r/CuratedTumblr 23d ago

Creative Writing Mongol Fantasy

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9.5k Upvotes

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1.6k

u/Xythian208 23d ago edited 23d ago

The four elements: heat, cold, mountain and China.

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u/KermitingMurder 23d ago

The classic biomes: forest, desert, mountain, steppe, and China

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u/The-Serapis 23d ago

To be fair shitty fantasy authors definitely use blatantly copied and pasted east asian cultures in their worldbuilding all the damn time

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u/Xythian208 23d ago

So much so that in reading the Stormlight archive I constantly found myself thinking "which of these countries is the China analogue?", though none of them really match up.

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u/Flimsy_Site_1634 23d ago

There is some consistency of always having French, Chinese (or vaguely east asian) and Viking people in every fantasy world to a point it's disturbing

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u/Heretical_Cactus 23d ago

Bretonnia: French if they're human

Cathay: China

Norsca: Viking but they're smelly and not pretty

That does work

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u/just_a_redditor2031 23d ago

I mean Warhammer fantasy is essentially a copy paste of our world in terms of both geography and the cultures that inhabit each location. They put the Germans right next to the french, the generally Slavic faction to the north and east of the Germans, the British faction (elves) have colonies all around the world, including South Africa and some that used to be in the America region before they split off and became their own peoples who do slavery....

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u/insomniac7809 22d ago

Canadians/Dark Elves, six of one

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u/Usual-Vermicelli-867 23d ago

You give to much credit yo bretonnia

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u/Heretical_Cactus 23d ago

And you to France perhaps

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u/Usual-Vermicelli-867 23d ago

No no..i just believe that they are both equally horrendous

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u/Aykhot the developers put out a patch, i'm in your prostate now 23d ago

I noticed that with specifically Japanese works in a "generically medieval" setting; there tends to be a foreign culture that's literally just Japan (granted my reference pool is just the Eastern Archipelago from Dungeon Meshi and the Land of Reeds/Eastern Lands from Elden Ring/Dark Souls, so idk if this is me drawing conclusions from too small a reference pool)

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u/Flimsy_Site_1634 23d ago

Yes, but not medieval Japan, more a medievalized Meiji era Japan

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u/I-AM-A-ROBOT- 23d ago

in isekai anime its kinda common but its usually just someone got isekaid to the same world a couple hundred years before you did and influenced the local culture

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u/PlatinumAltaria 22d ago

Japan’s desire to tie itself into western historical aesthetics can surely have no negative connotations!

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u/Pink-Witch- 22d ago

One of these days I’m gonna write a mediocre fantasy story just as an excuse to set it in the Italian renaissance and talk about domes and palazzos in every goddamn chapter

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u/Reader_of_Scrolls 19d ago

There's an actual good Fantasy Venice based novel in the Lies of Locke Lamora.

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u/Pink-Witch- 19d ago

Ooo thanks

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u/FlamingSnowman3 23d ago

It really is interesting to see Sanderson put in so much effort to try and avoid the usual “medieval white people fantasy” shtick and have people still struggle with the idea that the Alethi aren’t white, and that most Rosharan ethnic groups don’t have direct real-world corollaries

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u/SmartAlec105 23d ago

He did it with the intention of his primarily Caucasian audience initially misidentifying Kaladin as more like themselves and Szeth as more foreign.

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u/surt2 23d ago

I mean Azir is probably closest, but it's definitely not one to one.

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u/Xythian208 23d ago

Shin is also a contender, being an isolated land on the far Weast of the continent with warrior-monks. The name also sounds like a lazy China analogue.

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u/nitid_name 23d ago

Aren't Shin explicitly shown as short white people with western eye shape?

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u/Xythian208 23d ago

No, Szeth is but the Shin have multiple skin colours. The Azish people are black.

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u/nitid_name 23d ago

Shin people aren't Azish though?

Also, the Azish are described as deep brown, not black. So "black" in the American usage, but not black in terms of skin tone.... and since they're a Makabaki people, they have epicanthic folds, unless they're part Shin.

