I was working on the map for my story, and I decided to share my creation on a few sites.
It was not received well; people hated it for reasons I'll get to in a moment.
Before I go on, I want to share some context about my story.
My story follows a person from our world who gets reborn into another world. As she grows up, she discovers some strong similarities between this new world and where our world was just before the first world war. As the war begins, she realizes that it will probably turn out the same way our history did, and so her self-proclaimed purpose is to prevent all the fallout that led to second world war and all the tragedy that came with it.
With that in mind, the map I drew was mostly historical Europe, but also mirrored East-to-West.
But people hated this map.
Now, part of this was because I didn't explain the context properly; I largely implied that it was just a typical fantasy world, and made no effort to explain that the main character was from our world.
But even on the sites where I shared the map with the proper context, I didn't get any favorable responses.
Now, *I* think that having a mirrored world is a great way to approach what I'm trying to do; it makes it clear that it's not some time travel or alt-history shenanigan, but it also can be similar enough that the main character genuinely feels that history could repeat itself. But I'm not seeing that kind of response from people. People seem to think that I need to make it a full-on alt-history, or a fully original world.
I don't like those ideas. If it's an original world, I can't see anyone being willing to put their life on the line to try to prevent WW2. If it's an alt-history, then it just gets weird every time I make something different from our history. Especially since I am adding magic to this world, (and having alt-history-magic-WW1 makes my story a bit too much like a certain other story; one that people will already be comparing mine to.)
But maybe I'm just too close to this to be able to see the problem.
So is it just me? Is this actually a bad idea that will turn people away, people that actually would have loved my story if it had an original map?
Or is the negative response coming from a lack of context, and I'm putting too much weight into the opinions of people who wouldn't read this story anyway?
Can I reasonably have an "alternate world" for my story that lies between alt-history and fantasy? Or will people only accept it if it is one or the other?
It was not received well; people hated it for reasons I'll get to in a moment.
Before I go on, I want to share some context about my story.
My story follows a person from our world who gets reborn into another world. As she grows up, she discovers some strong similarities between this new world and where our world was just before the first world war. As the war begins, she realizes that it will probably turn out the same way our history did, and so her self-proclaimed purpose is to prevent all the fallout that led to second world war and all the tragedy that came with it.
With that in mind, the map I drew was mostly historical Europe, but also mirrored East-to-West.
But people hated this map.
Now, part of this was because I didn't explain the context properly; I largely implied that it was just a typical fantasy world, and made no effort to explain that the main character was from our world.
But even on the sites where I shared the map with the proper context, I didn't get any favorable responses.
Now, *I* think that having a mirrored world is a great way to approach what I'm trying to do; it makes it clear that it's not some time travel or alt-history shenanigan, but it also can be similar enough that the main character genuinely feels that history could repeat itself. But I'm not seeing that kind of response from people. People seem to think that I need to make it a full-on alt-history, or a fully original world.
I don't like those ideas. If it's an original world, I can't see anyone being willing to put their life on the line to try to prevent WW2. If it's an alt-history, then it just gets weird every time I make something different from our history. Especially since I am adding magic to this world, (and having alt-history-magic-WW1 makes my story a bit too much like a certain other story; one that people will already be comparing mine to.)
But maybe I'm just too close to this to be able to see the problem.
So is it just me? Is this actually a bad idea that will turn people away, people that actually would have loved my story if it had an original map?
Or is the negative response coming from a lack of context, and I'm putting too much weight into the opinions of people who wouldn't read this story anyway?
Can I reasonably have an "alternate world" for my story that lies between alt-history and fantasy? Or will people only accept it if it is one or the other?