Aura Battler Dunbine is the first thing that comes to mind, and makes me question just how extensive your knowledge of the format is. (And will also not be one of those Fantasies that "looks like every other Fantasy" by a long shot.) Heavy Metal L Gaim follows logically from that, stripping away the rest of the heavily "Fantastic" elements and looking rather like the sort of world that grew from the very end of Lord Of The Rings (Fantasy in the sense of Star Wars, then).
If you're desperate, there's Escaflowne or Fullmetal Alchemist, and a metric ass-ton of Magical Girl shows (I recommend Akazukin Chacha, but you may not like it).
(If you really want an Urban Fantasy that's both Japanese and a bit odd, try subbed Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger or Ninja Sentai Kakuranger. An ounce of demonstration is worth a pound of theory, and seeing something in live-action - before CG came in and ruined everything, so Mahou Sentai Magiranger is right out - is incredibly helpful in our line of work.)
...but I digress.
I was at a convention, went to a certain panel, and one of the guests said something that, in retrospect, seems so ridiculously obvious that I'm embarrassed to not have realized it. Look closer at what your friends are saying about "fantasy" - are they talking about plots or plot devices ("props")? Because the presence of a certain prop will sometimes pigeonhole a work into a genre. The specific example that guy gave was how introducing a starship of any sort turns any story into "Sci-Fi", regardless of the presence of actual science or no. Star Wars A New Hope, for example, is "Science? You'll find no science here, my friend. Move along", and yet it's consistently located in the Sci-Fi section.
(Incidentally, your New World Fantasy Setting would describe the Outer Rim Worlds pretty well.)
Also: come here and receive your free Dope Slap regarding the Jidaigeki and Shinto logic fail. It is precisely because that form and that (actually relatively minor) religion exist that they aren't extensively used in popular media - would you continue to use something that's set in stone in your cultural background, ad infinium, or would you get bored of it and continuously try something new? (And worse, the topic is Non-European and not World Medieval Fantasy.)
This is true of every culture in every era, to the extent that the then-present "climate" would allow it, and doesn't necessarily involve Canon Welding two cultures together. Tolkien wasn't reinventing a past for its own sake, but trying to build a new mythology England didn't have, right? Same basic idea.
(I've operating on the assumption that you want to do something literary with anything you've learned from this topic, as you've posted here rather than in one of the Media forums.)
edited 7th Apr '15 9:19:57 AM by DeusDenuo
Mastermind Rational
I didn't mean to make an impression that I'm interested mainly in Japanese constructed worlds. If you have other cultural perspectives, I'd be very interested in them, too.
Unfortunately, I haven't watched or read any of the anime and manga you mentioned (except the "desperate options"), so I cannot be sure about the following, but can they really be placed under a hypothetical "Standard Japanese Fantasy Setting" trope? From what I hear, they are all individually great at world building, but do they have overarching themes and motifs like the post-Tolkien Western fantasy? If so, what are they?
Regarding your question about fantasy definition, those of my friends who hold that attitude don't actually refer specifically to fantasy, but to Speculative Fiction in general, including science fiction, Science Fantasy, and so on—basically any story where fantastic elements are major plot points. From this point of view, I guess it's less about speculative elements themselves (whether magical or scientific), and more about world-building and placing human drama in the context of an invented world, but I cannot think of any Constructed World that was exactly like Earth but wasn't actually Earth in some way (well, maybe except Strangereal from Ace Combat, and even that one leans heavily towards Science Fiction).
As for my alleged logic fail, I don't presume to be a world expect on Japanese culture, but from what I know, the Japanese media producers in particular are very much into reusing something that's already tried and true—otherwise, we'd see much more innovation in, say, RPG gameplay design coming from Japan in the past thirty years. But that may be just me being bitter about my lackluster JRPG experience that isn't all that extensive. 
I didn't get your point about "Non-European Fantasy" not being "World Fantasy". I am happy learning about any overarching cultural trends that are not Tolkienesque English-language fantasy, and I am not implying that there is some kind of "worldwide fantasy setting" that is universal to every culture. Given the cultural diversity of real life, any such world would be, in the best case, a network of smaller constructed worlds that grow out of individual cultural traditions that produced them.
