@king-ofconfusion​ asked:

So im writing a fantasy story that mostly takes place on an island between canada and russia. The magical community is hidden from everyone else and their main land/school is on this island, and even tho there are smaller places all over the world this is the main place. Theres some sort of translation spell so everyone understands eachother but i dont want it to seem like american washed or smth? race isnt a problem plot wise but i also dont want it to be so background that it seems all white?

I’ll focus on the part about the translator, as when you say “American washed” I assume you mean the Anglocentric (English-centric) bias that could arise with the concept of a universal translator. Mod Lesya will talk about your…choice of location for this school.

As a bilingual & linguist who thinks in a quasi-combination of languages, I think I’d like to see an idea of a spell that translates to that individual’s unique linguistic interface; if your story has multiple closed POVs, you can show hints of that by having different POV characters hear dialogue differently—maybe language-unique lexemes (vocabulary) are being borrowed! Maybe there’s code-switching! If your story has a more omniscient POV then you might have a part that explains how the spell works, or show through ambiguities in dialogue that shows that characters are hearing dialogue differently depending on what languages they understand. 

• As an example, think of how a character who speaks German, an agglutinative language, might create new vocabulary by stringing together morphemes, and a character who doesn’t speak an agglutinative language would hear that via the spell as a literal-translation-of-words-strung-together. 
• Think of semantic differences/ambiguities that the spell might not (or might! Up to you!) catch—I give an example on the differences between answering negative yes-no questions in English vs. Japanese here. 
• You might even get cases of characters who speak languages that may name borrowings with prototypical labels (English does this, but other languages like Spanish do too). An example is referring to masala chai as “chai tea.” What happens if a Hindi or Urdu speaker hears this? The translator may either literally translate and return “tea tea,” or it might apply context and return “masala chai.” Here’s some more food for thought on borrowings & prototypes! 

Assuming you’re writing this story in English, there will unavoidably be some bias towards English as the basis for your translations. But hopefully this approach gives some ideas for challenging English-as-default by representing forms and meanings that don’t exist in English, and not assuming English is necessarily the prototype for these translations.

~Mod Rina 

Here’s the elephant in the room Rina tapped me to answer: you’ve chosen Indigenous land for a magic school, without acknowledging any Indigenous peoples in your worldbuilding or ask.

The arctic is not uninhabited. That stretch of land between Russia and Alaska (Canada does not go that far West) is the region of Yupik peoples, both on the Russia and Alaska sides (it’s the only language family that is found in both the old and new world), and the Iñupiat peoples, just on the Alaska side (as far as I’m aware).

If you do mean Canada, then you’re getting onto the polar ice cap… and this is also not completely uninhabited. This territory would belong more to Inuit peoples.

In short: you’re at a pretty large risk of having this school be on Indigenous lands, and whether or not it’s a colonial outpost or simply a safe haven depends on how they go about it.

It is possible that there is a genuine, respectful relationship between the Indigenous peoples and the school. The school would have to surrender its land ownership to the people local to the region, respect hunting grounds, not muck with the ecology of the place, and help the people of the region. They would, essentially, acclimate into Arctic life, creating a cultural hybrid between their old customs and what is required to be in the Arctic.

But if you start to have this school try to recreate European ideals, foods, and have them insist their way of life is the only way that can exist, then your magic users have become colonizers. It’s, unfortunately, that simple.

The thing about this island is: Indigenous peoples would’ve known about it, probably before these magic users did.

Arctic peoples also crossed between Russia and Alaska “late” (after the land bridge sank), and very well could have found this island in the time they travelled by water between the two countries. Late is relative, because it was still at least ten thousand years ago.

That land could very well have been inhabited before the magic users got there, which means they would have had to be extremely respectful to not colonize that land. As I said above, it’s possible to be respectful, but requires the magic school default to Indigenous voices when it comes to how to live there.

If it’s uninhabited, then it’s likely known about. These magic users probably don’t have enough magic to completely alter the wave patterns of the ocean, which an ocean-navigating Indigenous people would absolutely know how to use in order to find land (this is one of the ways many peoples navigate at sea).

The other option is the school is actually Yupik or other Arctic peoples founded and uses their belief structure, which would require an intense amount of working with the peoples in question to inform your worldbuilding. 

