4theWriters: How to Remix Reality (aka A Guide to Cultural Fusion in Storytelling)

What Avatar & Cowboy Bebop Can Teach You About Writing

So, let’s start with a question. What do Chronicles of Mystara & Dragon’s Crown, Cowboy Bebop & Thundercats, and Avatar & Record of Lodoss War all have in common? Spoilers: it’s not the plot, characters, or tone. It’s their use of cultures as a mixtape that gets us hooked on a fantasy we never even knew we wanted. 

Prefer the audio version? Get it on Spotify or Apple, or watch the Full Nostalgia Edition™ below:

Because we can’t have long conversations on the internet anymore, I’m going to be super reductive and say all stories are built on four main pillars:

1. The Plot (The What);
2. The Characters and their Relationships (The Who);
3. The Setting (The Where); and
4. The Tone (The How).

Today, we’re getting into Setting—the Where—and how some absolutely monster juggernauts in fiction have used global culture to flavour their stories beyond characters or tone. You might think the Plot—the What—is the most impactful thing you can write, but no. It’s been said there are only seven basic plots in all of fiction, and while that’s also super reductive, you can probably agree that a heist movie is a lot like other heist movies… except for its characters, setting, and tone.

By the end, you’ll:

1. Know what we mean about cultural fusion in storytelling;
2. Have a system you can use to make this yourself, whether you’re a writer, a games master, or even just want to spot it in the stories you love; and
3. See how I did this, so you can get an in-the-wild book series that has enough ratings to avoid being called a fluke. I’ve left this to last because I hate talking about myself, but we’ve got to do it! So, we’ll do it together.

Tapping Into a (Literal) World of Inspiration

Over the weekend, I decided I wanted to look up a how-to guide for a game that was kicking my ass and ended up falling down the most amazing well of how a piece of art came to be. That game was Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, which re-released two classics in 2013 but has roots almost as old as the world.

The entire history of the Mystara duo is super cool, but the thing that struck me while doing this research was how a very Japanese company, Capcom, got the rights to a very Western high fantasy property, Dungeons & Dragons. What this fusion gifted the world was two games, 1994’s Tower of Doom and 1996’s Shadow Over Mystara, which, despite being older than dirt, still stand up well today. A huge element of this is the cultural welding apparent in the game’s manufacture—the elements of D&D fuse spectacularly well with a distinctly Japanese anime aesthetic.

It stands up so well that George Kamitani, who worked on Tower of Doom, got the bug. Legend says that around 1998, he still itched to make a successor to his work on Mystara, culminating in 2013’s Dragon’s Crown after he started his own game company, Vanillaware. While Dragon’s Crown is one of the most undeniably horny games to be produced, it’s also still carrying the torch for East meets West: we can see how Kamitani loved what he learned about D&D so much that he wanted to keep giving his blend to the world years later.

The creative hybridisation spread with Sword World and Record of Lodoss War, both Japanese properties that give a distinct view into the West’s high fantasy imaginings.

1998’s Cowboy Bebop—I haven’t actually got to the 2021 live action version yet—is a Japanese-meets-Noir space Western. Oh, and it’s got bounty hunters and noodle bars. It was so successful it was credited with being the gateway drug introducing Western viewers to anime in the early 2000s.

What about the other way? 1985’s Thundercats saw United States television producers dipping heavily into the vibe of the anime aesthetic. Not just visually—Thundercats’ art style is an absolute treat—but thematically. You don’t have to squint too hard to see Bushido culture referenced in Thundercats, and it’s this theme the 2011 reboot dives headfirst into. Born in the USA doesn’t mean we have to use guns instead of cool-ass swords, and the Sword of Omens was one of the coolest swords ever gifted to fiction.

We can also see how the tragic misstep of 2020’s Thundercats Roar failed its way to a 2.2 on IMDb. It’s not just the art style to blame, although that’s huge. Roar throws off the trappings of East meets West, the delightful fusion of battle tanks and bushido, and trades it in for bullshit wacky adventures. You lost me at hello.

Also… anyone remember how that initial pilot of ’85’s Thundercats had the Thundercats all hanging about naked on the ship? 80s childhood television was a trip.

Avatar: The Last Airbender blends—or Bends?—elements from Asian and Indigenous cultures to create a world you wished you lived in. Well, not the parts where everyone’s fighting for their lives, but you get me. The Four Nations in the series are inspired by sources including Chinese, Japanese, Inuit, and Tibetan cultures, creating a world that feels familiar while still being fantastical. The creators didn’t just borrow for flavour; they synthesised philosophies, martial arts, and societal structures to create a world that feels both unique and real. Remember that term ‘synthesised’; we’ll be coming back to it.

