As a Swede I would like to point out that, even if children visiting their friends often don’t get served dinner, they will most likely be served “fika”. Most of the time, the kid will have left their friends house by dinner time, but they will still be at their friends house at 3pm/4pm which is a great time for a cookie and some lemonade, and it still leaves room for dinner with your own family later. Bonus points if you have something you baked yourself to serve. It’s not that we don’t feed our guests, we just do it in a different way 😅
As another Swede, from my experience it’s always been kind of the opposite. The guests often stay until dinner and usually it’s considered rude to start eating before the guests have gotten their food. I guess there isn’t just one Swedish way to do things. I do love a good “fika” though!
"There are starving children in... some far away place we think is poor." I haven't laughed at a video this hard in a while! This is probably my favorite of your videos aside from Elush clothing :)
In secondary school, on the way back from a science club trip, we stopped for a planned meal at a restaurant. One student’s meal was delayed, but I just began eating. My teacher looked at me and in an annoyed (I would say condescending) tone, he said something along the lines of “it’s rude to eat before all the food arrives” and basically implied that I didn’t have manners. He then asked that student if it was okay to begin eating while she waited. In my family, we just eat whenever our food arrives. Plus I’m a picky eater (even more so back then) and occasionally I’m given food that doesn’t match my order and has to be sent back, so it would be impractical to wait for everyone’s food to arrive. Even now, I’m unsure if it’s generally rude not to wait or if it was just that teacher who saw it as rude. I mainly only remember it because of how embarrassed it made me feel.
This is such a simple, yet succinct video that manages to both serve to make people consider something they likely hadn't at all considered about their worldbuilding, but also think consciously about a lot of the subconscious "dance" of etiquette we all perform to on the regular. And all with such engaging video editing/scripting/delivery/etc. Well done, this is really good.
I always got annoyed at "proper etiquette" or ppl who act like their culture has the objectively right ways of showing respect & offense, bc i knew that there's always a culture out there that finds the exact opposite things respectful/offensive. I love to see worldbuilding that incorporates things like that.
in my house growing up, food was served one dish at a time, & there was a very specific order to the food. & then after everything, the dessert would be served if there was any. We also sing songs at the table together. Recently i had a culture shock where i ate a meal at someone's house where they just had everything out all at once, buffet style, & then when ppl felt done theyd move over to the couch in the living room. then a few hours later everyone went back to the table for dessert. I found it interesting how different 2 cultures can eat so differently. That dessert thing is what shocked me most. That theyd eat everything really quickly, then take a few hours break socializing in a different room, & then come back for dessert. I'm used to eating slowly since every dish comes one at a time, & then dessert is served right afterwards, & then once it's over ppl leave the table & you dont come back for part b.
Love these kinds of video's so much, probably because I tend to overfocus on the "big" things in worldbuilding like languages. It is really refreshing to think about those smaller things that in a way matter more in day to day life of these imagined people
Great video! Really intresting to see other cultures food rules As a side note, im swedish and has never heard of this "dont call the unexpected child guest to dinner". But then again, ive always told my parents when i had a friend over and if they were staying for dinner
Oh, neat! I was fascinated by etiquette growing up (both because I've always liked learning about other cultures, and because I've always liked learning about history and thought the idea of a finishing school was very novel), so when I started worldbuilding, it was one of the first things I thought about. But this video is making me realise I've still got some room to build, which is great! There's a plot point in one of my stories where the protagonist fucks up the local etiquette really badly and annoys everyone around him (sorta reinforcing his sense of loneliness), and I've just thought of some extra layers I can add to that moment.
When i was little if my being around a friends house hadn't been prearranged and I was still there when it was time for dinner their parents would send me back home to ask my parents if it was alright. At which point they would give their verdict and I would run back to my friends house either for dinner or to tell them that I couldn't. The advantages of living in a village where 90% of your friends lived 30 seconds run from you i guess. You'd never be fed without permission from your own parents (who - now that I'm thinking about it - were probably doing a little etiquette dance of their own in their heads) but you might be given a snack. I'm sure if you knew a child wasn't being fed properly or that their parents were poor enough that it would matter you would feed them anyway. And anything goes if it was pre-arranged. But if you weren't allowed to stay for dinner you wouldn't be allowed to stay in the house. That was going home time. I'm from England, if someone is collecting data or something.
7:45 the mention of time coming right after the Japanese anecdote reminds of hearing that Italian cafes will simply refuse to serve you breakfast foods at lunch time & vice versa
I'm Italian and I've heard of several anecdotes in which foreigner ordered particular food combinations that Italians consider "wrong", and the restaurant personnel objected. One thing I find funny is that where Italian and Japanese cultures have similar traits, other Westerners describe the situation differently. if the Japanese do something they're a fascinating exotic culture that westerners can't possibly understand. If Italian do the same thing we're just wacky.
excellent as always, best content in the worldbuilding sphere--I particularly enjoy these videos that are equally interesting as worldbuilding inspiration, and as a lightweight comparative anthropology crash course. I've thoroughly enjoyed your content ever since the Seal Milk video led me to discover this channel--keep up the good work!!! these longer videos probably take a lot of extra effort to keep them engaging, but it definitely pays off.
