I'm writing a serialised historical fiction set in 1169 Ireland. I'm an Australian - but not painted blue, I promise. To deal with the problem of cultural appropriation & inaccurate portrayals I researched for 5 years, travelled to Ireland, paid for a subscription to Tuatha.ie who are a collective of Irish archaeologists, read books and watch Irish media. I spent years paralysed by all this research before finally jumping in to create my story. It's one that I have felt compelled to tell for 10 years. I dread being exploitative or misrepresenting Irelands culture. But its almost certain I have. I just hope that folks will help me be better.
I think even in both academic and creative writing inspired by the real world, there's a sense of continuous learning. There sometimes feels like an onus to have all your ducks in a row before you ever try to do something semi-scholarly or inspired by real life if you want to be taken seriously but that's just not how education works. Even just learning as you go and adjusting is good enough.
It is really surprising that Yarros could be so cavalier about such an important aspect of her writing. To misuse the language of the people you chose as the characters in your fiction is an insult to the people and to your readers.It seems Yarros has no respect for either.
The approach I took with a secondary world setting I've been building up since about high school is blending distinct elements in a way intended to jar the reader out of any direct parallels, because I hate the fantasy counterpart style and lens. So things like putting samurai in the place where I used Irish names for characters to ideally divide it from both Japan and Ireland to readers and make it clear its only influenced by them, not a proxy for them. Being something from so early on as a writer, I wonder if I'd take a different method if I started another setting this elaborate from scratch.
When it comes to mythology itself I feel there's a lot of room to do things in a way that's downright offensive. I've gotten to the point of actually feeling relief when my favorite Aztec deity doesn't appear in works because when he does they tend to misuse him in a way that's borderline conquistador apologism. Mesoamerican is a similar magic bag to Celtic in a way, I sometimes forget how little most care for the distinction between Aztec and Maya. I don't like most media that tries to be about Mesoamerican cultures.
I used to be a fan of the Fate franchise, which is a blend of all different mythologies and history, but I grew more jaded with it as I came to realize a larger percentage was portrayed unfaithfully and rather offensively when you stopped to think about the implications. The ones about modern day characters interacting with figures of mythology still hold up to me since its about the relationship between the modern and mythic characters, where the mythic can work more as symbols of big ideas, but the ones that try to be more directly about the mythological characters lost a lot of appeal on deeper or even surface level reading.
I've noticed in general with mixed mythology media there are a handful of figures used when creators want to get points for acknowledging a mythology, but don't care enough to research it, like name dropping Pele or Baron Samedi. So for my own in progress mixed mythology project I've made a point of swearing not to use such figures as the main representative of their mythology. I don't have any Irish figures lined up for it right now, but I can tell you that the Morrigan is off-limits until other Irish characters are worked in (and Cu Chulainn would be as well, but this is only featuring deities anyway).
Now I worry this has gotten a bit off-topic but essentially what I'm getting at is that I wish people were more intentional and thoughtful when it came to the use of mythology and ancient cultures, and recognized the political dimensions to them. Instead it tends to get treated as an easy grab bag of names to use interchangeably without one look at the actual sources and narratives, with mythological based works coming off as more in conversation with each other than mythology. And sadly this is not limited to the Celtic.
On a less serious note A Court of Rose and Thorns is weirdly funny to hear about second hand. Apparently the map is just a relabeled real world map that clearly marks Ireland as the home of the evil fairies and Britain as the good fairies, which just feels comically over the top in terms of this issue, and Koschei the Deathless is in the last book for some reason. It's funnier for me to purposefully not learn what the hell Koschei the Deathless is doing there.
I think the use of language and names is an element of worldbuilding writers handwave a lot of the time. Quite a bit of advice I've seen is just to make names and words pronounceable to people in the Anglosphere. More effort seems to be given to making "realistic" magic systems than to creating plausible culture and language in fictional worlds. Every person's name on Earth has a unique meaning and history so why shouldn't fictional characters? Robert E. Howard's "big three" (Solomon Kane, Conan, and Bran Mak Morn) come to mind where he intentionally named them using mostly plausible conventions based on their cultures and characteristics. One thing I admire from his "worldbuilding notes" was the list of Cimmerian names that fell in line with the Irish Gaelic mood he wanted them to evoke.
