#also. that og post is from 2021. and while I'm not saying I completely disagree with myself

[bookwyrminspiration]

hello so i sent you something very similar to this a few months ago but it looks like tumblr ate my og ask because i haven't seen it so i'm resending it except i don't remember my exact words so i have to rewrite it from scratch lmfao

about elves and culture: at one point i remember you mentioning offhandedly in some post that elves are all white culturally (i tried for about fifteen minutes to find it, but you know. tumblr.) which is another way the series lacks diversity (besides the obvious barely-any-non-white-people and no non-allocishet people) and i was thinking about how shannon could have even have fixed this problem because the elves are a monolith when it comes to culture. yeah, they have different races, but all the races have the same culture. so i was like. ok. how would shannon even incorporate multiple cultures into the story? how would it even be possible to show cultural diversity in a story where the elves all live in the same society? and i came up with a few ideas:

could do a mashpot, where everyone in the lost cities has bits of every single culture ever mixed into one (somehow). i have two ideas for this

mashpot option one: have the different aspects of a culture each come from different cultures (for example, clothes of one culture and the food of a different culture and traditions of the another culture and so on). putting it all together, this would create a collage-culture of sorts, which would be quite jarring, but it could be effective if done well, i think.

mashpot option two: they could have the different aspects of a culture pull from every culture ever. for example, the elves could eat foods that taste like foods from all around the world, instead of foods that just taste like american foods (as someone who hates the taste of stereotypically american food, i can say i would hate eating anything from the lost cities). or have them celebrate a variety of holidays or something across the whole year, each of which is representative of a different culture.

could have different groups of elves each have different cultures. i also have two ideas for this

different groups option one: each family line has a different culture or something like that. so you have cultural diversity through each family having a different culture and everyone being accepting of that. this could include different clothes, food, traditions, architecture, celebrations, and all that stuff (maybe not language though lmfao). this would at least be able to somewhat showcase different cultures, although it would have to have been done really half-assedly. this would also have a huge skew toward white cultures because most of the characters are white.

different groups option two: create different clans of elves, all of whom have mutual respect for each other. each clan of elves can have a different culture. this would literally be separate societies of elves. however, they could all respond to the same council, which is made of people from all the clans in the name of equality. this way, the monolithicity of the elves would be intact and while still showing some diversity of culture.

shannon makes up her own culture that is completely unlike any culture we've ever heard of, ever. equal neglect of all cultures is equality. sophie eats an umber leaf and is like "this tastes like nothing i've ever eaten before and tastes like it shouldn't even be a real food but i like it". sophie is shown their clothes and it's just a dress made out of solid, opaque crystal. their traditions involve scratching random shapes in the ground and dancing around them in a specific way. this is the chaos option.

this wouldn't really showcase cultural diversity, but instead of an all-white culture, it could be a non-white culture monolith. but then there's the same problem of "why do all the elves have the same exact culture, where's the diversity?" except a different flavor. it would also be really weird because most of the characters in the series are canonically white.

elves don't have any culture. not gonna lie, i have no idea how this would work. this is the other chaos option. up to interpretation, i guess.

thoughts? what would you do if you were shannon. i don't really see any other options for fixing this problem, but there might be something i missed.

(also, yes, i am sending this three times. sorry for annoying you. i want to make sure at least one makes it to your inbox this time lol.)

Hey! So sorry about that--I don't know exactly how long you were waiting, but if it ever seems a while you can send an ask sooner to double check!

Before I get into this, I will say: there is no one right way to approach this topic and I am one person. These are just my thoughts--and I am always open to hearing from others

That said, just to clarify my first point (from this ask, thanks for the link), what I meant by "the elves are all white culturally" is that the kotlc elven culture is fabricated, but seems largely white american inspired. Which makes sense, as that's what Shannon is. There's always going to be a level of bias from one's own experiences and life, it's legitimately impossible to avoid and not always a bad thing. In some cases though, we want to temper it a little, which I don't think it really was in kotlc.

Like you said, there's multiple ways to approach this.

I think the crux is how race, in the elven world, means nothing--but this story exists in a world where it means a lot. While race is a social construction (the meanings/distinctions we assign to skin color are arbitrary) and therefore can be given a null significance, doing so is difficult because socially constructed doesn't mean meaningless/insignificant

We also run into complications given how scattered elves are--I've brought this up regarding clothing, but the physical geography of one's community shapes not only what you wear, but what you grow, how you build, etc. And we don't have that landmark for the elves

I think either an elven monoculture or multiple would work, it's just a matter of what you'd want to do.

If we go for a monoculture as Shannon has, I'd personally go for its own unique culture rather than a mash-up. A mash-up seems too likely to remove significant context/meaning from the source, and the elves are supposed to be isolated from humans. I think Shannon choosing this was fine, it was the execution I dislike.

The food comparisons you mention, for example. Or the family structures. Beauty standards. The education system. They don't actually feel like a distinct monoculture, it feels American with a fantasy filter. If, for example, we expanded on how being immortal affects your family (everyone's still alive, what kinds of relationships does that create, etc.), or how they're taught (instead of lectures and homework, maybe more hands on involvement, travel for hands-on since they can do so instantly, different kinds of tests, etc.), then I'd be more satisfied. I know there's some level of familiarity so readers aren't lost, but it's a little too much, in my opinion

If we were going instead for multiple elven cultures, I think I'd personally base it on ability. It's the most defining thing in their world and could easily be taken further. There'd be kinks to work out given kids don't automatically inherent their parents' abilities, have to manifest, and that people with the same ability don't generally group together, but! that's not insurmountable

kids could be raised within their parents' ability cultures/customs and then, if they manifest a different ability, its culture could be passed via their instructors--which wouldn't necessarily be at Foxfire. Those who differ from their parents, perhaps, would be expected to seek out additional mentor figures and become more multi-culture kids in the process. just because they don't group in canon now doesn't mean they can't here (and could be seen as more necessary given how much ability cross-marriages there are). There could also be more celebratory days around abilities--e.g. a kind of ceremony conducted when a kid manifests. Lots of different ways to take it, the point is just that abilities, I think, make a great base for different elven cultures given how massively important it is in their world.

We're critiquing/discussing diveristy, so something to consider, I think, is what is diversity in the context of kotlc? We want a variety of people to be reflected in the story--but we're dealing with isolated non-humans, so including a variety of human cultures won't necessarily achieve that goal.

The main thing that comes up (or at least that I've seen discussed) is the lack of non-white characters and the fairly american constructed culture--so the course of action to take could be a better balance of physical descriptor (more non-white characters) that creates the varied reflections/connections we want, and a more distinctly elven culture that leans into it harder, making it less American.

I'll stop here for now until this gets too long, but at the moment that's the general direction of my thoughts. I think it's a fine thought experiment to ask "what if culture wasn't tied to race?" you just don't want to then forget that even though your fantasy book doesn't consider race, it exists in a society that does. which could lead us into further discussion on sterotypes as well, which also factors into all this

and again: these are just my personal initial thoughts. it's a broad, complex topic, so there will of course be things I miss or don't get to. but regardless, i hope that at least partially answers your question of what I would do :)