Fantasy counterpart culture
Jul. 27th, 2014 02:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_whomA common trope in fantasy literature is the Fantasy Counterpart Culture—the fictional nation in a fictional world that's obviously based on the culture of some real-world nation. A few examples are basically indistinguishable culturally, politically, and even geographically from their real-world counterparts, except for having the names changed: e.g., Galen Beckett's Altania and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
swan_tower's Scirland are both England; Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantium is Constantinople and his Kitai is China.
Though the names are changed, though, they're usually not changed very much—e.g., characters in Altania and Scirland have English-sounding names like Ivy Lockwell and Isabella Camherst, while characters in Kitai are called Ren Daiyan and Lin Shan. And this is quite sensible, in serving to give the counterpart culture a consistent and familiar sound. But it's not necessary, of course—and I'd kind of like to see the opposite sometime. I think it'd be amusing to see how long it would take a reader to realize that a story's setting was based on China if the characters were called things like Godfrey and Erica Phipps (or that it was based on England if their names were Tang Weixing and Song Huan).
swan_tower's Scirland are both England; Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantium is Constantinople and his Kitai is China.Though the names are changed, though, they're usually not changed very much—e.g., characters in Altania and Scirland have English-sounding names like Ivy Lockwell and Isabella Camherst, while characters in Kitai are called Ren Daiyan and Lin Shan. And this is quite sensible, in serving to give the counterpart culture a consistent and familiar sound. But it's not necessary, of course—and I'd kind of like to see the opposite sometime. I think it'd be amusing to see how long it would take a reader to realize that a story's setting was based on China if the characters were called things like Godfrey and Erica Phipps (or that it was based on England if their names were Tang Weixing and Song Huan).
