As time went on, I noticed something about big geek media IP, whether Western or Japanese. It’s hard to describe, but I’ll call it “sterility” — a sense that the stories being told are totally divorced from real-world history. Everything appears to be specifically tailored to either cause little hubbub (the Japanese stuff and some Western stuff) or focus on current events (mostly the Western stuff.) Pools of reference are limited to other IP, and where it does engage with history, it only does so incidentally at most.
I have an opinion on why that is. Now, to disclaim: I’m only speculating. If you think I’m wrong about this, feel free to tell me in the comments.
I think that most big IP shies away from history because their creators either sell the art globally or want to do so, and engaging with history risks causing offense.
History is rooted within a specific time and place, but to a global marketer, that is an inconvenience. If the product highlights such local stories too strongly, it harms its ability to sell elsewhere, as it may not translate; there’s a reason Hollywood movies aimed at a global audience seem “dumber,” as explosions, sparse dialogue, and paint-by-numbers tropes are easy for an audience with nothing in common to deal with.
Another thing to note is that backlashes against “cultural appropriation” seem like an attempt to drive creators toward sterile corporate storytelling that references only other works (preferably large IPs), does not stray from well-worn tropes, and stays either in the now or in an imagined future free of old culture.
(Modernist architecture strikes me as having the same impulse; absent signs in another language, a modern cityscape can look like it is anywhere in the developed world. After all, who can argue with a featureless gray box?)
The way to avoid the self-referential trap is to read history and internalize it. It’s important for fantasy stories to at least be rooted in something real, even if it doesn’t retell a real story. For example, I literally got the idea for Sword & Flower after reading the Puritan section of Albion’s Seed, then watching a J-pop video and saying, “What if I put these two together?” My alternate history novel Shining Tomorrow explores the legacy of colonialism by showing it happening to white Americans under an Imperial Japanese regime, inverting real-life history (I’m not boring or preachy about it, I swear! But it is in there, and it is a crucial part of the setting.) Engaging with history in any important way might make someone feel bad, so it is strenuously avoided.
Religion, too, is important here, and not merely as a branding tool. Interweaving one’s religious understanding with one’s stories gives it something more that a corporate-style story just can’t do. A huge feature of corporate IP is either no religion or made-up religion. The same is true of traditional folklore.
That’s not to say you must only reference real-world or traditional sources; imagination is a must, and you must work to distinguish yourself in some way. But if you are informed only by pop culture and current events, it will show in the shallowness of your work. I’m no historic encyclopedia myself — there’s a whole lot I just don’t know. It’s just that stories should have weight, not be held hostage to the thinking of corporate marketing departments.
—–
Cirsova Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense draws its influences from the early 20th-century action-adventure fiction, not modern, sterilized corporate IP. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.
Rawle
Orr read the fantastic stories like Beowulf or the Chanson de Roland or even Reynard le renard. They use real historical events or real life situations to tell good stories that entertain.
But you’re right that you need to read some history and then ask a counterintuitive question:what if..?
Or how about….? Wouldn this be cool?
xavier
That’s the spirit! I actually have a hard copy of Roland; I need to get around to reading it. This is why I mentioned traditional folklore.
Rawle,
Ah sorry. I missed that the first time. After re reading the post, you did mention it.
I found an awesome website that had Reynard the renard story in both Old and modern French in side by side columns but I lost the URL. So I’ll have to find it again.
Man is reading Old French a real challenge but what fun it is! 🙂
P.S. in my Deus vult story I have dips- demonic vampire dogs in Catalan mythology- who are the Alpha male and female leading a back of infernal canines. They’re all cybernetically enhanced and the Alphas talk. I think this qualifies as something…unexpected.
xavier
xavier
Sounds like a neat concept. I don’t think that monster has really been done before.
I don’t keep up with the big IPs, but if they do avoid history, then I’m glad. It’s one less thing for them to screw up.
That isn’t to say that historical accuracy necessitates sticking it to history’s “evil” characters, either. One movie that may or may not be popular enough to violate Brand Zero portrayed the battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective, and even though those Japanese fatheads committed atrocities against my grandparents, that didn’t stop me from enjoying the movie. There was also that Viking story that I posted a few months ago, in which the Viking not only resented Christian intrusion, but also never explicitly converted to Christianity.
Good catch. Historical revisionism is no good. It’s why I said it was better for it to influence your storytelling, rather than be a straight retelling.
Read primary source.
That is, stuff written at the time of the events, not historians ruminating on it after.
Indeed, I advise writers to wallow in all sorts of primary source, even stuff from cultures you never want to work with. It’s not to pick up information, it’s to get a feel for culture, and also to knock your block off enough that you don’t just assume that modern culture is the way of the world.
Mary,
Could you provide us with examples of primary sources?
Would these be chronicles or something else?
Thanks!
xavier
Primary sources are absolutely anything written at the time in question.
For instance, the Homeric Hymns of ancient Greece; the love letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple; Victorian etiquette manuals; Astolphe de Custine’s account of his travels in Russia (which, alas, I have found only in abridged version in English translation); A Medieval Home Companion which was a husband’s advice to his young wife on the household; or the letters of Seneca.
There is often a limited variety. A scholar once recommended to a writer to read every surviving work from Anglo-Saxon England, which does not even take that long.
Mary
Thanks! Got it. So cookbooks too!
Cool!
xavier
And then you’ll find that the truth is stranger than fiction.
Seconded; primary sources are quite insightful, as they give insight into the mentality at the time.
This could help explain the decline of comedy as a movie genre too; jokes are hard to translate.
I’ve been thinking the same thing.