The Legend of Korra next-levels this. Set decades after Avatar, its Big Deal™ is how the world has evolved. Republic City is described by the creators as what would happen, “…if Manhattan had happened in Asia.” It’s a sort of Roaring Twenties vibe from America and Europe merged with the established Four Nations Asian-inspired world Avatar handed down. There’s Art Deco architecture and 1920s fashion alongside steampunk-inspired technology like satomobiles and mecha tanks. It’s not just vibe; Korra uses its fusion to dredge the lakebed on tradition versus progress, spirituality versus technology, and the social upheavals that come with McMassive industrialisation. In an unrelated note, I don’t think a lot of AI tech-bros have watched The Legend of Korra.

Literature isn’t immune. While it’s not popular to talk about Gaiman these days, his American Gods imagines a world where gods from various mythologies and cultures exist in modern-day America. The Almighty Johnsons riffed on this same prestige in my New Zealand back yard.

Now we’ve seen how it works… how do you do it yourself?

The Cultural Catalyst Framework

Let’s say you want to try this at home. Maybe you’re a writer. You could be a TTRPG game master, too. Hell, maybe you’re in Hollywood and wanting that new spice. Regardless, I’ve got a system for you. Let’s call it… The Cultural Catalyst Framework.

You can tell I’m a recovering IT architect. Architects love frameworks.

There are three phases to our framework: Foundation, Fusion, and Focus.

The Foundation

Step 1: Identify your core theme. To avoid scaring the everliving shit out of your reader, you need a touchstone. Something familiar, a genre or story structure your audience understands. Be specific.

• Not just “Fantasy.” Is it a “Quest-based High Fantasy in the Tolkien tradition?” What about a “Gritty, Low-Magic Sword & Sorcery?”
• Not just “Sci-Fi.” Is it a “Hard Sci-Fi Space Opera?” Maybe you’d prefer a “Dystopian Cyberpunk Thriller?”
• Not just “Mystery.” Is it a “Cozy English Village Whodunnit?” Or maybe a “Hardboiled American Noir?”

Let’s use Hardboiled American Noir. We know the tropes already: a cynical private eye, a femme fatale, a corrupt city, moral ambiguity, jazz music, and rain-slicked streets. If you feel like this could write itself, you’re not wrong. It’s been written a thousand times already. That’s why we want a cultural catalyst.

Step 2: Choose a culture to blend with your theme. It doesn’t matter if it’s historical or contemporary, but what does matter is choosing it for the right reason. If your reason is, “Bro, it’s exotic,” you’re not only stepping dangerously close to cultural appropriation, you’re committing a worse sin: you’re risking reader boredom. Choose something for a thematic or aesthetic reason.

• Thematic Resonance: Is there a philosophical concept that creates interesting friction with your core? For example, the Noir theme of fatalism versus the Buddhist concept of Karma.
• Aesthetic Contrast: Does a culture’s visual language create a striking new look? The sharp, brutalist architecture of the Soviet era would be dope when mixed with the organic, flowing art of the Celts.
• Structural Parallel: Does a historical society’s structure mirror your genre’s needs in a new way? The rigid social hierarchy of Feudal Japan could be your perfect fit for a political court intrigue story.

We’re going to select 1920s Shanghai: The Paris of the East will be our cultural catalyst. We’ve got a rich history of international intrigue, colonial powers, and powerful gangs, and we can create a unique blend by dubstepping Chinese tradition with Western modernity.

Step 3 is important for not cocking this up completely: Do your research. You’ll want something a little deeper than most Wikipedia articles provide because we want our world to feel lived in. You want to be able to answer three elements:

• The Senses: What does it look, sound, smell, and taste like? Think architecture, fashion, music, food, and technology.
• The Rules: How do people interact? What are the social hierarchies, family structures, legal systems, economic drivers, and political factions?
• The Soul: What do your people believe? This could be religion & mythology, their core values, and how they feel about honour, life, death, and justice.

The reason you want to research this is so your world feels authentic, but also so you can tweak this authenticity. We’ll get into this a bit more in our real-world Richard-writes example. Now, let’s get into combining this.

The Fusion

The fun part begins: we’re going to combine the elements from the three steps of the Foundation. To avoid this sounding like a bad copy/paste from Wikipedia into that term paper you forgot about until the night before, we’re going to apply some techniques.

Technique 1: Juxtaposition. This is a fancy term for placing things side-by-side. It’s the simplest method; all we’re doing is taking a part from Culture A and placing it directly into Culture B. The reader’s tension and interest come from contrast. Cowboy Bebop does this: a classic Western-style bounty hunter (Spike) operates out of a ship that feels like a lived-in apartment, maybe eating noodles in a marketplace modelled on Hong Kong.

