The way we write traditional epic fantasy now is making the whole genre look bad... you can't always have male protaganists-even in medieval Europe, women were useful and functional in society. You can't just have quests and the Hero's Journey. Youcan't just have non white races represented as orcs or tokens! Do somedamned research.
The Medicis has black family members! The Moors were part of European life for centuries. Medieval Europe was full of strong women and Jewish merchants and Chinese traders, gay knights and married popes and peasents who did important things besides becoming kings... There's no reason for medieval Europe basedfantasies to be a boring as they are. It's time to shake things up-N.K. Jemisin (author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
I like this excerpt from an article I read today on a sistah, who is a fantasy writer of the epic fantasy series, The Inheritance Trilogy.
Synchronicity works when the spirit is leading you on the right vibration. Being a lover of fantasy and sci-fi myself, I have opted to not write a word of my novel until I have a solid foundation of truth. My imagination istainted with post traumatic slave syndrome... because I cannot find apoint of reference for self image in literature involving fantasy. It istainted with the "elves, dwarves, medieval and dragon blueprint." Ihave been heavily researching African mythos, reading African Griotstales, and reading Native American mythos as well. Our whole existencein the ancient world, pre colonialism read like that of a fantasy, aswe are magical beings who did magical things, and interweaved ourselvesin the fabric of nature and the cosmos. I am preparing outlines for myown epic fantasy and I can't stress enough how important and delicateimagination is. The vibration of your imagination builds your reality,what you perceive and experience in this physical world. But it startswith solid pretense.
Imagination is from the latin word imago, imago represents the perception of self, our perception of self in the African Diaspora has been compromised, we don't know who we are looking at, so we must research... mythos gives breath to inner
mysticism. That's why art is so important, especially art representing one's self, self being the hive organism that is us, which we really do not get a fair, accurate portrayal of anymore, since we've beendisconnected from our language, and history.
Imagination is a copy, likeness, a representation, a portrait of ancestors; an echo of the past; a mental picture, idea, a metaphor, an appearance, "a pretence" So who's likeness have we been saturated by?? Exactly mypoint... it's about that time to find our own representation... and Iintend to do that. Fantasy is we, we is fantasy! All the storieswritten are about us, with the visual defintion of another... StarWars, Superman, Matrix, King Arthur, all those and then some, need allbe Afrocentricized to understand.
Peace! Ashe*
~ Kristina
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