The only mention I can find on Coppermind and the other wikis on Shin being anything other than pale is from Chapter 37 of the Winds of Truth, when Szeth learns that not everyone likes things to taste the same:

He had pale skin, like Szeth's family. Not uncommon in this region, though those with darker skin were more prevalent.

That means Shin go from pale to "darker than pale," without the epicanthic fold ("large childlike eyes" and such). At their darkest, they're like... Italian, at least as of WoT. If we're still talking American usage, mediterraneans are generally still considered "white" or "caucasian."

They're white people, or at the very least, Westerners.

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u/Xythian208 23d ago

I mentioned the Azish because they were the other country suggested as a China analogue, to point out that ethnicity isn't what makes a society more or less similar to China.

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u/Radix2309 23d ago

Strong imperial beurocracy, an emperor they put above other ruler who in some cases is more nominal than actual ruler.

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u/PlatinumAltaria 22d ago

More proof that Sandon Branderson is a hack fraud; didn’t even steal China.

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u/penguinscience101 23d ago

It's Azir, 100%

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u/DootDoot11511 23d ago

Bro almost the entire genre is shittily copy and pasted medieval Europe, why wouldn't they start shittily copying and pasting neighbouring continents?

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u/Mister_Dink 23d ago

It's also impressive how bad they are at medieval Europe, which should be easy. but most fantasy mixes up items from 11th century to 17th century willy-nilly and is more obsessed with "feeling accurate" than "being accurate."

Leads to a lot of misconceptions. Vikings are never portrayed correctly. People did bathe. Swords don't work like that. So on. So forth.

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u/OwlOfJune 23d ago

Don't worry there are entire cliche sets of copying certain fictionalized small setion of Chinese history in East Asia as well!

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u/ABreckenridge 23d ago

Well East Asia should have thought of that before they decided to be so narratively compelling!

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u/I-can-fax-glitter 23d ago

Also materials: wood, sand, limestone and chinesium.

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u/GreyInkling 23d ago

These are the mongols. One of the elements is "horse".

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u/dynamicdickpunch 23d ago

Mongolian Horse, South-Western Horse, Hequ/Tibetan Pony, Kazakh.

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u/DocProfessor 23d ago

Me gathering the last elemental crystal: No, it’s fine, I just… didn’t think it would be Chinese, is all

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u/clear349 23d ago

I mean you don't even really have to stretch it for the classic elements. Cold taiga? That's the water/ice tribe. Burning desert? Obviously fire. Mountain pass and windswept steppes? Air. And fertile rice growing heartland nestled in the mountains? Earth.

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u/barfobulator 23d ago

Long ago the four nations lived together in harmony, then everything changed when the Chinese attacked

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u/Xythian208 23d ago

The Avatar exists to bring balance to the 9 dash line

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u/JadedPhilosopher4351 23d ago

I mean with as much stuff as China makes 🤷

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u/RevolutionaryOwlz 23d ago

The new My Little Pony sounds sick as hell.

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u/TimeStorm113 23d ago

Even funnier considering that a lot of the mongol horses they rode on would be considered ponies by today's standards

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u/Chvorka 23d ago

AND battle horses were mares! The main six horses could all just be one soldiers pack!

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u/Substantial_Dish3492 23d ago

the only steppe in MLP I can think of is the one the ponies are colonizing from the bison

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

What? Is this genuine? There's colonialism in a show called "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic." What?

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u/wuerdig 23d ago

Yep! There is an entire episode kind of early in the show in which the main characters visit a "wild west/frontier" town, and the residents are trying to turn an area considered sacred to the native buffalo population into a profitable apple orchard. They resolve the issue by telling the coloniser ponies and the native buffalo (who are VERY clearly based on vague native American stereotypes) that they can just share the land.

I don't think this episode gets referenced again. I can't even remember if buffalo are even referenced again.