In our worked example, our Noir detective in a fedora and trench coat walks out of a European-style Art Deco building on the Shanghai Bund and navigates a crowded street market full of traditional Qipao dresses, rickshaws, and the smell of street food. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it, and the detective hasn’t even seen a murder yet.

Technique 2: Synthesis. This is a more complex trick where we’re creating a hybrid. We’re going to merge a concept from Culture A with a concept in Culture B. This is your, “What if?” that leads right to the door of something completely new. Avatar does this by asking, “What if the four classic Greek elements were the basis for a magic system, but the movements and philosophy behind that magic were based on different Chinese martial arts? Holy shit: you get Bending.” Korra, not content to be a mere spin-off, also does this by asking, “What if 1920s American industrialisation and car culture happened in an Asian-inspired setting? Great gadzooks, Batman: you get satomobiles and Republic City.”

In our worked example… 

• What if our Femme Fatale is a powerful “singsong girl” from a high-class teahouse instead of our expected nightclub singer, who uses her social influence and knowledge of secrets gathered from powerful men in a way that merges the Noir trope with a specific cultural role from 1920s Shanghai? You get the inside woman, a powerful force that might confound the detective in ways our reader doesn’t expect. You might even get the Noir version of Liara T’Soni after she and Shepard take down the Shadow Broker in Mass Effect.
• What if the classic American Mafia structure was synthesised with the complex codes of honour, ritual, and guanxi—social networks—of the Green Gang? Your mob boss isn’t just a thug; he’s a figure of immense social and spiritual importance.

Technique 3: Reinterpretation. This one’s the most subtle. Take a core trope or character from the Foundation and ask how the new culture would catalyse this into something new. 2011’s Thundercats does this, reinterpreting the privileged Lion-O into first a warrior then a leader through a Samurai Bushido code. He learns respect is earned and might doesn’t make right, despite his upbringing.

Back to our example, a core tenet of Noir is the detective’s lonely, individualistic cynicism. It’s going to change because he’s operating within a Confucianist culture that values filial piety and family connection. His ‘loner’ status isn’t just a personality quirk; now it’s a profound social and spiritual failure, making his isolation actually mean something. Instead of solving the case for money, he might want to restore honour to a family name. His motivation just became cool as hell, man.

We’ve got a Foundation and a Fusion. What’s next, boss?

The Focus

Our final step is where we work out if what we’ve done is cohesive but, more importantly, meaningful. Remember, we don’t want to be boring. Three steps will lead us to victory.

Step 1: Ask Why. Why does this fusion exist in your world? Did one culture colonise the other? Did they meet as equals for trade? Was there a mass migration? This fuels the power dynamics, the conflicts, and the themes of your story. In our example, 1920s Shanghai’s blend was due to trade and colonialism, which is a source of immense narrative tension. We can probably already guess how the victim’s going to end up murdered.

Step 2: Find the Universal Theme. What human truth becomes real through your specific blend? Cowboy Bebop’s mix of lonely American archetypes with a diverse, transient solar system gifted the audience a touchstone, giving an understanding of how the characters were trying to find a place to belong while running from their past. Our Noir-Shanghai blend could be a powerful story about the conflict between tradition and modernity, or the loss of identity in a rapidly changing world. Can you see how the femme fatale fits here? 

Step 3: The Respectful Appropriation Check. This is the final, non-negotiable gate. This is a big topic, but I’ve got a five-point checklist for you:

1. Am I representing or stereotyping? A stereotype is a simplistic and potentially derogatory shortcut. A representation is nuanced, complex, and gives characters agency.
2. Am I honouring or borrowing? Honouring involves deep research and giving context. Borrowing often means stripping an element (like a sacred symbol repurposed as a tattoo you thought would look dope on your MC’s arm) of its meaning just because it looks cool.
3. Who holds the power in my story? Are the characters from the catalyst culture fully realised individuals who drive the plot, or are they just exotic background decoration for the core culture’s protagonist?
4. Am I stealing someone else’s voice? We want to encourage readers to both learn about the culturally diverse world they live in here on Earth, as well as the one they’re about to visit, but we don’t want to steal minority voices on the way.
5. How am I getting feedback? Find sensitivity readers from the culture you are drawing inspiration from. They can point out blind spots, inaccuracies, and unconscious biases that you—as an outsider!—will 100% have.

Making Something Awesome

I risk being more cringe than Rhys Darby by talking about my own work, but we’ll try to get through this with as little violent shaking as possible. Enter: the Night’s Champion.

Night’s Champion is a trilogy dealing with werewolves, but it’s really a superhero story. It also spawned a sequel trilogy, Dawn’s Warden, which is the what’s-next, but let’s tame our enthusiasm for just a moment. Being a superhero tale means book one’s an origin story, book two’s a dark middle chapter, and book three… well, shit gets real. Night’s fusion of settings uses the techniques I’ve shown.

