The Effects of Hunting On Family Dynamics

Not entirely sure if this belongs here, but here goes:

A project I am working on involves a large rural family whose members have been targeted by a large criminal organization for almost three hundred years.

The reason is because, under certain conditions, the bodies of anyone within this family can be converted into crystal that will enhance the physical and magical powers of anyone who consumes or even holds it. This has led to them being relentlessly hunted to be petrified into large amounts of that power-enhancing crystal to be sold.

My question is this: How would this affect the day-to-day dynamics of their family life?

If you need more details:

They are a large clan with many, many members all distantly related to one another and live in an out of the way rural area. The organization's attacks over the years have decimated them and left their financial health in ruins—-they were once a prosperous farming clan but are essentially this world's equivalent of "hillbillies" who live in the woods and wetlands and despise outsiders.

Another detail if it matters: This world is a fantasy one (elves, dwarves, magic, gods, etc) but with pretty modern technology, late 2000s level.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Aug 13th 2020 at 5:26:23 AM

Depending on what you mean by "the day-to-day dynamics of their family life", the answer would be "nothing". The daily dynamics of a loving family are pretty universal, and largely unaffected by outside forces. Family drama is family drama, how mothers related to their children, or siblings to each other is driven by basic feelings that are likely to be very recognizable by your readers. Now if you mean how would being poor and hunted affect their quality of life, that's a different issue. They have to remain hidden, disguise their identity and trust no one outside the family. It would be very isolating, with no prospects of improving themselves or achieving any life goals outside of the bare minimum of existence. They would suffer from stress related illnesses, maybe alcoholism, although they can't let themselves act out of they might come to the attention of the authorities. I imagine they would feel compelled to move every couple of years.

First of all thanks for responding. I expected this to sit here for some time.

Anyway, yes you are right. My question was more along the lines of how being poor and hunted would affect quality of life...although I do think that family dynamics play into it although perhaps less than I thought. The stress of things would definitely cause tension within relationships, but also affect how they relate to one another.

I suppose it would be better to ask how being hunted affects their interactions with the world and each other.

If it helps, they still live mostly in and around their ancestral lands.

It would probably act to greatly intensify their relationships with each other (both positively and destructively) and would greatly decrease their engagement with the outside world. One thing to consider—how do they find people to marry and have children with? They must have an answer to this to have survived 300 years.

There are two answers to this actually. The first is that there are people who have met members of this family and fallen in love and decided to be married. Although it is a hell of a sacrifice—they are very secretive and despise outsiders with a passion. It means giving up your contacts with the outside, leaving behind everything and facing a near-eternal distrust from the other family members, because you will always be an "outsider" to them.

And it's not entirely wrong—you'll never have the sense of panic and desperation they have as to what will happen if the organization gets their hands on you. But those who do weather this will marry into the family and have offspring.

The second way is...well, I'll be blunt. They practice incest on a regular basis, though it isn't played for shock or to be purposefully disgusting. It is to the protagonists who meet this family, but to them it's just a way of continuing their line and finding a partner to settle with, just like anyone else. What keeps birth defects down is that while all of them are related, they were such a large clan before the bad times came that the distance in relation has been enough for them to avoid that for the most part. There are some exceptions, but they shrug it off.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Aug 7th 2020 at 8:44:56 AM

That's going to have a significant impact on their health over the course of a few centuries. But what I was getting at was how do they meet outsiders to begin with? What process do they use to ensure these outsiders aren't spies or potential turncloaks? They must have some sort of system to have survived this long.

Yes, there definitely are more than a few with birth-defects and the number increases over time. It's just not as widespread as it should be, both because of the far-flung nature of the original clan's genetic relations and plot.

As for how they meet outsiders—-they do go into towns and cities to gather supplies and sell the wares they make or do odd jobs for money. The world is a modern one (the tech level is 2017-ish in nature) but they live in a rural area and so their behavior isn't seen as too crazy or out of the ordinary.

They do have a great distrust for outsiders as I mentioned, but sooner or later someone is going to get tired of seeing the same faces over and over again or become attracted to someone in town and then begin a courtship. Depending on circumstances, it could go badly or result in another infusion of new blood into the family.

The final part is that they actually don't have a system to avoid spies or traitors. In truth, the organization that has been hunting them could have wiped out the bloodline a long time ago if they wished. But the villain who controls it is trying to...well, conserve their prey by only petrifying certain people to allow the other to reproduce so that a constant supply is maintained.

Apart from that, the family has learned to make use of traps and fight their hunters, and they do have a guardian entity who scares off and in many cases kills others who try to come at them with malicious intent.

So...there's a lot of differing reasons why they are still in existence, lol.

One side effect of "intensified" relationships is that it might heighten abuse dynamics within the family. We're talking about a mostly isolated community that strives for self-sufficiency. Those who fight, bring in supplies and maintain contact with the outside world (including other branches of the family) would wield more power, especially compared to members who are ailing or physically or mentally disabled.

In this kind of closed circle, it's easy for abusers to hurt vulnerable members of the family. The pressure to keep quiet would be immense. Nobody would want to be the selfish troublemaker who brings the whole family down: even if they speak up, they'd probably be told to tolerate or "forgive" their abuser because it's better than tearing the family apart, and the latter has worked so hard and done so much for them, so it's only fair if they're quick-tempered and controlling sometimes, right?

On top of that, it would be physically and emotionally difficult for victims to run away to the dangerous, unfamiliar outside world, especially since their abuser would've gotten to decide who gets to interact with it on the regular. The idea of being caught and betraying the whole family would be more frightening to the victim than simply enduring the abuse they know. And on the extreme end, you might see branches of the family descend into cult-like behaviour as power-hungry individuals force the people around them to go by rules and routines that have less to do with survival than with maintaining their stranglehold on their victims.

It's not inevitable, mind. It's perfectly possible for a family in this kind of environment to keep a healthy dynamic based on mutual trust and respect. But the odds are pretty heavily stacked against them. You can kind of see this in, say, Indigenous communities in North America and Australia who spent generations being "hunted" through residential schools, mass incarceration and forced labour practices and are now still dealing with a heavy dose of generational trauma leading to issues like widespread alcoholism and domestic violence.

This was very helpful; thanks for really delving into how that sort of twisted dynamic could form and the list of examples of it's manifestation were excellent.

It's weird because this sort of thing is exactly what I wouldn't have expected. I suppose my idea was that everyone just became ultra-pragmatic and put aside any sort of power games or unnecessary attacks on others in the family in favor of not being subjected to a Fate Worse than Death.

Not to bring it up unnecessarily but the part about physically or mentally disabled members of the family being especially vulnerable in this abusive dynamic ties into my concept that they regularly practice incest. I'm trying to avoid that part being played up for drama or disgust/shock value and more like Deliberate Values Dissonance, so showcasing a practical problem might go well to juxtapose against the moral disgust shown by the protagonists who meet the family.

Um...anyone else?

Is there some sort of ritual where outsider boyfriends/girlfriends are brought before the guardian entity and if they don't get brutalized they pass the test?

I actually hadn't thought of that! It would be a good idea considering that one of his powers is Mind Manipulation so I suppose he could compel them to spill any traitorous or evil intentions. Then again it wouldn't always be an option since he goes into long periods of hibernation, leaving the family to their own devices.

Anyone else? Sorry, just trying to keep the thread a little active.