cultural-konttext-where-i-ism-1

Cultural context – where and why

How real history and culture help us in fictional worlds? Why even the most fantastic of the universes are composed of the well -known bricks to everyone? From which the universe is sculpted by game and literary demiurges?

If thoughts in your head have developed on the topic of very, very blurry – call it an “essay” and place it in the author’s column. Why, in fact, no? I bring to your attention one such essay. Moreover, at the same time in text and video format- both for those who like to listen, and for those who prefer to read. I will try to make materials in the same way in the future. (And if you are waiting for a clearer subject of discussion, the new release of the “appearance of the era” is already on the way.)

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Choose any of the memorable world worlds. Attention, world Necessarily Must be fictional! Historical canvases and science fiction are not suitable in any way.

Well, they chose? The image before the inner gaze appeared? I hold a bet, in this world there are various peoples, society and the state. And even reasonable species, when it comes to classical fantasy. And, it would seem, nothing prevented the authors from walking around in full, to make many completely unique people and cultures, but-almost certainly, the anchors-prisoners leave no doubt that everything here has more than transparent prototypes. Here we have Victorian Britain, a gloomy Teutonic technocracy lurked around the corner, and somewhere behind the horizon a bright Italian Renaissance is hidden.

Why so? Which makes the creators over and over again drive themselves into the framework of cultures that have already existed in reality?

The Warhammer universe is that still cheerful cranberries collected from different stereotypes and supposedly supposedly under a serious look. For that and love.
Whoever the creators of fictional worlds are, no one is deprived of small completely human weaknesses. Everyone has their own favorite historical period, some kind of culture to which it is attached (well, or at least a work of art related to it), and it is not at all surprising that the author will form primarily what is interesting to him. And what is he Disassemble.

The second factor, although it depends on the first, is actually much more important. Attempts to create a world from absolute zero are doomed to failure: human fantasy is simply not able to foresee all the options and opportunities, to indicate the place of each thing and every custom in the new marvelous world. Only puts everything in its place practice, which the history of earthly civilizations offers us unobtrusive to us. To make sure of this, it is enough to look at the thorough forecasts of the future authoritative researchers of the past who become ridiculous and absurd for the next generation of their readers.

Do not observe the window of a similar picture? But your great-grandfathers expected something like that.
And when creating a fictional universe, it is necessary to take into account hundreds and thousands of little things, without which the picture will not turn out together-or, worse, it will form in an incredible freak, the place of which is in the universal cunt-of the demiurges-lord.

It is important to remember that everything – absolutely everything – will definitely find their completely reasonable Explanations and reasons. Pyramids are built not because their shape is ideal and caresses the gaze of the inner aesthet of each person. No, this is a corny simple design that can be folded from stones so that they do not roll around, and as soon as people learn to build something more complicated, they threw these useless cones and built something … more complicated. In the era of the construction of the first pyramids through the territory of modern Russia, mammoths still walked – just to imagine what period they correspond.

The Belchulki nobility became sugary https://betitoncasino.co.uk/ and not because the annual income of a thousand louidors prescribed the rules of etiquette at the genetic level, but because in the world of connections and personal sympathies, someone often meant to put a cross in their career, and having offended someone, one could get a non-thoroughly test, whose nickname is more reliable, and the hand is reliable and the hand is reliable and the hand is reliable.

Therefore, powder and wigs are also not combined with stone pyramids, like vegetarianism with whaling fishing. These will be the phenomena of two different worlds that cannot be combined – but even to be near each other. The clash of civilizations with a development gap of several thousand years we have already observed in our history. And, as you can see, all of North America now speaks English, and South in Spanish (well, Brazil – in Portuguese, of course).

Collision of cultures is a topic that is undeservedly rarely rising in science fiction.
In addition, competent creators of non -existent worlds always follow Rules of good tone.
If something looks like a dog, barks like a dog and smells like a dog, it should be called a dog, and not, say, a roaring gavkosub. Creating extra difficulties by renaming things that we are familiar with – a low and ungrateful thing.

The footboard can be substituted here native language -He is just a product ours peace and carries a whole cultural baggage of references and borrowings. Fans of “Games of Thrones” soared in an angry impulse when one of the characters mentioned a glimpse French Sleeeve, French sleeve – well, what to do, in English this is a stable expression – and although the creators then explained that the misunderstanding arose, it was only pronounced there Fringed Sleeeve, the sediment, as they say, remained.

And in some cases it will not be possible to get out at all. Described in a fantastic universe, say, no less fantastic car. WITH headlights. At the same time, there was no Greece in this universe, from where the word “Faros” came, nor the Faros beacon, who gave the name to such a useful unit, nor the island of Faros, from which it all started. But what then to be, in a fantastic world-yes without headlights? So you have to perceive the framework of the language as an inevitable given. Otherwise you can reach the gavkozubs.

