The upshot of all this is that I have no idea how you reconcile Rabiah with Dominia in a respectful way.

I dream of a world where offending people is okay. Yeah okay that sounds bad even to me...

Basically, you can't make it fit nicely. I do like the idea of concepts and ideas crossing through the multiverse, so that the stories of Arabian Nights actually are Earth's misrepresentations of actual events on Rabiah. That's clever, and solves some of the problems. But of course not all of them.

I think my favorite example of Orientalism is the fact that Aladdin is originally Chinese. But because it's from The East, they just stuck it into the Arabian Nights.

As far as Jakkard goes, can't we try to find a way to represent native Americans fairly? There must be some way to do that...

The ways that I've been approaching it involve A. showing that the nonhuman races in particular aren't monolithic (multiple personalities, tribes, traditions, interests), B. pretty squarely placing the people at the top of the food chain in the "villain" slot (Honestly, Two Bullets did most of that work for me--what a perfect vision of a society on the verge of violently ripping itself apart), and C. jumbling signifiers so that what is "Western" and "Other" get blurred, meaning that no particular group is a direct, obvious allegorical representation for another group.

But I'm not comfortable taking signifiers that I just don't know much about, and anything Native American falls into that camp unfortunately. I particularly don't want to co-opt actual religious symbols... that seems like a bad move.

I always forget that about Aladdin. Oh goodness.

Aaarrrgh, you're Christian, yes? What are your thoughts on using actual Abrahamic religious figures in a fantasy setting?

The idea of our Arabian Nights being a reflection of Rabiah reminds me a lot of the one Sandman comic about Baghdad...

Doing a shard of rabiah where everyone is not human, but mythical middle eastern creatures would be pretty sweet.

Or Or, a shard where the djinns are all merchants and famers and stuff and the evil human warlocks live in bottles and grant twisted wishes to the poor fools

...Ok both of those ideas would be pretty awesome, yeah.

There's a lot you can do with Rabiah if you sort the problems out. It's a multiverse within a multiverse.

I've got another great one. A kingdom ruled by an evil siren queen who forces the people to tell her a story each night. Maybe something with eating nightmares or crazy stuff? But yeah evil sharazaharhdhahd in reverse...or something.

I never thought much about how I feel about real-world religion in fantasy. It depends on how it is done, I guess. But then again, Media has a pretty bad record with representing anything. I think I could be okay with it as long as it was for a purpose and the people writing it knew what they were doing. For instance, although it doesn't say it by name, Aslan is obviously Jesus, and I'm okay with that, because Lewis knew what he was talking about, and could get the symbolism right. So yes, I think that's my final answer: I think symbolism (or even direct representation) in Media is OK, as long as the writers have a personal knowledge and relationship with the symbols. It's sort of like N-word Privileges. We don't want other people using our words against us. Does that make sense?

FWIW, hardly anything ever goes without saying.

Oh, boo. The internet goblins ate my post. Trying to remember what I said...

I think the solution is just to allow people the time and creative space to add content which builds on Jakkard in ways which, little-by-little, walk the plane away from its original inspirations. People will introduce new ideas, they'll tweak the existing people and places, they'll push what we know about Jakkard in subtly new and different directions. Over time, as the fictional layers build on each other, the threads which connect the peoples and places of Jakkard to their real-world analogs will lengthen and intertwine, and Jakkard will become more Jakkard and less anything else.

Not to go all Jurassic Park on this, but fiction will find a way.

Although, I do hope that there's room for more than just humans at the top of the villain roster, because I'm a big believer in an equal opportunity for all people to turn out to be huge jerks.

As long as we remember that Noggles are the real heroes. Just ask Harrish Krell.

@Keeper: Thanks for that analysis. I've picked up bits and pieces from your tumblr, but it's nice to see a longer post on it. It reminded me on how when I draw fantasy maps, I try to make sure I don't put the "main characters" or the "good guys" on the Western side of the dominant continent. I often do that unconsciously (because of how Earth maps are often represented) and I need to actively work towards correcting that.

Orientalism is western drawing and depiction of Arabia.

Classical Fantasy is, and has always been (and with a little bit of luck) will always be a little racist, because the things it was based off of was extremely racist and xenophobic.

