Meta Thoughts: reflections on using inspiration from RL cultures

I begin this essay as I am stewing on the latest community challenge: Describe an ancient civilization in your world and inclued a timeline.

Since I've only been writing this world into being for about 4 months, I haven't really done much with ancient history¹.

The starting meta inspirations for my world were:

• What if Mt St Helens blew up because a dragon was killed in battle there?
• What if Minaon civilization was established in the American west and rodeos incorperated bull jumping?
• What if magic acted in accordance with the laws of nature (ish²) and could be studied by science?

So I leaned in and borrowed...

• DnD's mechanics and campaign setting, Faerune, for: everything magic, the pantheon, celestials, and satanic/demonic. Especially dragons.
• Our Earth for geography and my culture in North America, where EVERYONE is from somewhere else. The dominant culture has the collective memory of a goldfish, but minority cultures thrive and have deep cultural traditions.
• The scientific revolution (1350 - 1750 ish ??). I'm a total science geek, I just have more fun with magic. And what's more fun than either : using scientific method to explore and develop magic. *evil grin*

I just felt that most fantasy settings were reflections of european culture in a way that didn't feel familiar to someone who's lived in a country where the oldest building in the city is 120 years old ⁴. And the scale of the geography in the American west is so amazing. How could that epic space not be perfect for an epic story?

Of course, before you say anything, right on the heels of these thoughts was, "wait, the oldest human building in Pheonix is probably Casa Grande. It's estimated to be what, 2 thousand years old?"⁵ And here comes the ethical complication: My culture is built on the subjugation of the origional inhabitants, and the majority of previous generations intended to wipe the historical slate clean. Fortunantly for all of us, those generations didn't suceed completely. But the damage is vast, the debt is huge. Part of paying that debt is treading with utmost care and respect when writing touches on our shared history (the facts not the fiction), and culture - because we have been influenced by each other.

So I started messing around with an area that was generally lightly touched by the native americans, joking to myself that I was putting the european immigrants on a reservation. That actually sparked a lot of inspiration, because it put severe limits on the resources avaliable, and really made magic a life or death resource.

Oh, but back to the issue at hand: Can I continue building a world partly based on North America as I understand it, or should I push off into full blown fictional world with the *hope* that I can avoid all the messy cultural ethics. Are these false choices? Probably there's no way to get off this ethical hook.

Coyote and Crow fortunantly came to my rescue with how to describe the indiginous human cultures. A team of game designers, all with indiginious heritage, wrote an RPG setting in North America (Makasing) featuring fictional representations of the major tribal groups. While their setting is far future (sans age of european colonialism), I felt like the beginning of their timeline could be sympatico with the age I was interested in. In fact, I was invited to use their material in developing my RGP setting.⁶

So invited to use their cultural material, but not welcome to elaborate unless I'm of indiginious heritage⁷. Fair. I have no problems with that.⁸

Now the puzzle that I'm struggleing with: how to include tribal folk in the goings on, without crossing the line. I'm developing a personal set of guidelines⁹:

• When addressing topics related to internal goings on, for example, in the Dine Republic, write as a sympathetic outsider: that the observations and assumptions made are not nessesarily accurate.
• Do include NPCs of indiginous heritage, as they would naturally be present and interacting in my setting. People come to trade, establish businesses, or travel to teach, learn, exchange ideas, or make political agreements, or push back / acquire territory, fall in love, etc...
• Do not use indiginous NPCs to define or elaborate on cultural insider knowledge - ie the significance and meaning of a ritual or artifact.

I started out with a rather whimsical "what if..": Dragons and magic; Mt Rainier and the PNW; Minoan bull jumping and American rodeos. I'm now writing from a somewhat deeper space: what if all that, plus we (immigrents and indiginous) could start over again, and be humans together¹⁰. ¹¹ But, you know, the deeper I get, the more fun I'm having. So I'll keep writing. All in all, I still love this whole Alt Earth/Faerun/Makasing mash up, in spite of the meta soul searching I need to do now and then.

1. aside from some petty larceny, and cloth for fabricating...
2. "ish" from the English suffix "ish" meaning "somewhat but not altogether unlike."³
3. also my nickname given in college days because, among other reasons, my maiden name is Isham.
4. Pheonix, AZ. Really. It's a farmhouse in Tempe. I'm not kidding
5. ok, maybe not that old. But older. I just looked it up, see Casa Grand Ruins National Monument
6. Implied in the preface of Coyote and Crow and confirmed by emails exchanged with the authors.
7. I'm not.
8. By the way, if any Anvilites out there ARE of indigionious heritage, care to colaborate?
9. This is not about casting shadow on anyone else, I'm just trying to find my voice here.
10. Well, ok, conflict does seem to be part of human nature, but I mean without huge power differences, i.e. european colonializm
11. Dang it, I got philosophical. I swear I am writing this in the morning. After coffee. Completely sober. Oh well, insert the appropriate comment about how all story telling is about understanding ourselves.