Is There Any Flowers/plants That Symbolize Or Relate To Discomfort And Dissatisfaction? Im Trying To

There’s something truly exquisite about stories where the real tragedy is the price you paid to stand on top of the world

Having done more research and not found this in the tags... What can be done to respectfully write a fantasy novel with indigenous cultures in it, as a non-indigenous author? Specifically ones that have suffered in the ways that those in the continental USA have? I've heard it's better to choose one tribe as a basis, I've heard it's better to use no tribe as a basis, I've heard you can use some aspects but not the whole, I've heard use nothing unless it's the whole. What's the best approach?

Coding Fantasy Indigenous Peoples

You’re getting conflicting answers because there is truly no right answer to this question, as with most things when it comes to representation. Some people will prefer one thing, others something else. If you’re trying to find the Perfect Path Without Backlash, it doesn’t exist. Sorry.

Also, just as a note, a lot of nations cross the border between Canada and the United States, because that border is artificial and colonial. So you might very well be looking at Canada even if you’ve picked an “American” tribe.

In my personal, singular Indigenous opinion, my process would look something like this:

1- Pick A Region First

Region will give you the environment that the tribe(s) live in (I’ll get to that plural in a second), which will then inform basically everything about how they built their customs. A lot of Indigenous beliefs are tied to natural resources and constrains of the land, so it’s very hard to code an Indigenous society without figuring out what sort of land you’re working with.

This applies even if you’re working outside of the Continental US, because even just within the States they’re subjugating wide swaths of Polynesia (including Hawai’i), Alaska, the Philippines, etc. Not to mention how many Indigenous groups there are around the globe being erased by their local states.

Indigenous peoples are everywhere. You don’t have to include them all the time, but they exist beyond Turtle Island.

2- See Who Lived There

And now, the plural. Because unlike a lot of Western places, there’s a lot more nomadic groups when it comes to Indigenous peoples. 

So the region you picked could have multiple groups that cycle through the same landscape, and this will also inform the representation. Did they like each other? Or were they traditionally enemies? 

How about in lands that changed hands a lot? Because the borders of what Native population owned what lands are flexible, and you can find areas where the region changed hands a dozen times over even just a couple hundred years. How will you handle that?

Now here’s your first fork in the road: You can combine the groups that were friendly (key word: friendly) with each other into one large group, or you can have multiple Indigenous groups in the worldbuilding that are mentioned in passing, like how x cycles through in certain seasons, and y in another.

I would not follow this fork if they were traditionally enemies. Because it’s just… not respectful to have two cultures that were incompatible enough they were enemies for large swaths of their history together. It does happen where traditional enemies sometimes live together for awhile, but if you’re an outsider, I’d keep them separate.

This does mean that if you’ve picked a region with traditional enemies, you’re going to need both groups. Because the “enemies” part will have also shaped the culture, like how many men were alive in ages where men were expected to be warriors. Cultures adapt for certain percentages of the population to die in war, after all.

This also provides an interesting avenue for your non-Indigenous population, because are they allied with one group? Both? How do they maintain relationships? If these non-Indigenous people are not colonial, then be very careful not to have them try to play both sides too hard, because helping both sides kill the other is a tool of colonialism. If they are colonial, they’re going to be doing this and it’ll be a villain move.

Personally, I’d toss more diversity instead of less because it helps avoid tokenism. Instead of having this One Token Nomadic Group, the One Token Indigenous Group, you have two, or three, and you’re showing a diversity of cultures instead of just throwing in Natives because you feel like you have to in order to be diverse.

But if you do want to blend (which might be useful, even if you just want to make a new culture that mixes “European” with Indigenous as people intermarry), I’d read this post: Pulling From Multiple Indigenous Legends

3- See what exists and what’s open

A lot of Indigenous practices are closed, meaning we don’t tell them to outsiders. At all. This doesn’t mean that those practices aren’t out there as appropriated pieces of “folklore”, but you need to be aware that some folklore is Indigenous and therefore should be closed.