Your assumption is partially correct. While I am planning and already doing some world-building based on non-Western European cultural archetypes, I created this thread on this subforum mainly because when I searched for this topic earlier, I found most similar threads here, rather than anywhere else. Since my examples come from different media, I wasn't sure about posting this on a medium-specific subforum, like you suggested, and sadly, we don't have a board for discussing speculative fiction in all media.
No no, it's clear that you weren't looking for mainly Japanese works - those are just the ones I'm familiar with, and can properly recommend. (You do sound like you're looking for a wildly different take on the familiar tropes, though, and anytime anyone asks for them in a European-based language the standard answer is really just "watch some anime, here's a list".)
Since Dunbine and L-Gaim are both Tomino stories, I'd say Poor Communication Kills is the main theme there. The Sentai shows are generically Good vs. Evil; Zyuranger is more about the ancient times encroaching on the modern world, while Kakuranger is traditional beliefs (well, Yokai) that have been corrupted by the modern world. (There must have been a thing going on - this "modern is bad" plot describes most of the shows between 1985 and 1995.)
True, they are not "Standard Japanese Fantasy Setting" - they're the cultural takes on medieval fantasy, which is fairly specific to Europe, or just plain fantasy as a genre - and that's the point. You're very unlikely to find one made in Japan by the Japanese nowadays, as it's just something that everyone knows already. I mean, here you are, listing yourself as in Germany, and you're more interested in non-German works.
(I don't know what you plan to actually do with this information, but when you're writing Fantasy it helps tremendously to have an outsider perspective, as that keeps you from taking minor cultural things for granted. I can't tell from what you've said that you understand or are aware of it, that's why I'm repeating it incessantly.)
Frequently, the problem with exported media isn't the source, it's distribution (or lexical/cultural translation and financial considerations, if you like, and how that affects what "consumers" of the genre see). A pun-heavy work (like Akazukin Chacha) is unlikely to get a wide official release in another language, and if it does, either the translator was working some serious magic or it's successful for another deeper cultural reason. (Look up "Chinese Finnegan's Wake", if you didn't hear about it at the time.) This says nothing about terrible fan-translations, of course, which are a strange art unto themselves.
"Non-European" is inherently exclusive - we're automatically discussing things that aren't under a banner like that. "World" is about as inclusive as you can get when you're discussing people, or things they've created (and this is why the genre is "World Music", not "Non-American" - or "Pop" and not "Non-Rap"). Particularly since "Medieval" anything is going to be European-based anyway in the popular mind, so you lose nothing by saying "World Medieval Fantasy" except the unnecessary and unintended connotation of exclusiveness. (Semantics Fight! The best kind of Writer Fight! Also not one I should go around starting without saying so
!)
The reason you don't see Constructed Worlds that are identical to Earth (and aren't an Alternate History) is because that's a waste of both the writer's and reader's time. Why go to the length of doing all the prep-work if it's going to be almost exactly the same, after all - might as well flex a bit, and write something different if you're going to write. That said, Urban Fantasy has a bit of that, in order to stay "Urban".
(...! Oh! Dororo's another thing that's worth watching.)
...What sort of world-building have you got so far? It just occurred to me that we're talking about tropes and culture, when we could be talking about things specific to your work.
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
There's also Ancient Grome type and similar fantasy that takes cues from Classical Mythology instead of medieval Europe.
Mastermind Rational
@DeusDenuo: When I spoke of "Germanic", I meant it broader than just "German"
, including both Southern and Northen German, Scandinavian, and British cultural spaces. With that in mind, I am just as interested in a hypothetical "Standard German Fantasy Setting" as in the Japanese one—I even think that if designed properly, it would be very different from Tolkien's take and more akin to the Central European setting I mentioned in my first post. I think Darklands gave it a shot back when, but that's too little for me to go on, once again.
