I've just been randomly recommended this incredible video on YouTube.
It's about ethnomusicology, a field I've never even heard of. Specifically, it's focused on how a lot of eastern musical tradition is destructively compressed (in western media) into a single sound that is jarringly inaccurate to actual traditions.
I actually have some Moroccan heritage, and so even though I have no connection to that culture or side of the family, I feel somewhat strange about not actually being able to differentiate any of these manifold traditions from the general hodge-podge in the popular zeitgeist.
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Link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR511iAedYU
As a fair warning, this video has some rather foul language. However, if you're fine with that it's also
absolutely hilarious on top of being thought provoking. I've been struck with full body laughter several times and I'm not even finished the video yet.
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I'm mentioning this here because it's giving me a lot of inspiration to do some worldbuilding regarding music in this setting. Specifically in South Kalatoria, which is clearly inspired by the Middle East - though I'd like to do some more research to differentiate between these influences given the revelations of the video regarding 'orientalism'.
Sadly, I have truly no musical talent and I'm not even good at understanding music theory, but I still want to try and explore musical traditions in this game world.
Another thing I'm not sure about is how much I want to draw from real-world influences. As the game world is totally separate from the real world, I'm not actually sure if it would be inaccurate to even have the same framework regarding music.
As someone who has studied both psychology and sociology (not to a professional extent, but I think I know more than a layman) I have some understanding of which aspects of human social behavior are intrinsic and which are culturally-informed. However, I've no idea when it comes to musical tradition. I'm sure it has some kind of biological roots, but I don't have any intricate knowledge of what that may be.
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If any of you have some musical knowledge, I'd really super appreciate it if you could explain the basics of music theory to me, or at least link me to relevant resources. It's something I find hard to grasp, for whatever reason. Maybe I'm tone deaf? LOL
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Overall, though my worldbuilding usually starts with "This would be cool" I always try my best to ensure that it has solid anthropological reasoning behind it. Of course, these things can be confounded by the presence of fantastical elements, but given the relatively low-fantasy of the current world setting, it's reasonable that things would be mostly recognizable.
Also, I do have plans for species other than humans in the world. However, they will be so distinct from humans that it might be impossible to mutually understand one another. They will have bodily and mental structures hugely divorced from humanity. Mystical elements will probably also be intrinsic to many of them, which would further alienate them from our real-world understanding of anthropology.
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For anyone who shares similar interests of in-depth worldbuilding, or for those just curious how I come up with these settings, here's a short list of terms that somewhat inform my approach in certain regards:
Historical materialism - Hasn't really come up since there's hasn't been any historical societal shifts. My main takeaway from this theory of history is that you're not often going to have huge societal shifts driven by ideology alone. There needs to be a material incentive for these changes. Of course, ideology will still play a huge role.
Since this is a fantasy world, exceptions include individuals with unnatural charisma, or mass mind manipulation.
Pragmatism/realpolitik - As above, but from a behavioral or political perspective, not one of historical analysis. That's a wordy way to say that it's the same concept as above just from a different perspective.
While we will certainly have some arrogant young master types - in fact we've already seen one in Dormatteo "Freck" Albas in the Denaster thread - the majority of nobility in most cultures will have a minimum level of ability. There will be few cases of the classic Xianxia trope
"I killed a guy so they sent a guy after me, and I killed him. So, they sent a slightly stronger guy, who I killed. This repeated until I was up against the guy who had sent all the guys".
Given the ever-present danger the elite face of being overthrown not by mass revolution or their peers, but by mere individuals with a personal vendetta against them - those who are able to throw away their pride when necessary are more likely to hold political power - based purely on the fact the others have a higher chance of being slain.
Things like "Prima Nocta" (google at own risk) will certainly exist in some places - but a lot of other societies with elites will see the wisdom in maintaining less cruel and heavy-handed behavior towards the public. They are less likely to have their lineages wiped out by a single commoner that they pissed off and inspired to go on a training arc followed by a revenge arc.
We'll call this the "Principle of Trope-Awareness" because thats funny as fuck lmao
Conflict theory - Almost every society (at least the human ones) will have inequal socioeconomic classes. While the status quo will often be maintained for long periods of time, unrest and even outright conflict will be common between groups.
Since this is a fantasy world, exceptions include the few oppressing the many through personal superhuman power
(in the real world, since anyone can be killed no matter how much wealth or social power they have, the military is the main tool of oppression by the state. In a fantasy world where individuals can have greater power than crowds, oppression may become truly inescapable - a tragic, horrifying fate), as well as hieromancy or 'law magic' which would basically be large-scale reality warping intended to align 'civilization' to a set of certain principles artificially.
In cases where these effects are present, the Principle of Trope-Awareness might not develop naturally, and in fact might be actively suppressed in the case of mass hieromantic enchantments over society.
