Re: Re: Dragonrise arc

From: donald_at_...
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:42:57 GMT


In message <207077.4805.qm_at_...> Jane Williams writes:
>
>> Chris made a point I wanted to make, too: Jane, the parallels you are
>> using, and the public you are catering too, have a decidedly British
>> background, which isn't shared by a large part of the rest of the
>> Gloranthan community.
>
>I am definitely assuming that we're writing (in English) primarily
>for people for whom English is their first language, yes. People who
>can write and RP in their second language are frighteningly clever
>and (I assume) quite rare. Is the rarity an invalid assumption, then?
>If so, we may have to drop any assumption of common historical
>"knowledge" at all, which will be awkward.
>I'd also assumed that anything non-British English-speakers know about
>history before their own history started would be from a British base,
>since that's where their ancestors would have been from. Not true?

From what I've seen and heard general knowledge of US history starts with the Pilgrim Fathers. There wasn't anything before that. In any case those with a British ancestry aren't anywhere near the majority. The other big group of English speakers would be in India which is more likely to understand Bollywood references than Hollywood ones.

>>To me, Celts are people living in and around the Alps, not island
>>dwellers.
>Well, they occupied most of Europe originally, and invaded Delphi
>at one point. But the last bit to get conquered by the Romans was
>Gaul, then Britain, I believe?

Apart from the bits they never conquered - like Ireland and some parts of Eastern Europe. They didn't hold on to Dacia long either.

>> > Did any invasion of Sartar use elephants? If it doesn't yet, we
>> > really ought to write some in.
>
>> No elephants. Dinosaurs.
>
>Would they have been a strange new idea (and frightening because of
>their strangeness) to Sartarites? I'd have thought not.

I remember someone writing up a Lunar mammoth unit.

While some Sartarites would be familiar with dinosaurs, particularly those in the north near Wintertop to majority wouldn't. Remember in a largely rural tribal society anything from beyond the next valley can be strange and frightening.

>> So let's not use analogs, but state these facts frankly, and then
>> tell where the inspiration came from. Let's get productive, not
>> controversial.
>
>I think we're going to have to. If our audience don't know what
>we're refering to with ANY of this, the analogues are useless.
>Drat :( There's got to be some commmon cultural references
>somewhere, surely?

Only between members of the same cultural group. There's also the risk that a cultural reference can have totally different meanings in similar cultures.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/

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