Cultures of the imagination...
Feb. 9th, 2006 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranOne thing I keep struggling with is a sense of guilt about projecting my vision of real-world cultures that I know little about.
It's a somewhat random thing. The Bear Story is set in an outrageous pastiche of Fantasy Russia, based on nothing more than reading Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and watching Russian Ark, and I have no qualms about that (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anghara may differ). On the other hand, I'm much more sensitive about using Asian settings which I'm more familiar with. I think probably it's something that annoys me when I see it other writers' work and it makes me feel guilty when I see it in my own. There's also a set of writing that I used to enjoy, but that now just seem silly and empty, now that I've travelled more and learnt more of the different cultures depicted.
The escape clause is to make the story cultures deliberately more different from the real-world cultures, but that has its own drawbacks. A better solution would be to just get over it, and write about the cultures of my imagination, and not to worry about the gaps between those cultures and the real ones. The best solution of all, of course, would be to just learn enough about the real world cultures to be able to write with authority. As every traveller knows, the more you travel, it turns out the less you knew.
It's a somewhat random thing. The Bear Story is set in an outrageous pastiche of Fantasy Russia, based on nothing more than reading Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and watching Russian Ark, and I have no qualms about that (
anghara may differ). On the other hand, I'm much more sensitive about using Asian settings which I'm more familiar with. I think probably it's something that annoys me when I see it other writers' work and it makes me feel guilty when I see it in my own. There's also a set of writing that I used to enjoy, but that now just seem silly and empty, now that I've travelled more and learnt more of the different cultures depicted. The escape clause is to make the story cultures deliberately more different from the real-world cultures, but that has its own drawbacks. A better solution would be to just get over it, and write about the cultures of my imagination, and not to worry about the gaps between those cultures and the real ones. The best solution of all, of course, would be to just learn enough about the real world cultures to be able to write with authority. As every traveller knows, the more you travel, it turns out the less you knew.
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Date: 2006-02-09 12:37 am (UTC)And as for Asian cultures... what can I say about it? I took on China, both ancient and modern.
Research is your friend...
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Date: 2006-02-10 09:44 am (UTC)Ah. That would be giant flying jellyfish and magic powered by part-payments of people's souls.
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Date: 2006-02-10 05:38 pm (UTC)