And while agree that extrernal perspective on a culture is very helpful to writing fantasy based on that culture, I also strongly believe that you have to fully internalize the values, concepts, and archetypes of that culture if you want to sublimate a solid Constructed World out of it. The best results at world-building are IMO achieved by applying the same principles you learn from analyzing and creatively modifying other culture's narratives to the "minor cultural things" of your own culture. Tolkien had that perspective from his studies of foreign languages and the Celtic and Finnish folklore when he set out to create a original British mythology—which is why his work proved so seminal and easy to imitate.
I'm not a professional writer (more of an IT expert here), so to me, "Non-European" conveys a very inclusive meaning: it's basically everything that isn't closely associated with Europe, which is a rather small part of the world, geographically and culturally. In my first post, I also further specify that I mean non-British/Germanic fantasy, as per my definition of "Germanic" above, so that is even more inclusive. And "medieval", to me, means any period in a culture's history between its ancient and modern times.
As I said earlier, I don't have a specific example of my own for this discussion. I started it mainly to get other people's perspective on my thoughts and hopefully learn of other subtypes of culture-specific fantasy settings that I haven't known about. But if you want an example, a while back, I was working on reworking several Eastern European myths and legends into a Tabletop RPG ruleset and module, but had to stop when I ran out of source material to keep the same content intensity as I had at the start. I'd like to get back to it some day, but I'm currently still in the additional research phase.
@Antiteilchen: You mean the Sword and Sandal subgenre, right? Yes, I would be interested in fantasy based on that, but unfortunately, none of the examples I know is actually set in a Constructed World rather than some variation of the RL ancient world with supernatural elements ramped up. Would you know of some?
edited 7th Apr '15 2:03:29 PM by Koveras
Fantasy writer turned Filmmaker.
First off, this whole thread so far sounds like a couple of crotchety old professors debating The Finer Points Of Twentieth Century Literature And Its Intersection With World Cultures. Which sounds boring, and shouldn't be. Let's change that.
As far as specific examples go, there's a lot of Wuxia stories that I would count as "East Asian Fantasy." Sure, there's a lot that take place in the real world — historical or modern — but occasionally you get original settings. Or at least they're vague enough that it's hard to tell.
A clearer example of "East Asian Fantasy" with an original setting is Avatar: The Last Airbender — which also takes a little inspiration from India, but whatever.
I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Middle-Eastern Fantasy. But there's probably not much, since the only example I have there is Magi: Labyrinth of Magic, which itself draws heavily from One Thousand and One Nights.
And that's one big thing I've noticed: A lot of the "original world" Fantasy comes from people whose own culture doesn't have much in the way of mythology. Again, Tolkien wrote Middle-Earth because he thought Britain didn't have its own unifying myth.
Plenty of Americans write Fantasy, I think, because America itself never had a medieval period of its own. The country itself was born out of the Enlightenment period, when science — not mysticism — ruled the day. So we pine for the "simpler" days back in Europe (because that's where most of our ancestors are from), where there is a lot of myth and mystery.
Also notice that, for those cultures who are steeped in myth and legend, they don't do much in the way of Fantasy because it's already around them. It's why you don't see a lot of original-world Fantasy coming out of real-world places like the Middle-East, India, East Asia, or even Africa. Latin America even has its own traditions, which come from a blend of Spanish conquest, Catholic religious imports, and the remnants of indigenous civilizations.
And then, when there is a Fantasy story themed off one of those traditions, it usually comes from someone on the outside who thinks "They're so cool!" — Again, see Avatar: The Last Airbender (an American cartoon) and Magi: Labyrinth of Magic (a Japanese manga).
Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.
Thanks to the constant conquests and colonization of foreign region by European powers, the world has always been influenced by them in one way or another. It all started with the Greeks, then the Romans, then the other Romans (what do you call the people from the Byzantine Empire?), then the other other Romans (HRI), then the remnants of the Romans (Spaniards, French, Germans, British, etc.), then the remnants of the remnants of the Romans (Americans).
Most other cultures and civilizations have usually kept to themselves (think China, India or Japan), conquered large parts of the world but failed to extend their culture (Mongols or Vikings to a certain extent), were too short lived to do any real influencing over the world (Aztecs, Mayans), or too weak to expand beyond small regions (African cultures).
