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Having a problem with creation story for fantasy world

Maggie Black

New Member
I was trying to come up with some kind of creation/origin story for my fantasy world as it exists in the main part of the story, and have run into a bit of a race issue. I was thinking it would be cool if there were different hollows in this world that were each run by a family and had an animal emblem/representation, and the way that came to be was that there were individuals who were led from the ordinary world into the magical world by each of these animals, and those individuals started those families and used the animal that led them as their emblem.

The problem with this is that because my world TAKES PLACE ON EARTH and INVOLVES A PORTAL TO THIS MAGICAL WORLD and is going to be euro-america-U.K.-ish (Just cause that's who I am and what I understand and relate to), the only way for that origin story to make sense is if they were a bunch of white people all chosen by these animals to be taken to this magical land...that just feels weird, right? Like, here, white people, you are the chosen ones and you will be taken to this magical european land just for you...if this world that takes place on earth is basically just Euro-fantasy-dom, it's gonna feel like I'm ignoring the rest of the world...any ideas?
 

Insolent Lad

Maester
If your portal is located in Europe, then you have an excuse for Europeans going through it? My own primary fantasy world was likewise populated by folk passing through portals, two of them like poles on opposite sides of the earth. One in the Pacific, passing the very occasional Austronesian or Oceanic individuals, and the other in the Urals, so it has had a mix of 'European' and Turkic people going through it over a very long period. And Neanderthals before them! Anyway, this means that there are two different culture centers where they emerge in their new world, far apart.
 

Chasejxyz

Inkling
How long ago did people go into the portals into this other world? If it was a really long time ago, there might not even have been that many white people yet lol. If these portals ONLY showed up in Europe....that would be pretty sus. There was probably never a time where the majority of people on Earth were white people (ESPECIALLY during the middle ages with the plague and all).

Honestly I'm glad that you noticed that it would be Really Weird for it to only be white people, most people don't have enough self-awareness to notice that. If these people went into your fantasy world a long time ago, their cultures/religions would vary a lot from modern day [whatever]. As a writer, you're always writing people that aren't like you. You can't use magic, you aren't killing orcs, you aren't attempting to take over the world. Writing someone who's another race or ethnicity as you (or is queer when you're cishet) requires a bit of research, yes, but it makes your world more alive.

And it gives you so many more options, too! Like why limit yourself to ONLY animals from Europe? Would people brought there by polar bears think they're related to people brought there by grizzly bears? If the traveling happened in pre-history, then you can have chalicotheres and haast's eagles. You can even have different species of humans like there are in asoiaf!
 

Saigonnus

Auror
Make these portal appear randomly across the world. Then you'd have Asian people, African People, South and Central American People... people of all genders, colors and cultures. It could help explain the affinity some cultures have with certain animals. The "Jaguaros" of central Mexico in pre-columbian times, or the Inuit of Northern Canada /Alaska whose totem poles honored the animals of the region as protective guardians. Early Native American in the US in the southwest had an affinity to coyotes, and there are countless others throughout history. Why shouldn't your world reflect that diversity?
 

Queshire

Auror
Well, unless the plot of the story involves the fate of the entire magic world you could establish that it's limited to the part that maps to Europe. Maybe somewhere far off there's a Japanese hollow with a kitsune for an emblem?
 
It sounds like your setting is culturally Western/Anglophone, but that in itself says nothing about race. The Anglophone world is racially diverse. Why couldn't the people in your fantasy setting be?

Have you established when in history the people came through the portals? If this is a fantasy world, it could exist in any time: the present, the past, or the future. And it doesn't necessarily have to run on our time. If it's like Narnia, where hundreds of years can pass while very little time passes in our world, then your fantasy world's inhabitants could be descended from people who left our world in the twenty-first century. They could have come through in Europe or America and be a racially diverse bunch, because America today is racially diverse (it always has been), so is the UK, and increasingly, so are parts of continental Europe. And centuries could have passed in their new land while it's still the twenty-first century here.
 

K.S. Crooks

Maester
I had a thought that may be totally not what you're looking for. I thought what if the was a portal for each hollow/family. If they were originally set equal distance apart (ring formation) hundreds of thousands of years ago, or even father back on Pangea. But now due to continental drift the portals are in vastly different places, such as Europe, South America, East Asia, etc. Now the portals happen to be among different cultures and your story happens to be about one particular portal or group of people.
 

Solusandra

Troubadour
that just feels weird, right?
Umm...no? What you're describing is all over British folklore. If you're feeling racist and guilty that's not a problem of the story. The animals totems are going to choose the people they are most familiar with, so if white people are the ones living in the hollows and owning the totems then it only makes sense. If instead its a minority community bringing their totems to england and setting them up in their racial ghetto then they'd be the ones most likely to be chosen. It would only be weird if the community was mostly mixed race and only one race was chosen. Then you'd need to answer the question of why that race? Is one race sacrificing another? Is it a closed community inside a larger community? Does the choosing body choose by another characteristic that just happens to mostly appear in one race?
 

