Now, I’ve talked a bit about this nonsense before, so I’m not going to spend too much time talking about why the whole campaign for “representation” in fiction is stupid. In brief, anyone who feels some sort of personal need for characters who look like them is pathetic. All that should matter in fiction is if it’s well written and entertaining, and a writer shouldn’t feel pressured to including a whole checklist of things in their story because “muh representation.”
You don’t need someone who looks like you in fiction, and every writer has the right to decide exactly what they want in their stories, whether that’s college ad level diversity, or ethnostate levels of uniformity.
However, if you do decide to put something into your writing for representation’s sake, then freaking do it well. Don’t insert something purely to hit a diversity quota, leaving it cringe and embarrassing.
There are no shortage of Jewish writers out there, but I can barely think of any who write Jewish characters worth a damn. The stereotypical weak, neurotic Jew was largely a creation of secular Jewish writers. You almost never see actually religious Jewish characters in fiction, and certainly never a tough and religious Jewish character.
For reasons we can only speculate about, even the rare stories featuring tough Jews who can actually fight, like Fauda and that Inglorious Basterds movie, we can’t get a single major religious character. It’s almost like there’s a fear of Jews who can both fight and believe in G-d. The time of being a weak, fearful, homeless minority, scared of our identity, is over. Let our fictional representations show that.
Jewish characters are also commonly used by these pathetic Jews in name only to push their other progressive agendas. The most recent example is the trainwreck known as The Last of Us 2. The creator Neil Druckmann, an irreligious, probably atheist Jew of Israeli origin, decided to create a lesbian love interest for the game’s main character, and of course made this love interest Jewish (and Israeli too, I believe.) Then he proceeds to shove random Jewish references and imagery into the game so he can claim representation, but he just cheapens everything and makes it a mockery. This Jewish character wears a hamsa bracelet, just because he “wanted the character to own her identity.” Own her identity, while openly transgressing the Biblical prohibition of homosexuality? Fuck right off. That character, like most secular Jews (especially outside of Israel) where’s her apparent Jewish identity as a skinsuit. A way to say “wow, look how unique and ethnic I am!” while spitting on thousands of years of tradition that our people gave their lives to preserve.
And of course there’s a Holocaust reference in the game, in a conversation about coming from a line of survivors. This game takes place during a zombie apocalypse, by the way. I don;t see what the two have in common.
For extra fun and stupidity, the characters randomly find a synagogue at one point, where, for unfathomable reasons, there’s an uncovered Torah scroll just sitting on a shelf. (Probably because he assumed that the general audience wouldn’t recognize a properly covered one?)
It all just screams “look, Jewish stuff, how neat!” while not understanding or caring about a thing, making it into a cheap stunt that’s cringe and embarrassing for us real Jews. Honestly, if I could, I’d forbid secular Jews from writing Jewish characters.
Oh and that Jewish character is also killed off to provide motivation for the protagonist’s violent rampage later lol.
My exasperation with the absolutely dismal portrayal of Jews in fiction–by Jews–is part of what prompted me to start writing Light Unto Another World. As msot of you might be aware, I overall prefer non-human character. There have been zero actual humans in any of my other books so far, and I’m not sure if there will be again after this series. But once the idea came to mind, I knew what I had to do.
Light Unto Another World is first and foremost a fun isekai (portal fantasy) adventure story, but it is also a celebration of the type of person Jews are meant to be. Uriel Makkis the embodiment of the Jew that was, and will be again. A man of unshakable faith in G-d, and who is more than willing to fight, to do whatever is needed, to protect those he cares about and sanctify G-d’s name. I’m honestly not sure if such a character exists anywhere else in fiction, let alone in the fantasy genre.
Again, I don’t think this sort of character is necessarily “needed”, and no characters of any particular race, religion, ideology, etc, is “needed” for a good story.
But so long as pathetic, leftist, faithless people like Druckmann are our there writing shallow, weak, faithless Jewish characters, I feel like I have an obligation to do things right, to provide a truly ideal example of a Torah Jew to the world, one with a warrior’s spirit, like our ancestors had.
No one else will do it, so I’m happy to step up to the plate. Where it all goes remains to be seen, but I’ve already written four volumes, outlined another six, and my plans for the series will likely hit or exceed twenty volumes.
You can read a bit more about the series here, and I’ll have yet more to share from it over the next few months as we approach the Kickstarter campaign.
To get new updates, including new artwork, before anyone else, plus extra bonuses, you can subscribe to my Patreon& Subscribestar pages. Anything I can earn there will enable me to put our even more books and stories, at the highest quality levels.
I hope I won’t remain the only observant Jew fighting back in this culture war, but remaining alone in this won’t stop me. Big things are coming.
Writing, Ascendant 