 Before we get started, I want you to take a moment to ask yourself what art and culture are. How specifically would you define them? It's a little harder than you might think at first, despite using both terms all the time. Is art just anything people create? Well, that would include things like cookie cutter housing and mass-produced screwdrivers. Is art just supposed to look beautiful? Well, what about things like Wind River which are supposed to make you upset while watching? Is that not art? Does it only count if it's part of a pre-approved list of media that's considered art? People tried to claim video games weren't art for years before we collectively realized that was stupid, and before that they tried it with cinema. Clearly, art is just stuff that I like, and if anything gets popular that I don't like, it's not art. Culture is even harder to pin down. Part of the reason is that cultures don't have rigid borders. They constantly change and mix together in ways that are hard to measure. Is culture a shared set of beliefs? Well, if that's the case, then why do individuals from the same culture have different sets of morality? Is it sharing the same religion or language? Well, that brings up questions about where you draw the line. Are Lutheranism and Catholicism in the same religion? Because people have killed each other over that before. Is it producing the same kinds of art? See above for the issues there. I'm not asking these rhetorical questions as a way to get you thinking like some pretentious video essay, although that is a byproduct. I'm asking to make you realize that this is an incredibly broad topic. Covering this in a simple YouTube video is like trying to fire a bullet without the gun. I'll come right out and admit that I'm not an expert in these sorts of topics. I'm not an art historian or an anthropologist, but I do understand how much these things make world-building pop. If you think about most fantasy settings you've seen, the ones which stand out usually stand out for cultural reasons rather than geographic ones. Sure, the high storms are cool, but the fascinating bit is how the Alethi and others adapt to them. Building their homes facing west, utilizing storm light in their economies, constantly fighting over land because so little is arable, all of this is bigger and more interesting than the magic hurricanes. Hell, the change in culture is the whole point of dystopias. Showing off how society has become some sort of hellhole because of the kids and their iPhones is essentially just showing a negative change in culture. sci-fi is a bit different from dystopia since that tends to be dominated by the settings available technology and the way society reacts to that as opposed to showing off how cultural changes on its own. Basically, culture is such a ubiquitous thing, both in the real world and in artificial ones, that we hardly think about it as a whole. We only focus on pieces of it at a time. So that's what I'll attempt to do here. I'll bring up a few aspects of art and culture that'll give you a starting point to jump off from when you're trying to give a setting some character. Otherwise, it's easy to wind up making it feel like you're just telling a tale in the same pseudo-medieval European world that everyone else has already done. Before that, sponsor time. Hello, I'm James Tullis. I was supposed to film some sort of intro for this video's sponsor ad read because this video is sponsored by Campfire Blaze. Unfortunately, the footage for that was lost or maybe I just forgot about it because I've been busy or maybe I forgot about it because I've been playing video games all month. You'll never know. The important part is that I'm just gonna play some funny clips from bad movies, you know, the way every hacky YouTuber does it because that gets those youngings rolling in the aisles, right? I want him dead! I want his head cut off and brought here! I want his head on this piano! I will bring you his head and I will place it on your piano. Campfire Blaze is a browser-based suite of tools that keep track of all your worldbuilding and story notes with character sheets, maps, timelines, encyclopedias, and more. This sort of organization is great for worldbuilding, RPG campaigns, and any other sort of writing you can think of. Your creations can be shared publicly with others, but only if you want to. Even real-time collaboration on projects is possible and it's way more intuitive than something like Google Docs. All these modules can be yours or you can pick and choose the parts you need. At either a one-time purchase or a monthly subscription, Campfire Blaze can be customized to suit whatever purposes you need it for and whatever price you can afford. Not sure if you want to commit to paying for all this? There's a free tier so you can try everything without paying a dime. It even has a month-long free trial and a refund option so you can change your mind at any time. Click the link in the description to see if Campfire Blaze is right for you. Alright, we are... we're good. Now, where's my check? Part 1. Games, Food, and Miscellaneous. A great way to get people into a new setting is to show off a mundane part of it and how the characters interact with that. Just taking a brief moment to mention what they're eating for breakfast gives a bit of depth to the place they inhabit. Someone who subsists on a diet of rats and tree bark probably lives in a much different place than someone who eats steak and eggs every morning. If all the kids play soccer with a single ball in a dirt field, they're worse off than kids who have their choice of playing video games, hockey, lacrosse, or whatever it is white people do in their spare time. Starting off with a lecture about the history of a town and what sorts of industries sustain it is a dull way to try and show off what the place is like and what the people have to deal with. Keep in mind when I say mundane, I mean mundane for the denizens. It can still seem bizarre to us. For example, if a large part of a country's diet comes from dragon meat, that would seem crazy to us, but totally normal to them. Or what if the sports they play