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Fantasy maps be like
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this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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Is this all fantasy maps or just the fantasy maps made by westerners?
I'd genuinely be interested in what this trope looks like from the other perspective. I guess Dune flips this around pretty much?
(Yeah it's by an American illustrator, I was just looking for a cool map)
Yes I would like to book a trip to the "Dissolving Maleness Mountain", please.
Be careful around the hyper pregnancy river
I am a Westerner with a different map.
The one that is defacto for all my stories has a big beautiful communist society to the north west separated by a mountain range from the exploitative kingdom-but-actually-"leaders of industry" to the east. They are flanked by an archipelago with a world capital bazaar south east, a true kingdom that's overthrown into a Republic to the south west. Then you have another continent to true south east of the map that's proto late stage communist that barely has a state.
Mostly the kingdom causes problems, but they each have had their historical quirks.
Sounds like The Dispossessed by LeGuin .
Ken Liu’s map for the first book of his “silkpunk” series that’s a fantasy adaptation of the Chu-Han contention: https://kenliu.name/binary/Dara_Map_final.jpg
I really like his short stories and 3bp translation. I assume his full length novels are worth checking out?
I enjoyed the series and really raced through them - they're good pageturners. The first volume is pretty much the Chu-Han Contention with names changed, but events and characters diverge from there. (There's another continent, with "floating cities" that attack the continent in the first book.) Although sometimes the technological developments the characters come up with are a little too timely and convenient, I thought it was a much more interesting approach than giving them magical powers. The main supernatural element is the presence of the gods, who mess with things in the manner of amused spectators.
Definitely a good pick if you're interested in a fantasyish series that's not Western-coded.
IDK, but I fucking hate how fake fantasy maps look. They always look 'off' in a way that at least Earth geography doesn't seem to look like.
You say that but then there's this model of the earth 240million years ago and it doesn't look real at all
https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#240
But I know what you mean, they lack geological sensibility. Mountains, rivers flowing from high to low, etc.