Cultural Trends

[Zundy]

I'm going to be producing a much requested "Galactic Culture" page soon which will detail popular music/bands/people/food/drink/maybe opinions etc.

It's a light bit of fluff you can utilise when building and roleplaying your characters.

What I'd like to see from you guys, gals and everything in-between is things you believe should be covered by this. Perhaps you and your friends often refer to some IPC band or Taj cuisine. As a master race European I don't tend to see the desolate wastes that are Burger Time and Kiwi Time so I'd love to here the general culture references that go on.

 

Post your ideas here and we can compare and discuss. No shit post please silly boys and no flaming you flamingos. Much appreciated.

[VTCobaltblood]

I think that each faction (and even specific planets in Sol) should have their own local culture, but this is a very welcome step. Universal culture such as the Extranet exists as well, and I'm tired of having to headcanon it with others only for it to be lost in time while the lore team directs its attention to politics instead.

Edited April 9, 2019 by VTCobaltblood

[Conspiir]

@ParadoxSpace Made a Skrell band named the Fourth Incident. Not sure if they intend it to be Federation-preferential or galactically entertaining.

 

My current favorite is the headcanon of Sromshine: The unholy union of orange juice and coffee, like someone made a horrible mistake. It was intended to be served cold, with coffee at least having sat in the pot overnight fOr FlAvOuR (the potential for mold just eNhAnCeS tHe ExPeRiEnCe mm fungus) but is now more often served hot and fresh galaxy-wide.

Edited April 10, 2019 by Conspiir

[mwhit030]

It'd be great if the culture of the different groups/factions were more fleshed out, especially on the musical side. The only thing in the lore that I can think of right now, is that tajarans like electro swing, or something.

also can we make jazz popular again thanks

[Carver]

I'd be curious to see what manner of fusion cuisines would cultivate from the intermingling of the various human and xeno cultures.

[MarauderW]

How can one help in this endeavor? To flesh out the lore, I find it to be a great mental exercise!

[wowzewow]

1. Language. Language should definitely be more mixed around.

First hand, grammar and vocabulary. Brains do that for expediency, at the cost of making educators and bureaucrats wanting to kill themselves, if the point gets across, then what's the problem?

Especially to communicate hard expressions when english lacks the word. Like for example, 乖 . Well, I could explain to you what it means - a form of praise for obedience and being filial.

you can use it in terms of an adjective > he's a very 乖 child, or a verb by itself, 乖 to praise someone

or you can just use the word by itself instead of going through translation spaghetti.

Similarly, linguistic habits. These are more from enviroment - like how in people say "ouch" differently - personally, I say"AIYAH" Kinda weird, but that's how I was raised. 

It can also be as simple as the slow shift from people saying "Pardon me" to "Excuse me" and "You're welcome" to "No problem". These things you don't notice until you've realized they've already happened.

Easily explained is how American English has drifted from British English - z's and s's getting swapped, u's being removed, etc.

In all honesty, it comes from mistakes your brain makes in the neverending quest to explain things to people. 

2. Food

To be honest, Fusion food doesn't have to be like, whoa slam two foods together - It's more like adapting to a culture. Japanese burgers and pizzas are prime examples. They love their bellpeppers and barbecue sauce, and their beef burgers aren't 100% beef. they knead in some vegetables and stuff in there too ( literally the only reason i know this is because i bit into a mos burger and got a bad surprise ) They don't fundementally change the thing - like changing the buns to some weird wakame blobby mess or a pizza made with rice ( please don't try to give me IRL examples to prove me wrong i'm just trying to make a point here ) but just the topping - little, tiny changes that give it a little touch of culture.

Just to complement their diet. I love unathi food. They've basically taken human food and said "needs more meat". Which 100% makes sense.

3.  The Homefront

I feel like the loredevs have been focusing too much on the politics of some far off planet I don't really care about - I'd much hear about stories of people's daily lives. The working class, their families - you know, people that we're going to interact with the most. Like a Tajaran mother having dinner - how is she serving stew to all her scamps? A quiet dinner meal at an Unathi household - tense, where the son doesn't want to take over the father's family business, or how some Skrell Drifter eats his Microwave Dinner Tenta-crisps watching corny Skrellian romcoms. I feel like this'll help roleplay more - In real life, we don't really talk about politics, do we? We usually talk about our families, our lives and our dreams.

Why not in our lore too? What's a usual day in these planets? Their cities? How's it like to live there - Be born and die there?

 

[KingOfThePing]

I find the direction of more cultural and "everyday life" lore something very welcoming. Please, please, please.

[Resilynn]

I talk pretty much nonstop about biesel’s next top model and unathi wives, the equivalent of trash tv in 2461. 

Tajaran electroswing is growing in popularity in Mendell. Clubs like The Cats Meow cater to humans who want in on this trend. 

 

[Flamingo]

I’d like to echo what @wowzewow already said. As anyone who’s ever spoken to me about lore can tell you, I much prefer “slice of life” lore over pretty much everything else. I believe @kyres1 and I talked about this at length at least once before, and while some might consider it more clutter, I think the benefits of this type of lore far outweigh the cost of more articles, provided they aren’t one super-massive wiki thread, and instead are tastefully broken up into categories. 

 

Part of the reason I really enjoyed the Martian story arch is that Martians all really “felt” Martian. It was like they came from a shared background (Mars), rather than the norm, which is 10 culturally different people who claim to be Martian. Unfortunately this is not the case for most of the locations in our lore, and people get by with agreeing upon headcanon to make their characters feel connected (if they even try at all). 

 

So basically all all I can say is yes please, 1000 times yes. 

 

Personally, I’ve mostly kept to Luna for my character, only recently branching out to make a Scarab. However, SeniorScore put in some nice cultural information that I was pushing for for a long time before he departed the lore team. I’d definitely like to see more music, sports (if lore likes they could even put out articles on this — personally I use space hockey with a couple others, but really any sport will do), cuisine, travel destinations, etc. 

[Zundy]

Quick exercise for you lovely peeps: What slurs do you hear/use when referring to different species/subspecies/factions?

[MarauderW]

For me, as a native of the New Gibson planet (human native) I use the following:

Vaurca: Skitter(er), Carapace, Brood of X or Hiver. Due to their presence on NG, I am used to calling them... worker type names.

Robots, Cyborgs or IPC's: Data, Unit, Bot or Droid.

Skrell: None yet.

Unathi: Scales, Rough-Hides, Honorbound, Horned ones or simply Lizards.

Dionaea: None yet.

Vox: Feathered, Screechers, Ravens or Black Ones.

These may seem basic but that's what I default to, IRL I would definitely use the above but only in very private conversations, for obvious reasons.