u/Comfortable_Cut5796

Hey everyone! If you’re interested in the Florentine Codex, there’s a digital one online. The codex is fully translated into Nahuatl and English. Also, you can listen to it. It was like hearing my ancestors and felt amazing honestly. Here is the link:

https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/

By Dr. EdBarnheart

In Aztec beliefs a Xolo dog helped to cross the river if you wneee nice to dogs

And in Zoroastrianism a dog also served as a judge. Seeing if you’ve been mean to dogs and if the dog doesn’t like you you fall and become a restless spirit. It’s weird two cultures over time and space
Developed similar belief

I want to write a fictional piece heavily inspired by pre-columbian america. Unlike most of them, which either include *one* to few cultures in their verses as a conpliment to worldbuilding, or just *striaght up* antagonize them (and even dehumanize, with example of WoW, the faction inspired by Aztecs are not even humans but trolls. It isn't necessarily bad, but you can tell this piece of media is very eurocentric), I want my art to be fully centered in these cultures, with no outer influences of other asian/european/african-inspired nations or factions.

My idea is to not include actual real-world Americas with exact real cultures, the world will be purely fictional, but I'll do my best to show how cool and underrated real counterparts are. This is because I find them cool, althought you can say so about every culture. The point is, both americas had a large variety and polarization culturally, which holds an immense potential for worldbuiliding. Farmers, nomads, hunters and gatherers, city builders and workers, land in both continents was fairly diverse, also including urbanization, quite large differences in faiths and religious systems, polytheism, spiritualism, it all holds a lot of worth for worldbuilding potential, and europe pales in variation by comparison (althought that's a single, small continent, but that doesn't change the fact that 90% of fantasy is euro-based, which gets boring). You can do so much with it. My plan is to present it in a more mass culture manner, but with respect to the source material. Many things will be accurate, like soldiers of some nations wearing cotton-based protection, meant to absorb physical trauma, but also some of over-the-top ideas, like obsidian parts of armor, heck, maybe even an entire obsidian armor, if I find a good way to implement it (obviously, obsidian is brittle and doesn't really work for armor, however, I'll find a workaround) or meteor-forged items (actually being present in these cultures as far as I know) or rithual items that are used to use some kind of divine power. That being said, I will not include anything inspired by exoamerican cultures, no one will wear cuirasses or fight with sabers and NO mix with african cultures (massmedia LOVES to do that and it's pretty stupid if you ask me), I can assure you of that. Everything will be based on america only. And I still plan to create something more essential than just something cool and all. I want to include symbolism and depth of worldbuilding and character development, I aspire to be a real writing artist after all. I am not a fan of how Hollywood does with its creations, no flashy moves or weird spinning attacks (unless rithualistic, as pretty sure it was a huge part of mesoamerican cultures, but I don't know how exactly these rithuals work, I'll study it).

And I wanted to ask, especially people who still cultivate these cultures, if you are here, what do you want to see being represented? I ask this question, because I think it's fair. These are your cultures after all, I want to present it the way you wish to be presented. What should be included, what should be excluded? Do you feel okay about it? I think that your cultures deserve recognition, but maybe you think that the attention is unecessary? Or that the popcultural framework is not necessary? I want to hear some of the opinions and ideas. Thought the artistic part, so story and the exact way I'll use the cultural framework, is something I want to do myself. I want to be a writer and I want to pour as much skill and talent as I have. But the direction it goes is the matter of respect.

Feel free to give your thoughts!

The Popol Vuh portrays the Xialba lords pretty negatively as a bunch of selfish and spiteful supervillains who regularly cheat and use dirty tricks to be best by the hero twins.

Where they always portrayed as basically supervillains or did they have a more nuance portal.

Al Pucj and the Lords of Xialba being these spiteful entities seems to be weird considering how Mesopotamian culture was based on life and death and diner focus on black and white it seems a very euro centric christma way

by Mason Mignanelli