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In contrast to the above methods, I specifically try to avoid relying too heavily on the following, since I think they lack anthropological accuracy (however given the fantastical nature of the setting, they have appropriate use cases):
Great Man Theory - To my knowledge, this is largely regarded outdated in the intellectual community. That this plays on some inherent human cognitive biases may explain it's lasting prominence. Many fantasy settings have relied way too heavily on this theory.
Since this is a fantasy world, Great Man Theory may actually have a lot more truth behind it than it does in reality. People may be born superior to others (in terms of mystical power, not moral worth) and single individuals can personally make greater waves than they can in reality.
If you're thinking 'but Alexander the Great accomplished so much?' then I'd like to point out that though he was surely a good leader, it was his ARMY that actually accomplished things for him. He didn't personally slaughter all his enemies in combat. This kind of reasoning is sort of reminiscent of the ecological fallacy, to be honest.
^ this could be seen as merely pedantic, but if one isn't careful with how they label, categorize and attribute - they will lose sight of a lot of the complexity and depth of history. History belongs to all of humanity, after all, not just certain representatives.
Given the nature of a fantasy world, historical textbooks in Kalatoria would probably take great effort to phrase things like "The General of Foo led an army of five hundred men to capture Fort Bar" - and would NEVER phrase it as , "The General of Foo captured Fort Bar" - the latter could be seen as ambiguous, since it's actually a possibility that future scholars would think the General of Foo may have been a superhuman warrior.
Teleology/Anthropocentrism - Not used at all except in very special instances.
Objective morality - IRL it's a pretty big divide between moral objectivists and moral subjectivists. I'm strongly in the latter camp, but I'm not here to make arguments. The reason I don't use this in worldbuilding is because it's not useful and makes for more same-y cultures, not because of any of the essential issues I have with it. Basically, the results of using this are poor, rather than the reasons to use it being unfavorable from my POV.
A huge exception to this is DND-style alignment systems.
In fact, while I don't use objective morality to design human cultures (nobody should) - that doesn't mean that in a fantasy world with mystical elements, objective morality might not actually exist.
I can't get into the details without spoiling so much of the lore, but objective morality will play a cosmic role - in matters outside the society of mortals.
Modernism - this means like a million things but i take it to mean "using only one approach". I like to be flexible in my worldbuilding, because it lets me try the most things to see what works. Everything has it's place, at least when it comes to fantasy writing
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One last thing
Prejudice (racism, sexism, etc) will certainly exist in the world. Systems of oppression based on those lines may also arise (racial slavery, patriarchy/matriarchy, etc)
BUT
As this is a fantasy world with significant fundamental differences between some kinds of entities, there is actually a highly significant chance that society would be more progressive and understanding of minor differences like race and sex. What difference is there between a Ghanbaran and a Sedorian, when they are faced with needing to understand and coexist with an entirely different species?
Hopefully I'm managing to express that idea well. It's not that bigotry won't exist, but that philosophies of understanding the other would be likely to emerge much more rapidly and potently than it did in our real world history.
ake DND mind-flayers for example. They are undoubtedly sapient
[and in fact may be literally cognitively superior to humans, a different topic]. However, they are impossible to coexist with. Unless a society has a policy of killing all nonhumans (something which may be more or less feasible/popular depending on the abundancy and behavioral tendencies of those species) they would need to find a way to determine which species are worthy of moral consideration.
In the real world, we morally distinguish ourselves from animals based on our 'intelligence' or 'ability to speak' or 'capacity for culture' - but if there were other species on this planet which were fully capable of all these things, plus mutually communicating and engaging in warfare against humanity, we would not be able to use these labels to distinguish between 'people' and 'nonpeople'
If it's a species we can coexist with, in many cases we would attempt to. Creatures like ilithids, ogres, vampires, werewolves, and others - some of these we could maybe coexist with - and ultimately I think it would come down to our ability to empathize with one another.
Eldritch creatures might be 'friendly' in the sense that they're not harmful, but if they have completely different mental structures to us, it would lead to a sense of unbearable alienation - and I don't believe they could cohabitate within society, though they might avoid conflict.
What of ogres or vampires? Maybe they have urges that lead to antihuman behavior (think the breeding instincts of certain kinds of modern Japanese monsters, or the biological need to drink blood of vampires) - but if those were fulfilled maybe they could otherwise coexist in society?
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There is infinite complexity here, and no perfect answers. However, I think it would all be very likely to exist in a framework that recognizes and cares an awful lot about what exactly defines each species in terms of mentality and behavior. This would also lead to a lot of insight among humans regarding their own kind. People would have more confident answers "what makes us human".
Alright, that was an absolutely gargantuan OOC post.
I definitely got carried away writing about all sorts of things.
Feel free to skip all of this, it's only for those interested in peeking behind the curtain, so to speak.
I'll try and respond to Tybe later today, but I woke up at 4 PM and its already 8 PM, so 'later today' could mean technically tomorrow EST!