this is the first new video of yours since ive found your channel! your stuff always makes me think about the topics you cover in new ways & look forward to watching each video
Food etiquette is very interesting! My mum is from Singapore so I grew up eating meals with a spoon and fork (chopsticks for noodles and knife and fork if we were having sausages, but mostly we ate rice or pasta). You use the fork to push the rice onto the spoon. It's a common way of eating in Southeast Asia if you are using Western-style cutlery - there's no need for knives since nothing needs to be chopped, and rice and sauces is easier to scoop up with spoons. However, many Anglo-Australian people grew up being taught that you shouldn't use a spoon for anything except soup or dessert. So we'd invite people over to our house and serve up a lovely rice dish - and they'd start sadly scooping the rice up with their forks, completely ignoring the spoon! Talking to a friend about it, he revealed to me that his family even eats curry and rice with a knife and fork - as a kid, he would spend the whole time wishing he could use a spoon, but he wasn't allowed to! It seems nonsensical to me (the poor sauce! how are you eating it?) but I suppose that's the effect of different etiquette rules that come from different cuisines. I also found it interesting talking to a friend of mine who's from a richer family/area and goes to black tie dinners every year because some club he's a part of hosts them. They seem so alien to me - strict dress codes, multiple different sets of knives and forks, all this weird fussy stuff. And then everyone gets drunk at the end anyway. I've been to fancy restaurants maybe two or three times with my family and while the food could be good, I much prefer ordering shared dishes and then everybody taking what they want! (Or my mum ordering, if I'm with family and especially if it's at a Chinese restaurant)
This applied to my own Drows: They are somewhere in between a restrained culture and an open one. They have one focus: keep society running in the long run, and they strongly value stoicism above all else. In their culture, torture is completely normal, and nearly 100% of their population were subjected to it at some point during their lifetime, and are often forced to eat rané (a special species of autotrophes) that block endorphines while producing an intense burning sensation. They also value harsh discipline, but not necessarely comformity. -Any signs of bodily functions must be repressed. So, no burping, farting or moaning. Restrained. They even consider animated conversations at the dinner table to be improper. -Only the leaders of the house, namely the elders and the male head of house can sit in the comfortable tailor position. The rest must sit in the W position. It is considered especially rude to not sit in a W position as a house guest. Having a hierchical society but without furniture, this arrangement shows deference to the leaders, as well as an act of religious devotion. In religious orders, everybody is required to sit in a W position, and hierchy is shown with the leader sitting in the center of the circle. -Children are expected to sit in W position, to keep their thighs bare and their left hand lifted and flat, palm upward. It is seen as a sign of deference towards the elders, of acceptance of house rules and discipline and is considered good for their coordination. Smaller children are allowed more leaway because their coordination is still underdevelopped, but after a certain point, they would be expected to sit like that nice and still. -They view routine as a way of honoring the dead, by keeping the same routine for several generations. Findling with dinner time is there for considered about as polite as spiting on someone's grave. -In terms of eating, they do not have eating tools such as forks, instead the food is passed with only three fingers of the right hand to the mouth, although, spoons might be used to eat soup. -Certain foods, such as fish liver, are considered very precious. It's one of the rare sources of vitamin D in their environment, and thus is usually reserved for the elderly, children, pregnant women and those with fractures. For grown, healthy adults to eat it, it shows they are selfish and take away a precious ressource from people who need it. -In both the upper classes and the pariah circles, it is considered good a sign of strength, social fitness and good health to eat heartily and cheerfully right after being beaten. Failing to do so is considered weak and effeminate, plus, they would need the extra nutrition to recover more quickly. There is more pressure to do so in their men and in their women, since they associate masculinity with strength. Commoners view this custom as bizarre. In Drow culture, they also tend to value sexual masochism in their men as a sign of healthy virility and reproductive fitness. In upper class and commoner circle, failure is simply seen as slightly less attractive, while in their pariah circles, their women would systematically reject the romantic advances of a man who isn't. However, the same masochism is viewed as repulsive in their women. This culture strongly values being able to live and function in constant pain, and see it as the highest virtue one can aspire. Thus, inhability to continue the simple biological functions of eating and reproducing while in severe physical pain is seen as being an epic failure. However, because having an entire population comprised of crazy masochists would be quite a detriment to any society, and because of their humanoid body plan, the importance of this masochism is reserved for their men. -One should eat everything on one's plate, failing to do so is considered wasteful. -Whenfresh berries are available, if a man's wife is pregnant or lactating, or if a couple expect their adult son to perform his "marital and filial duties", the berries are reserved for either the new mother or the newly weds. Kids who would fail to do so would simply be considered greedy, while if let's say the man of the house fails to do so, he's considered gross and selfish.
Hello! I'm a sucker for homebrew drow lore, as I've long had a deep dislike for the traditional lore. Could I learn more about your lore and your version of drow? Since I also have a drow-focused worldbuilding project, could we compare notes somehow?
@@ChronicallyDehydrated My drows tend to be more pale and gaunt, with females having an ashier complexion (in my world, female elves tend to have ashy skin and hair, while male elves tend to have shimmering eyes). All elves in my world get wings at puberty, that are round, robust and slightly concave in females and long and narrow in males. My Drows are not dark skinned, because I find the idea of a dark-skinned underground creature a bit stupid, although they will have black hair, of textures that go from perfectly straight to kinky, with everything in between, although capilary albinism isn't that rare. They are very pale to fully albino, with blue, grey, green, red, pink or very rarely purple eyes (elves in this world have a wider range of eye colors than humans). Their facial featuers are quite neotenous, with a small, extremely gracile frames, big eyes and big ears poking out of their curls. Their society is patriarcal, but females are still able to achieve quite a bit of power, mostly through the cults of Hewwa, the goddess of life, inequity and water, represented as a half-mushroom elven woman with large breasts (female elves only have visible breasts when they lactate, so to elves, it's not sexual at all) and Helisa, the godess of healing, represented as being half-spider, half drow. In spite of their cute appearence, they are mostly-torture addled. Being persecuted to near extinction, reduced to two cities, they decided to keep their society hidden for almost 8 centuries, then eventually returning to the surface, coexisting with humans until the 1940 (a bit like our 40s) were they were faced with another genocide. Also, in this world, terms like drow, ice elf, and so forth are the equivalents of saying with humans: white, black and asian. So, the two surviving Drow cities are very culturally different, but the ones worshipping Hewwà and Helisa are patriarcal, the other surviving city is matriarcal. Both practice slavery, torture and cannibalism as part of normal life, and both consume rané, an autotrophe that uses seismic energy and salts to synthesize sugars, and blocks endorphine production while creating a very intense sting that feels like a second degree burn. It's the only way they can get the necessary sodium and glucose from their environment. They also share a taboo against eating salt as a mineral, because of how precious it is to their environment, namely so rané can proliferate and produce oxygen, occupying the same niche as plants in the outside world. The ones that worship Hewwa, named the Pyroxene drows because of the amount of peroxyne in their caverns, during their hiding time, also developped a ritual of wing ablation, and the wings are then given to the sacred spiders of Helisa, (spiders and healing are associated because of the blood slowing properties of spider silk, as well as their well-known appetite for disease-carrying insects, making them sacred animals). The reason of this is also practical, sense without moonlight, elves cannot develop healthy wings, and they will necrose as a result, from both auto and outer immune factors). The vast majority of Drows are torture-addled and traumatized, and they don't really understand humans, resulting in accidentally killing the few human captives who find their existence, mostly from improper nutrition, feeding them mushrooms that are edible to elves but very toxic to humans, and lack of sunlight. As a culture, they prefer being left alone, and mostly aren't really evil, just desperate. Elven reproduction...Elves are obligate queuers, with two biological sexes, each with it's mirrored queuing. Their highly altricial youngs, even punier than baby humans, and having a very gracile humanoid body plan means that typically, many of the sibblings would stay as "servants" of the eldest, but they have less pressure to be heirs, and thus are given more career paths than the eldest, but also a smaller portion of the inheritence. It's often necessary, because after giving birth, the mother is too weak to take care of herself, let alone her highly dependant baby who cannot even have independent bowel movements and need to be stimulated. They are a society of high authoritarianim and low conformity outside of blood-relations, were fear and guilt determine morality. Elves also have a physiologically engrained response to become less violent when they experience pain in their reproductive organs, although the hormonal cocktail it produces seldom replaces genuine bonds, but Drows do exploit this physiological reflex for social regulation, whiles other elves tend to value genuine connections through love. In their culture, valuing someone's opinion of you for it's own sake, without fear of physical harm, is something very intimate, reserved for family members. In their pariah class, it's even considered as more intimate than having sex. Hence, for example, a teacher who uses praise to encourage good behavior would be seen as overstepping their boundries, but a teacher who beats the kids on the thighs till blood draws would be seen as just fine.
