: Re: What are the advantages and disadvantages of setting a story in a made up country, compared to a real one? I have story ideas that involve civil wars or revolutions happening while a character

@Berumen699

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Some of the advantages is that you can tackle a real world conflict with a fictionalized culture without a lot of the stress of the situation. Even if it's unlikely that you would have a readership in the real world conflict, keep in mind that the situation in a civil war is rarely as cut and dry down the middle. Even the U.S. Civil War had a lot of politics beyond slavery behind it and many southern soldiers were not slave owners (General Robert E. Lee was actually an abolitionist and hated slavery, but was a patriot to the state government Virginia over the Federal Government or the United States. Lincoln had the misfortune of offering Union Commander to Lee the day after Virginia succeeded from the Union). Portraying this in a fictional nation allows you to tackle the politics of both sides.

The disadvantage is it's obvious you're dancing around the real world issues. Writers have a wealth of history to inspire their civil war's history, and this tends to mean that they often correlate to the real deal in some degree. This is especially true in Scifi and Space Operas where it's "a historical war with Space Ships". Star Wars, for example was largely WWII naval and air battle re-enactments (George Lucas went so far as to listen to radio chatter from actual WWII battles). Firefly is from the point of view of a Southern Soldier in the aftermath of the Space!U.S. Civil, though the slavery issue wasn't a driving factor (Our hero justifies stealing money off of a fellow bar patron because the victim was a slaver and the money was stolen off his profits for not paying his labor), the extent of government control over people was a major theme. Star Trek Deep Space 9 is sort of a Cold War leading to the naval aspects of World War II (to the point that Sinatra style big band lounge music enters the pop culture of the period).

Because of these parallels it may defeat the point of making a fictional country (though it does remove the conflict of blaming a particular country as the aggressor. One of the reasons why Torah Torah Torah is still considered the definitive Pearl Harbor movie is that U.S. and Japanese film studios worked closely together to ensure that both sides were portrayed accurately and that neither was disparaged. Compare to the late 90s Pearl Harbor, which depicted the Japanese committing war crimes they did not committ vs. Torah Torah Torah, which had a glaring detail of misquoting Yamamoto in the closing as it's most glaring inaccuracy (Yamaoto never said the final line in the movie, but his sentiments about the coming war were pretty much in the same line).

And then we get to the bizarre, where there are some occasions where the people who you oppose obviously see themselves as the side you oppose, and do not care... they love the romance of their struggle and are happy for any acknowledgement of the matter, especially if you are fair in your portrayal of the matter. Although I have no actual examples, I submit the Airport scene in the film Argo, where one of the hostages posing as an advance scout for a U.S. scifi film to escape Iran is asked by the Iranian government details about the film. He improvises and basically tells about the rebellion against an unpopular king installed by an evil empire and the struggles of the people against the regime. It's pretty much the situation in Iran from the point of view of the Iranians and the guards are so geeked out that Hollywood is making a film about it, they let the whole crew go without any hassle in exchange for concept art. Although this is mostly humor in the very tense scene, the real life incident did have the Iranian government provide helpful support to the cover of the film scouts for much the same reasons (the west is showing our side in the next Star Wars!). And this kind of surprising support is actually fairly common (TVTropes has a whole series of Articles titled Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales which discusses favorable attitudes to foreign works that depict their culture in a negative light. It's named for the outrage Mexicans felt when Warner Brothers tried to limit the cartoon character's exposure on American Television in the 90s out of fears they offended the Mexicans... They wanted more of Speedy, not less).

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