To be clear: you still need to account for Indigenous peoples and research/talk to members of the peoples I listed above. It’s just going to be less work if you stick with a European magic system and have them be visitors working heavily with Arctic peoples, instead of having the magic system be based in Arctic peoples’ customs.

I’m not from the Arctic. The Arctic has a unique colonization history that I’m not very well educated upon, beyond the fact it’s unique, recent, and suddenly devastating. I cannot advise you on this any more than saying you are on Indigenous lands. I would strongly suggest you look at all of the other “remote, uninhabited” compounds you’ve created to see what Indigenous peoples live in those regions, as well. 

The idea that the earth is mostly barren and unused and lacks meaningful human presence is a colonialist myth that is used to perpetuate the concept (white) Europeans can move in without consequence. Many harsh climates have Indigenous peoples living there, and any magical communities need to do similar practices to the ones I outlined above.

Make sure they’re not taking land, and make sure they learn how to respect it the way the local peoples do: sustainably. That’s the bare minimum.

~ Mod Lesya

@mariamiirabela submitted:

I (white) am writing a fantasy novel where there aren’t fantasy races, just humans who can use magic (MHs) and who can’t (NMHs). NMHs can’t use magic by happenstance, long story short they were sabotaged when the creator was bestowing magic on their creation. MHs and NMHs developed separately after that, so there’s a pretty clear geographic split. now the major MH and NMH empires are locked in conflict over some stolen magical artifacts, and my main character (NMH) has a sort of unknowing romeo-juliet with a MH pretending to be a NMH for espionage purposes.

is it offensive, or even disrespectful, to have broad cultural groups inspired by real-life groups (at the scale of west africa, eastern europe, central asia, etc.) that occur across the MH/NMH divide, with distinct cultures on either side that are influenced in terms of architecture and clothing by geographically analogous cultures? or is that too “this culture gets magic bc they’re better,” and in that case, should I redraft the creation story so that somehow each culture has separate populations of MHs and NMHs, since the separation is essential to the plot?

You answered your own question, friend. Go with the latter. Redraft. 

~ Mod Rina

This is a guide specifically about fantasy worldbuilding. WWC gets a lot of questions around “I’m mixing two cultures together, how do I do that?” and this is to explain both how to do that and when you very much should not.

For starters, you should avoid blending empires with their surrounding properties, especially if there is recent political strife along those lines. This is why Japan/China/Korea (or even China/Tibet) mixes should not be done. For more information on that, take a look at Research:Large to Small Scale, Avoiding Homogenizing East Asian Cultures, & Paralleling Regions Appropriately.

Next up, mixing Greece/Rome with far-flung cultures gets a little bit eyebrow raising. Unless it was a direct trading partner/conquered property, Greek/Roman cultures do not mix with non-European cultures. The Greek empire only went to the Northern regions of India at its very peak, and that is limited to the ancient world. Rome stopped in the Middle East, so, again, you don’t have the cultural backing for a mixing of anything outside of its borders. 

Depictions of Rome and Greece in ancient literature shows other ancient cultures found them quite backwards, and were adverse to mixing with them. By many standards they were very backwards, and it’s only Europe (and, as an extension, America) that revered them to the extent they do. Asia and Africa had no reason to see them as advanced, because they made many more technological advancements than either. North America and Oceanic cultures hardly interacted with either, and had both their own technological advancements+ cultures closer by to borrow advancements from, instead. 

Outside of that, cultures are born out of the environments that made them. As a result, places with wildly dissimilar climates and resources pools will not be able to blend harmoniously unless you’re taking a modern analogue society where globalism has happened. This is plain old because resources only travel so far, and people are more likely to build culture around resources they have easy access to (even well-established trade links can lead to people re-creating things: Han purple and Egyptian blue point to an ancient trade link, but they were made with local materials processed differently).

Roman architecture exists because the Romans had access to copious amounts of concrete materials/marble and lived in the Mediterranean, which got very hot summers, heavy rains, and not a whole lot of cold. As a result they created structures that worked for this, which included open airways, pillars, easy to clean floors, shade, and ventilation. Places that lack these resources will not be able to replicate Rome.

Their resource pool was very specific to their regions, and there’s a reason Rome had the rule that anybody who did’t live like Romans were slaves: it was really hard to live like a Roman, and they wanted their slave pool as large as possible. 

