Worldbuilding Speed Round Series: Marika Answers Culture Coding Qs
Making real world culture equivalents while making them unique in fantasy
pokeblader3 said:
How do I handle coding cultures/religions after real world cultures/religions while still keeping them unique and not feeling like just being their real world equivalents? Some of my fantasy cultures have several real world cultural influences, which works fine with architecture, clothing, and names, but I feel like combining real world religious traditions is insensitive.
Is it better to just have a fully made up fantasy religions with a few dressing elements taken from the inspirational cultures’ religions, like temple architectural design or religious stories (like say a character retelling the story of King Solomon and the baby as a proverb)?
I recommend reading authors who have been praised for their culture-coding based world-building and taking notes about how they have represented a culture while also what is different from the culture(s) that serve as the original inspiration. I have already on this channel recommended Tamora Pierce, Nahoko Uehashi and N.K. Jemisin. I think the perfect balance of coding is when the reader can obviously tell the sources you are pulling from, but it’s not so exaggerated that it makes a member of that culture feel as though it’s their culture directly being portrayed in unflattering or unbalanced ways. Some creative extra bells and whistles that show you’ve thought about how fantasy tropes, plot devices and so on can be reflected in your coding are also nice. Beta-readers, to this effect, can be very helpful in instructing what is or is not offensive, as well as what resonates and what doesn’t.
- Marika.
Cultural diffusion is a thing— look up real hybrid religions that were made in deeply religiously diverse areas to see what sort of patterns you can establish, see how people mixed multiple kinds of traditions together for tension-easing ends. This can give you an idea of where to put in the fantasy tropes and what liberties have already been taken with any one religion while it was considered respectful enough to be practiced
~ Mod Lesya
How to decide on coding / story cultures
writerandstudent said:
How do you decide when a story would benefit from coding? Like which culture would be best to influence the fantasy world/characters? Like I have a lot of ideas for stories, but don’t want all my main characters to be the same or to be stereotypes/harmful to a culture. So far, my process for picking as been, is there a stereotype that could be seen in this character’s role/power in the book? Yes? Don’t use it. Which I feel isn’t the best way to do it. Do you create world, story, or character first?
Answered here: https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/110647537818/i-am-a-white-writer-and-my-story-is-settled-in-a-made
In addition, my very arbitrary bench lines are:
1) Will this particular coding make the story more interesting?
2) Am I interested in these cultures? If I code a culture I don’t care about into a story, it will likely make for a boring experience from the reader’s perspective. However, I must point out that you are almost always employing cultural coding when writing fantasy or science fiction. The only metrics that differ are which culture(s) and to what degree of accuracy? Examples below:
Are you writing a King Arthur-style fantasy? Then you are coding that story based on Arthurian legend.
Are there fae/ derivations thereof in your story? You are employing Gaelic coding.
Lord of the Rings clearly pulls from Anglo-Saxon coding.
George Lucas used Buddhism when coding Jedi philosophy (albeit exceedingly poorly). Please see the response to the previous ask for further details.
- Marika
Coding without the culture in fantasy
helpmeobijuanyouremyonlyho said:
Hello! I’m helping a friend design a Dungeons and Dragons style world and she plans to give each race their own kingdom. She wants each kingdom to be loosely based on a real life civilization from history so I’ve been using your blog a lot to help her so far. However the big issue we’re running into is that you’ve discussed the issues of making an entire fantasy race look like one real life ethnicity, however wouldn’t it also be wrong to just take the culture without the people as well? I know that most civilizations are as homogeneous as usually portrayed, but it seems like erasure to make them “color-blind”. Is there a respectful way to do this?
How does one divorce people effectively from a culture? How can you portray the culture in a way that won’t make your audience think, “Oh, they used [IRL people] for inspiration?” Cultures are created by and for people, so I’m at a loss what you mean here.
Your problem, by the way, is easily solved. Give multiple kingdoms per race/ species with varying cultures/ ethnicities. Having each species remain confined to one physical location and never venturing from their stronghold seems unrealistic given that social, intelligent animals, including humans, tend to have large ranges and will often migrate. Please see “Fantasy with no humans” for more details.
“I know that most civilizations are as homogeneous as usually portrayed.”
…Says who and on what grounds? The story of many civilizations is not one of homogeneity and isolation. Alas, I do not have time to provide you with a lecture on human migration, trade routes and diversity in the pre-modern era, but I suggest you use Wikipedia as the Internet intended.
In the event the above is a typo and you meant “I know that most civilizations are not as homogeneous as usually portrayed” (And I hope this was the case), I don’t think a color-blind approach is really an option as diversity does not mean peace. A civilization can be plenty diverse without being neutral when it comes to inter/intra-ethnic conflict. In fact, this is usually the case. I suspect this is why much of East Asia and Western Europe are currently quite desperate to preserve their own perceived homogeneity. One need not look far for current examples. The United States, Mexico, Philippines, Brazil, India: all diverse countries - none known for their domestic peace or functional governments. I believe the Roman Empire lasted for all of 500 years, but how many of those years would we consider peaceful? A friend who studied China once told me the median Chinese dynasty is 150 years. Diversity and conflict historically go hand-in-hand.
Your friend is not thinking very logically. Most civilizations are not formed around a population that appears out of the blue. A particular set of circumstances like geography, resources and external events drive different groups to the same location where the sum of their interactions create a civilization.
- Marika.
I would suggest looking at something like Ancestry and Culture, a fan-made initiative to try and break DND away from the concept of homogenous fantasy races. I have not read it, but it appears to be a fairly solid attempt at giving people character creation freedom in a way that allows them to be coded in multiple ways, and gives much more interesting possibilities for playthroughs.
~ Mod Lesya


















