Non-'European' style fantasy: am I all alone?

Ah, a kindred spirit... :D

l live in the Caribbean, and instead of misty forests, four seasons, medieval/fuedal or even swordfighting grounds, I have palm trees, mists only appears after a flood and really heavy rainfall, there are two seasons and our swordfights would really qualify as stickfights (since the enslaved weren't allowed such sharp and pointy things like swords) and it was more of a plantation economy per the Tudorian and every-bloody-body else up to the Victorian age. So my fantasy is going to be decidedly adapted to that environment.

(Plus, I've only ever seen summer in the US so I don't know jack about four seasons other than tv and books. XD)

Anyhoo, building on this environment my fantasy has our type of magic, which some call "science" strangely enough, or voodoo in Haiti. There may be some gunfights and swordfights, but I seriously doubt armour is a good idea. (The heat too, would take you before the other guy did.) Then there are the traditional characters, from Anansi to jumbies, the relations between the different groups in the region, from the Europeans to the Amerindians, and due to the period of our re-discovery and colonisation, it's a steampunk somewhat alternate history universe.

Also, I've been planning this thing since August, which explains the name of one of my characters, and I've decided to throw in all my favourite things while I can, like history, archaeologists, writers, journalists, heroines and superclever and ultimately ambiguous villains. I expect this to be loads of fun or very confusing. o.O :D! But the best part will be it's a fantasy that comes from a place I recognise rather than a place I have to look at the Lord of the Rings trilogy again to get.

*is proud* *waves banner for the creation of this thread* w00t!

Oh man.
I've got people on a mountain in the middle of the desert.
I've got an Asian-esque country riddled with rivers.
I've got a frozen north where everyone's pretending they're in the Wild West.
I've even got a semi-Native-American-like continent with wide plains that occasionally smoke due to all the necromancy going on.
I haven't made one lush, green field with towering castles on it. The closest I've gone to is green fields which are mostly lush but are generally covered with concrete so that the biplanes can take off properly.
I love not using the same-old fantasy environment. It makes it so much fun. ^__^

My setting is more like the Old West than anything European... There are still city walls and towers, but I don't have any kings and likely won't be using castles of any sort. My world is growing increasingly colder, which means plant life is struggling more and more. When the characters travel through the forest it's blanketed in snow. A good portion of the story will likely take place in areas that are basically just earth and rotting tree trunks. Oh, and there's a decent amount of time spent on rocky beaches.

My story is pretty much modern fantasy, so no medieval or feudal settings for me! Mine starts out in a rather depressing modern english town, then goes into various other dimensions, full of chaos and often not-so-sensical worlds and beings. I don't have it all sorted out in my head, but it's definitely not your typical fantasy :D

My setting is a fairly ordinary temperate climate, but it's most certainly not medieval, and the culture isn't European. The setting is urban, magic powers industry, and castles? Hah! My people never even developed the concept of hereditary power, what would they need those for? Kings? What, I'm meant to follow this guy just because he's the last leader's eldest son? What's he actually done to deserve that?

Annddd so on. It's fun, even when you're not changing everything, to toss out a few standard assumptions and see what happens.

Mine's mostly set in space. So, yeah, more than a little non-European.
I haven't really fleshed out the planets yet, or at least the parts the characters end up on, except the Elven nation my main character hails from looks more like Brazil than anything else, and I'm planning on having somewhere look like northern Newfoundland, where I don't think it's technically tundra but the trees start getting a lot shorter, icebergs float around most of the year, and so on.

Yay for non-traditional fantasy!

I plan on most of my action taking place in a desert environment resembling the 4-corners area of the USA, with an economy resembling that of the same region anciently: "3 sisters" agriculture supplemented by hunting and gathering, supporting highly developed social structures. Characters might travel to other biomes in the course of their mission.

No swords. No steel or iron and so far not even bronze - all weapons are made out of stone, wood or bone. I might have to allow some metalworking though if I allow glass production.

No horses, not anywhere on the continent. Dogs or reindeer pull sleds in the taiga to the north, and giant ostrich-like birds pull chariots in the desert. Yes to sheep, probably geese and maybe cattle. If some people outside of my focus decide to grow oats or barley with the help of cattle or domesticated buffalo, that's fine. But no knights in armor, feudalism, or towering stone castles (but I figure large stone/adobe pueblos are legit).

Biplanes are lovely. Your setting looks very interesting, partly because I'm obsessed with Turkestan and Siberia.

KL_Leemong, your setting looks very interesting too. I went to school with some Trinis, I'd love to visit there some time. I did spend a couple years in Puerto Rico, so I got to love the Caribbean environment.