Different cultures with different resources formed in wildly different ways, and might not even have anything similar to Greece or Rome. Because of this, you need to look really close at why culture developed the way it did. If it’s because they had extremely dissimilar resources pools, it’s wise to not blend the cultures (or at least not think they’ll look anything like their original cultures) 

Which brings me to value systems. Cultures put value on different things. Each culture ends up with a base philosophy for what they esteem and how they use resources, which proceeds to influence how it develops. Architecture has meaning to it. So does what colours you use in different applications. Because these things are sacred and/or practical for certain social orders. “Sacred” in cultures ends up becoming a shorthand for “this ritual helps us survive.”

There is no such thing as “aesthetic” when you get down to the root of each single item, because that aesthetic has a practical purpose. There is also no such thing as a “solely religious reason” under the same logic. Cows have become sacred in most varieties of Hinduism— because cows (and oxen) have been the main farming animal in the Indian subcontinent for millennia. They provide milk for sustenance, power for ploughing fields, and dung, which can be used as a floor polish and, when dried, a source of fuel for fire that gives off a more even heat than wood. As a single provider for crucial elements of agrarian life, their sacredness developed from their practicality. Having cows roam freely meant absolutely everyone could have access to an efficient cooking fuel.

Chinese brush painting has meaning. Jade sculpture has meaning. Pagodas and sloped roofs and gates have meaning. The philosophy, environment, history, and present circumstances of a culture is built into every. single. little. thing. about that culture, meaning you cannot just change it out.

Unless you learn the very root of culture, their values and stigmas and honours and shames, you cannot modify it accurately. Cultures survive because that was the best way to respond to the world at the time. A long-standing culture such as China’s has to be functional and incredibly well suited for the environment, otherwise it would not have survived. There is something about Chinese culture that works extraordinarily well for it to perpetuate itself, and you cannot disrespect that.

Learn the “why” of culture. Learn how it came to manifest and the reasons behind its manifestations. Study the geography and resources available to the people at hand. Know a culture so well you can explain how it works in real life and how your world’s history parallels the circumstances that created a similar culture in fantasy.

Only then will you be able to pull it off with respect.

~ Mod Lesya

@stillmeadows asked:

I wanted to write a fantasy story with a type of humanoid species. But I kind of wanted to make their skin and eye color and general appearance due to the climate and geography of where they live. Anything I should avoid or general advice?

So the main thing that drives skin tone is the amount of vitamin D people receive. If your humanoid species relies on vitamin D, then you’ll be working with human limitations for skin tone. If your humanoid species relies on something else, you’ll have to figure out those mechanics.

Very few foods produce vitamin D, so the primary source humans get is through their skin. Darker skin blocks out vitamin D, while lighter skin lets more in. The trade off is, light skin is more susceptible to radiation and therefore is more prone to cancer (key term: more prone. Dark skinned people can get skin cancer, too. Evolutionary advantages aren’t perfect). Vitamin D is critical for calcium and iron absorption, hence why kids who don’t get enough sun develop rickets (de-calcification of the bones).

As a result, the weaker the sunlight in a person’s natural environment, the lighter their skin had to be to survive till reproductive age (and in the case of people who can get pregnant, survive the pregnancy itself). In places that receive lots of sunlight, darker skin is an evolutionary advantage because the person is less likely to develop cancer and sun poisoning. 

The Inuit are an exception to this, because they receive ample vitamin D from the fish in their diet. Their migration to the north was fairly recent, as well (10,000 years which is nothing in evolutionary terms), but they don’t have any particular advantage to losing the darker skin just because they don’t need the sun to receive vitamin D.

The same is true for eyes. Dark eyes have slightly more protection against the sun than light eyes. It’s not absolute (the genetics around eye colour are terribly understood, and you can get so much eye colour variety I’d take this with a grain of salt), but it’s a factor. 

When it comes to body characteristics, people in cooler environments have a tendency to hold more fat just because they need the insulation. There are even some studies that show torso size is indicative of race (source: http://www.livescience.com/10716-scientists-theorize-black-athletes-run-fastest.html), which, when you consider the general cultures of nations, makes a certain amount of sense. Walking long distances in a shorter time is an advantage if you’re hunting, while broader torsos are better for heavy lifting.
Basically, the principle is to figure out what these people rely on to live… and also know it’s not perfect. Human evolution works in generalities, and it also works on “is it a bug or feature? yes”. So despite these super broad strokes, there will be lots and lots and lots of exceptions. A Gaelic person will have more DNA in common with an Arab-Egyptian than another Gaelic person a town over, as my sociology prof once told me.

