: Re: How to merge conflicting narratives? I am setting up my story setting, a sci-fi story, and the people that I work with have created their own lore(s). Some of them conflict with one another.

@Berumen699

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So it looks like you have four races: The three you mentioned (hearby refered to as Mir, Xal, and Aka respectively) and an unknown oppressor of Mir (UOM).

And want to square away that the Mir hate the UOM, the Xal hate the Mir for reasons unrelated to the UOM/Mir Conflicts, and the Aka supported the Mir against the UOM in the UOM/Mir conflict, and for their friendship with the Mir, the Xal also hate the Aka.

This is entirely possible, if you consider that nations will often make strange bedfellows for conflict. Just because the Mir were opressed, it does not mean they aren't without their faults... Yes, they were once slaves, but that hardly means they weren't horrible people in their own right... just that they shouldn't have been enslaved for their own things. Perhaps the Mir mistook the Xal's friendly greetings as hostile because UOM use the same actions as hostile signal. This happens a lot in scifi (It's why Humans and Mimbari had a war in Babylon 5 on first contact, but especially in nature. It's literally the reason why Dogs and Cats fight. Dogs and cats use similar body language cues to communicate... it's just that the cues don't mean the same things to dogs as they due to cats. A dog that gets low to the ground and arches it's back is asking "Do you want to play" where as a cat doing the same action is asking "Do you want to fight me?" When one of the two animals makes this action, the other will respond with the same action... and the dog reads the response as an invitation to play, while the cat reads the action as "bring it Morpheus come at me gesture included". And the next cue is to start the playtime/fight time and both are ready to deliver... and that's why cats and dogs hate each other... it's not that they can't understand... it's just that culturally... they don't assume another message is being sent.

So, the Mir might have misread the Xal's intent and reacted poorly. It could be an honest mistake for the Mir, but an act of war to the Xal (who were only being nice). Meanwhile the Aka don't know what just happened, only that their ally the Mir are now attacking the Xal. The Aka might even understand the Xal did nothing wrong and the Mir were ignorant, not malicious, but the Xal are far too offended to listen to reason and won't hear the words of anyone who would defend the Mir.

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