Putting these closed practices in fantasy is generally considered a bad move (see: almost every non-Indigenous use of the w3ndigo ever), unless you can work closely with the tribe to figure out how to do it respectfully (see: Teen Wolf doing a Skinwalkers episode with the Navajo; ironically enough they did not work with the Cree when they had a w3ndigo episode, as far as I can tell)

I’d suggest reading this post: All Myths Are True, Native Spirits Invisible to Outsiders for how to include closed practices.

4- Magic gets its own point

The thing about fantasy is that you’re dealing with the supernatural, and in my experience on WWC, some of the biggest “uh” moments are whenever people don’t realize how culturally Christian their magic systems are, and how incompatible they are with Indigenous beliefs.

So you’re going to need a degree of research into Native mindset, and then extrapolate what sorts of things that make sense for them. This can fill in some blanks for not touching Native spirituality with a ten foot pole, but you are going to need extensive research to have it actually make sense.

Read through the tag and note every time I poke at the concept that Natives are more magically attuned, that there’s something like “the gods told me to”, or other little tiny “basic” things in a lot of fantasy that just don’t feel like they fit.

Or, come back after you’ve gone through steps 1 to 3 and can be more specific!

Still, I would suggest you do this sort of research anyway just to be respectful. Figuring out how magic works and dovetails with Native populations is just a nice side benefit.

Overall:

To very directly answer your questions:

Best way to respectfully include Indigenous cultures in fantasy: I’d prefer very little colonialism if any; no such thing as noble savage (aka: we are not “better” because we live closer to nature and don’t have the humdrum of Western society); complex, rich societies with social rules and the same level of care you’d give Western cultures; just generally considered valuable, complex, and sustainable.

Better to use one tribe and hard code or no tribes and blend: Whatever makes sense for the story, but I’d err on the side of trying to capture the feel of the area with the peoples who already populated it. Like, if you’re trying to work with an area that has a confederacy of tribes, you’d be better off coding multiple tribes within that confederacy because being part of a confederacy is usually pretty important to tribe leadership and general functioning of the group; if you’re writing an area with a lot of roaming nomads, you’d be better to have multiple nomadic groups; etc.

Some aspects but not whole vs the whole: Keep closed practices closed, and figure out where magic and your unique worldbuilding breaks how an Indigenous group would function in the world.

What’s the best approach: If you’re attempting to make Indigenous people feel seen in fantasy, then whatever means to that end is the best approach—while understanding there’s not going to be a solidly unified opinion that everyone will agree on, but at best broad generalities. In my opinion that is nailing down coding enough that the peoples from the region you picked can spot their own practices and mindset and know somebody cares enough to have found those details.

I personally err on the side of closer coding to irl than looser at least to start, just because the way my brain works I need a lot of details from the culture in the early stages of research, just so I can gain the confidence in what to put on the page and have it feel real. 

Especially if you’re trying to unlearn a colonizer mindset through writing, and really trying to broaden your worldview, going towards an initial goal of closer coding will really help break apart the base assumptions about How Things Work, and you’ll develop the mental flexibility to write about differences more easily.

You can loosen up coding later, if you want to, once you’ve learned enough to know what you’re consciously adapting to your fantasy world instead of just throwing your ideas of how you think the culture works into the plot and expecting it to be accurate.

Hope this helps!

~Mod Lesya

its about conviction so strong it turns into power. its about being utterly devoted but not necessarily to each other. its about being somewhere between a weapon and a shield and a bandage but not a person. maybe more of a person with each other maybe less. its about not being able to set down the weight of your duty and being with the only person who gets that. its about begging the other person to stop being a symbol and being told no and not being able to blame them for that. its about service and humility at the cost of your desire for each other. its about being scared but never having any inch of room to be so you're not. its about doubt. its about your home being a concept that would see you dead rather than not chasing it. its about your real home being a person you can't let yourself love too much. its about paladin4paladin. is this thing on. can anyone hear me. hello.

wait till the tumblr girlies find out that in binary star systems sometimes one star will basically eat the other and kill them both - resulting in the most powerful thing a star could ever do in its life.