all carry the death penalty for losing and none of them find that odd because that's just how life has always been. As much as we want to believe otherwise, we're all a product of our environments and if we were raised somewhere different, we might have views that we find abhorrent now. This can easily play into the plot, too. Whether you're writing a book or creating an RPG campaign, if something happens to affect the food supply, then that can be a great way to kickstart the adventure while also showing off how various aspects of the world interact. Keep in mind food is basically whatever is available for consumption. If it's not outright poisonous, humans will scarf it down eventually. Oftentimes because we don't have a choice. Before modern transportation and refrigerators, we were more limited by climate. Oranges and bananas won't grow in Alberta any more than you can raise millions of cattle in the Sahara. Tomatoes didn't come to Italy until the 16th century and now they're a massive part of all sorts of dishes over there. Plus, Italian-American food is quite a bit different from Italian-Italian food since immigrants added ingredients that they didn't have access to back home, like meat and sugar. These are clear cultural differences that can be shown in a simple, inobtrusive way. As for games, those are a bit less important than food since, you know, we require sustenance for life, but they've existed in every society in history to one extent or another. Board games, video games, sports, anything you can use to take your mind off the fact that you are a speck of dust stuck to another speck of dust floating through a void so large that we could all collectively scream in anguish for an eternity without a single other being knowing of our existence. Sometimes they can be a reflection of socioeconomic status. Sometimes they can be a way to bridge that gap. Sometimes they're a massive part of the economy, yet they're always present. Spending a few moments to show off people watching the Mars hoverboard death match will tell the audience a hundred times more than a dry encyclopedia entry. As long as you keep it in perspective, sure, sometimes certain games can be extremely popular, but they'll never overtake an entire society. This isn't Yu-Gi-Oh! It's time to duel! Part two, combining cultures. The phrase cultural appropriation has only entered the general lexicon in the past few years and immediately became one of the best things to say to start a fight. The thing about that is that cultural appropriation isn't inherently good or bad. It's what happens when members of one culture adopt elements from another culture. Taco Bell is a form of cultural appropriation and most would agree that it's harmless. I'm not here to discuss the ethics of real-life cultural appropriation. I'm only here to discuss how it works. Basically, whenever two groups of previously isolated people meet, they exchange things. These include technology, agricultural products, knowledge, ideas, and, of course, art and culture. Sometimes this is amicable, oftentimes it isn't, but it's guaranteed to happen to one degree or another. And once this contact happens, neither culture will be quite the same afterwards. Take a moment to think about whatever setting you're currently creating and the history they're in. You've probably already thought about a few different countries, wars, discovery of new planets, things that alter the status quo and how they lead to the present. That's all well and good, but how did all of that change the way people act and think about the world around them? Did being conquered cause them to slowly give up their old language or religion? Did the founding of a new country foster a sense of nationalism or resentment among the people living there? If they're resentful, maybe they would try and emphasize how different they are from the others and stay separate from the main population, kind of like Germans during the Napoleonic Wars. Say you have a setting where humans made contact with a wider community of a few alien species. Most of them might start to think that they're less important in the grand scheme of things. Others might dumble down on the jingoistic fervor and try to make sure humans are in a supreme position in the universe. Don't just think about what sorts of daily rituals and ideals define a culture. Think about how those came into being to start with. You don't need a long history of it, just a basic idea that you can build from. And obviously art inspires other art. Things like paintings, film and music have inspired artists in other places forever. Look at things like Celtic metal, mafioso rap, Viking metal and martial arts movies for some easy examples of art styles from different cultures mashing together to create something different. When cultures meet, both sides tend to start off by seeing each other as exotic and mysterious. That's why weaboos exist. And the many, many western subcultures that exist in Japan, like Chicanos and Gyarus. When they find something exotic that they think is cool, they try to incorporate it into their own media. That's how we get Japanese video games that utilize a western aesthetic. That's how we get American comic books that combine mutant animals with ninjas. That's how we get the president of China being compared to a yellow animated bear. These ideas and concepts influence one another as they evolve alongside the people that create slash consume them. Because that's the thing. No culture is ever truly stagnant. Sometimes they change slowly, but they never stop changing because the world never stops changing around them. And that forces people to adapt. If they fail to do that, they die out. Part three, propaganda. Don't worry. People you agree with don't make propaganda. That's something only insert enemy group here does. Your side only does messaging or outreach. Whatever the time period, rulers need a way to convince those they rule over that they're doing a great job and they should continue to obey. The exact messaging and manner of that messaging very considerably, but it's always there. Ancient rulers used to claim that they were literal