What Fantastical Mileu hasn't been Fantasied?

[Harpo]

This forum has plenty of its own fantasy RP stuff in the Lounge, and I’m guessing there might be other online message boards (excluding fan fiction) with similar things. So perhaps collectively it’s all part of an unrecognised ‘forumiverse’.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

I guess there are two traditional sources for fantasy settings: real-world cultures, and the mythologies of those cultures. I've encountered a lot of fiction set in British fairylands, and a little set in Russian fairylands or Japanese-ghost-story-lands. Suspect it can get a bit appropriationey if you base a fantasy setting on someone else's actual current religion.... What little I've encountered of Native American / First Nations mythologies seem to follow a bizarre and fascinating sense of narrative logic very different from anything else in the world. But I'd feel a mite itchy about pinching it.

 

[Guttersnipe]

If the mileu is fantastical, I'd say I've never read a fantasy about Lemuria or Mu.

 

[Harpo]

I guess there are two traditional sources for fantasy settings: real-world cultures, and the mythologies of those cultures. I've encountered a lot of fiction set in British fairylands, and a little set in Russian fairylands or Japanese-ghost-story-lands. Suspect it can get a bit appropriationey if you base a fantasy setting on someone else's actual current religion.... What little I've encountered of Native American / First Nations mythologies seem to follow a bizarre and fascinating sense of narrative logic very different from anything else in the world. But I'd feel a mite itchy about pinching it.

Pinching it?

that’s theft....... it implies somebody no longer having it

 

[CTRandall]

it implies somebody no longer having it

That is precisely the danger when playing with someone else's culture. For hundreds of years, Native American culture was reduced to either the 'noble savage' or just plain savage by films, serials and novels. The only version of Native American's that was known to most people was a simplified version of the semi-nomadic tribes of the Great Plains who rode horses and hunted buffalo. Native Americans had to fight hard (and are still fighting) to regain control of their own narratives and identities.

That doesn't mean an outsider can't write about Native American mythologies (in my opinion, at least). It's just that an outsider has to be careful about how they do it.

Which is all beside the point of the OP. I don't think India has had much of a fantasy treatment, and it is a culture that seems bursting with possibilities.

 

[C3nobite]

I've always thought that Ottoman Turkey or the nineteenth-century Arabian Gulf had rich political conflicts and mileux that would make them really amenable to fantasy stories. Andalusia during the Reconquista has also struck me as a good candidate. Too bad I write science fiction...

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Another entire category: the animal world! Adrian Tchaikovsky seems to have that all to himself these days, but it used to be a more common source of inspiration. (Furrydom aside.) The last couple of decades have been a good time for "ethology", or the study of the natural behaviour of animals. So, alongside the visual imagery, there's a lot of sociological material going begging. Ringtailed lemurs would be a good one- picture a battle where warrior queens duel whilst carrying infant twins strapped to their backs, as the men dance about sluicing perfume everywhere....