Also, why is everyone race baiting in 2014? I swear I can't have a conversation about the weather without someone race baiting ****. What ever happened to "race doesn't matter" mantra of the 90's?

It's my understanding that Tolkien, as a devout Christian himself, was deeply uncomfortable with this interpretation of orcs as "always chaotic evil" and tried to figure out for years a way that they were being corrupted by an outside source.

Thank you!
I had the same problem with my own western world (never mind the gun thing).
I wasn't confident with my ability fit native american analogues in a setting that was respectful and made them out as a culture without reducing them to tropes. How do I handle them alongside the cowboys? Do I downplay the real life tensions? Ignore them? Play them for all they're worth?
And gods forbid if I depict them with non-human creature types because what the hell does that say about how they're viewed.

I think a wild-west inspired setting has enormous potential, but there is soooooo many things that could go wrong in the presentation.

@Hairless: I've literally never heard this, can I request sauce. The term "Chaotic Evil" didn't even exist when he died, granted, I don't feel he thought the Orcs were always evil, just different.

@Jakkard:

When I was designing my western plane (the one for a Fist Full of Mana, which I might never actually get around too writing), I had the idea for four tribes to be presented in the story, representing proxies of different Indian Tribes, with cat warriors representing great plane Indians complete w/ the noble savage myth. For the Navajo, Lizardfolk. Then when the story inevitable moved to a different location (proxy mexico/south America), it would include birdmen (representing the Inca), and Panther warriors as a proxy for the Aztec, respectably.

@Tolkien; I cannot remember for the life of me where I read that. Probably TVtropes...

@Thrull; so you did purely Native American lore and never had any cowboy analogues? That would certainly solve one issue.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

Also, "with a little bit of luck?" Really? I mean, really dude?

@Yxoque:

Yeah, it's definitely something I've tried to work on more lately, too. That was part of the reason I wanted to really develop the Arivan continent of Ikass, actually--it meant that suddenly there was an East-oriented part of the map... on the west side... influenced somewhat by the Mongolian Steppes. I think confusing things like that is a good way of resisting lazy stereotypical writing. It's the same reason why I don't want any one race to represent one culture in Jakkard... It just strikes me as a mix of lazy and racist to turn real cultures into nonhuman races.

@Thoctar:

Oh man, I know what you mean about the nonhuman creature types. I've solved that by sort of pushing the Foxes into the "racist colonialist expansionary jerks" role, and spreading humans out socioeconomically across the culture but even then it's something that doesn't quite sit right with me... Although the most aggressively stereotypical cowboy clothes are reserved, in the sketches I've done, for the Viashino and Centaurs, so that's another disruption.

I keep feeling like it's just not enough, though.

@OL:

That seems legitimate.

It's tough, bringing this back to the original topic, to do that when you do have limits set by an external canon, though. While fiction will find a way, I feel like something with as much pull as Rabiah or Frankenstein takes a LOT of reshaping and rethinking...

I wonder if the best solution might be to just write full stories to reconcile some of these issue cards?

For the records, I've done pretty extensive research into both the history and culture of the western american and south american tribes.
You know, if you need help, I can work with you.

I'm happy anytime that "write more stories!" is a solution to a problem.

Just blackmail/persuade/Inception-ize Raven into picking some of those cards as Flavor-of-the-Week prompts, and you're guaranteed to at least get a haiku or two in response.

For what it's worth, I think the solution to some of the thornier bits (I'm looking at you, Army of Allah) is still that we treat these bits of the canon as figurative rather than literal. You just disregard the specific real-world references and try to take the underlying subject at a more conceptual level. In this particular case, for example, it's just a religious army - Allah has left the building.

Which, I'll grant, opens up a slippery-slope argument in response - if we can just start massaging parts of the canon because we don't like them, what's to stop us from tweaking other parts as well? And that's a fair concern. But I think it represents the lesser of two evils in this case, since the alternative is simply letting these seemingly irreconcilable things sit in the canon like the proverbial you-know-whats in the punchbowl and pretending like we can't see them, which I think is a less positive state of affairs at the end of the day than allowing a little artistic interpretation.

Also, my sincerest best wishes to the fine people hard at work over in Ft. Meade, who I assume will be monitoring this thread now that we've name-dropped Islam and Allah.

Hi guys!