I've also find myself with a slight sense of relief when I find a piece of new fantasy media that doesn't try to replicate Celtic or any real world cultures. Although I still have that list of things I want to review, my scholarly experience has dampened my ability to genuinely enjoy certain things.
Gods and other divine forces are always best kept in the background in my opinion. If a writer wants to include them in their stories, they should take a good long look at how traditional myths portray gods and what analyses have been done to understand the meaning of their protrayals.
You're right in that the idea of the "magic bag" can certainly be applied to any culture if you have writers uninformed or unmotivated enough.
That makes sense when considering Maas likely thought "fairy tales" also happened to mean that they took place in Faerie like many other pieces of media using that sort of genre do. "Changeling: The Lost" from White Wolf Games outright ignored using any actual Celtic material since they thought the stories from the Brothers Grimm were about the fey and Faerie and such. Maas probably imagined the case was similar when thinking of Russian "fairy tales."
That brings another strategy I've used for secondary world fantasy to mind, which is borrowing Tolkien's trick of saying it is all a translation, which lets me get to the cultural parts of language without having to invent a grammar or such. I see the expectations of conlanguage, maps with realistic geography, and defined magic systems many come to fantasy with as major burdens I should have shed even sooner.
My general method of name picking tends to be deciding on meanings first and then working backwards to find a name that fits it, like knowing I wanted an Irish name related to fire for the dragon of fire from the place with Irish names, and settling on Aodh.
An example of something I did with the framing device translation was saying that the character named Fintan's name in the original language contains a specific word for white that has exclusively lunar connotations and can only be used as a name element by the royal family (because they are descendants of the sun and moon). While my searching pulled up Fintan as a name where most meanings do involve white.
I may not love creating languages the way Tolkien did, but I do love learning about the 'quirks' that show cultural values, so I'd rather simply invent honorifics and specific untranslatable nuances. Tolkien invented his world for the languages while I invented mine for the characters and cultures.
Also I've certainly not let anglophone appeal limit my choice of names. Part of me has wondered when my use of Nahuatl (the language of the Aztec empire though that's a simplification) names and political terms will get me accused of keyboard smashing. My work would not have mass market appeal for other reasons anyway.
I'm writing a serialised historical fiction set in 1169 Ireland. I'm an Australian - but not painted blue, I promise. To deal with the problem of cultural appropriation & inaccurate portrayals I researched for 5 years, travelled to Ireland, paid for a subscription to Tuatha.ie who are a collective of Irish archaeologists, read books and watch Irish media. I spent years paralysed by all this research before finally jumping in to create my story. It's one that I have felt compelled to tell for 10 years. I dread being exploitative or misrepresenting Irelands culture. But its almost certain I have. I just hope that folks will help me be better.
I think even in both academic and creative writing inspired by the real world, there's a sense of continuous learning. There sometimes feels like an onus to have all your ducks in a row before you ever try to do something semi-scholarly or inspired by real life if you want to be taken seriously but that's just not how education works. Even just learning as you go and adjusting is good enough.
It is really surprising that Yarros could be so cavalier about such an important aspect of her writing. To misuse the language of the people you chose as the characters in your fiction is an insult to the people and to your readers.It seems Yarros has no respect for either.
Kudos to you for pointing out her errors.
The approach I took with a secondary world setting I've been building up since about high school is blending distinct elements in a way intended to jar the reader out of any direct parallels, because I hate the fantasy counterpart style and lens. So things like putting samurai in the place where I used Irish names for characters to ideally divide it from both Japan and Ireland to readers and make it clear its only influenced by them, not a proxy for them. Being something from so early on as a writer, I wonder if I'd take a different method if I started another setting this elaborate from scratch.
When it comes to mythology itself I feel there's a lot of room to do things in a way that's downright offensive. I've gotten to the point of actually feeling relief when my favorite Aztec deity doesn't appear in works because when he does they tend to misuse him in a way that's borderline conquistador apologism. Mesoamerican is a similar magic bag to Celtic in a way, I sometimes forget how little most care for the distinction between Aztec and Maya. I don't like most media that tries to be about Mesoamerican cultures.
I used to be a fan of the Fate franchise, which is a blend of all different mythologies and history, but I grew more jaded with it as I came to realize a larger percentage was portrayed unfaithfully and rather offensively when you stopped to think about the implications. The ones about modern day characters interacting with figures of mythology still hold up to me since its about the relationship between the modern and mythic characters, where the mythic can work more as symbols of big ideas, but the ones that try to be more directly about the mythological characters lost a lot of appeal on deeper or even surface level reading.
