Noooo my precious idea (you could probably execute it better than me lol)

But I'll stick around and try, it's just gonna be a slog.

Pmed you. Hopefully that helps. 

Thanks for the reply. These are also great suggestions. I may try to start with something smaller before leaping into this idea. Maybe a short story is my best bet.

That definitely works too, and is honestly a superior connection. Thanks for that.

All right then, thanks, I feel so welcome 

Thanks! I find epics based in Theist ideas super fascinating. What I took from the moral story was that the squirrel was doing everything in his power to show his devotion, and the best he could do was the pebbles. The other animals make fun of him, but Rama sees his devotion and says that his love is enough. So I could see the materialism connection, but it made me think of the whole "blessed are the meek" lesson from the New Testament. I kind of want to play off of that with this story.

I chose south India because that's where these specific squirrels are located (Indian palm squirrel and Malabar giant squirrel.) I may have to take you up on helping me out with the Hindi cannon. I'm a complete outsider to it, I honestly didn't really know much about it until I did research for this idea. 

Those are some weird things to ask haha. I've never been officially diagnosed with autism, but my wife thinks I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum. Honestly, everyone is a little on the spectrum, more often than not. 

I'm not sure why you'd consider me a furry, but if you want to believe that about me, it's no skin off my nose. 

These were all extremely useful, I appreciate what you've shared.

Oh, I'm absolutely aware that the Warrior series is trash. But it's my trash;  some people really love The Bachelor or General Hospital ironically, and then that love shoots the moon and becomes unironic. For me, I unironically loved Warriors as a kid, and now with hindsight, I still love it, but I realize it's basically a soap with weird star-worshipping cats. I love to go back and read all my old RPs starring my awful, edgy Warriors OCs. Good times, simpler times for sure.

Like I said, I'm not Indian. I'm just a WASP that lives in the middle of nowhere, and really I'm more of a WAS. I was raised Protestant, and I quite honestly don't know as much about the Hindi faith as I would like. I'm trying to read up on it for this particular work.

I have trouble following through on my ideas. I have a lot of them, but committing to one is something I've always struggled with. I think I get caught in my own head, doubt myself, and overthink it. Then I stop. It's a cycle I'm trying to break, I do it for more things than just writing. I'm trying to be honest about it, and hold myself more accountable. I know it comes from a fear of failure - I get so invested in something, then I worry what people will think if I do it poorly, and then I quit. I really want to stop doing that. 

I have never written in the CYS format, nor have I ever completed an actual written story in my life. My experience comes from text-based roleplaying, post by post on forums hosted by sites like Proboards. That was years ago, I'm extremely rusty. I was less confident back then, so I hardly posted anything, afraid of criticism. But I want to be a better writer, and I'm tired of letting myself be limited by fear.

So here I am. I have put together a mind map of an idea I want to try out. Ever since I was a kid, I've loved fiction with personified animals as the main characters. Watership Down, Guardians of Ga'Hoole, the Warrior cats series. As long the animals were mostly behaving as animals do, but grappling with human social issues as well. The general idea for my story is about a colony of squirrels that live in a public park in Southern India. They believe that they are put on the Earth to be Servants to humans, as told in a specific tale in the epic Hindu writing Ramayana, of a squirrel servant to Ramachandra. 

I've got a link to what I have mapped out so far - it's not much, and I would love any feedback that I can get about what I have. Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks for taking the time to help me out. As an aside, I do not practice Hinduism, and I am also not from India. I realize that by writing about these topics, I may have unintentional biases that could potentially affect the story in a negative way, or that could potentially alienate some readers. I am willing to educate myself on the things I do not have direct, applicable experiences with.

https://mm.tt/1367131647?t=8Rz4uEGglG