WooHooMan

Auror
No-go zone sound better?

Do you at least understand the thrust of my response to the OP's setup? Or are you just on about the word choice?
My rule of thumb is to never address one word responses. Especially when it’s an interjection like “yikes”.

To speak to your initial response, I think you bring-up a good point about addressing the apparent racial bias within the story.
To a divine spirit, I’d assume, they wouldn’t care to much about the race of the people - it would be like the difference between red ants and black ants to us. It could be address in the story that the divine beings chose the land and white anglophones just so happened to be the people living there.

Like, white Christians and black Christians generally don’t seem to have much of an issue with Jesus being middle eastern. It’s just understood that the messiah only incarnated in one location and that location happened to be Israel. Fretting about race seems to be something only humans do. Animals don’t do it. Nature doesn’t do it. So no reason to believe mystical spirits would do it.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
There is color and then there is culture. If you make your various families more or less like modern post-industrial Western white humans, then making some of them non-white isn't actually accomplishing much. I didn't take note of the OP's gender, but that would enter into the equation as well.

As others have pointed out, there's enormous cultural diversity in Europe, even today. Roll back a few centuries and you get even more. If the point of your story is to explore culture clash, there's plenty of raw material there. And you don't have to work very hard to find people of color within that narrative, going all the way back to ancient Europe. So if that's where you're headed, you have many pleasant years of research ahead of you!

OTOH, there appears to be a market for stories that have people of color in them but where everyone behaves more or less the same. I notice this mainly in recent TV shows. That's fine by me. The case can be made that showing diverse people operating in space (physical, cultural, economic, etc) that has traditionally been viewed as white has a role to play. So you can put someone with non-white skin into 18thc wig-and-flounce, call them duke or princess, and it's fine. So if that's where you're headed, go right ahead.
 

Puck

Troubadour
it's gonna feel like I'm ignoring the rest of the world...any ideas?

Put the same stuff in other countries? So you get elephant maybe by going through a portal somewhere in Africa or Mongoose for somewhere in India?

Also culture does not exclude colour necessarily unless you make it do so. Both the USA and (in reality) the UK are countries with long histories of immigration. Anglo-Saxons originally came from Germany / Holland remember - they were invaders of England, not the original population.

There have been black African people in England ever since Roman times - maybe only in very small numbers until around the C18th but they were present nevertheless.
 

Solusandra

Troubadour
Anglo-Saxons originally came from Germany / Holland remember - they were invaders of England, not the original population.
the Engles were the original inhabitants. The saxons were the invaders. They're now called anglosaxon because you cant find one bloodline in england without the other. it's also fairly disingenuous (or more likely ignorant) an angle to go with, given the anglo-saxon has been there for more than a thousand years without major upset. Very few ethicities around the world can say the same, being on average pushed around by someone every 200-500 years.
maybe only in very small numbers until around the C18th but they were present nevertheless.
Muuuuuuuch bigger numbers than most assume. I know teachers in history class are absolute shit, but invasions of Europe from africa and the middle east were pretty much constant for the last 4000 years and most of those invasions came with migrations only a year or two behind the conquest. Which picked up significantly in the 8-900's after a certain group consolidated the middle east. The reason you didn't see many non-whites in Europe by 1800 was that the crusades and reconquista spent from 1100 to 1700 systematically kicking them out of spain, france, itally and the entire balkins region of states. People love to ignore that the response was cause by the sacking of the Vatican and surprise victory at Tours france.
Many also forget (or never learnt) that there were a fair number of famous dark skinned knights who participated in tournaments and gladiatorial matches who we still have ballads, tapestries and merchandise pottery for.

But this is getting really off topic for the OP's discussion, and I apologize for doing that.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
The Angles were emphatically not the original inhabitants of England. They, like the Saxons and the Jutes, invaded the island after the Roman occupation. The Celts (Britons) were there prior to the Romans. But this whole business of priority and origins can mislead. Neanderthals were there before the Celts. Is the latter descended from the former? *shrug* It doesn't much matter.

As a former professor of history, I'm curious what invasions from Africa or the MIddle East can be dated to any century prior to Rome. It's not my era, so I'm certainly not claiming there were none. Just looking for specifics. I won't hold anyone to the "pretty much constant" phrase. Just a few examples. Also, a small amendment: the invasion of Spain by the Umayyads was in 711, so a bit before the 800s-900s. Also, neither the crusades nor the Reconquista took place in Italy or France (leaving aside the Albigensian Crusade), and what campaigning was done in the Balkans had nothing to do with race.

None of which is to argue with the general statement that the role of non-whites in European history has been systematically overlooked, at least outside of scholarly circles. (the reason why we know it's been overlooked is precisely because of historians who have researched the matter)
 

Puck

Troubadour
what invasions from Africa or the MIddle East can be dated to any century prior to Rom

The only really notable thing is more of a migration than an invasion. The Phoenicians established colonies in places like southern France and fairly extensively in southern Spain. They were originally from the middle east, although by Roman times their primary home was Carthage.

