How can I properly write a tribal fantasy without offending anyone?

I'm working on series called the guardians of geo'kai where a 5 boys are chosen to become the new protectors of magea. The setting of magea is basically in the tribal stages with a few shizo tech here and there. Each of the tribes are based on certain tribal or indigenous cultures like Polynesian/African, Celtic, Mongolian (with a few Chinese and Japanese elements), Greek, and mayan/ native American. I know a bit of the culture behind a few of them all but people keep asking me that they have to be accurate to the culture representing. However, I'm not sure if that's the case since these are fynari were talking about (if you're wondering what they are, basically fair folk but more like Little Bit Beastly winged insect people.)

Bluntly put, you can't.

There's always going to be someone who gets offended, and some people do it not because the work is something that is worth being offended about but rather because they simply like getting offended (or something).

If you want to make sure that as few people as possible get offended then simply make the tribes in your story have their own history and place in the world you create, make them inspired on the real-world tribes or societies but markedly different from them and only inspired, not based with a few details edited for the sake of not being identical. Then you shouldn't have issues with it.

Also, there are excellent fictional representations of just about any historical culture you could name, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to read some of them. Ursula Le Guin's "Earthsea Trilogy" (the books, not the movie) is an excellent example of a "Polynesian Inspired" island based culture.

edited 14th Sep '16 2:34:16 PM by DeMarquis

The difficulty on this question lies in part on something you can't control. Someone, somewhere will always find an excuse to be offended. When it comes to culture someone is always bound to complaint about your artistic license.

However, if you do want people familiar to the source to be more likely to be accepting of your changes, you should try to preserve its original spirit.

For example: Anansi is a trickster god(spirit?). There are hundreds of ways you can write a mischievous god. Go wild. But if you portray him as a serious, boring and by-the-book kind of person, it will be off putting to those that know him. It's not "wrong"; but it would feel out of place.

edited 14th Sep '16 2:44:03 PM by Nightlikeday

this is pretty ironic but....i can't read. well i can.

That's a damn good voice to text package you have there, then.

Who cares, frankly. Write what you want, regardless of what anyone else wants. Your story should, first and foremost, be for you, not for anyone else. Someone's always going to get offended by something.

One should never give up trying to improve one's writing. Make a good faith effort to do the best one can, that's all anyone can expect.

Bump reasons: need more advice and questions

edited 30th Oct '16 12:10:14 PM by ewolf2015

Try not to just bump threads unless you have something else to say. If you're bumping this thread because you've tried the suggestions that have already been indicated and you had problems, say so. If you're bumping because you're still not clear on how to do some of advice you've been given, say so. If you're bumping because you want more advice, say so. As it stands, nobody reading this thread has any idea where you are on fixing this.

The process Kazeto describes above is what I do with all of my cultures- there's big problems in even non-Earth set fantasy with fictional cultures being overwhelmingly European, so I base them off of a mix of non-European cultural elements, and some original elements that I didn't get from any real-world cultures. If you do this right and the culture keeps evolving as you fill in the gaps during the writing process, the end result shouldn't resemble any real world-cultures at all. And if they deal with any wholly fantastical elements, such as fictional creatures, magic, or nonhuman races, the culture will grow beyond its inspirations even more. Try changing the reasons why they do some things that you've taken from some real-world cultures.

Don't overthink it. Nothing is set in stone, and you're not going to have this culture all built in one day. If you're still worried, get your notes together and show us.

So, this isn't going to be awesome to hear, but...

Genre writers tend to be extremely trope-aware, and very few of them are familiar with TV Tropes. In fact, they're probably more trope-aware than someone who's primarily read through TV Tropes as their "homework."

That just isn't how they learn 'em.

I've seen the advice "read a hundred novels from a genre before you try to write one in it." Reading a several-paragraph description of a trope and looking at a list of novels where it appears will enable you to recognize when it's being used and provide you with a language to discuss it in, but it won't make you understand it.

You'll understand it when you read a couple dozen stories in which it is used.

Regarding fantasy counterpart cultures... these are dangerous. They can give a lot of things you write the appearance of being commentary on the real-world version of the culture, even when the idea of making that comment never consciously crossed you mind.

But your story isn't taking place on earth in a real-world culture's mythology, it's taking place in a fantasy world with elements inspired by those mythologies. So instead of trying to get it absolutely perfectly accurate, go back up the other side of the uncanny valley and make it clear the people in your story are not intended to be members of real world cultures.

If you want to do this right it's going to take a lot of homework. Read a lot of mythology from all across the board. Read legends from India, Africa, the Americas, but also read up on Greek and Norse myths and some of the more supernaturally charged Judeo-Christian stories. Develop a sense of how all sorts of different people viewed the supernatural and the divine and how it colored their perception of the natural/physical world around them.

Mix that in with stuff that is various degrees of separation away from actual real-life mythology. I remember rather enjoying "Sketco the Raven" essentially a novelization of a collection of Native American myths. Take note of some of David Eddings' prologues in the Belgariad, where he tells stories that feel remarkably mythical without actually being the myths of any real-world people. Take note of how Avatar: The Last Airbender does a handful of fantasy counterpart cultures without seeming to have upset too many people.

That kind of research should set you up to understand ancient mythology will enough to write fantasy cultures that inhabit a middle ground where you can use the influences of real world cultures to create groups with distinctly different flavours from one another without simply dropping real world cultures into your story whole, and attracting all the problems that follow from that kind of thing.

edited 1st Nov '16 9:01:27 PM by ThePaul