@Lilas.Duveteux I took a rather different direction. I decided to leave my drow as having dark grey skin. (It's true that having dark-colored creatures underground is strange, but the traditional depiction of the Underdark doesn't remotely resemble real-life cave ecosystems anyway. I thought that with all the bioluminescent wildlife, maybe it's more themed after the deep ocean.) They tend to be short and wiry. (Surface people stereotype them as all having Napoleon complex.) Sexual dimorphism is far less pronounced than humans. Since their environment is often dimly lit, they rely more on smell and hearing than humans do (that's what those big long pointy ears are for), and various forms of colorblindness are not uncommon. Regarding their culture, I decided to throw out the old lore, and rebuild from the ground up (or, as it were, from the ground down). My main inspiration is not the traditional depictions for drow, but the physical environment in which my drow find themselves. They still bear a superficial resemblance to the old lore - their family structure is centered around matrilineal clans, they hold spiders to be sacred animals, and slavery exists - but the way everything works under the hood is different. Life in a cramped, crowded environment impacts nearly every aspect of the culture. - The various dangerous gasses than can collect in confined spaces are considered demons. People build shrines to the Four Demons of the Air, and pray for them to stay away. On a more practical level, care is taken to manage the supply and flow of air through the city. This includes managing the gasses that arise from sewage and corpses. Poorer areas, where official inspectors don't visit as often and are less trusted, predictably tend to have worse ventilation, though few areas are entirely neglected. After all, a collection of gas anywhere could pose a danger to the whole city when it's finally released. - Fire in a confined space is one of the most viscerally terrifying things that there is. As well as the direct physical danger, it uses up oxygen and produces CO2. Additionally, the most easily accessible fuel is coal, which is difficult and dangerous to mine. So, fire is used very rarely and carefully. Most food is not cooked, but instead is fermented, pickled, dried, or salted. Culturally, fire is strongly feared, and is associated with violence and destruction. - Generally, people don't use doors, but rather use curtains. (Stone doors are difficult to move, wood must be imported from Above at great expense, metal is also expensive because it's difficult and dangerous to mine and smelt.) Heavy curtains where airflow needs to be blocked, light ones where air must pass through. Doors are considered a luxury, found only on public buildings and the richest dwellings. - Since privacy is rather hard to get, the drow have come to value it highly when they can get it. For the rich, large and spacious private apartments are a status symbol (though really, this is true in almost any culture). Respect for the privacy of others is considered an important virtue. (A spider that sits in its web and bothers no-one else is considered an exemplar of this virtue.) - Surface people stereotype drow as dishonorable backstabbers who fight dirty. This is not because the drow are dishonorable, but rather their use of poison and backstabbing is an adaptation to cramped environments where fighting is physically difficult, and to crowded environments where an open fight risks hurting random bystanders whose families might seek revenge. When drow go to war, they favor guerilla tactics because they're used to an environment where an open confrontation between armies is physically impossible. In terms of weapons, they favor stabbing weapons over ranged or swung weapons. Fencing and wrestling are popular spectator sports, as these developed from the styles of combat that one might use in a narrow tunnel. - There's a cultural value on managing anger and not acting impulsively. In a confined tunnel, especially out in the wildnerness where there's dangerous wildlife and you can't survive alone, anger can get you killed. In the city, this is less of a concern, but stoicism and calm tenacity are still valued. (And if you really want to ruin someone's day, you can always figure out something more subtle and creative than just punching them. _The Count of Monte Cristo_ would be quite popular among Drow readers.) - In a cavern, you don't need to speak very loud to be heard, especially if the other person has sensitive elf ears. Drow stereotype surface people as being big, loud, impulsive, brash, and innocently rude (kind of like Americans lol). The basic unit of social structure is considered to be a matrilineal clan, consisting of a matriarch and her descendants. In practice, things are rather more complicated, and as the drow adapt to their urban environment, the traditional attitudes are changing, and the family structure is getting less rigid - or rather, the social norms enforcing the "traditional" family structure are getting less rigid, and people are more willing to recognize that no family quite perfectly fits the traditional ideal. How autocratic the matriarch is (and whether there's one, multiple, or none at all) varies hugely from one clan to another. Generally though, clans tend to be rather tight-knit, and it's expected that if someone gets into trouble, their clan will come to their aid. The society is, generally, no more sadistic than any regular human society. Hurt a family member, and the rest might kick you out. Hurt someone else, and their clan might start a blood feud with yours (or, increasingly commonly, sue you). Most people are good people and wish no harm on others, but there are ample opportunities for exploitation and abuse of power, and no shortage of people willing to take advantage of those opportunities. Some other highlights: - Giant spiders are the main source of textile fiber, and so they have become culturally important. Over time, they have been domesticated. That people are fed to the spiders is a widespread misconception among surface people, and the drow sometimes play into this to scare prisoners, or to prank guests. - The fiber arts are highly valued. Stone walls are rendered more comfortable by tapestries. Door-curtains are decorated to impress passerby. Clothing tends to be tight-fitting, to avoid snagging in cramped spaces, but cover as much skin as possible - not out of any concern for modesty, but to provide as much area as possible to show off your embroidery skills. Living in darkness or dim light, the drow tend to make more use of texture than color, and favor geometric patterns over imagery. There's more detail, and I haven't even gone into how the clan structure is changing, how this society's system of slavery works and how it's changing, how a legal system is starting to develop, how that value of privacy affects other aspects of the culture, how hosts and guests are supposed to interact, the stereotypes that commoners and nobles have about each other, what religion is like... In all, this is a society in flux, a society grappling with changes to its culture as it struggles to reconcile the cultural imprint of its rural past with its urban present. A society where people complain about their lives and get drunk with their friends after work. Where people argue about how their traditions are changing. Where people love their families and want the best for their children. Where people want their society to be good, just, and moral, but they disagree, sometimes minorly and sometimes fundamentally, as to what exactly that entails.
