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submitted 7 months ago by Evilphd666@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net
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[-] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I read "Shant Soghomonian" and I immediately thought "oh, Armenian, 'son of Solomon', that's neat"

Rule of thumb: pretty much everything about the Caucasus looks or sounds like it's straight out of some sort of high fantasy conworld, which honestly makes me wonder to what extent the aesthetics of high fantasy may have literally been inspired by the Caucasus.

[-] Amerihay@hexbear.net 14 points 7 months ago

We literally inspired the term Caucasian because white people were too racist to admit we all came from Africa. Mix that with that eras orientalism and I think you're actually on to something with regards to high fantasy. I mean just look at some of our traditional clothing

[-] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 10 points 7 months ago

Yeah, like, circus side shows in Amerika in the PT Barnum era had "Circassian princesses": they'd just grab any random pretty girl off the street and give her a curly afro — possibly inspired by papakhi but this is questionable — and they'd dress her up in some sort of titillating and obviously 200,000% inaccurate """traditional outfit""", often complete with a nice cross necklace to remind viewers that [gibberish name] is really a good Christian woman... Even though Circassians are in fact Muslims.

So yeah, the Caucasus definitely has a historical place in the popular imagination of international-community-1international-community-2 as being "simultaneously foreign and familiar". In that sense I guess you could say that "Circassian beauties" and their likes were just yesteryear's big tiddy anime GF.

I dunno, I've had this thought a few times, about how the Caucasus may have inspired fantasy aesthetics. For instance when I first discovered Circassian musicians like Aslan Tlebzu and Aslan Kulov, I thought, "What, like the Narnia lion?" — naturally, it turns out that "aslan" is just Turkish for "lion", hence both the Narnia character as well as the Circassian forename. And another time when I had this thought was when I first saw the film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind — because those are very clearly supposed to be gazyri on the titular character's chest, and I remember there was also one scene in that film with buildings that reminded me a bit of those famous Vainakh towers.

[-] DyingOfDeBordom@hexbear.net 5 points 7 months ago
[-] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago

Caucasians literally have heavily choreographed pretend sword fights with actual swords, at some point you just gotta say that they know how badass their traditional culture is and they're just kinda rubbing it in on everyone else.

Like my mom always points out that in the Caucasus that interest in traditional culture seems to skew a lot younger and seems to be a lot more widespread compared to in Norway. In fact I got an accordion not too long ago, and when I got it, the thought of playing local folk music like its previous owner did was frankly secondary to the thought of learning some Circassian folk music. Because obviously these Norwegian waltzes with their quaint lyrics, to younger folks like me cannot hold a candle to some raw, concentrated Adyghe swag.

[-] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago

I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

Link 1:

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[-] Evilphd666@hexbear.net 5 points 7 months ago
[-] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 1 points 7 months ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

A ton of D&D and therefore fantasy stuff is from the middle east and the caucasus. Same with cosmic horror via lovecraft.

[-] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 1 points 7 months ago

Can you name any specific examples? I'm curious.

[-] theposterformerlyknownasgood@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I can't name much for the caucases sadly, being very ignorant on the subject, but I was told that whenever Gygax needed a name for something in one of his settings he just took a random Turkish or Armenian word. I'm much more confident about the middle east thing, but that's not what we were talking about.

[-] HumanBehaviorByBjork@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago

so you're saying they have giants

[-] CliffordBigRedDog@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

This comment reminds me of that one chud youtube channel i saw where this beardy chechen guy was like "us chechens are hairy, live in mountains, love blacksmithing and fighting orcs (russians), so we're basically dwarves"

this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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