Sao Njack is a primary character in Tears for the Moon God, and as he features in such an important role, I want to take a moment today to break down who he is, some of his motivations, and some background about him.
Katcyakin
Important to note is that Sao Njack is one of several characters who fall into a class of demigods called katcyakin, who have powers to alter probability in their favor or against others. The katcyakin are separated into two subclasses: Sun Men and Cloud Men.
Sun Men possess innate qualities mitigate damage to them and generally skew the probability of success in their endeavors in their favor. As they grow, their efficacy in the expression of that power increases. This may prevent them from being harmed from a fall that might kill or severely injure someone who does not have their gift, or make it easier to court a spirit for the purpose of learning powerful magic.
Cloud Men, on the other hand, project a heightened probability of negative events occurring outward, into their environment. The area of effect may increase as they learn to control their power, and unlike Sun Men, they can consciously control that power if they learn the appropriate skills to do so. Cloud Men are particularly dangerous when they are children, as they do not possess control over their abilities yet and their aura of misfortune may cause harm to others in their surroundings by encouraging accidents and illnesses to develop in their environments and the people surrounding them.
Sun Men are often seen as a blessing by their communities, while Cloud Men are seen as a curse. Cloud Men are often killed or abandoned shortly after they are born, as their communities don't know how to control their power while they are children, and the years of misfortune for their communities, together with the uncertainty surrounding whether they will ever learn control, make it untenable for mortal peoples to raise them.
Important to note: these two gifts are complimentary, and cancel each other out when a Sun Man and a Cloud Man are in close proximity, rendering both effectively human.
Sao Njack
Sao Njack is a Sun Man. He learned to be dissatisfied with his gift early in life because it made of him less a person than an idol to his people. He saw that he was often viewed as the answer to his people's problems, was sometimes excluded from games the other children his age played, etc.; with the result that he began to view himself as other and increasingly isolated. He believed his parents loved him, and saw him as a person and not an object, but could never extend that sentiment to those in his broader community as the people he was exposed to were so frequently enticed more by the idea of what he could eventually do for them than who he was, or what he wanted to do for himself.
In his life, his primary concern was with becoming human...knowing what it was to be vulnerable to the same things that humans so often were. This generated a complex in him which demanded he seek out more and more dangerous feats and circumstances in order to prove he could be harmed, in some way, and led to an emotionally complicated state in which hard as he might try, he could never really find what he was looking for. Ultimately, what he needed was a sense of community and understanding, which he couldn't quite have. This because he was the lone katcyakin among his people, and had never met another one. This isolation, as the sole katcyakin among his people, a person who was deeply misunderstood and often dismissed, informed his decisions throughout his time of life and freedom, and ultimately precipitated the decisions that led him to be reclaimed by the gods.
At the beginning of Tears for the Moon God, he has been reclaimed, and all memory of his life purged from the minds and souls of those who live in the outside world. No mortal remembers him, and the gods saw fit to lock him away. Perhaps the most personally catastrophic ramification of his taking and imprisonment: the one other person in the world who understood him absolutely, who was even like him, is still in the world and doesn't remember him.
Katcyakin as Allegory for Multi-Racial Identity
The katcyakin provide a window through which to see a version of the often fraught struggle of mixed race people in our communities. I myself am mixed race, and it was important to me to write characters who could be seen as just that. Sao's struggles are largely internal, as he grapples with the isolation, desire to overcompensate, and need to be seen not for what he is or what he might be able to do for others, but for who he is as a person. These are themes which are intimately familiar to mixed people who are often seen as a bridge between two worlds, sometimes even "the answer to racism", and who are at the same time accepted conditionally or otherwise by the communities to which we belong, and often are denied a seat at the table where it concerns conversations surrounding race and the experiences inherent in being non-white.
While I benefit from white privilege, as I took after my mother, many of us do not, and our lived experiences are inherently different because of that. What is nonetheless true is that we are often pressured to identify with one half of our being over the other, and that is often based on our complexions. It is also true that we very seldom happen to be in company of other mixed race people, and are never really the majority in the room. This is where that isolation tends to come from. This is also why I developed the katcyakin as a people of dualities, and in such a way that their lived experiences are different, yet they may find a concept of community, a shared experience, in each other.
In Sao Njack, I do not see myself, but a hyperbolic variation on the struggles I dealt with when I was younger, and the struggles I see others who are like me in that they are mixed race dealing with as well. I do hope that some of that struggle, the duality imposed by being of two or more cultures rather than being comfortably monoracial, might encourage others to identify with us, and the nature of our lives. As well, Sao's arc is about who a person who does not have a stable concept of self might become if he is thrust into power. This secondary theme is not tied to the first, but rather speaks to the concept of what may come of a person who progresses down a dark path associated with a misguided hope may be capable of if given influence over others.
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