@@ChronicallyDehydrated This is actually great lore ! My drows don't really value modesty, and go a lot of times half-naked, since cloth is such a rare commodity that it's not wasted on anything more than the bare minimum, and they see modesty in general as an arrogant attitude. Mine also don't have doors. Also, elven cities tend to be self-sufficient. Being fungivores, like all elves, the way they build cities look a lot more as if it was built by giant ants than by sentient megafauna, so they seldom have the distinction between urban and rural. All elves tend to be either hunter-gatherers or city builders, with very little in between because of their physiology, although they are some "villages", that tend to be nomadic anyways. They also lack the ability to digests large quantities of fat or starch at all, making so that elves really have no interest of attacking human settlements to steal livestock or crops, unless they perceive the human settlement as a threat. Drows also consider the Abrahamic religions as evil, not because they restrict the autonomy of their followers and tend to be repressive of their pleasure, no, it's in the case of Judaism and Islam the taboos concerning food, such as not allowing their followers to eat arthropodes or blood. While they agree blood is sacred, it cannot be wasted specifically because of this reason, and it's also considered the most nutricious part of the animal. As to not eating arthropodes and bivalves, elves have trouble digesting the meat of large mammals anyways, so in their eyes, this God would be one that forbiden His followers to eat nutricious food, and force them to kill more animals to feed themselves since less of each animal is "edible", for no reason. While Christianity, a lot of branches, including catholicism and orthodoxy, ban mariage between in-laws, even after widowing, and the mariage between adoptive siblings. Marriying a sibling-in-law after becoming a widow is considered a social duty in Drow culture, as it might be the only chance said in-law has of having biological children, and should the previous couple have children of their own, the new in-loco parentis would be someone who they are already familiar with. While for adoptive siblings, they don't see it as anything morally wrong, and because Drows don't really practice courtship or dating in any capacity, it might be the only chance these youths have of a happy mariage, or at least one were they aren't constantly beaten. "Well, when they are still young, their parents would be there to mitigate violent behavior, and after the parents pass away, they'd be mature enough to handle themselves properly", is the mentality behind this. It also might be a unique opportunity for the adoptee to climb the social ladder. For a Church to ban such salutary practices, this Church, the God they worship and their followers, have to be evil, is the Drow mentality.
As a sweed I think not feeding kids is mostly because you do not know how their parents want to feed them, i.e allergies, intolerances, religions, vegetarianism or yeah the unplanned extra meal you have to whip out of thin air and the meal that potentially will have to be thrown out in the kids family. Though leaving the kid alone while you eat feels also off-putting, I would honestly move dinner until the kid leaves tbh I think most Swedish kids leave before dinner time to avoid this awkward situation. Interesting also that organ meat was considered lower class when patê, foie grass, and other offal are seen as gourmet today. Idk I've always seen organ meat as fancy, especially with how rare they are at the supermarket, something you can only get if you go to a butchery. Nutrient-rich animal produce that most "commoners" are too unrefined to appreciate. Or Hannibals high-class presentation of organ meat dishes just influenced my perception.
I loved this one, etiquete is so confusing lol I hadn't considered this for my fictional culture, but after this I'm pretty sure they'd be more on the messy eater side, don't you worry about the mess, you'll be helping clean it up anyway!
I still can’t believe the Swedish thing bc kids will eat at the friend’s house then go home and eat again. And also my mom is like “never say no to free food ever it’s free food”
To this day, I forget which hand is for forks and which is for knives. I had it drilled into me as a kid that the way I was doing it was wrong. Now as an adult I hold them however feels right to me, but in the back of my mind there's always the nagging feeling that I'm holding them incorrectly
dominant hand is for the knife! At least if you're british (this usually means in the right hand for "left handers are the devil" reasons but now its just depends on if you're right or left handed)
The rule of thumb I heard is that the most dangerous implement you're using goes in your dominant hand. If it's just a fork you use your dominant hand for the fork, if you're also cutting stuff or moving it with a knife the knife goes in the dominant hand and the fork in the non-dominant one.
@@teaartist6455I like that a lot :) I do hold my cutlery this way already, but now if I ever need to teach anyone else I will pass this rule along (thank you)
I hold it like I hold a pen for writing, with almost the same grip I use for chopsticks. I never knew the etiquette of it, it's just the most natural position for me.
Ah yes, the stressful part of my childhood. Figuring out unspoken etiquette.
As someone who grew up in an extremely multi cultural area while autistic, this was half the things I worried about back then😂
As a Swede I would like to point out that, even if children visiting their friends often don’t get served dinner, they will most likely be served “fika”. Most of the time, the kid will have left their friends house by dinner time, but they will still be at their friends house at 3pm/4pm which is a great time for a cookie and some lemonade, and it still leaves room for dinner with your own family later. Bonus points if you have something you baked yourself to serve. It’s not that we don’t feed our guests, we just do it in a different way 😅
As another Swede, from my experience it’s always been kind of the opposite. The guests often stay until dinner and usually it’s considered rude to start eating before the guests have gotten their food. I guess there isn’t just one Swedish way to do things.
I do love a good “fika” though!
"There are starving children in... some far away place we think is poor." I haven't laughed at a video this hard in a while! This is probably my favorite of your videos aside from Elush clothing :)
Truly the threatening equivalent of "Please eat these for the poor kids out there!"