Thanks to this, the history of Europe is seen as the history of the world, their myths and legends became the most popular all over the world, and their way of life became THE way of life of the rest of the world (see the Spanish Conquest of the American Continent, or the British influence on Japanese life in the late 19th century). Thus the standard fantasy setting was born.
As a result of that standardization, the other fantasy settings are seen as alien when compared to the European setting, therefore, they are rarely exported to the rest of the world, and when they are, they are seen as quirky and innovative. Of course, for the people who know about those settings, they are anything but innovative.
Not true. There were times in history where Europe was rather irrelevant. Before the times of Alexander The Great and Julius Caesar, the great civilizations were found not only in Mycenae and Athens but also in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China. After Rome fell, you forgot that the culture that actually was strong enough to influence the world while Europe was going through its "Dark Age" was the Islamic Empire. It was only at the time of the Renaissance and afterwards when Europe took its experience in warfare innovations and tried to conquer the world that it claimed that title with a vengeance and refused to let go.
Basically, Europe was not always the center of the universe, it was just better at being the center of the universe than everyone else was.
edited 7th Apr '15 6:14:18 PM by shiro_okami
Fantasy writer turned Filmmaker.
But I'd argue that even this is wrong. It's just that, right now, Europeans and Europe-influenced cultures (like in the Americas) are just really prominent, so we just assume that Europeans are more influential when, in reality, it's just another part of the cycle.
East Asia is on the rise, so is India, the Arab world might have a renaissance of its own just around the corner, and even Africa looks promising these days.
Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
No, its not just another part of the cycle, because when Europe became important again, it was during the times when the world was getting exceedingly smaller, and Europe was able to spread its culture more effectively during its dominance than any other past dominant culture. And currently, no other power has even come close to unseating it. If it will be unseated, only time will tell, but right now what I said is a true statement.
edited 7th Apr '15 7:36:56 PM by shiro_okami
Okay, fine. I was wrong. Clearly Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe.
Either way, my point was that the influence the European cultures have had over the centuries is the reason why there is such a thing as a Standard Fantasy Setting. As a huge portion of the world has been exposed to those cultures, we've adopted those tropes and conventions as the standard.
Also, I think what Aw Sam Weston said is true. The quirkiest cultures (or at least their descendants of the ones that are extinct) do not do much worldbuilding because their myths and legends are already very rich.
I imagine it's also possible that such fantasy works are rarely seen outside their countries of origin because the creators believe foreigners might "not get it".
Anyway, back to the OP: I'd argue against putting A Song of Ice and Fire in the New World Fantasy Setting. To me it's just another European fantasy setting, though I could be biased. However, I'd say Ursula K. Le Guin, whose works tend to follow Native American themes, would fit nicely into that category.
edited 7th Apr '15 7:40:47 PM by Lorsty
Since we can grant that every individual has a creative process that's unique to them, wouldn't each culture have a collective creative process that's unique? So, it isn't necessarily that there would be some equivalent of Arthurian Lore (or the Eddas, or something) becoming Middle Earth becoming the Much Imitated Too Much Generic Genre for every nation or modern demographic or whatever body of bodies of work that we're considering.
That said, Final Fantasy XII had some very refreshing sort of Middle Eastern and South Asian influences in its Ivalice.
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny was a sort of theo-punk fantasy novel, if that is a thing. The theology being played with was Buddhism.
Haroun And The Sea Of Stories is more like a genderswapped Down the Rabbit Hole and it is full of very very Indian whimsy. It's so very Indian. It's definitely an odd sort of contemporary fairy tale, so definitely not medieval as in some Bygone Era Made Of Codified Tropes, and it's just the one that I can name so it might not be a genre.
I'm guessing that you're looking for something like, what if Middle Earth were inspired by The Mahabharata, or what if The Tale Of Genji had magic?
edited 7th Apr '15 10:01:17 PM by Faemonic
Mastermind Rational
@AwSamWeston: You raise a very good point about standardized fantasy settings rarely coming from mythology-rich cultures. That is exactly what DeusDenuo tried to Dope Slap me about in the case of Japan. You seem to agree with me about the Japanese culture having enough original myths to draw upon that Japanese writers never felt the need to develop an entirely new mythos, rather than draw on their own folklore or the myths from other parts of the world.