In general, try to avoid animalistic comparisons for darker people. If you have animal comparisons for all the groups, that’s one thing, but if it’s just for one particular skin tone you’re going to run into trouble. There is so much historical context for that I would rather not get into details. But if you start implying Black and Indigenous people (including Australian Aboriginal, Native American, Ju'hoasi, Polynesian, the list goes on) are various predators you have some huge issues. Many of these groups were actually covered to hunt legally under big game licences. 

For example, if you had every member of the humanoid species be “cat like”, that’s one thing and is a relatively safe comparison. But if the lighter members of the species were “cat like” and the darker ones were “monkey like”… you’re getting into very, very offensive territory. Take a look at various historical codings for PoC and get a general list, then preferably avoid those comparisons (if you can’t, make them apply to everyone).

Hope this helps!

~Mod Lesya

Hello!

I am writing a fantasy story and am worldbuilding. The planet is earthlike in nature (liquid water, oxygen atmosphere, etc). The people on the planet (humans) were created by the four gods that created the planet (earth, air, fire, water deities) and the people were born from the land which they inhabit. To clarify, people living in a tropical rainforest climate have dark brown/ reddish brown skin to blend in with the trees while people living in a desert climate have beige-y bronzed skin to blend in with the sand. 

I study evolutionary biology, so I’m using that to help create the races of people on the planet. They are adapted to their environments, accounting for skin color, muscle tone, eyesight, etc (kind of like how animals adapt to their environments, but not in a derogatory way or anything) Each race has their own culture stemming from the geography and the resources available to them.

My problem comes when trying to name people/places/things. My first instinct is to draw upon existing languages and adapt them. Ex: tundra/snow inhabiting peoples speak a language similar to existing scandinavian/russian/eastern european languages and tropical inhabiting peoples speak a language similar to pourtuguese/spanish or telugu/malay/javanese and so on and so forth

However, I’m trying to make the cultures of my peoples unique, drawing upon multiple cultures and my own imagination for inspiration and not simply coding one specific race or ethnic group. How should I go about naming people and places of different races without alluding to an existing culture? Is that even possible? For example, would it be rude to draw upon traditional west african languages for inspiration of naming places and people in a tropical setting if the culture I create is nothing like the culture of west africans?

Or am I just over analyzing things? *sigh*

Howdy, @thebiomaster! 

There are plenty of worldbuilding and culture-coding articles on WritingWithColor (look in the tags), but in regards to your primary concern of naming things, there is a subject that I don’t think we’ve gone over too often: phonotactics. 

Phonotactics is basically …The “rules” of what can be a word in a given language. It’s a study of the patterns and constraints in a language’s soundset, a sort of quantifying of why “vlim” could pass for a word in English but “mtar” couldn’t.  If you look up, for example, ‘Spanish phonotactic constraints’ you can find breakdowns of what consonant and vowel combinations occur and do not occur in the language, and even syllable patterns and vowel-to-consonant ratios. With some reading on phonotactic constraints, you can get the vibe of a given language and use that as a scaffolding to make up unique names that sound like they come from a real language, capture the ‘vibe’ of a given language, and yet not be an explicit (or obvious) copy. 

Now, which languages would you want to pick for which cultures?

Naturally, you would do well to NOT pair cultures that have a rocky history with one another (for instance, I would not by any means use a French-based language on a Vietnamese-like culture), but picking a language based off of shared climate/terrain and not shared culture, is completely legitimate.  There is study on the correlation of climate and language, after all. For example, look at the work of Caleb Everett, correlating tonal languages with humid regions. 

After doing this, if you wanted to take linguistic world-building a step further you could consider the terrain of your world and identify the conquerors, the traders, and the isolationists within it, and look at the geography of the world and locate the places where these different cultures are most likely to interact and thus have a transformative effect on the languages in the regions they most commonly interact.  Decide whether there is an attempt in some nations to standardize its language(s), such as through an official language or a universal writing system.

- Rodríguez