In secondary school, on the way back from a science club trip, we stopped for a planned meal at a restaurant. One student’s meal was delayed, but I just began eating. My teacher looked at me and in an annoyed (I would say condescending) tone, he said something along the lines of “it’s rude to eat before all the food arrives” and basically implied that I didn’t have manners. He then asked that student if it was okay to begin eating while she waited. In my family, we just eat whenever our food arrives. Plus I’m a picky eater (even more so back then) and occasionally I’m given food that doesn’t match my order and has to be sent back, so it would be impractical to wait for everyone’s food to arrive. Even now, I’m unsure if it’s generally rude not to wait or if it was just that teacher who saw it as rude. I mainly only remember it because of how embarrassed it made me feel.
This is such a simple, yet succinct video that manages to both serve to make people consider something they likely hadn't at all considered about their worldbuilding, but also think consciously about a lot of the subconscious "dance" of etiquette we all perform to on the regular. And all with such engaging video editing/scripting/delivery/etc. Well done, this is really good.
table etiquette is both the most fascinating and pointless part of so many cultures LMAO I love it
I always got annoyed at "proper etiquette" or ppl who act like their culture has the objectively right ways of showing respect & offense, bc i knew that there's always a culture out there that finds the exact opposite things respectful/offensive. I love to see worldbuilding that incorporates things like that.
As a french, trust me it's never rude to come to a dinner with a whine bottle, but it will probably be stored for later consumption though
Exactly. Or you would be asked to bring the wine in advance so that you know which bottle to buy.
in my house growing up, food was served one dish at a time, & there was a very specific order to the food. & then after everything, the dessert would be served if there was any. We also sing songs at the table together. Recently i had a culture shock where i ate a meal at someone's house where they just had everything out all at once, buffet style, & then when ppl felt done theyd move over to the couch in the living room. then a few hours later everyone went back to the table for dessert. I found it interesting how different 2 cultures can eat so differently. That dessert thing is what shocked me most. That theyd eat everything really quickly, then take a few hours break socializing in a different room, & then come back for dessert. I'm used to eating slowly since every dish comes one at a time, & then dessert is served right afterwards, & then once it's over ppl leave the table & you dont come back for part b.
Love these kinds of video's so much, probably because I tend to overfocus on the "big" things in worldbuilding like languages. It is really refreshing to think about those smaller things that in a way matter more in day to day life of these imagined people
Thank you! I love little domestic bits of worldbuilding like this :D
Great video! Really intresting to see other cultures food rules
As a side note, im swedish and has never heard of this "dont call the unexpected child guest to dinner". But then again, ive always told my parents when i had a friend over and if they were staying for dinner
Oh, neat! I was fascinated by etiquette growing up (both because I've always liked learning about other cultures, and because I've always liked learning about history and thought the idea of a finishing school was very novel), so when I started worldbuilding, it was one of the first things I thought about. But this video is making me realise I've still got some room to build, which is great! There's a plot point in one of my stories where the protagonist fucks up the local etiquette really badly and annoys everyone around him (sorta reinforcing his sense of loneliness), and I've just thought of some extra layers I can add to that moment.
EEE thank you!! I'm glad it could inspire you :D
fab as always. the cute little sliders definitely made me think about where my own conculture fits on them!
When i was little if my being around a friends house hadn't been prearranged and I was still there when it was time for dinner their parents would send me back home to ask my parents if it was alright. At which point they would give their verdict and I would run back to my friends house either for dinner or to tell them that I couldn't. The advantages of living in a village where 90% of your friends lived 30 seconds run from you i guess. You'd never be fed without permission from your own parents (who - now that I'm thinking about it - were probably doing a little etiquette dance of their own in their heads) but you might be given a snack.
I'm sure if you knew a child wasn't being fed properly or that their parents were poor enough that it would matter you would feed them anyway. And anything goes if it was pre-arranged. But if you weren't allowed to stay for dinner you wouldn't be allowed to stay in the house. That was going home time.
I'm from England, if someone is collecting data or something.
very nice video, i don't think i would've thought about table manners when worldbuildung if i hadn't seen this
the themed patreon supporters list at the end is super cute (also awesome video in general :D)
i love this channel
nice bite sized videos on emergent culture
7:45 the mention of time coming right after the Japanese anecdote reminds of hearing that Italian cafes will simply refuse to serve you breakfast foods at lunch time & vice versa
All-day breakfast menus are very weird to me as a Frenchman.
I'm Italian and I've heard of several anecdotes in which foreigner ordered particular food combinations that Italians consider "wrong", and the restaurant personnel objected.
One thing I find funny is that where Italian and Japanese cultures have similar traits, other Westerners describe the situation differently. if the Japanese do something they're a fascinating exotic culture that westerners can't possibly understand. If Italian do the same thing we're just wacky.
excellent as always, best content in the worldbuilding sphere--I particularly enjoy these videos that are equally interesting as worldbuilding inspiration, and as a lightweight comparative anthropology crash course.
I've thoroughly enjoyed your content ever since the Seal Milk video led me to discover this channel--keep up the good work!!!
these longer videos probably take a lot of extra effort to keep them engaging, but it definitely pays off.
Thank you so much!! The comparative anthropology crash courses are fun to make (though slightly nerve wracking in case I get something wrong >_>)
this is the first new video of yours since ive found your channel! your stuff always makes me think about the topics you cover in new ways & look forward to watching each video
Food etiquette is very interesting! My mum is from Singapore so I grew up eating meals with a spoon and fork (chopsticks for noodles and knife and fork if we were having sausages, but mostly we ate rice or pasta). You use the fork to push the rice onto the spoon. It's a common way of eating in Southeast Asia if you are using Western-style cutlery - there's no need for knives since nothing needs to be chopped, and rice and sauces is easier to scoop up with spoons. However, many Anglo-Australian people grew up being taught that you shouldn't use a spoon for anything except soup or dessert. So we'd invite people over to our house and serve up a lovely rice dish - and they'd start sadly scooping the rice up with their forks, completely ignoring the spoon! Talking to a friend about it, he revealed to me that his family even eats curry and rice with a knife and fork - as a kid, he would spend the whole time wishing he could use a spoon, but he wasn't allowed to! It seems nonsensical to me (the poor sauce! how are you eating it?) but I suppose that's the effect of different etiquette rules that come from different cuisines.
