layla | Worldbuilding Blogfest #4: Food, Drink, Holidays & Culture (Reply)

As noted in the last post, we’re now on Karamanda 2.0, The Re-Karamanding. *g*

And the full list of blogfest participants, for your reading pleasure!

So, at this point, I’ve moved them from the mountains to the middle of a Mediterranean-like sea, and done away with most of my plot. *facepalm* One side effect of doing this is that most of the cultural stuff I’d come up with is no longer valid. A great deal of their material culture has changed tremendously — food and clothing, for example.

(Their feet are more like ape feet, with a “thumb”, than like bird feet. They are also quite bulky in the chest and shoulders, compared to humans, though this seems to vary a lot every time I draw them.)

Because of the warm climate and the fact that flowing clothing is tough to fly in, they wear minimal clothing: simple wraps and leotards, or nothing at all. They like jewelry and ornaments, particularly ones that make noise — rattling, clinking bracelets, for example, that jangle when they move. (Obviously these would not be worn while working in manual-labor type occupations, or hunting/fishing, or doing things of that nature.) Both sexes wear their hair short, or else braid it and tie it up to keep it out of the way when they’re flying. They like bright colors and shiny, flashy things.

Historically, they were fisherfolk, and based their economy around the sea. These days many of them are urban, and they farm extensively, but they still have a cultural fixation on the ocean and fishing — sort of like Americans have a cultural fixation on the Wild West and the ideal of the explorer on the new frontier. Most of their major holidays were originally staged around the major fish migrations: the day the first bluefin eel appeared in the water in the spring, for example. These days it’s much more ceremonial and stylized, kind of like Christmas trees have lost their original significance and become a generic, secular symbol of a particular holiday.

But the fish theme is EVERYWHERE in public, ceremonial life. There are statues, paintings and mosaics all over the place of naked men and women holding spears and nets. Many of their major myths and popular stories feature strong, tricky heroes getting the best of giant or supernaturally clever fish. Fights over fishing grounds that lead to war and/or marriage are also a common theme (rather like Irish myth involves a whole lot of cattle rustling). Athletic contests and stylized versions of the old spear-fishing and net-fishing techniques are a common feature of their festivals, as are beautiful dances of synchronized flying.

“Dancing”, for them, is done in the air, not on the ground. A wedding ceremony is centered around a sky-dance between the couple, with the rest of both families slowly joining in; it can take years to prepare, with everyone having to learn their place in the dance! Courtship is done differently on different islands, but typically involves bird-esque features, with one party bringing gifts to the other party’s house, or doing an improvised sky-dance to impress their beloved. On one island, men of marriageable age move out of their parents’ house and build little temporary houses of wood, which they decorate lavishly with as many shiny things as they can find. They are, basically, bower-birds, though of course it’s cultural and not instinctive. Men compete to build a better bower (often making hugely complicated ones with many rooms; they are guys in their early 20s, after all) and girls hang around to watch, with a lot of giggling. Of course, no matter how silly your bower ends up looking and how rainproof it isn’t, two things are true: you have to build it all by yourself, and you have to live in it until you marry, since the permanent stone houses are the women’s, not the men’s.

Their writing system is adapted from other people they came in contact with, but they like books and are interested and curious in tales of life beyond the sea.

They grow various fruits & vegetables, olives, grains (particularly a strain of purple wheat), tea, grapes, linen & cotton, and probably other things I will think of later. Flatbread wrapped around fish or meat or a vegetable filling is a major staple food. Tea and wine are popular drinks.

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Worldbuilding Blogfest #4: Food, Drink, Holidays & Culture

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