Asian Steampunk

[the21bluedudes]

So I'm trying to create a Asian steampunk

My characters are mage detectives (think skuldugery pleasant) who have run out of money and instead have taken up jobs like coal mining instead to support costs.One day a their first paying client in a long time walks in and is assassinated after handing them a package. (tell me if this story sounds plausible.)

My question is this. How much culture is too much in Asian Steampunk if I'm too heavy with the culture then I end up just writing a book that no one outside Asia will get.

Btw I am asian so the lack of research may not exactly be my biggest problem.

Oh and one last thing, Asia kinda covers a really large chunk of land. Am I allowed to mix chinese and japanese culture? I know in Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff he did this (unintentionally I think) and it didn't go too well. I love some elements of Japanese culture better than Chinese and fusing them could prove tricky.

 

[Jabrosky]

Oh and one last thing, Asia kinda covers a really large chunk of land. Am I allowed to mix chinese and japanese culture? I know in Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff he did this (unintentionally I think) and it didn't go too well. I love some elements of Japanese culture better than Chinese and fusing them could prove tricky.

If you're Asian yourself (what nationality?), you might have an easier time with it than a non-Asian, especially a European.

I'm all for mixing together different cultures for fantasy world-building personally, but I say this as a white guy whose favorite mix is ancient Egyptian and sub-Saharan African elements.

 

[CupofJoe]

Write your story in the way you feel comfortable with it. The level and forms of Asian culture and Steampunk will work themselves out as you go along.
I like the "Film Noire" begins of the Story...

 

[Ophiucha]

I don't think there is really a limit to how much culture you can toss in, beyond having too much to tell a story in. Readers might not understand everything, but explain the things you have to and we'll get by. I might be confused as a reader by the mix-and-match style to designing the culture, but as long as you're writing otherworld!China instead of actual China, there isn't really anything wrong with doing that and it's certainly worked in a few stories.

It may work better for some readers if you make it clear that your world had more cultural mixing between the two than the Earth equivalents? A line of exposition about good relations and heavy trade with the 'islanders' or something? Just a thought.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Oh and one last thing, Asia kinda covers a really large chunk of land. Am I allowed to mix chinese and japanese culture? I know in Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff he did this (unintentionally I think) and it didn't go too well. I love some elements of Japanese culture better than Chinese and fusing them could prove tricky.

I don't see a problem with mixing cultures. I have a character named Kojima Hanako whose father is a samurai and mother is a kung fu master. In her case, she is of mixed blood.

I've learned a few Japanese martial arts and my wife is Chinese. I had lived in Hong Kong for three years and spent some time in China, Singapore and Thailand. Also, my parents raised some Vietnamese children for a few years, and I worked at the Korean International School in Hong Kong for two summers. In other words, I have exposure to several Asian cultures, so my fantasy worlds tend to have a section that is generically "eastern" on the east side of the world.

The west side is generically "western." I think fantasy worlds normally mix western cultures, with barbarians being celtic/germanic/norse and knights being more British but maybe with a hint of other European cultures. I don't see why it would be wrong to include non-European cultures or mix them.

My daughters are an eastern-western mix, so I'm all for this kind of cultural mix in a fantasy setting.

 

[Jabrosky]

I guess what really bothers the critics is lazy stereotyping. There's consciously mixing elements of cultures you know to be distinct, and then there's inadvertently getting those cultures confused because they're both grouped together as "Oriental" or whatever in media stereotypes. That latter issue could probably be addressed with adequate research though.

Of course, it doesn't help that the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans really do have a longstanding tradition of borrowing from each other.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

The irony of critics saying that blending non-European cultures is lazy stereotyping is that European cultures are blended on a regular basis.

I wouldn't blend Asian cultures in historical fiction, but for fantasy that takes place in a fictional world, blending any culture should be acceptable regardless of the culture. I could see a critic scoffing at a "samurai" whose traditions are not entirely Japanese-like, but still, no one questions an author who does his own thing with knights.

 

[Terry Greer]

Over in the west we tend to not hear of some amazing bits of Asian history (to base stories on). When I first heard about Zheng He's voyages I was completely blown away and wondered why we never get to hear about this stuff (probably because its not the west doing it - and it shows how some cultures were well ahead of us).
I could totally see an Asian Steampunk based around that historical setting and voyage (Including a massive 400+ foot main ship of the fleet!).

If you're not familiar with his explorations check out:
Zheng He - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Caged Maiden]

I sure hope Asian Steampunk is a good genre because I'm working on a project that could possibly be called Asian Steampunk. Our world is a sort of Hong Kong story. A melting-pot island off a mainland very much like China. The technology is steampunk with some magic thrown in and the politics are our own, but resemble the return of Hong Kong to China after many years of foreign influence. Our island is advanced (compared to the agricultural and somewhat socialist mainland culture) and a place where many cultures blend. No natives lived on the island before the colonization efforts and while it had a humble beginning as a penal colony, it's bloomed into a place where everyone is welcome and energy sources are limitless.

I think blending real world and fantasy is a wonderful way to lend authenticity to a story without relying solely on one thought process or culture. I think the reference book's failure was that it was poorly researched and mixed inappropriate things. For instance, if I wanted to blend an Egyptian feel to a steampunk novel, I wouldn't be detailing Mayan pyramids, I'd go with Egyptian ones, and I wouldn't be using a Greek pantheon of gods, I'd use appropriate (even if invented) ones. The biggest complaints I heard about the mentioned book was that people's titles were off the whole way through and some specific details he chose did a disservice to the story by being confusing, cheap supplements to plug information rather than being authentic, and there wasn't a purposeful blending feel, more of a mashed-together hodgepodge of elements people found offensive when expecting something that stayed a little truer to one specific culture.

Now, I'm not Asian, nor have I any extensive research into Asian cultures, but for the purposes of our story, we've based the mainland off China and the island off Hong Kong, changed a lot of details to make it a completely unique world, and used other elements to denote other cultures. For example, I was completely taken by Thai wedding ensembles for men and used them as ceremonial dress for our mages. I think it's okay to borrow from many cultures if your goal is to show a blended culture. Readers just need to know what to expect, rather than being surprised in a bad way. For instance, I wouldn't call our novel "A work of Steampunk, set in an alternate China" because our culture and mainland might appear disloyal to Chinese culture. It's maybe "inspired by" but I wouldn't even call it that. We have all colors of people on the island, from all over the globe, as a means to show how the island itself was a place of opportunity and therefore appealing to anyone looking for a better life. Traders came from everywhere to get their piece of the pie and I hope that shows in our using some English names, some Indian and Pakistani names, and at least a handful of Chinese names. Of course, it's a work of fiction and the story formed from a pool of brainstorms, but when standing back and looking, I could see how a reader might read more into the plot and characters than we ever intended.

I just hope that whomever reads the novel, they enjoy the unique place and people we invented and acknowledge it for what it is, a fantasy story with an Asian feel, rather than any sort of political statement about cultures to which we don't belong.

Thanks for sharing your concept and thoughts.