I also found it interesting talking to a friend of mine who's from a richer family/area and goes to black tie dinners every year because some club he's a part of hosts them. They seem so alien to me - strict dress codes, multiple different sets of knives and forks, all this weird fussy stuff. And then everyone gets drunk at the end anyway. I've been to fancy restaurants maybe two or three times with my family and while the food could be good, I much prefer ordering shared dishes and then everybody taking what they want! (Or my mum ordering, if I'm with family and especially if it's at a Chinese restaurant)
This applied to my own Drows:
They are somewhere in between a restrained culture and an open one. They have one focus: keep society running in the long run, and they strongly value stoicism above all else. In their culture, torture is completely normal, and nearly 100% of their population were subjected to it at some point during their lifetime, and are often forced to eat rané (a special species of autotrophes) that block endorphines while producing an intense burning sensation. They also value harsh discipline, but not necessarely comformity.
-Any signs of bodily functions must be repressed. So, no burping, farting or moaning. Restrained. They even consider animated conversations at the dinner table to be improper.
-Only the leaders of the house, namely the elders and the male head of house can sit in the comfortable tailor position. The rest must sit in the W position. It is considered especially rude to not sit in a W position as a house guest. Having a hierchical society but without furniture, this arrangement shows deference to the leaders, as well as an act of religious devotion. In religious orders, everybody is required to sit in a W position, and hierchy is shown with the leader sitting in the center of the circle.
-Children are expected to sit in W position, to keep their thighs bare and their left hand lifted and flat, palm upward. It is seen as a sign of deference towards the elders, of acceptance of house rules and discipline and is considered good for their coordination. Smaller children are allowed more leaway because their coordination is still underdevelopped, but after a certain point, they would be expected to sit like that nice and still.
-They view routine as a way of honoring the dead, by keeping the same routine for several generations. Findling with dinner time is there for considered about as polite as spiting on someone's grave.
-In terms of eating, they do not have eating tools such as forks, instead the food is passed with only three fingers of the right hand to the mouth, although, spoons might be used to eat soup.
-Certain foods, such as fish liver, are considered very precious. It's one of the rare sources of vitamin D in their environment, and thus is usually reserved for the elderly, children, pregnant women and those with fractures. For grown, healthy adults to eat it, it shows they are selfish and take away a precious ressource from people who need it.
-In both the upper classes and the pariah circles, it is considered good a sign of strength, social fitness and good health to eat heartily and cheerfully right after being beaten. Failing to do so is considered weak and effeminate, plus, they would need the extra nutrition to recover more quickly. There is more pressure to do so in their men and in their women, since they associate masculinity with strength. Commoners view this custom as bizarre. In Drow culture, they also tend to value sexual masochism in their men as a sign of healthy virility and reproductive fitness. In upper class and commoner circle, failure is simply seen as slightly less attractive, while in their pariah circles, their women would systematically reject the romantic advances of a man who isn't. However, the same masochism is viewed as repulsive in their women. This culture strongly values being able to live and function in constant pain, and see it as the highest virtue one can aspire. Thus, inhability to continue the simple biological functions of eating and reproducing while in severe physical pain is seen as being an epic failure. However, because having an entire population comprised of crazy masochists would be quite a detriment to any society, and because of their humanoid body plan, the importance of this masochism is reserved for their men.
-One should eat everything on one's plate, failing to do so is considered wasteful.
-Whenfresh berries are available, if a man's wife is pregnant or lactating, or if a couple expect their adult son to perform his "marital and filial duties", the berries are reserved for either the new mother or the newly weds. Kids who would fail to do so would simply be considered greedy, while if let's say the man of the house fails to do so, he's considered gross and selfish.
Hello! I'm a sucker for homebrew drow lore, as I've long had a deep dislike for the traditional lore. Could I learn more about your lore and your version of drow? Since I also have a drow-focused worldbuilding project, could we compare notes somehow?
@@ChronicallyDehydrated My drows tend to be more pale and gaunt, with females having an ashier complexion (in my world, female elves tend to have ashy skin and hair, while male elves tend to have shimmering eyes). All elves in my world get wings at puberty, that are round, robust and slightly concave in females and long and narrow in males. My Drows are not dark skinned, because I find the idea of a dark-skinned underground creature a bit stupid, although they will have black hair, of textures that go from perfectly straight to kinky, with everything in between, although capilary albinism isn't that rare. They are very pale to fully albino, with blue, grey, green, red, pink or very rarely purple eyes (elves in this world have a wider range of eye colors than humans). Their facial featuers are quite neotenous, with a small, extremely gracile frames, big eyes and big ears poking out of their curls. Their society is patriarcal, but females are still able to achieve quite a bit of power, mostly through the cults of Hewwa, the goddess of life, inequity and water, represented as a half-mushroom elven woman with large breasts (female elves only have visible breasts when they lactate, so to elves, it's not sexual at all) and Helisa, the godess of healing, represented as being half-spider, half drow.
In spite of their cute appearence, they are mostly-torture addled. Being persecuted to near extinction, reduced to two cities, they decided to keep their society hidden for almost 8 centuries, then eventually returning to the surface, coexisting with humans until the 1940 (a bit like our 40s) were they were faced with another genocide. Also, in this world, terms like drow, ice elf, and so forth are the equivalents of saying with humans: white, black and asian. So, the two surviving Drow cities are very culturally different, but the ones worshipping Hewwà and Helisa are patriarcal, the other surviving city is matriarcal. Both practice slavery, torture and cannibalism as part of normal life, and both consume rané, an autotrophe that uses seismic energy and salts to synthesize sugars, and blocks endorphine production while creating a very intense sting that feels like a second degree burn. It's the only way they can get the necessary sodium and glucose from their environment. They also share a taboo against eating salt as a mineral, because of how precious it is to their environment, namely so rané can proliferate and produce oxygen, occupying the same niche as plants in the outside world. The ones that worship Hewwa, named the Pyroxene drows because of the amount of peroxyne in their caverns, during their hiding time, also developped a ritual of wing ablation, and the wings are then given to the sacred spiders of Helisa, (spiders and healing are associated because of the blood slowing properties of spider silk, as well as their well-known appetite for disease-carrying insects, making them sacred animals). The reason of this is also practical, sense without moonlight, elves cannot develop healthy wings, and they will necrose as a result, from both auto and outer immune factors).
