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Oct. 21st, 2010 11:34 amI've been spending some time lately brainstorming a fantasy city I'd like to run an rpg in, or possibly write a NaNo story about? All of my frustrations with D&D campaign settings boiling over.
I want a world with the generic stock fantasy species, Dwarves and Elves and Orcs and Gnomes and the like, but no humans. Humans and the impulse to sympathize with them, to elevate them over the 'freakish' and 'animalistic' other races lead to much of the discomfort I have with Tolkien fantasy as racist wonderland. I want to know what Elves are like in a world where there aren't human rangers living among them, trying to become emulate their perceived closerness to nature. I want to know what Dwarves are like in a world that doesn't give them an either/or choice between brutish insularity or bruising assimilation to the human majority's norms. I want to know what Orcs are like when they're not being raised in massive armies to fight wars for human masters.
And I want there to be a great city on a lake, a city of ancient mysteries, of yearning masses and scheming elites. A city that, like the rest of the world, is full of intermingling cultures uneasily trying to negotiate their differences. A city that has been a democracy and the seat of a monarchy, a place that has been ruled by men and women of every imaginable race. A place where race doesn't essentialize culture, where Elves sometimes identify with 'Dwarven' cultural instutitions and vice versa and where that's problematic and contentious but workable.
A city where family is hard but friendship is easy. Where the sounds of the taverns pour out into the streets at night during peacetime. It's starting to sound like an idealized fantasy version of New York City, right? I think that's where a lot of the idea's coming from. Also, pieces of idealized Chicago, idealized London, idealized German university town whose name I've forgotten, and other idealized cities I've read about.
I want a world with the generic stock fantasy species, Dwarves and Elves and Orcs and Gnomes and the like, but no humans. Humans and the impulse to sympathize with them, to elevate them over the 'freakish' and 'animalistic' other races lead to much of the discomfort I have with Tolkien fantasy as racist wonderland. I want to know what Elves are like in a world where there aren't human rangers living among them, trying to become emulate their perceived closerness to nature. I want to know what Dwarves are like in a world that doesn't give them an either/or choice between brutish insularity or bruising assimilation to the human majority's norms. I want to know what Orcs are like when they're not being raised in massive armies to fight wars for human masters.
And I want there to be a great city on a lake, a city of ancient mysteries, of yearning masses and scheming elites. A city that, like the rest of the world, is full of intermingling cultures uneasily trying to negotiate their differences. A city that has been a democracy and the seat of a monarchy, a place that has been ruled by men and women of every imaginable race. A place where race doesn't essentialize culture, where Elves sometimes identify with 'Dwarven' cultural instutitions and vice versa and where that's problematic and contentious but workable.
A city where family is hard but friendship is easy. Where the sounds of the taverns pour out into the streets at night during peacetime. It's starting to sound like an idealized fantasy version of New York City, right? I think that's where a lot of the idea's coming from. Also, pieces of idealized Chicago, idealized London, idealized German university town whose name I've forgotten, and other idealized cities I've read about.