Questions tagged [culture]
For questions dealing with the customary and artistic characteristics of a society.
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What are good reasons to create a city/nation in which a government wouldn't let you leave [closed]
I am building a city that the main character will be prohibited to leave from and yet their intentions of entering the city are to save the world form an extra-planer threat. So they have to go in. ...
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Why might a repressive order allow for flamboyant newscasters?
Thanks in advance and sorry if this isn't within the scope of the forum, I'm new but I've lurked so I totally get it if this doesn't really fit.
Anyway, let's get into it. Setting is a far-future ...
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Conditions required for a society to develop aquaculture?
While researching Kwak'wala, because I think the languages of the Pacific Northwest have this amazing aesthetic I want to mimic in some languages in my world, I came across the fact that the Kwakwak'...
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Orthographic change over time
This is related to a previous question of mine: Rate of linguistic change among geographically separated descendants of a common language
If you had 4 groups of humans with the same language and ...
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Rate of linguistic change among geographically separated descendants of a common language
I'm developing a story set on an exoplanet where a relatively small terraforming expedition is forced to settle on the planet due to some catastrophe 20,000 years before the story's events.
They ...
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Is it plausible for constructed languages to be used to affect thought and control or mold people towards desired outcomes?
In 1984, newspeak is used to control thought, and to make certain ideas impossible to express, or even to think.
I'm imagining a future totalitarian state which develops custom languages which it ...
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Litmus Test for whether my worldbuilt cultures are too close to modern America/Britain/etc
I was listening to a video on how to write, and the person giving the lecture said something along the lines of "I'm bored with stories where the setting is supposed to be in the far-flung future,...
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Need Help with a Fictional Modern Baltic Country’s Name?
I want the name of the country to mean “eastern border/land”, but I’m not a professional in the Latvian/Eastern Baltic languages.
As an example, would it be Austgale or Austrumgale (gale meaning “...
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Why would a society persecute people who are antisocial misanthropes (sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists, and sadists)? [closed]
An alternate-historical story is set in a third-world country in 1977 of the Gregorian calendar (the year George Lucas' masterpiece, Star Wars, was released). The country is a Costa Rica pastiche (...
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In a righty-dominated society, how can authorities prevent a right-handed child from being born to two lefty parents?
In this society, superstitions regarding right- and left-handed people are accepted as fact. (I'm going to be politically incorrect and call them "righties" and "lefties" ...
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How can bonobo that evolved sapience maintain their 'conflict resolution' strategy without risking spreading of STIs?
If humans die out tomorrow the two most likely candidates to achieve sapience after us are our closest genetic relatives. One of these, chimpanzee, has been discussed quite thoroughly in stories such ...
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How to keep paper copies of a "knowledge base" up-to-date in a fantasy world?
I am currently working on a fantasy world, in which one city maintains a written knowledge base about all knowledge they have about the world. This knowledge base consists of dozens of tomes, each ...
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How could a nomadic society establish a stable civilization?
In my world, there is an entire nomad-based society. While they have some influence based on gypsies, they are mainly based on Mongolian Horsemen. At some point in my fictional history (ca. 12th-13th ...
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Can there be an Underwater Advanced Civilization? [closed]
After watching Aquaman and, most recently, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which features Namor and his underwater empire, I got curious about the feasibility of an underwater civilization composed of ...
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What are some of the most culturally universal names? [closed]
This is mostly a shower-thought type query rather than an active problem I'm looking to solve, but here it goes.
Say I have a character that gets an opportunity to choose his own name, and he wants to ...