Also, your mention of Wuxia is just what I was looking for! I knew about the genre, but I wasn't aware that there is a semi-standardized setting ("Jianghu") that is specific to this genre. I will try to study it closer.
@Lorsty: I see your point about Eurocentrism, but just because we Europeans have been shouting about our culture the loudest in the last few centuries doesn't mean that we should pay less attention to others. This is exactly why I find it interesting to look at world-building in other parts of the world—even though I confess that my idea of world-building is decidedly Eurocentric ("world building in the same fashion that Tolkien et al did it").
About ASoIaF, as I mentioned myself, it is very much a liminal work in my eyes, showing strong influence by the "Old World Fantasy", while also pioneering the sensibilities of what I call "New World Fantasy Setting". As it was the first specimen of that setting I know of, it's only natural that it isn't as clear cut as what came afterwards.
I haven't actually read much of Le Guin's works myself, but I don't think "Native American Fantasy Setting" and "New World Fantasy Setting" are the same thing: the former is aboriginal and the latter is decidedly Eurocentric ("New World" always implies the existence of "Old World"). Speaking of which, I finally remembered a great example of a non-European Constructed World that I couldn't recall before: Ehdrigohr is set in an invented world based on the various Native American mythologies, and only them (although the methods for its construction were, once again, Tolkienesque).
@Faemonic: Well, yes and no. While I love to see original worlds based on Indian or Japanese folklore and myths with no direct ties to the originals, from what I have seen read in this thread thus far, there have been many individual authors and works that do just that. However, only a few settings (like SFS and Wuxia) have so far become recognizable and reproducible enough to be found in works written by different people at different times. Given how young the Constructed World fantasy still is (a century old, tops), it is perhaps not surprising, but I think that the emergence of non-Western European varieties of it have been gaining steam in the past few decades and I'd very much like to observe it as it happens (and maybe even contribute what I can).
Ursula K. Le Guin's "Earthsea Trilogy" is very much a Polynesian-inspired constructed setting.
How is A Song Of Ice And Fire new world in any way? It is very clearly set in a European-esque place, with similar social structure to Medval Europe. The map of Westeros is even the UK flipped upside down.
My two-cent
I don't quite get what you mean by Eurocentric World Building and Tolkien's style of world building. His style of world-building is basically similar to what everybody did, taking European myth and add his own spin to it.
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About Jianghu genre, if you want learn a little more about the world of Jianghu, I believe that the other Wiki has a entry that give you a brief idea of what is it.
Believe it or not, Western equivalent of the genre....is actually Mafia....but with martial art and swords.
Yes, Wulin in Jianghu genre is basically the Mafia....with some genuinely fighting for good cause (Using martial art to protect the weak).
People don't go to authority because they are corrupted (mostly, in Jianghu story).
Authorities merely tolerate/ignore Wulin's presence and has no qualm about burst their asses if they become a threat.
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I am not sure how to phrase it well but....
If you want to break out of Euro-centric style, think less individualistic and more about honor and family (Including "Family" as in tight-knitted community.) I believe that this is because most Asian Culture is more....collective and family oriented than Western/European culture.
Consequences of your action doesn't just affect you but also your family's name and honor on the line.
Using Chinese as example:
If you pissed off the Emperor...The Emperor can order your entire family and relatives to death.
How many people would die just because your action? Long story short: A lot.
Story-wise: Chinese Hero can end up carry the entire burden of family history with him. Feud from grandfather's generation can continue on even to his generation.
Mastermind Rational
@washington213: It fits the narrow definition of a Constructed World. And depending on how you define "new", no "new" worlds have been invented since The Epic of Gilgamesh. 
@idiot: I understand your confusion about me always referring to "Tolkien-style Worldbuilding", but I don't mean anything specific by that. It's just that Tolkien's way is the only one I am familiar with, so I did not want to imply I knew "what everybody else did". If you say that all Worldbuilding is culture- and location-independent, then I'll believe that, as it makes my inquiries much simpler.
