On how many authors choose what elements of medieval history to apply to their work of fiction, Quinnae Moongazer writes:

many of us were immediately met with cries of “but it’s supposed to be like the Middle Ages!” Let me explain why this is patently ridiculous using my usual flawless logic.

Or, perhaps more appropriately, using their logic.

I have heard this used about World of Warcraft’s setting of Azeroth more than once, and it was indeed this setting to which Sohmer was hearkening when he implored Static Nonsense to stop being so PC and accept that cheers like “Woo! Woo! Woo!” and Lord of the Rings references were commonplace in Earth’s European Middle Ages. Let’s also not forget that warlocks are real, and so are undead, and Elves, and Gnomes, and Trolls… what? Read a history book and open up to the Medieval bit! Arthas will be there, right between Charlemagne and William the Conqueror.

Snark aside, there’s nothing wrong with a good LotR reference or a little woo woo in a fantasy comic, or RPG, or novel, or what have you. But do not then insult my intelligence and defend something prejudiced with a veneer of “Uhh, Middle Ages!” If you made an excuse for a joke based on a modern movie, you can easily excise unnecessary bigoted nonsense.

This goes for any number of video games as well. Dragon Age’s Ferelden had absolutely no reason to be mostly white. At all. While the setting was inspired by Earth’s Medieval England, it wasn’t the same place. Dragon Age is not a game of historical re-enactment. It is a fantasy game. If we use the world of fantasy to liberate our creativity and add dragons, phantoms, goblins, sorcerers, and unicorns to our stories, what exactly is tying your hands in changing certain elements of social relations? Nothing except yourself.

I read Border House Blog because I like to expose myself to other ideas and perspectives, but I’m often not impressed with the quality of the writing. I extract what ideas I can, but it’s really more of a chore to exercise my awareness and empathy than something I directly enjoy.

I believe that the author, Quinnae, is intelligent and knows the “real” reasons why authors choose to construct villages dominated by Caucasians and make references to modern memes, but she seems to avoid ever bringing it up.

The Border House Blog self describes as “thoughtful analysis to gaming with a feminist viewpoint”. I’m not sure what audience Quinnae’s blog post is intended for, but I think it fails to live up to the previously mentioned goal (she’s not the only author who fails at this goal; I’m singling her out merely out of my own convenience in that I’ve just recently finished setting up Tumblr on my iPad).

If the post was targeted at the people most likely to commit the sin she is complaining about, I think she should realize that many people don’t understand the true motivations behinds their own actions — not out of malice, but simply because they never spent any effort at self introspection. I’m pretty sure Quinnae is aware of the “real “motivation, so it would have been more “thoughtful” for her to just come out and state it to help educate these people.

If the post was targeted at the preached-choir (and I suspect that this is probably the case, if perhaps subconsciously), well, the response to her blog post will probably be relatively positive (and at the time of writing, it seems that it is indeed positive with commenters awarding her “2 internets ftw”, etc.) but little thoughtful analysis will be gained.

The “real” reason for the selective application of realism is simply due to authors following the path of least resistance. If an author has a fictional character ostensibly set in the medieval era make a reference to something modern, most readers will recognize this as a joke. Very few people would bother to ask “Why did that elf mention Twitter?” and if any such people do, the author can simply say “It’s a joke.”

In contrast, if you have a European town where most of the dominant social class seems to be Asian, it’ll seem “weird”, and people probably would ask questions about that, or simply assume that the author has an Asian fetish, or something along those lines. When asked about it, what is the author going to say?

“Well, it’s fantasy, I can do whatever I want.”? This is as much of a cop-out answer as to why the author choose not to have any non-Caucasians in his towns.

“I wanted to promote equality between races.”? While admirable and honest if it were true, chances are this isn’t most authors goals. It may be the goal of many readers and writers of Border House Blog, and it’s lamentable that it is not a goal shared by more authors, but obviously it’s unrealistic to expect this response being uttered by someone who wasn’t thinking about equality while writing the work of fiction.

I think there may be something like a bystander effect in that many authors don’t want to be seen as some sort of equality/freedom hippy, and do not wish to risk being one of the few authors which challenge reader expectations in such a dramatic way, especially if it’s a cause that’s not particularly prevalent in their mind.

I’m not sure the best strategy for this is to mock someone for failing to understand their own self-motivations, which is likely just to lead to those people becoming more self-defensive and less likely to be willing to learn from what you have to say.