The reason I named those two settings in particular is because they have been almost universally been subjected to artistic license for such a long time.

The USA is a melting pot that doesn't have much of a "culture" to begin with (outside of Native Americans - almost every major aspect was brought over from elsewhere), and medieval Europe in general established core tropes of the "fantasy" genre (lowkey to the point of public domain). The fact that both are infamously antagonistic in terms of power and history helps their case as settings that are "okay" for anyone to distort as they please in their work.

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In a nutshell, I am doing my best to avoid orientalism in this project. It is a fantasy counterpart culture (FCC) work, sure, but nothing is purely original - everything has inspiration and the line is very thin in works that can't help but make it obvious due to said inspiration not being a universally acceptable target.

I must also keep in mind that no matter how perfectly I nail the individual elements of the project's FCC to their real-life inspiration, this final product will NOT please everyone. Apart from a dislike of the story itself, this can have outside-context reasoning such as the story being made-up, that fact that artistic license is taken in the first place, the fact that multiple cultures are being used as inspiration and reference, or even the fact that I'm the one making it because I'm not from any of the cultures being referenced. I can't win for losing, and I accepted that when I made the original music video long ago (it is worth noting that said video was better-received on RedNote than any of my US-based socials but I digress).

My best bet is to just make sure the artistic license is as far from offensive as possible, which means doing my best to make intentional nods as recognizable as I can, but no more focused in the narrative than they need to be. The central point of the work is to tell a story with an aesthetic that only nods to the existence of real-life cultures, and there is nothing new, noteworthy or malevolent about that.

To anyone that follows this project and/or plays the final product of this project, please understand that my use of non-English inspiration is only out of admiration and interest in terms of building a high-fantasy setting suited to a story. I will do my best not to offend anyone with any of its elements and I hope you enjoy it.

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