I am particularly fond of deserts and seem to write about them every chance I get. I have no less than three worlds I am currently juggling that are desert or desert-like, and I don't think I've ever created a fantasy realm where a desert didn't play an important part. I also currently have a quasi-Victorian society with a serious desertish land to the south and to the north you enter plains and then a climate and landscape akin to Russia.

Interestingly, I also get a lot of underground in my novels. Caves and holes and caverns are almost always pivotal to my worlds.

My NaNo novel this year will be all snow, all the time, which is going to be a wild ride for me. Cold and I are not friends, and i tend to avoid it like the plague, so I am entering unfamiliar territory with this one.

Deserts . . . there's just something about them. It's funny, I've got 2 other worlds where most of the action takes place in a desert too. I've actually worried about whether my NaNo setting looks too much like my cherished other setting that I've been working on for years. At least the technology and magic will be totally different.

I'm creating my own world with its own rules. Has a lot of European fantasy standbys... but I'm also trying to incorporate a heavy Asian influence, particularly with regard to the feudal system/fighting style. One race lives on the edge of the world with serious frost issues; one race is semi nomadic a la the Romany but without the traditional "Gypsy"ish accoutrements.

I did character shots of them early on and decided they were far too Rennaisance Faire looking. So I redid them, borrowing costume ideas from Cirque du Soleil as well as Japanese and Korean influences in robes and decoration. I'm trying to mix it up so that nothing stands out as being particular to any known Earth culture, but the influences are there when you look.

Yeah for deserts! I had one in my first fantasy novel. There's just something mysterious about them.

This year my novel takes place in our world (or a mirror -world to ours!), but the characters are scattered all over the place. One is a native american living on a reservation in the U.S., one is the rich daughter of a politician, one is from Egypt, and another is an orphan from Ireland. Eventually they're all going to go to the mountains in Tibet. And maybe jump between worlds, but I haven't decided what the other world will be like yet. It will probably be non-traditional.

Ooh, that sounds really cool, acharris! I like that idea.

Heavens to betsy, what have you been reading? Of course you're not alone. Here are just a few names and titles that ought to ring a bell:

- Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea, where the large majority of people were not white
- Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Tomoe Gozen series
- Tanith Lee's Tamastara
- Parts of Glen Cook's Dread Empire neverending series
- Sean Russell's Initiate Brother series
...and that's just off the top of my head.

Hmm. Mine is mostly set in what seems like a settled Great Plains-type area with a Civil War era technology. So, pretty much if you find a high point, like the top of a building, you can see for miles and miles and miles. There are some trains, too, but not so much to the extent of a typical steampunk setting. And YES, they have guns. Not very accurate ones, granted, but they most certainly do have them. And there are no stone buildings -- most everything is out of imported timber or dug into the ground.

So, not exactly non-western, but it's not really Medieval European, either.

Hoorah! I'm using a rather harsh, cold and mountainous continent, with tons of snow year round (nearly polar. I guess you could compare it to Alaska or northern Canada) and tundra islands. One of the country's way of life, however, resembles that of Egyptians or Aztecs... sooo that will be an interesting take, no? I would love to do a purely desert centered fantasy novel. It's be really cool. Also, asian flavor sounds fabulous as well! So many thigns to choose from. European landscapes aren't exactly too interesting, to be perfectly honest.

What I have noticed is that if a fantasy novel isn't particularly 'European' in climate, landscape, etc., it has every type of climate imaginable. Forests, deserts, mountains, tundra, jungle, one in each corner of the land. I think that's overkill and the author was trying too hard for diversity. I mean, I guess if you are writing with an entire world in mind, then it would be necessary. But in a 1000 square mile country/continent? I think not.

One of my MCs hails from your typical pseudo-European fantasy setting (though you can get variety in those, depending on what country you're looking at--I tend to base those on France rather than England), but the other hails from a pseudo-Arabic-with-some-Indian-influences country. *ducks out of the way of all the PC people who are enraged at this--I know they're different cultures! They are not all the same! There are in fact long-standing feuds between the two groups! I swear I'm working on my research!*

I don't think it's going to be desert--there are deserts in the country where more nomadic groups live, but the majority of the action there is going to take place in the capital, which is more oasis-jungle-y. And the cultures area going to be very, very different, reflecting the influences. The Euro country dresses like you would expect fantasy people to dress, while the eastern country places greater importance on things like "not overheating" and veiling for secrecy and protection, with a large emphasis placed on symbolic jewelry and the like. I haven't fully developed this, but it's going to be integral.

So far my characters are battling it out in a world of arid forests and scrub-brush deserts. No castles. There are towns, nomads, and the like. The main focus is agriculture, but there is some metal working.