Let’s start with the Foundation.

• Step 1. This isn’t just “superhero.” This is “Action-meets-myth superhero where werewolves have been hunted to extinction… except for that one guy.”
• Step 2. Werewolf stories, especially around the time I penned Night’s, were all about the vampire crossover. There was a popular TTRPG, World of Darkness, where there were werewolves, vampires, and so on. Underworld had rocked the cinema world. I wanted to use these as the common cultural ground so as not scare the shit out of my reader, but also blend them with aspects of voudou, Celtic myth, and so on. I felt the aspects of borrowed power from voudou would make an excellent thematic resonance for book two, and there’s an aesthetic contrast in book three when beings of myth—the werewolves—meet Judaeo-Christian powers (the Horsepersons of the Apocalypse).
• Step 3. I did research into all kinds of shit. This was partially enjoyable—rewatching all the Underworld movies is never a bad time, except for the ball-grating experience of Rise of the Lycans. It was also partially educational—while I very much enjoyed skimming over cargo cults when reading Dream Park, getting deeper into this was a good time. There’s nothing bad here, I was either having fun or learning something.

This all meant that by book three, a lot of this (hopefully!) felt authentic. If you want to write a werewolf story about an everliving dark antihero, and remix it with Judaeo-Christian mythology so a protagonist was around and vibing, able to actually see the Crucifixion, well… we can agree that setup probably never happened in Earth’s history, but answering the senses, rules, and soul meant my readers lived through every dark ‘historical’ moment. I was also able to break the rules with confidence in the worldbuilder’s version of, “Hold my beer and watch this.”

Now, what about the Fusion? I used Techniques 2 and 3—synthesis and re-interpretation. They’re werewolves, but they also have a spiritual lineage that’s passed down like a tribal shared memory. The Horsepersons are what we thought they were, except they’re actually real people who have their own lives and care about this world they live in. Vampires are bad, sure, but that’s because they were made that way, and what if one of them didn’t like the cut of his cloth? I like to think there’s no carbon copies of any of the source tropes in the entire trilogy, and you can imagine how—in the Night’s universe—myths handed down over millennia warped and shifted away from what was real. Also, it let me have werewolves that knew kung fu.

Finally, I came to Focus. 

• Step 1: The Why of how the werewolves we met in book 1 ended up duking it out with powers right out of the Bible in book 3 is because, in this world, all myths have some truth to them. Things we call fantasy or magic are just systems or tools for the pantheon of legend. They didn’t choose the world, but they still had to live in it.
• Step 2: The universal theme was humanity. I wanted this story to be about the people in it, not the superpowers or the dope-ass special effects Hollywood would no doubt drop in there if they ever optioned the rights to it. The trilogy is about, “What if these really complex types of beings had very human motivations? What if monsters were beautiful on the inside, and beautiful people turned out to be monsters?”
• Step 3: Appropriation is a really complicated topic, but in brief I used both alpha and beta readers both during the writing, and then to tune the final product. It led to things like a dudebro becoming less homophobic, despite how ‘real’ that was in the world at the time, or a complete gender change for a main character—I wanted to be sure there was no hint of power imbalance due to the meat people were made of.

The end result is a series with werewolves and vampires, sure, but there are also zombies, voudou, and the four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse, and that’s before Mary Magdalene makes an appearance at the end. The Dawn’s Warden trilogy continues where Night’s left off, bringing in Celtic and other influences. The ‘genre’ lane of these books is superhero, but you’d never know it because of how powerful the cultural fusion technique is.

They don’t look or smell like anything the MCU would put on screen.

So, What?

We’ve covered a lot of ground today. A framework for remixing reality, which can be used as a detector for appreciating it when you see it done well. We’ve talked about the great successes at genre-bending, and we’ve talked about at least one critical fumble. And I’ve given you a toolkit on how to make it work, while showing how I did it myself.

Now I want to hear from you! The world is a massive, incredible spice rack filled with inspiration. The only rule is to be a respectful chef.

• For the writers and GMs: What’s a dream cultural fusion you’ve always wanted to build? Want a remix of Battlestar Galactica with Vikings instead of an Egyptian motif? I’d watch the hell out of that.
• And for everyone: What’s the best (or worst!) example of cultural fusion you’ve ever seen? Was it the awesome multicultural fairy tale vibes of a game like Ravenswatch, or a critical fumble like Thundercats Roar that you can’t forget?

Drop your answers in the comments below. I’d love to geek out about this stuff with you. And if you dig the idea of worldbending, click Like! For more of my hack writer tricks, subscribe. And thanks for watching!