Back to the original point; I guess the point is that Europe has seen numerous migrations of various different populations throughout its history. The UK was originally very sparsely populated during the ice ages (most of it was under ice), then Neanderthals and the earliest modern humans. I suppose the earliest culture you could identify was Celtic & there is some debate over where the Celts came from (central Europe quite possibly). Angles and Saxons came fairly late to the party in the overall scheme of things.

Can you therefore align any original animal spirit mythos to any specific culture? Or would it make more sense to say it was truly ancient and cross cultural - more linked to a place and a particular group of people. The people change with each wave of new migrants - be they Roman, Saxon or Norman or even later groups of immigrants. And culture also changes. Buy an ancient, primal, spiritual presence may viably form a connection with any people who choose to settle in a particular area and embrace that land as their home.
 

Solusandra

Troubadour
As a former professor of history, I'm curious what invasions from Africa or the MIddle East can be dated to any century prior to Rome. It's not my era, so I'm certainly not claiming there were none. Just looking for specifics.
the greeks have several records of pre-roman invasions by north africa on them and their neighbors. They made particular note that another would happen every other generation and had been well prior to the recordings.
Also, neither the crusades nor the Reconquista took place in Italy or France
Yes, I used specific names for campaigns that happened after both regions were reconquered from the arabs, I apologize.
what campaigning was done in the Balkans had nothing to do with race.
That's not how the Ottomans viewed it. They were very clear in their writings that any race who couldn't defend its children from conscription didn't deserve to continue.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
>Can you therefore align any original animal spirit mythos to any specific culture?

Good question. I think there are two answers relevant. One is what the anthropologist would say, but the other is what the people themselves would say. The former would look to the similarities across cultures and would speak of archetypes. The latter would insist that their crow spirit wasn't at all the same as the crow spirit of those foreigners two valleys to the north. As a writer, I'm more interested in the latter because that's where color and texture come from.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
>the greeks have several records of pre-roman invasions by north africa
Sources? It's been a long time since I've studied ancient Greece.

As for the Ottomans, I misread your original statement to mean western Europeans campaigning in the Balkans. You meant the Ottomans. But the statement about not deserving to survive baffles me. Regular Ottoman practice was to install an overlord and lay on heavy taxes. Can't really do that if you've eliminated the population. Here again, specific examples would help clarify and ensure we're both talking about the same thing. Even the Mamluks, who regularly took non-Muslim children as slaves, converting them to Islam in the process, never undertook to destroy the populations who provided those slaves. They simply raided, or did business with raiders.
 

Puck

Troubadour
the greeks have several records of pre-roman invasions by north africa on them and their neighbors.

You mean Phoenicians I presume. Technically they would be middle eastern in origin. Also they were not really invasions so much as colonisation or attempted colonisation. They clashed with the Greeks occasionally who were playing the same game. It would be misleading to characterise this as "invasion" (which implies the invasion of a state by a foreign power). What we are actually talking about is the clash of two colonial powers - like between France and Britain in North America in the C18th. Hence you get conflict between Greeks and Phoenicians in places like Sicily. Neither Greeks nor Phoenicians were native Sicilians.

That's not how the Ottomans viewed it. They were very clear in their writings that any race who couldn't defend its children from conscription didn't deserve to continue.

That the Ottomans held 'racist' attitudes would be correct - but no more so than the Europeans of the same period. Ottoman racism manifested itself in a general assumption of Turkish superiority but not necessarily in an overt belief that other races were inferior in the sense that more modern forms of racism would do. The exception to that would probably be in Ottoman attitudes to black Africans which were more overtly racist.

However, the Ottomans ruled a large Empire that contained a mix of many different peoples. They made no particular concerted attempt to eliminate any particular racial group in their Empire until such incidents as (most notably) the Armenian genocide in the early C20th / late C19th. This and various atrocities committed in the Balkans were essentially desperate acts to cling onto a disintegrating Empire by a failing Imperial power.

It would be more accurate to say that the Ottomans believed in the subjugation of other cultures and in the superiority of their own particular brand of Islamic culture (which in practice was very secular in nature - not a single Sultan in their history ever made a Hajj). In many ways they were not really much different from the Holy Roman Empire.

They believed that cultures that could not defend their children from conscription by the Ottomans did not deserve to survive and should be replaced by the Ottoman idea of Islamic culture (which, needless to say, was not the same vision of Islamic culture as was held by many other Muslims - especially the Persians). But culture is not the same as race. They did not believe in exterminating all the Serbians; they believed in dismantling their culture and converting them to Islam. Although many people are unaware of it, people like the Serbians existed fairly happily within the Ottoman Empire and voluntarily contributed military forces in support of the Ottomans on various campaigns during the middle ages. Indeed, it was the Serbians who saved the Ottoman Empire after the defeat of Bayezid by Timur. The Serbians were pretty much the only significant military force that remained loyal to the Ottomans at that time. Were it not for them the Ottomans would have disappeared from history in 1402.
 
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