demigods who kept the harvests coming. If you believe that, you're less likely to try and overthrow him or even ask for proper political representation. The bulk of primary sources from ancient times are political propaganda, which makes it hard to suss out exactly what's true. Pharaoh Ramesses II had an entire stone inscription made to show how he personally won the Battle of Kadesh by beating the Hittites with his big swing and dick and later governments have only been slightly less ridiculous with their propaganda. During the third crusade, King Richard took a detour to conquer Cyprus from the Byzantines and later had his chroniclers claim that the Byzantine Emperor was a Satanist who mixed his blood with Saladines. This is obviously untrue, yet it gave Richard Acasa's belly for the conquest and helped salvage his reputation. After all, even in the modern day, people think of him as a glorious honorable warrior rather than a brutal conqueror. Ever notice how most Hollywood movies portray the American military as perfectly benevolent, altruistic, and professional? That's partially because the US government funds their films. It lets them use equipment in exchange for having veto power over the script and they've used that power plenty of times to make sure no one sees any unfavorable depictions. The same way they tried recruiting kids by starting a Twitch channel and banning people who talked about American war crimes in the comments until the courts ruled that governments couldn't censor people and they stopped streaming. While writing this, I learned that a video game called Six Days in Fallujah, which was cancelled in 2011, has been rebooted and is coming out soon. It's hard to say from the trailer whether it'll try to sanitize war crimes or the Iraqi war in general, but the developer has denied the military's use of chemical weapons in the conflict, so that's pretty obviously what's going on. The publisher claims that the government has no involvement in the game's development, which I straight up don't believe. We're supposed to believe it's pure coincidence that this is coming out at a time when the military is having recruitment problems. Governments don't even need direct control over media to mold it. A big issue that's been raised in recent years is how the Chinese market has become a major source of income for movies, but the Chinese government certainly isn't going to allow anything that goes against their narrative to be broadcast to their citizens. Claim Taiwan is independent? Banned. Mentioned that Tibetan people exist? Banned. Bring up that hundreds if not thousands of protesters were killed by the army in 1989? Banned. Point out their ongoing cultural genocides in Tibet and Inner Mongolia or their regular genocide in Xinjiang? Banned. Because of this, film studios have begun altering their motives to appease Beijing. Ever wonder why the ancient one Dr. Strange was a white woman instead of a Tibetan man? Or why Top Gun 2 has removed all the Japanese and Taiwanese flags from Tom Cruise's jacket? Now you know. No force was used here. The studios all changed this on their own because they wanted access to those 1.4 billion customers. Ironically, Chinese influence has been spread by global capitalism. What I'm getting at is that the messaging changes because the culture changes. If someone came along and tried to claim that they were a demigod and should be made King of Canada because he killed a bunch of Assyrians, he'd be viewed as a crazy person. Take a moment to think about what sorts of values people have had in your setting. Then think of ways to appeal to those values. Is it a martial culture that focuses on how good people are at killing each other? Does it value being crafty in terms of business or finance? Individualism? Taking care of your family? Loyalty to the state? Social conformity? All these things exist in every culture to some extent. So which do the people in power or who are seeking power want to focus on? Whatever they think will get people to do what they want. So if you're trying to write say, a war, then take a few minutes to consider who benefits and how they can convince others that it's in their benefit too. After that, think of how the message could be effectively brought to as many people as possible. This is dependent on technology. Ramesses and his stone tablets wouldn't reach many these days, but the internet certainly does. Radios, television, film, mass media that can only be utilized by a literate populace, even new media that you can think up can be used to spread propaganda around. As long as you have the means, you can make whatever you can imagine. And propaganda that looks cool is more persuasive than stuff that's boring, which is why the creation has always been outsourced to artists. Now, media is only a part of this. Education is also a big part. Things like schools are great for making sure that more citizens buy into whatever values you want to press on to them. If there isn't any sort of mass education, then at least the wealthier classes can be brought into the fold through things like tutors and universities. And once that's been established, it tends to continue under its own momentum for a while. At least until the world shifts around it. Cultural values change over time, but there will always be more traditional people who resist that change. So take some time to think about how you would impose values on your people if you were in charge. Not just for moral reasons, but for the express purpose of keeping yourself in power. Then think about how that has changed over time to match with the shifting landscape. Then remember that not everyone will be convinced by this. So, how are they received by society at large? What sort of subcultures developed to counter this? How well are these subcultures tolerated? Propaganda isn't even necessarily lying. It's just designed to push your buttons and get you to think a certain way. And that's part of what makes it so dangerous. Part 4 Communication. One of the biggest and most fun in my opinion, parts of first contact stories is how both groups have no idea how to talk to the other. Aliens who