The vast majority of Drows are torture-addled and traumatized, and they don't really understand humans, resulting in accidentally killing the few human captives who find their existence, mostly from improper nutrition, feeding them mushrooms that are edible to elves but very toxic to humans, and lack of sunlight. As a culture, they prefer being left alone, and mostly aren't really evil, just desperate.
Elven reproduction...Elves are obligate queuers, with two biological sexes, each with it's mirrored queuing. Their highly altricial youngs, even punier than baby humans, and having a very gracile humanoid body plan means that typically, many of the sibblings would stay as "servants" of the eldest, but they have less pressure to be heirs, and thus are given more career paths than the eldest, but also a smaller portion of the inheritence. It's often necessary, because after giving birth, the mother is too weak to take care of herself, let alone her highly dependant baby who cannot even have independent bowel movements and need to be stimulated.
They are a society of high authoritarianim and low conformity outside of blood-relations, were fear and guilt determine morality. Elves also have a physiologically engrained response to become less violent when they experience pain in their reproductive organs, although the hormonal cocktail it produces seldom replaces genuine bonds, but Drows do exploit this physiological reflex for social regulation, whiles other elves tend to value genuine connections through love. In their culture, valuing someone's opinion of you for it's own sake, without fear of physical harm, is something very intimate, reserved for family members. In their pariah class, it's even considered as more intimate than having sex. Hence, for example, a teacher who uses praise to encourage good behavior would be seen as overstepping their boundries, but a teacher who beats the kids on the thighs till blood draws would be seen as just fine.
@Lilas.Duveteux
I took a rather different direction.
I decided to leave my drow as having dark grey skin. (It's true that having dark-colored creatures underground is strange, but the traditional depiction of the Underdark doesn't remotely resemble real-life cave ecosystems anyway. I thought that with all the bioluminescent wildlife, maybe it's more themed after the deep ocean.)
They tend to be short and wiry. (Surface people stereotype them as all having Napoleon complex.)
Sexual dimorphism is far less pronounced than humans.
Since their environment is often dimly lit, they rely more on smell and hearing than humans do (that's what those big long pointy ears are for), and various forms of colorblindness are not uncommon.
Regarding their culture, I decided to throw out the old lore, and rebuild from the ground up (or, as it were, from the ground down). My main inspiration is not the traditional depictions for drow, but the physical environment in which my drow find themselves. They still bear a superficial resemblance to the old lore - their family structure is centered around matrilineal clans, they hold spiders to be sacred animals, and slavery exists - but the way everything works under the hood is different.
Life in a cramped, crowded environment impacts nearly every aspect of the culture.
- The various dangerous gasses than can collect in confined spaces are considered demons. People build shrines to the Four Demons of the Air, and pray for them to stay away. On a more practical level, care is taken to manage the supply and flow of air through the city. This includes managing the gasses that arise from sewage and corpses. Poorer areas, where official inspectors don't visit as often and are less trusted, predictably tend to have worse ventilation, though few areas are entirely neglected. After all, a collection of gas anywhere could pose a danger to the whole city when it's finally released.
- Fire in a confined space is one of the most viscerally terrifying things that there is. As well as the direct physical danger, it uses up oxygen and produces CO2. Additionally, the most easily accessible fuel is coal, which is difficult and dangerous to mine. So, fire is used very rarely and carefully. Most food is not cooked, but instead is fermented, pickled, dried, or salted. Culturally, fire is strongly feared, and is associated with violence and destruction.
- Generally, people don't use doors, but rather use curtains. (Stone doors are difficult to move, wood must be imported from Above at great expense, metal is also expensive because it's difficult and dangerous to mine and smelt.) Heavy curtains where airflow needs to be blocked, light ones where air must pass through. Doors are considered a luxury, found only on public buildings and the richest dwellings.
- Since privacy is rather hard to get, the drow have come to value it highly when they can get it. For the rich, large and spacious private apartments are a status symbol (though really, this is true in almost any culture). Respect for the privacy of others is considered an important virtue. (A spider that sits in its web and bothers no-one else is considered an exemplar of this virtue.)
- Surface people stereotype drow as dishonorable backstabbers who fight dirty. This is not because the drow are dishonorable, but rather their use of poison and backstabbing is an adaptation to cramped environments where fighting is physically difficult, and to crowded environments where an open fight risks hurting random bystanders whose families might seek revenge. When drow go to war, they favor guerilla tactics because they're used to an environment where an open confrontation between armies is physically impossible. In terms of weapons, they favor stabbing weapons over ranged or swung weapons. Fencing and wrestling are popular spectator sports, as these developed from the styles of combat that one might use in a narrow tunnel.
- There's a cultural value on managing anger and not acting impulsively. In a confined tunnel, especially out in the wildnerness where there's dangerous wildlife and you can't survive alone, anger can get you killed. In the city, this is less of a concern, but stoicism and calm tenacity are still valued. (And if you really want to ruin someone's day, you can always figure out something more subtle and creative than just punching them. _The Count of Monte Cristo_ would be quite popular among Drow readers.)
- In a cavern, you don't need to speak very loud to be heard, especially if the other person has sensitive elf ears. Drow stereotype surface people as being big, loud, impulsive, brash, and innocently rude (kind of like Americans lol).
The basic unit of social structure is considered to be a matrilineal clan, consisting of a matriarch and her descendants. In practice, things are rather more complicated, and as the drow adapt to their urban environment, the traditional attitudes are changing, and the family structure is getting less rigid - or rather, the social norms enforcing the "traditional" family structure are getting less rigid, and people are more willing to recognize that no family quite perfectly fits the traditional ideal. How autocratic the matriarch is (and whether there's one, multiple, or none at all) varies hugely from one clan to another. Generally though, clans tend to be rather tight-knit, and it's expected that if someone gets into trouble, their clan will come to their aid.
The society is, generally, no more sadistic than any regular human society. Hurt a family member, and the rest might kick you out. Hurt someone else, and their clan might start a blood feud with yours (or, increasingly commonly, sue you). Most people are good people and wish no harm on others, but there are ample opportunities for exploitation and abuse of power, and no shortage of people willing to take advantage of those opportunities.
