California already feels mythic: redwoods, fault lines, tule fog, deserts in bloom, gold rushes, lost towns, studio dreams, fires, floods, and an ocean that connects the state to worlds far beyond it. A fantasy project does not need to borrow sacred stories carelessly in order to find wonder here.
“Research gives invention resistance—and therefore shape.”
Indigenous California is living, present, and specific. Tribal histories and traditions are not a general folklore layer available for atmosphere. If future work enters those territories, it must begin with the relevant communities, relationships, permission, and paid collaboration—not with an aesthetic decision already made.
For Hidden Tide, the immediate root is water: Sacramento River to Delta, Bay, and Pacific. That route carries documented histories of migration, labor, trade, exclusion, adaptation, and return. Research gives the invention resistance. It tells me which easy image to surrender and which deeper current might support an original myth.