crossover fic where Fandom B disproves all religions
It is difficult to address this without knowing the fandoms, especially because I don’t understand how a setup can disprove literally all religions, but I’ll take a stab at it: I guess don’t look too closely at it? Don’t write the maybe-Jewish characters as overtly Jewish and hopefully that will prevent anything too depressing or alienating from occurring to Jewish readers of your fic.
--Shira
With the information given, I'm not really bothered too much. I typically don't enjoy stories that make Judaism explicitly false, but with that aspect of one of the originals not being the focus of your fic, and that culture/religion is not considered pointless, I'm not especially offended. If you spend more time on this fic, or if it grows beyond what you have planned already, you might consider tweaking the premise of the Literally All Religions are Disproven work, and making it more friendly to Jewish (and other) readers of yours.
Shira gave a good option: to not write anything into your work that makes the coding more concrete, and I suggest that if that's not the direction you end up taking, put in a little time to showing positive interactions with Jewish practice for your characters, to make the value of their Judaism explicit.
-Dierdra
















