Animals are my friends, and I don't eat my friends!This quote is attributed to George Bernard Shaw. However, the first time I ever heard those words they were coming out of the mouth of a character in an after-school special. It was one of those shows where a group of teens solve a mystery together, though I can't recall anything else about the plot. In fact the only thing I do for-sure remember was that one line of dialogue. The girl who said it wasn't one of the main characters, yet that simple, powerful statement had more of an impact on me than the rest of the show put together.
For the record, no: it did not turn me vegetarian on the spot. I didn't even consider vegetarianism (let alone veganism) until many years after I'd seen that show, but I can't help thinking that line had some kind of a subconscious influence, if only because I remember it so well.
I'm thinking about it today because the muse has been very kind to me and blessed me with a story idea in which the main character lives a vegan lifestyle. I'm saying lifestyle because he didn't choose to be vegan for ethical reasons. Rather, he has a psychometry-like ability to pick up images and emotions attached to objects. Because animal "products" result from the torture and death of animals, they carry intensely negative, painful emotions, so my main guy avoids contact with them.
At the beginning of the story, he's unhappy about this. He resents his ability because it sets him apart from other people, and he wishes he could be "normal" like everyone else. But then (since this is a romance) he ends up working with a perfectly normal guy who is fascinated by his ability and asks him all kinds of questions about it, and when he finds out why the main character avoids animal products, he decides that he wants to be vegan too. For ethical reasons.
The aspect about veganism is just one part of a larger theme about compassion vs. empathy, two things which seem almost the same on first glance, but which can actually be quite different. The main character's journey is one of learning to accept himself and his ability, to have compassion for himself and others, and the importance of doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do, rather than purely out of self-interest.
I'm happy with the story idea so far, because I think it gives both characters a nice growth arc and touches on themes that many readers can relate to, such as self-acceptance and feeling misunderstood. I don't know if it will fly with omni readers (or editors!), or if it'll ultimately come off feeling like a religious conversion story, but I guess that all I can do is start writing and hope for the best.
It got me thinking about character arcs, though, and the difference between having a vegan main character vs. having a vegan background character. As an aspiring romance writer, it feels important to me to bring vegan and anti-speciesist values into the story of my main characters in some way, because otherwise I'd feel I wasn't being true to myself. (I write clueless omnis in my fanfic writing, of course, and I adore the characters I write even though they are, sadly, clueless on this particular issue.)
Having vegan main characters can be a challenge, though. Only about 1% of the population is currently vegan, so it's a bit tricky coming up with plausible ways to populate my romances with ethical vegan protagonists. Obviously, that doesn't mean that it can't be done, and I'm planning a blog post that talks about ways of doing it. However, I'm also leaning towards turning this particular story into a series of novellas, and have the relationship between my two guys develop over the course of several adventures so that I can write a number of stories with a strong vegan ethic without sacrificing believability.
For a story that has an ensemble cast, though, I would think that having a vegan secondary character could be done both plausibly and very effectively. That one line from that after-school special had such an impact on me, I can only imagine how powerful it would have been if it had been a theme that got touched on several times throughout the course of the story. Or the story had been a series, and the vegetarian (perhaps vegan?) girl had been a recurring character.
The beauty of secondary "background" characters in an ensemble story is that they do not need to have in-depth character growth arcs. Or any arc at all, usually, unless it's a series that allows minor characters to "star" in their own stories from time to time. Normally the secondary characters are just a backdrop for the main characters in the story, though, and I see no reason why more of them couldn't be vegan. Characters like these can easily add an anti-speciesist message without affecting the overall plot, and those messages can be powerful. Like that one line, from an otherwise forgettable after-school special, that had such an impact on me. You just never know.