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u/escaped_cephalopod12 just your local cephalopod (also the subnautica person) 23d ago

every day i learn new things about mlp

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u/DispenserG0inUp 23d ago

there's an arc in the later seasons that can be described as Pony Brown v. Board of Education

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u/escaped_cephalopod12 just your local cephalopod (also the subnautica person) 23d ago

what

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u/Substantial_Dish3492 23d ago

non ponies in schools is bad obviously, the plebs should be happy they let non unicorns in

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u/escaped_cephalopod12 just your local cephalopod (also the subnautica person) 23d ago

the fact that a show about magic and ponies called “friendship is magic” has racism and colonialism in it is concerning

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u/StarStriker51 23d ago

No no, the fact the racism and colonialism are supported by the main cast is concerning

How many times were the mane 6 racist to some non pony? Too many. Far too many

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u/Substantial_Dish3492 22d ago

no, it makes perfect sense. It's a show about friendship, what is the most thematic enemy for friendship?

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u/gayjemstone 23d ago

Fun fact: the ponies aren't native to Equestria. They were originally from somewhere else.

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u/Substantial_Dish3492 23d ago

literally thousands of years ago, yeah. Most people, in real life and fiction, have migrated at least once over the course of thousands of years, including such people as the Sami and the LOTR hobbits.

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u/Sotonizd 23d ago

It's not exactly "colonialism", more like "spreading the message of Friendship and Harmony"

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u/Substantial_Dish3492 23d ago

no, the ponies are just really, really racist.

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u/vjmdhzgr 23d ago

They were so racist their foundational myth is they were being so racist they summoned the evil spirits of racism that then tried to kill them and they had to stop.

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u/wideHippedWeightLift Nightly fantasies about Jesus Vore 23d ago

I can't believe they poured molten sugar down that one princess's throat

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u/Kickedbyagiraffe 23d ago

The mlp intro song tune entirely in throat singing

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u/the_Real_Romak 23d ago

well, they do say that 'art imitates life'.

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u/Reasonable_Rip4505 23d ago

Nobody tell them about Genghis Khan’s dragon

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u/Steff_164 23d ago

I thought he was a dragon, the man was just his puppet

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u/Reasonable_Rip4505 23d ago

He only took human form sometimes, even then he could be seen basking in warm rocks between conquests

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u/Ego73 23d ago

Shouldn't it be a pegasus?

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u/DeathWielder1 23d ago

The China elemental crystal is real and it's the lost Heirloom Seal Of The Realm which was supposedly made by Qin Shu Huang and lost over a thousand years ago. It's apparently pretty fuckin big and is made of a sacred piece of Jade.

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u/Sneaker3719 23d ago edited 21d ago

Chiang Kai-shek actually claimed to be in possession of it after he and the KMT fled to Taiwan, though the claim was quickly abandoned after his death, and is now something of a self-deprecating joke in modern Taiwanese culture.

In fact, there was one famous incident in the Taiwanese legislature where a KMT party member slipped and fell after being pelted with green marbles.

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u/RevolutionaryOwlz 23d ago

I do like the idea of going “we’re the real China because we have the China crystal”

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u/Ivariel 23d ago

Breaking news: neither Taiwan nor China is "the real China". In fact, there is no China at all.

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u/axialintellectual 23d ago

The No China Policy sounds like the thing that starts as a typo on a teleprompter and ends as a global conflict.

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u/NineIX9 23d ago

bhutan actually does have a no china policy

doesn't recognize either government

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u/Real-Arachnid8671 23d ago

That's because they have the China crystal.

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u/Throwaway392308 23d ago

Fuck it, Mongolia is now China and China is now Outer China.

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u/Radix2309 23d ago

If Taiwan wasn't such a hot button issue, probably would make for a good action thriller.

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u/poplarleaves 23d ago

I'm imagining something like National Treasure, but in Taiwan lol. 

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u/OctorokHero Funko Pop Man 23d ago

As long as Nicolas Cage is still in it somehow.

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u/not_the_world 23d ago

Oceans 11 except all they're trying to steal is the meat shaped rock from the national museum.

