05-24-2022, 06:08 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: justifying cultural imitations
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That is not what I was talking about. By "justify" I meant "find a plausible backstory for". The ethics of the matter are not the main point as much as doing it while retaining willing suspension of disbelief. It is difficult to belief a society with Massai warriors would evolve by chance unless related to the original Massai.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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05-24-2022, 06:31 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: justifying cultural imitations
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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05-24-2022, 08:11 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: justifying cultural imitations
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No two settings or periods are ever exactly equivalent (unless that's the point, which requires a different approach). It's also rare that there is only one obvious analogue. So, mix and match: Your steppe nomads are organized in a hierarchy of affine groups (guilds or krewes) rather than arbitrarily divided into military units based factors of ten, and they cover their faces when in public. Your palace intrigue owes as much to the Borgias and the Tokugawas as it does to the Plantagenets. Maybe your buccaneers are rightly feared because they embrace a "death before dishonor" code of conduct and are contemptuous of anyone (friend or foe) that lives to be captured. |
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05-24-2022, 10:01 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: justifying cultural imitations
In Jerry Pournelle's future history (which contains the famous novel The Mote in God's Eye), the strongest human state 1000 years from now is an empire which is copied in many ways from the British and French empires of the 19C, including a hereditary constitutional monarchy and a hereditary aristocracy (but it is not feudal!).
To justify this, Pournelle shaped the star flight tech to create travel times and other conditions paralleling (but not identical to) the era of the Crimean War. The Empire uses the traditional European titles (Duke, Marquis, etc.) because the founders of the empire consciously copied them. But the setting is also shaped by it origins in a mid 20C alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union that was in control of the Earth when star flight started, and that left a deep mark. So it's not a pure copy of 19C politics. I used a different approach in my own world: the most powerful state on the 22nd Earth has a hereditary ruling class, 30 families that use the title of 'Prince'. They use some of the old symbols and regalia of the old European aristocrats, the but the title is actually a double play on words, because their origins of power are less in warfare than money, 'merchant princes'. The coronets and other symbolic regalia start out as an affectation.
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HMS Overflow-For conversations off topic here. Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 05-24-2022 at 10:11 PM. |
05-25-2022, 02:14 AM | #15 | |
Join Date: Apr 2022
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Re: justifying cultural imitations
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Culture is pretty specific anyway. If you make some thing that isn't Massai then it's not Massai and doesn't need justification. Just do your thing. Or is this about preventing "Orcs are an allegory to some reallife people" kind of thing? I'd say that falls under the same thing as "cultural appropriation" and should be fine with most people. I might not be getting some nuance here, though. If it's not the same thing then it's not the same thing, why worry? And if it's the same thing then why worry, too, as long as it's respectful it should be good. Last edited by Lovewyrm; 05-25-2022 at 02:21 AM. |
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