communicate with smells would find human speech incomprehensible and vice versa. Though that's an extreme example. When people meet and they have no one who can translate, they have to go through the long process of learning each other's languages, which often means pointing at objects and naming them to come up with a vocabulary. Communicating between cultures can be extremely difficult for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is language, certainly. Those take time to learn and even then it can be difficult when there are no equivalents to certain words or phrases. Just look at Backpfeifengeschischt, a German word for a face in need of punching or Toeborne, which means you bury me in some varieties of Arabic. It goes further than that though. Communication involves a huge list of written and unwritten rules that change depending on context. Just ask any socially awkward person about how difficult these things are to keep track of. How loud should I laugh? Is it okay to sit here? I need to ask if it's okay to leave my shoes on because my feet are cold and oh God I'm holding my hands weird. They're all staring and they know how weird I'm holding my hands. And these rules are different in different societies. The way you talk to elders is different in Korea than in the United Kingdom for example. During the Cold War Nikita Khrushchev famously said to the United States we will bury you and most Americans perceived it as a threat. The reality is that it's a more benign statement in Russian. He was essentially shrugging and saying your funeral. Not much came of this but there are times when these sorts of misunderstandings can explode into much bigger problems like when the conquistadors first met the Inka Emperor and handed him a Bible. He hardly understood Spanish and had no idea what a book was since he'd never heard of written language so he tossed it aside and it pissed the Spanish off enough to immediately kill all his soldiers and take him captive. Sixteenth-century Catholics were something else. There are a million ways that things we view as innocuous could be viewed as offensive to others or vice-versa. Maybe there's a culture where it's normal to spit on someone when you meet them or where it's a sign of wealth to toss a brick through your window when you get home. Missing out on these minute details can get you into serious trouble or even just sour relationships. Sometimes it's bigger though with governments misunderstanding others intentions or religions being unable to gain converts. Think up these sorts of problems and how they're dealt with. A good way to think of how members of a culture's mindset might think slash react to things is to go back to the question of their core values. Then think of how growing up in an environment with those values would affect people. What would you get with a society that valued martial skill and disdained people who are viewed as barbarians by which they mean everyone who's not like them? You get the Romans who were kind of dicks less dickish than others at times but still dicks. How would they differ if they had valued creation of art more than fighting? Who knows? But they'd probably fight others less which would alter the way they interacted with others. Let your mind wander a bit to come up with how people's values would change their actions. After that think about what sort of issues this communication problem would lead to and what sort of solutions there are to those issues. An obvious one is interpreters. These people are usually hired not just to translate words but to guide others in an unfamiliar environment. That really only works on a small scale though in the long run education is needed. Without that they could always be a way to start off the story or a subplot. You know get the players or characters in a jam because they forgot to kiss the Goblin King's staff. That could be fun. Conclusion. I know this felt pretty unfocused and it is but that's kind of how real world art and culture work. There's not a greater point to them usually. They just exist both affecting and being affected by their surroundings yet without them the world would be a lot less colorful. That last bit is why it's so crucial to put a little effort into creating them. You can make all the epic battles weird political systems dubious scientific explanations for faster than light travel and love triangles you want without any cultural background there's no heart to it. The emotion has been drained away leaving a hollow husk and don't worry about whether your fictional cultures are too odd. Whatever you think up there's probably a real world example that's even stranger or more extreme. The most important thing to remember is that humans are not defined entirely by the culture we come from we're all still individuals that are shaped by our personal experiences. Sometimes that means not living up to the expectations of others. This doesn't apply to alien or fantasy races though and that can be a good way to differentiate them from humans. Why make elves just people with sharp ears when you could make them devoted to their society to the point that they're barely individuals. Why make the grays just little alien men when they could be brilliant individuals who commit suicide at the smallest inconvenience. The world is your oyster or worlds I guess. I don't have a strong closure for this video. A special thanks to everyone who watched this far and an even special or thanks to all of my patrons including the $10 and up guys Oppo Savilainen Olivia Rayon Ava Tumor Brandon S. Pilcher Brother Santotys Christopher Quinten Mbis Pfizer Jeremy Joel Carcat Kitsune Kevin Jang Liza Rutakova Madison Lewis Bennett Mel Austin Microphone Sad is getting long. But I could not do this without you guys. You are seriously the best and thanks again for watching. If you want to get your name on here then consider donating to my page. We also have other perks that you can have access to and if you don't want to do that then simply rating the video commenting on it subscribing to my channel all that stuff I'm supposed to say at the end here that is a huge help anyways uh bye.