I have read up on The Other Wiki's description of Wuxia and Jianghu, and I do agree that it sounds a lot like The Mafia, which is probably why the term came to mean The Triads and the Tongs in modern vernacular. Still, I think that by the same token, you could interpret the Robin Hood saga as a gangster flick, and that Jianghu is just as close to Heroic Fantasy, with the core message being about morally upright common folk heroes standing up for the downtrodden by the corrupt authorities. That is a very distinct motif that seems to go through many narratives by different authors, and hence exactly what I was looking for. On a side note, I'd be very interested in how it emerged, in the light of our earlier discussion that all Constructed World-bulding is Tolkienesque and that cultures with rich mythologies and folklore generally don't partake in it. I can't imagine China being that poor on folklore.
And yes, I agree with you that non-Eurocentric Constructed World would be less centered on individualistic motifs. An archetypal European hero is a lone and autonomous Knight Errant, and a lot of traditional narratives focus on the struggles of an individual. I am not an expert on Asian cultures but I think you may be right in pointing out the importance of family and community in their traditional stories, and hence in any invented setting based on them.
If I may share some of my observations, as I read through the Russian folk tales and lays (specifically, the Bogatyr cycles), I traced a common motif of morally upright martial heroes loyal to the land and to the common folk, whom they defend from the monstrous enemies outside and the authorities' corruption inside. Interestingly, despite flat-out refusing to serve or even subverting the corrupt authorities at times, these folk heroes never try to fully supplant and replace them, like the Wuxia heroes. That attitude would have to make it into any constructed world based on these myths to feel authentic.
edited 8th Apr '15 1:12:13 PM by Koveras
Although the Japanese fantasy in general has pretty much a mirror of the Knight Errant, the lonely, brooding and brave hero on quest to do righteousness: The Ronin.
When it comes to comparing morals, something I notice is that Japanese fantasy in general seems to have a motif with placing your code of honor above all else, while European fantasy, while still very strongly connected to ideals of honor, seems more willing to go the way of Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Mastermind Rational
Indeed, the topic of rebellion against the order of things by its outcasts is very much ingrained in the Western fantasy narratives (not all of them, but many). It's interesting that you mention Rōnin, because for all their similarities to a Knight Errant, there is a crucial difference between the two archetypes. A ronin is always a masterless samurai, implying a past attempt and failure to fit into the social order, while a knight errant does not have any such requirements, and basically roams the landscape on his own, searching for evil to vanquish and damsels to rescue. It'd seem that, as the troper who dubs himself "idiot" pointed out earlier, the Western culture does extoll individual virtue, while in the Japanese cultural context, it always has connotations of failure (to fit into the social order/community).
Actually some Asian countries do have some authors doing Constructed world of their own culture. The problem is: It is seldom spread to other part of the world and is mostly self-contained.
May be due to self-depreciation, thinking that it will not catch on with western audiences because of being too fantastical.
May be due to lukewarm or lack of interest in it.
May be due to it being difficult to explain certain more fantastical concept(like Qi in Wuxia) in English. Believe it or not, there is such thing a Wuxia-babble. Kind of like Technobabble except with martial arts.
or may be just plain laziness to translate it.
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Oh, just for interest sake: Chinese version of heaven?
Sounds good to western audience but frankly speaking, it's imperial stuff all over again with officials debating with each other wheather to take action or not
Edit:
Chinese version of hell is basically a Courtroom and the setences are usually involve gore-level torture, to make thing worse: you can't die from it since you are already dead. The only consolation you have is: Unlike Christan's version of hell, you don't suffer forever.
Pretty shitty and horrifying.
edited 9th Apr '15 8:58:04 AM by idiot
*crotchety crotchety crotchety* 
I just noticed that we haven't namechecked The Hero with a Thousand Faces yet, for the archetype itself if not the cultural justifications for it necessarily.
edited 11th Apr '15 7:27:40 PM by DeusDenuo
Just dropping by to mention that another reason for the lack of non-European fantasy is because writers of color find it hard to get out of "people-of-color writing."