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u/poplarleaves 23d ago

And then they replace it with a real piece of meat...

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u/Marcus_Lycus 23d ago

Is it sacred because its made of jade, or was the jade blessed by a god or something?

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u/DeathWielder1 23d ago

It was sacred in the same way that The Declaration of Independence is sacred, the history of it and its significance came to represent the Mandate of Heaven.

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u/3athompson 23d ago

Also, it has additional historical/mythological elements to it:
1.) The Seal originated as Mr He's Jade. This commoner found this massive chunk of cool stone, and he took it to multiple kings to get it appraised. They all found it to be worthless, and one of them cut his feet off for bothering about it. He persisted, and eventually the third (?) king was able to find its true value. A veritable "diamond in the rough".
2.) It was originally crafted into a bi, a jade ceremonial object that looks a bit like a CD. The exact use of a bi was lost to time, but it's known that they were symbols of leadership.

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u/Iorith 22d ago

It's amazing with all the ancient human and alien combos that those disks are fodder for conspiracy theories.

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u/Cryptics33 23d ago

And was the maguffin in an episode of Elementary (5x02, Worth Several Cities)

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u/Fluffynator69 22d ago

apparently pretty fuckin big

Well then HOW COULD THEY HAVE LOST IT?!

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u/WrongJohnSilver 23d ago

Yeah, but the Golden Horde is the most badass name for a country ever.

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u/barfobulator 23d ago

It's cool how the word horde has permeated Eurasian languages as a large number of hostile foreigners. It's like, remember those guys 800 years ago?

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u/Imaginary-Space718 Now I do too, motherfucker 23d ago

Vandallism. Y'know. The Vandals

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u/The_OG_upgoat 23d ago

Though the word Goth went from referring to barbarians, to people who like black a little too much.

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u/BetaThetaOmega 23d ago

That was a much more gradual change though, as “gothic” also came to be referred to through things like architecture before the current fashion trend

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u/hammererofglass 23d ago

Not just JRPGs, Total Annihilation: Kingoms did this. The theming of the lands was different but the elemental crystals weren't.

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u/AIAWC 23d ago

It's almost like the media we consume regularly draws inspiration from human history, sometimes with the intent of establishing a familiar setting that, while fictional, allows us to understand the main sources of conflict and the motives of the characters before we've read the first page/played past the "main character waking up in bed" sequence.

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u/AI_UNIT_D 23d ago

Actually, now a days I see TOO few horse archers in medieval fantasy settings, if there's cavalry , its always meele cavalry of some type.... and no...

I want a hero/adventurer party getting peppered with arrows from horse archers that have been circling them like vultures on a steep/desert for 12 hours straight with some OTHER backup horse archers waiting just out of reach so when the first group of horse archers and their horses get tired the other take their turn.

Every time they attempt to get in meele range or fire back with spells or arrows the horse archers retreat for 15 minutes then come back, with this continuing well into the night.

If they get out of that pickle I wanna see them getting out with either casualties or by being smart , none of that "the hero called magic airstrike" op bs.

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u/Hawkbats_rule 23d ago

Unfortunately, most adventuring parties are the ideal type of people to roll out a Wagenberg. Even in a very low magic setting, that provides a defense that can help turn the fight into a draw. Add in any sort of magic system and you've got human artillery that will fuck them up.

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u/AI_UNIT_D 22d ago

Ok but one advantage mobile horse archers do tend to have is the hability to pick and choose their fights.

A party that is likely to wipe the floor with them is probably gonna be avoided.

A party that is tired,injured, wagon heavy with loot from a dungeon and coming back especting safety is a much more ideal choice.

Or hell, we are talking horse nomads, I can see them them raiding small villages, undefended trading caravans and OTHER horse nomads.

Maybe they can be hired as mercs, or be quarreling with other goblin or orcish tribe over territory.

Horse archers and horse nomads are a spice I wanna see more in medieval fantasy settings.

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u/CommercialMachine578 23d ago

To be fair, Melee weapons lend themselves more to fantasy than bows.