Some other highlights:
- Giant spiders are the main source of textile fiber, and so they have become culturally important. Over time, they have been domesticated. That people are fed to the spiders is a widespread misconception among surface people, and the drow sometimes play into this to scare prisoners, or to prank guests.
- The fiber arts are highly valued. Stone walls are rendered more comfortable by tapestries. Door-curtains are decorated to impress passerby. Clothing tends to be tight-fitting, to avoid snagging in cramped spaces, but cover as much skin as possible - not out of any concern for modesty, but to provide as much area as possible to show off your embroidery skills. Living in darkness or dim light, the drow tend to make more use of texture than color, and favor geometric patterns over imagery.
There's more detail, and I haven't even gone into how the clan structure is changing, how this society's system of slavery works and how it's changing, how a legal system is starting to develop, how that value of privacy affects other aspects of the culture, how hosts and guests are supposed to interact, the stereotypes that commoners and nobles have about each other, what religion is like...
In all, this is a society in flux, a society grappling with changes to its culture as it struggles to reconcile the cultural imprint of its rural past with its urban present. A society where people complain about their lives and get drunk with their friends after work. Where people argue about how their traditions are changing. Where people love their families and want the best for their children. Where people want their society to be good, just, and moral, but they disagree, sometimes minorly and sometimes fundamentally, as to what exactly that entails.
@@ChronicallyDehydrated This is actually great lore ! My drows don't really value modesty, and go a lot of times half-naked, since cloth is such a rare commodity that it's not wasted on anything more than the bare minimum, and they see modesty in general as an arrogant attitude. Mine also don't have doors. Also, elven cities tend to be self-sufficient. Being fungivores, like all elves, the way they build cities look a lot more as if it was built by giant ants than by sentient megafauna, so they seldom have the distinction between urban and rural. All elves tend to be either hunter-gatherers or city builders, with very little in between because of their physiology, although they are some "villages", that tend to be nomadic anyways. They also lack the ability to digests large quantities of fat or starch at all, making so that elves really have no interest of attacking human settlements to steal livestock or crops, unless they perceive the human settlement as a threat.
Drows also consider the Abrahamic religions as evil, not because they restrict the autonomy of their followers and tend to be repressive of their pleasure, no, it's in the case of Judaism and Islam the taboos concerning food, such as not allowing their followers to eat arthropodes or blood. While they agree blood is sacred, it cannot be wasted specifically because of this reason, and it's also considered the most nutricious part of the animal. As to not eating arthropodes and bivalves, elves have trouble digesting the meat of large mammals anyways, so in their eyes, this God would be one that forbiden His followers to eat nutricious food, and force them to kill more animals to feed themselves since less of each animal is "edible", for no reason. While Christianity, a lot of branches, including catholicism and orthodoxy, ban mariage between in-laws, even after widowing, and the mariage between adoptive siblings. Marriying a sibling-in-law after becoming a widow is considered a social duty in Drow culture, as it might be the only chance said in-law has of having biological children, and should the previous couple have children of their own, the new in-loco parentis would be someone who they are already familiar with. While for adoptive siblings, they don't see it as anything morally wrong, and because Drows don't really practice courtship or dating in any capacity, it might be the only chance these youths have of a happy mariage, or at least one were they aren't constantly beaten. "Well, when they are still young, their parents would be there to mitigate violent behavior, and after the parents pass away, they'd be mature enough to handle themselves properly", is the mentality behind this. It also might be a unique opportunity for the adoptee to climb the social ladder. For a Church to ban such salutary practices, this Church, the God they worship and their followers, have to be evil, is the Drow mentality.
Your videos are always so entertaining and inspiring tysm
As a sweed I think not feeding kids is mostly because you do not know how their parents want to feed them, i.e allergies, intolerances, religions, vegetarianism or yeah the unplanned extra meal you have to whip out of thin air and the meal that potentially will have to be thrown out in the kids family. Though leaving the kid alone while you eat feels also off-putting, I would honestly move dinner until the kid leaves tbh I think most Swedish kids leave before dinner time to avoid this awkward situation.
Interesting also that organ meat was considered lower class when patê, foie grass, and other offal are seen as gourmet today. Idk I've always seen organ meat as fancy, especially with how rare they are at the supermarket, something you can only get if you go to a butchery. Nutrient-rich animal produce that most "commoners" are too unrefined to appreciate. Or Hannibals high-class presentation of organ meat dishes just influenced my perception.
heck yeah another Creating Cuisine video!!! today is a good day
Excellent video as always.
v well made video really nice
I just realized how informal Americans are when it comes to these things
Great video, thanks for sharing! I always enjoy when you upload.
So question how would Elush eat in a home? I guess that’s a topic of another video.
I loved this one, etiquete is so confusing lol
I hadn't considered this for my fictional culture, but after this I'm pretty sure they'd be more on the messy eater side, don't you worry about the mess, you'll be helping clean it up anyway!
I still can’t believe the Swedish thing bc kids will eat at the friend’s house then go home and eat again. And also my mom is like “never say no to free food ever it’s free food”
To this day, I forget which hand is for forks and which is for knives. I had it drilled into me as a kid that the way I was doing it was wrong. Now as an adult I hold them however feels right to me, but in the back of my mind there's always the nagging feeling that I'm holding them incorrectly
dominant hand is for the knife! At least if you're british (this usually means in the right hand for "left handers are the devil" reasons but now its just depends on if you're right or left handed)
The rule of thumb I heard is that the most dangerous implement you're using goes in your dominant hand.
If it's just a fork you use your dominant hand for the fork, if you're also cutting stuff or moving it with a knife the knife goes in the dominant hand and the fork in the non-dominant one.
@@teaartist6455I like that a lot :) I do hold my cutlery this way already, but now if I ever need to teach anyone else I will pass this rule along (thank you)
I hold it like I hold a pen for writing, with almost the same grip I use for chopsticks. I never knew the etiquette of it, it's just the most natural position for me.
Seems like using forks is officially gay.
God etiquette is stressful.
!!! new video!
yipeeeee, so excited!!!
I thought this would be related to the Eulush but no its just about food
🗿👍
"Forks are gay, and blasphemous"
I am a swede, but ive never experienced that?
Gay and blasphemous that's my mood ro8 now ❤😂
I can’t believe the internet shat on sweedish culture like that
Not first
Eleventeenth
i wonder, is eleventeenth the same as twenty first?
Great Video