Africa

Although I've hardly worked on this project recently, I've been thinking about it quite a bit.
Ages ago, from the beginning of this blog, I was writing a wyvern story. It was very much like Dragonheart (the main character teams up with a supposedly dangerous dragon in order to overthrow an evil king).


During my trip to Spain and Italy, I had some ideas to rework the story and make it more alive. I don't even know if wyverns will be in it much. I may substitute them with dragons, at least partially, to fit certain aspects of the world.
One part of that I really need to work on it so make the story fit into my world.

When I first wrote the story, I only had a vague idea of the world it would fit into: Soreina. It was a fairly bland and undeveloped world then. By the time Soreina became more developed, I'd already written some stories that took place in it. I'd already started writing Katani's story, for example. The first draft didn't have anything of the Asian culture in it. The culture came about when I started to fit the story into my world.

As for the wyvern story, it will take place in Soreina's version of Africa.
I can't stop thinking about how I'm going to do the culture for this.
Despite my effort to build up Reyu's Asian influences, people were still disgusted with it. And for that story, I even had people who could help me with culture and language and stuff. Although those people aren't around anymore.

But I don't know anyone who's had a lot of experience in Africa.

There's another story I'm working on which is set in Soreina's version of South America. And ditto to that - I don't really know anyone with a lot of experience there. And then there are many other less-developed stories I'm working on, with various settings.

I desperately want to go to these places. I want to see the wilds of both Africa and South America. They're my top two places to visit. But since I hadn't visited them, it's hard to imagine how I'll learn about them. And it's not like there's just one culture. Africa and South America (and everywhere) are made up of many cultures.

Some people seem to think that I'm looking down on cultures when I write about them.
Maybe I didn't understand a part of it, or I didn't portray it the way I was trying to. Which I guess they took to mean that I don't respect the culture.
It's not easy to get a deep understanding of a different culture. What I really want to do is visit these places and spend a lot of time there meeting people and seeing things.
And I hope to do that in the future.
Even that may not be enough though.
I wish there were books that could really help you understand cultures. What the people do, why they do it, and how it developed to be that way. Though I'd still want to visit the places.

Here's the main thing.
Soreina is not Earth. It is a sister planet to Earth (in my stories, there are three versions of Earth on parallel dimensions, and it is possible to travel through them)There are a lot of parallels between these worlds, and they all come from the same root Earth.
But they formed very differently. In Soriena especially, humans only really live on one continent. Each Earth continent really only gets a single country on Soreina. That's a whole lot of cultures packed into a small area.
And because of dragons, there is a lot more mixing of the cultures. This especially happens in the capitol cities, which are huge melting pots of the entire country, and of surrounding countries. Katani's story is mostly set in the capitol, so there's a lot of mixing of cultures.
For another example, Soriena is gender equal (and more equal in many other ways). When you start to apply that, it changes a lot of stuff about cultures. Not just in Asian-based cultures, but also American culture.
In Soreina, your boss is as likely to be female as male. They don't have clothing that restricts the movement of females specifically. There aren't really jobs that are considered "jobs for women" or "jobs for men."

I don't think there would be much complaint of me making these changes in an American-based culture. Since I'm from America (although even that doesn't take into account the American Indians). But people seem offended when I try to apply my world to other cultures.
I understand if someone is making fun of a culture, of isn't bothering to understand it at all.
But I want to be able to develop a world that reflects our world and cultures. Even if it is in a different setting.

And yet there will still be plenty of people who get angry about it.
Considering I'm working to be a published author, I should have a thick skin when it comes to criticism and stuff.
But I'm far too sensitive about what people think of me.
Heh.

Maybe cartoons and movies are easier to do this with, because you can see the buildings and clothing in every scene.