- Fantasy is EXTREMELY white-dominant. Not just with the writers, but with the characters. We barely see important characters of color, so we feel excluded from the genre because "nobody wants to see people of color in fantasy." Non-European settings and characters? REALLY exceptional.
- There's also the more insulting note that when we ARE in fantasy, we're often generic window-dressing (and very likely stereotyped). Alternately, we're a fascinating and well-written culture... who has to be saved by Mighty Whitey. I love Tamora Pierce, so it was really jarring when I read the Trickster series and found a gender-flipped Mighty Whitey story. I can deal with white-dominant fantasy, but fuck you if you try to foist a White Man's Burden plot on me. (Apparently Pierce realized this and started deconstructing it, but I'm way too angry about the first book to bother giving it another shot.)
- Writers of color have a much higher tendency to write about the real world (whether modern settings or historical settings) because of all the crap happening to people of color in this world.
- Some writers of color who try to write fantasy with a non-European setting even get told that "it'll be too hard to find an audience with [X-counterpart] world." Or if we try to write High Fantasy, we get told that people won't read a High Fantasy written by a black/Asian person, solely because we break the stereotype of "Asians write Asian stuff" or "blacks write about slavery." According to the higher-ups like editors and publishers, readers can't COMPREHEND the fact that Asians might not want to write about Asia, or that blacks don't want to write about slavery. Whether it's true or not is a debate, but being told that we can't write "normal fantasy" just because we're brown? Not the most encouraging message.
So yeah, just throwing that into the discussion—it's not just the fact that generic European fantasy is a dominant genre, it's that STAYS dominant by actively stifling change.
edited 13th Apr '15 5:17:11 PM by Sharysa
Does that stigma exist in just the United States or elsewhere too?
So this has been on my mind for a past few years: My acquaintances who not into the fantasy genre often complain that all fantasy seems the same to them, specifically referring to the Standard Fantasy Setting trope. I tend to agree that, if you don't look at finer nuances (like deconstructive elements), in many cases SFS is also a case of Medieval European Fantasy, and by "Medieval European", I mean "Medieval British" or, more generally, "Medieval Germanic"—because that was basically Tolkien's main specialty, from whom most fantasy authors have since drawn inspiration.
So I've been thinking whether there are other approaches to fantasy that emulate Tolkien not in outward details but in attempting to take cultural traditions other than Germanic (or Finnish) and transfigure them into original fantasy settings the way Tolkien did. What would define such worlds thematically and how would they differ from the SFS?
So far, I've got a beat on two possible alternatives to the Standard Medieval European Fantasy Setting. To clarify, I am not interested in worlds unique to a specific author, like Sir Terry Pratchett's, but in fantasy universes that share common themes in the way many post-Tolkien fantasy worlds.
New World Fantasy Setting
Not to be confused with Fantasy Americana, where the setting is specifically a fantasy-fied North America. Although probably not restricted to American authors, all of my examples come from them, specifically:
All of these display some or all of following thematic similarities:
Central European Fantasy Setting
I have less to go on here, but I feel this subtype is currently gaining steam. I don't have a comprehensive list of unifying traits for it yet, but I do think some can be found. It is a developing field that I am very interested in.
Others
I have some intuitive hunches about other possible types, but again, I have to little material to go on here—my examples may, in fact, very well turn out to be of that "unique to a specific author" variety that I am not interested in, rather than follow a general trend. Examples include Jade Empire ("Medieval Chinese Fantasy"—a bit iffy on this, since it wasn't made by a Chinese developer), GoldenLand ("Medieval Russian Fantasy"), and some others that either I can't remember or fall in the realm of Non-English Literature.
I am also quite interested in whether a "Medieval Japanese Fantasy" setting exists, but despite my extensive anime and manga knowledge, I fail to come up with a definitive traits list for it. It may be that I am too far away from the cultural milieu or it may be that Japanese authors don't approach world building in the way I expect. To me, it seems that between Jidaigeki and the extensive Shinto myths, the Japanese never felt a need to invent entirely new worlds based on them, but I am not claiming any authority on the topic.
I would be interested in others' thoughts on the topic, especially other possible types that I haven't heard about.
edited 7th Apr '15 6:34:08 AM by Koveras