I've noticed in general with mixed mythology media there are a handful of figures used when creators want to get points for acknowledging a mythology, but don't care enough to research it, like name dropping Pele or Baron Samedi. So for my own in progress mixed mythology project I've made a point of swearing not to use such figures as the main representative of their mythology. I don't have any Irish figures lined up for it right now, but I can tell you that the Morrigan is off-limits until other Irish characters are worked in (and Cu Chulainn would be as well, but this is only featuring deities anyway).
Now I worry this has gotten a bit off-topic but essentially what I'm getting at is that I wish people were more intentional and thoughtful when it came to the use of mythology and ancient cultures, and recognized the political dimensions to them. Instead it tends to get treated as an easy grab bag of names to use interchangeably without one look at the actual sources and narratives, with mythological based works coming off as more in conversation with each other than mythology. And sadly this is not limited to the Celtic.
On a less serious note A Court of Rose and Thorns is weirdly funny to hear about second hand. Apparently the map is just a relabeled real world map that clearly marks Ireland as the home of the evil fairies and Britain as the good fairies, which just feels comically over the top in terms of this issue, and Koschei the Deathless is in the last book for some reason. It's funnier for me to purposefully not learn what the hell Koschei the Deathless is doing there.
I think the use of language and names is an element of worldbuilding writers handwave a lot of the time. Quite a bit of advice I've seen is just to make names and words pronounceable to people in the Anglosphere. More effort seems to be given to making "realistic" magic systems than to creating plausible culture and language in fictional worlds. Every person's name on Earth has a unique meaning and history so why shouldn't fictional characters? Robert E. Howard's "big three" (Solomon Kane, Conan, and Bran Mak Morn) come to mind where he intentionally named them using mostly plausible conventions based on their cultures and characteristics. One thing I admire from his "worldbuilding notes" was the list of Cimmerian names that fell in line with the Irish Gaelic mood he wanted them to evoke.
I've also find myself with a slight sense of relief when I find a piece of new fantasy media that doesn't try to replicate Celtic or any real world cultures. Although I still have that list of things I want to review, my scholarly experience has dampened my ability to genuinely enjoy certain things.
Gods and other divine forces are always best kept in the background in my opinion. If a writer wants to include them in their stories, they should take a good long look at how traditional myths portray gods and what analyses have been done to understand the meaning of their protrayals.
You're right in that the idea of the "magic bag" can certainly be applied to any culture if you have writers uninformed or unmotivated enough.
That makes sense when considering Maas likely thought "fairy tales" also happened to mean that they took place in Faerie like many other pieces of media using that sort of genre do. "Changeling: The Lost" from White Wolf Games outright ignored using any actual Celtic material since they thought the stories from the Brothers Grimm were about the fey and Faerie and such. Maas probably imagined the case was similar when thinking of Russian "fairy tales."
That brings another strategy I've used for secondary world fantasy to mind, which is borrowing Tolkien's trick of saying it is all a translation, which lets me get to the cultural parts of language without having to invent a grammar or such. I see the expectations of conlanguage, maps with realistic geography, and defined magic systems many come to fantasy with as major burdens I should have shed even sooner.
My general method of name picking tends to be deciding on meanings first and then working backwards to find a name that fits it, like knowing I wanted an Irish name related to fire for the dragon of fire from the place with Irish names, and settling on Aodh.
An example of something I did with the framing device translation was saying that the character named Fintan's name in the original language contains a specific word for white that has exclusively lunar connotations and can only be used as a name element by the royal family (because they are descendants of the sun and moon). While my searching pulled up Fintan as a name where most meanings do involve white.
I may not love creating languages the way Tolkien did, but I do love learning about the 'quirks' that show cultural values, so I'd rather simply invent honorifics and specific untranslatable nuances. Tolkien invented his world for the languages while I invented mine for the characters and cultures.
Also I've certainly not let anglophone appeal limit my choice of names. Part of me has wondered when my use of Nahuatl (the language of the Aztec empire though that's a simplification) names and political terms will get me accused of keyboard smashing. My work would not have mass market appeal for other reasons anyway.