It’s 1 am and I just… stories really were made to save us, huh?

how to outline your novel

every writer outlines differently, from hardcore plotters who go into heavy detail to laid back pantsers who prefer to go with the flow. this post will be about simple tips to plotting and you can interpret them as you will! personally, i am a plantser who tends to loosely outline my scenes before jumping into the writing part. that being said, i am working on documenting my wip info in one organized google doc :)

pros and cons

there are some disadvantages to the advantages of outline your book to be considered carefully.

benefits:

keeps your plot on track

helps you stay more organized

can help diminish writer’s block

clarifies the middle to avoid the “muddle”

drawbacks:

can produce a stilted narrative

may lead to more show and less tell

limits spontaneity and creative during the actual writing process, which can create an air of boredom

characters have less freedom in their choices, degrading their authenticity and taking away natural reactions

formulating the premise

the premise will be main plot of your story, which can be easily established by asking yourself these three simple questions:

who is the protagonist?

what do they want more than anything?

how can i prevent them from getting it?

there are also the five w’s (where, when, who, what, and why) that should be taken into account when crafting your premise.

character profiles

imo, making character profiles is one of the most fun things about outlining. this is where you compile all there is to know about each and every character in your book—from the main character to that baker who only appears once in the first chapter and is never seen again. start with basic attributes like:

full name

age

physical description (add every detail you can think of!)

personality traits

likes

dislikes

after that, feel free to go much deeper into a lot more personal things:

familial situation

important events in their past

insecurities

regrets

morals

religious beliefs

…the list goes on!

constructing and placing scenes

there are many different approaches to this part of outlining and it all depends on how specific you wish to be. from a loosely outlined note to a fully developed google doc, the possibilities are endless. there are a lot of different softwares and apps out there to help create your storyboard and outline, here are a few to check out:

Milanote (free)

Evernote (free version)

Dabble writer ($10/month)

Trello (free version)

Workflowy (free version)

Coggle (free version)

for every scene, i would advise at least a single sentence to encapsulate what happens in that scene. think back to the five w’s mentioned earlier and use this sentence structure if desired (you can modify it as needed):

[ when, where ], [ who ] wanted [ what ] but [ conflict ] because [ why ] so [ result ].

conclusion

so that’s it! i hope this helped you get a grasp on outlining at least a little i honestly feel like this post is a mess but- we’re gonna just take a moment to appreciate all the hardcore plotters and my fellow plantsers and the majorly underrated pantsers out there. you’re doing amazing sweetie and ilysm <3

this is it. this is writing

what people think is hard about writing: describing the joy, love, beauty, grief, loss and hope that form the richness of human experience

what is actually hard about writing: describing basic actions such as turning, leaning over, reclining, gesturing, saying something in a quiet voice, breathing, getting up from chairs, and walking across rooms

Parry: to block an attack

Beat: the striking of swords

Thrust: to straighten your sword arm as you can without having to move/ lunge forward

Lunging: extending your sword arm during a lunging motion/while moving forward

Cut: an attack where the sword is thrusted downward or across to hack at the opponent/their blade

Disarm/envelop: capturing the opponent's weapon near the hilt and tearing it out of their hold/locking it in place so they can't move it or fight back

Lock: when two swords come together at the hilts to make an "y"

Break: to push off, circle around, or disengage from the fight

Attack: the strike of a sword

Caress: the strikes of the opponents blade on both sides of it

Advance: to move forward

Retreat: to move backwards

En garde: the stance before combat

Sweep/swipe: to swing the sword around the opponent's head/shins

Front guard: where the sword sits in front of your face

Pivot: rotating 180 degrees with one foot planted in place

Pass back: moving the front foot into the rear position

Pass forward: moving your rear foot into the front position

Shed: to let a sword slide away from your without fighting back or changing it, so you're then free to move or attack

Slope: moving backwards from left to right

when a character not in a cool way but in a fully sincere and slightly helpless way is like to understand things i need to be able to identify qualify & organize them i need structure and systems of logic but i also have an incredible capacity for empathy and feel things deeply. literally give me a kiss

writers will really have a doc titled ‘fic planning’ and then it’s just blank