Oh, Frank Herbert set his novel "Dune" on a desert planet. It definitely makes challenges for the characters.

Oh, yes. I'm not against European-style settings; I just ended up in a massive, futuristic city, with occasional forays into a smaller, more Baroque-style city on the Moon (wtf?) and a massive field/farm that becomes the site of a huge launchpad about halfway through the story.

Yeah, mine is a blend of Fantasy and Sci-Fi (part of the story involves the dawn of my world's Space Age), so it might not count in this context. Wah.

So far, I have meadows and forrest and rocky beaches and cliffs. No castles, no feudalism; just a bunch of kids trying not to get captured by people who want to eat them. Semi-European fantasy sounding, however. But all these other settings sound really neat. I wish I could break away too!

I'm setting my story in a sub-tropical environment - since half my cast are reptillian, it works out a lot better for them anyway. There aren't a lot of forests, and it's warm/stiflingly hot year-round, with a lot of rain. [offtopic] Hm...now that you've mentioned it, I just spotted a fairly significant plot hole where weather is concerned...thanks for that! [/offtopic] For culture, I got a lot of ideas from East Asia and Africa, especially where social structures and traditions are concerned. Looking at cultures that haven't been influenced very much by European values made me see a lot of things about our own I hadn't even noticed, if that makes sense. I'm trying this time to stay away from most aspects of European-style fantasy, even though it's probably going to end up in there anyway.

My setting isn't a traditional fantasy one either, it's a dying world (the gods got themselves eaten so it's end of the world time soon) so there's more desert than rolling fields....there's also an asian style country, and a british style country, and for good measure an american style one

Mine's not in a desert, exactly, but there's one not far away. Most of the action takes place in a tropical garden.

Does urban count? Most of my novel will take place in cities, right at the societal/tech level where castles are viewed as traditional but seriously unstylish. It's got about a Renaissance-era tech level... but then, what's more European than the Renaissance? Hm.
I don't want it to fit in that 'medieval adventurer' archetype, so I scrapped magic and made all the major characters politicians for good measure. Royalty or nobility, yes, but definitely politicians. I'd say mine is borderline...

I have been moving around a lot lately, and I enjoy incorporating the natural environments from the places I have lived and/or visited in my stories.

Last year's fantasy nanovel took place in landscape that was inspired by northern Virginia: mountains, rolling hills, footpaths through forests, etc. A fantasy story before that was heavily influenced by trips to Saint Petersburg, Russia, and the surrounding areas. Now I am living in the Mojave Desert of south California, which is amazing. Oddly enough, my 2005 nanovel was set partially in a desert that I might go back to work on now that I have first-hand experience of what a desert can be like.

I decided to try my hand at writing something very different for this year... a young adult modern fiction that takes place in southwest Georgia. The landscape there is interesting, too. Tall pines, ancient oaks, swarms of gnats, loads of humidity, etc.

~Jacquelyn

". . . just a bunch of kids trying not to get captured by people who want to eat them."

I love you. Nothing particularly constructive to say about your setting (though it makes me think of coastal Maine or Newfoundland), just that that particular line is made of awesome. Ah, there's always *next* year to break completely away. . . and you'll have twelve months to perfect your nontradition fantasy world!

Mine is set in a Cadyland-esque place. Yeah, that's right. Candyland. :D I have four kingdoms, those of Fudge, Fruits and Fantasies, Karmael and Vanille. Oh, what fun. ;D Just follow the taffy-brick road. xD Haha!

Mine is set in a Candyland-esque place. Yeah, that's right. Candyland. :D I have four kingdoms, those of Fudge, Fruits and Fantasies, Karmael and Vanille. Oh, what fun. ;D Just follow the taffy-brick road. xD Haha!

Its not my NaNo, but my regular world has the Medieval stuff placed in a Pleistocene climate and ecology.

Well, mine is urban.

Every god and every hero and quite a few normal people live there. Its geography is a composite. It is a city of bridges and rivers (for all the great rivers flow into the sea there) and island chains that curl out into the bay. Gods live on any of the 7 hills, or in the suburbs or in wine country down river (there's always wine), or in beer country in the surrounding mountain range. Or none at all in the hot spring spas out in day trip away desert or soggy retreats in the rain forest up the coast. There are castles, but they are modern and have indoor plumbing. The gargoyles are mass produced cement and glass towers make canyons in the financial district, while ravers writhe in the deco dark of burnt out mansions along Spanish moss river fronts. There may be dragons, but they are pets along with cockatoos. There may be knights, but they're sadly reduced to dinner theater.