And some cultural parallels have already become partly part canon. So, if elves appear somewhere, then almost certainly they will have the features of Celtic peoples. Do not believe? In Dragon Age, their Welish accent is not recognized only by a person who has never heard him, in d & d and games based on names and pantheons give out eared heads, and in the “Witcher” of Stya’taeli, they speak in the language of the Red Dragon country. What the Welsh themselves think about this, the Irish and the Scots, I, right, do not know.

Forests, magic and Stonehenge are long -time friends of the elven people, without which it is already impossible to imagine now.
But if you associate the elves, say, with Chinese civilization, then after binding They will lose and content. There will be no more inevitable associations with magnificent forests, in the shadow of which you should not enter the simple mortal, with the mysterious stone sanctuaries of unknown cults, overgrown with violent greenery, and there will be no trace that reaches out to the marvelous people from its very origins – myths about the giggling tribe of Tuians de Dannan ..

Because not itself is important form, folding from common templates, and image, The ideas, symbols and legends arising from a host, connecting into a certain idea that is picked up by the viewer and plays the plot of the whole work.

And once obvious, once thin references-like the same language-the authors bring these ideas to us.

Therefore, if you hear French speech in passing, then it will almost certainly be connected with the exalted and sophisticated culture of a high -resistant society – and do not care that there were no less in the history of real France of the rude and primitive eras. The Latin roots will give imperial greatness and the inviolability of the long -ruined Rome, and the plate armor, Katana and Busido – unshakable determination and determination of the real samurai. Because stereotypes are convenient. With a barely noticeable binding, they help to fill the object with the content of a whole culture, which otherwise would have to be painted on dozens of pages for a long time and tedious.

And so the same is born atmosphere.

To plunge into the world, we must understand what it is. And when we run, let’s say, The Banner Saga, The very first shots, the first sounds of traditional Scandinavian music set us in the right way. We already We know that they honor here for strength and military dare, that carved habits of dark wood rise above the mirror stitch of countless fjords, that the ice waters of the northern seas cut narrow boats with wide striped sails. We will not be surprised when Skald will chase a song about the heroes of the past times and when we understand that this world is inevitably approaching its end and Ragnarok is coming, a terrible battle of the last day.

Despite the fact that we ourselves have not seen anything from this yet. But from the very beginning of a pair of recognizable images and the not -like sound of the North German folk picked us up and spin out in the whirlwind of Scandinavian myths and legends, at once filling the world with a series of familiar paintings from childhood.

The Banner Saga immerses you in the atmosphere of Scandinavian myths in all ways available to her – from thematic music to interface design.
But in the fact to put various cultures and put them in one universe, there is nothing complicated. It is difficult to balance them so that the picture looks like plausible.

In reality, there is no such thing that one culture flourishes here, and literally behind the fence, another is in full force. From the point of view of the traveler, this may be great, colorful and diverse, but the inner Stanislavsky is already in the head. Everywhere and always more powerful, Prestigious Culture suppressed lagging behind in the struggle for human minds. Therefore, in Japan, they wear jackets, not kimono, and in Ireland they speak English, not Gales, and mainly Greek Alexandra and Jewish Mary, and not the original Slavic goodflies, surround us.

Any thing should be appropriate on a general cultural background. And stumbling here is incredibly easy.

In a wonderful and deeply thought-out game “Witcher”, for example, the plot of the “Stone Hearts” additions is dedicated to the history of Olgerd von Everek, who behaves like a godun from the Senkevich trilogy and looks like a backham from … some kind of league there. And here everything is in the image: the Polish-Ukrainian motifs of the seventeenth century, and the indefatigable spirit of the Cossack freemen, and the fairy tale of the transaction concluded with the unclean.

But the gloomy Gothic novel in the Victorian wrapper, tied to Lady von Everak, is also woven into history. The novel is beautiful, touching and atmospheric-only related to a completely different cultural layer than the main story. There was no “witcher” in the world of grotesque mansions, picture galleries and Victorian outfits, which is why Lady Iris looks like an alien and inappropriate alien, hopelessly far from the surrounding world. Where Gogol would successfully fit from a panel that was rebelled from the coffin, the dark-brown colors of Mary Shelley will not find a shelter.

Some scenes of the Witcher would look quite strange – if Sapkovsky himself and CD Project Red from the very beginning did not flirt with obvious postmodernism.
So you have to limit ourselves to images and eras familiar to us by colorful historical canvases. Or, relying on them, to conceive the path of great cultures, which have not survived to this day. What would happen if the Persians of Islam did not happen? Whatever Rome, stretch the empire a thousand years longer? What would the Spanish Baroque would not look crushed by Protestant neighbors? From this we play.

Because another path is, sorry, Gavkozuba. Whatever they are called there.

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