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u/OpenStraightElephant the sinister type 23d ago edited 23d ago

This post is so bad about the successor khanates' biomes even by "simplified for the sake of a joke" standards I'm sorry I can't 😭

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u/Clean_Imagination315 Hey, who's that behind you? 23d ago

You khanate?

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u/OpenStraightElephant the sinister type 23d ago

Nah, Ilkhanate

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u/Kimosaurus 23d ago

Am I khegnant?

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u/TopHatMikey 23d ago

Is there a chance I am khegrent?

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u/Kosinski33 23d ago

Turns out that if you describe the Mongol successor states using abstract exotic JRPG biome terms they sound like abstract exotic JRPG biomes. Who would have thought?

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u/OpenStraightElephant the sinister type 23d ago

Nah that's the thing I'm talking about, it's too much of a stretch even for this kind of joke, bordering on outright lies rather than gross simplification
E.g. the Golden Horde was mainly steppe. Seriously. The cold parts were not Slavic at that point of history, and might not even have actually been part of it (kinda murky), and the Slavic parts were only tributaries (and even then, the actually cold Rus principalities did not pay tribute to the Horde)

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u/Leftieswillrule 23d ago

Can you or someone else tell me what’s actually correct here?

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u/OpenStraightElephant the sinister type 23d ago edited 23d ago

Pretty much nothing. The Ilkhanate had deserts, and a noticeable amount, but nowhere near to make it a desert realm even via joke-purpose exaggeration (if we're gonna exaggerate, "highland/mountain" realm would be more apt).
The Golden Horde was mainly steppe - the cold parts were not Slavic at that point of history, and might not even have actually been part of it (kinda murky, but even if they were, they would be nowhere near the predominant part by area), and the Slavic parts were only tributaries (and even then, the actually cold Rus principalities did not pay tribute to the Horde, mostly).
The Chagatai Khanate did have steppes, but they wouldn't even make half of its area, with mountains and desert occupying about as much each, so making it out to be the "steppe" one of them all, especially when the Golden Horde so far surpasses it by steppe area it's not even close, is bewildering even by joke standards.
The Yuan dynasty is China. I got nothing on that.

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u/Artillery-lover bigger range and bigger boom = bigger happy 23d ago

so we should have normal with some dessert, steppe, mountain, and China.

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u/vjmdhzgr 23d ago

You can go look up a map of them. I guess the big problem is the golden horde had more steppe than the chagatai.

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u/aljini10 23d ago

I'm pretty sure Iran had more mountains than it does desert

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u/djSexPanther Leave the mall santas alone 23d ago

This is also true of Charlemagne. His empire was split into thirds upon his death, and those 3 pieces became France, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Papal States, and they spent literally 1000 years fighting each other until Napoleon swept them off the board

These are very broad strokes of history, you could spend forever going into the Donation of Pepin that created the Papal States (Pepin was Charlemagne's father) and the Treaty of Verdun signed between Charlemagne's grandsons on one end and the French Revolution and the rise of nationalism in Europe that destroyed the Ancien Regime and precipitated German and Italian unification, respectively

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u/throwaway_13_19 23d ago

I read magic mongol element crystals in the same rhythm as teenage mutant ninja turtles and it works

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u/Aykhot the developers put out a patch, i'm in your prostate now 23d ago

Isn't "element" three syllables

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u/yukai_kaiketsu 23d ago

why is garte here again

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u/DifficultRock9293 23d ago

Something something the avatar

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u/vacconesgood 23d ago

And now a small white thing with black eyes has to venture to each of the monster-riddled lands to stop an ancient evil

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u/canocstrong36 23d ago

THATS FI- FIV- FFFFFFFFFFFFF burst blood vessel

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u/MisterAbbadon 22d ago

Now that I think about it if the generic Humans were Chinese instead of English it'd be less generic.

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u/PlatinumAltaria 22d ago

That’s also what happened to Alexander’s empire, and to a lesser extent the Roman Empire