One thing I've found when people discuss the idea of biology effecting the thinking of sophonts is knee-jerk fear of Doing A Racism though leaning too hard on biological determinism.
And while yes, there are concerns there. And culture can override instinct in many cases, biology is still a foundation on which thinking and culture is built, and shapes the directions it will naturally grow.
A lot of people... are not great at self-reflecting on what aspects of human behavior are shaped by our instincts. From protectiveness over children, to discomfort with death, to feeling lonely. I made an alien species once with an amphibian reproductive cycle, and they have absolutely zero childcare instinct. A tadpole of their own species might as well be a random fish, instinctually. They can choose to look out for them, if they want to, but it's not a reflexive built in urge.I wrote a whole short fic about it. I'll have to dig that up and post it later.
And you do have to balance that against stereotyping and other racist assumptions, when worldbuilding. But people definitely overcorrect and end up making a lot of species feel just... human with different aesthetics. And it gets bland.
>> I find that most people just have an appalling lack of imagination. They struggle to grasp how different motivations could work, or how to tell nonhuman stories.
Oh for sure, that too. I think think it's any inherent lack? I think it gets trained out of them as they grow up.
A combination of being fed a very samey diet of entertainment through their life, and giving into the "cringe" as it's being called now.
They learn to kill their imagination every time it really starts to branch out. Clip the leaves in tight and close to a "normal" shape. I see it over and over in, for example, watching co-op let's plays? People start to have a wild hypothetical conversation and one of them is mid-idea and stops themselves. Goes "I'm being weird", and they kill their idea. Strangle it and toss it aside. It's too "weird", too "silly". They feel embarrassed and have to stop themselves. It takes a special skill to get over that impulse to stop yourself, to keep going. People like Drawfee have trained themselves out of the kill. Improv actors train the kill away thoroughly. And some lucky souls avoid learning the kill in the first place.
I started to learn it somewhere in my teens, and have been training to get rid of it every since. Never kill any idea before I've really seen its wings unfurl and can tell how it'll fly. Only discard something early if I'm super busy nurturing a different idea and don't have the time and energy to feed both.
>> Hell, humans have a hard time understanding a humpback's fishnet as technology because they cannot hold it in their hands.
Oh yeah. I absolutely do not remember where I read it, it was yeeeeears ago somewhere online. But the idea that technology isn't "A Thing" but is Applied Knowledge, really flipped my perspective on the matter. A bubble net is technology. An octopus hiding in a shell is technology. Language is technology. Some technology is simpler or more "primitive" (for lack of a better word) than others, but that doesn't make it non-technology.
>> Come up with an explanation like "Drow are evil and raped enough other women to leave half-drow littered everywhere, of whom the survivors formed this village of folks who look like drow but have the major strengths and weaknesses buffered by other genetics. So you can play one of these, because they're not all evil."
That's similar to a situation we had in one of the games I tried to DM. One player made a half-drow whose mother had been raped and he didn't have all the drow weaknesses. He focused more on stigma and not quite feeling like he belonged in his own family, and wanting to prove himself. All very fair places to build roleplay from! But much different than really wanting to dive into the psychology of a nonhuman.
>> World Tree, for instance, has multiple whole emotions that humans just don't have.
That sort of thing has always been really hard for me. It's much easier for me to handle the idea of lacking a certain emotion, even if I have it (see my amphibians ("Amphiros" is the human name for their species)), or a rebalancing of existing human emotions to a different scale that feels inhuman in total but if you pick at each individual thread, you can see how it connects to us.
One thing I struggle with but in a way that's enjoyable and I keep throwing myself at, is inhuman perceptions. It's mostly a struggle to write? And sometimes to remember "oh yes, [character] should be noticing smells more". But the perspective change just from different senses alone can really make a sophont see the world differently.
As the webcomic Freefall points out, being heavily scent-oriented changes your perspectives on time. Sight and sound are effectively instant, but smell lingers.
>> I liked the observation that certain creature types come with preset assumptions.
Oh yes. It's so hard to properly change certain types of creatures. And some are even less flexible than others. If you write elves, there's a few different ways you can go before you confuse people. Dwarves? Good fricking luck. And I do like writing common pop culture dwarves! But. Even though I'm mostly happy here in the preset fenced in area of "dwarf", I still don't like that the fences are there.
>> Another thing people overlooked is that game rules are loose parts.
Hell all my DnD books have a little section near the start where they basically go "but if you don't want to sue these rules, change them up as you like". A reminder that ultimately the game is about having fun with friends, not Following The Proper Guidelines.
>> It's good that people can make all different kinds of games and characters, because we need that diversity.
For sure!
And thanks for your patience with how long it took me to reply to this. I have to beat my ADHD/anxiety around with a bat sometimes. And then all my internet troubles didn't help. But I was determined to reply eventually, and here I am!
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Also ...
Date: 2025-02-17 11:55 pm (UTC)And while yes, there are concerns there. And culture can override instinct in many cases, biology is still a foundation on which thinking and culture is built, and shapes the directions it will naturally grow.
A lot of people... are not great at self-reflecting on what aspects of human behavior are shaped by our instincts. From protectiveness over children, to discomfort with death, to feeling lonely.
I made an alien species once with an amphibian reproductive cycle, and they have absolutely zero childcare instinct. A tadpole of their own species might as well be a random fish, instinctually. They can choose to look out for them, if they want to, but it's not a reflexive built in urge.I wrote a whole short fic about it. I'll have to dig that up and post it later.
And you do have to balance that against stereotyping and other racist assumptions, when worldbuilding. But people definitely overcorrect and end up making a lot of species feel just... human with different aesthetics. And it gets bland.
>> I find that most people just have an appalling lack of imagination. They struggle to grasp how different motivations could work, or how to tell nonhuman stories.
Oh for sure, that too.
I think think it's any inherent lack? I think it gets trained out of them as they grow up.
A combination of being fed a very samey diet of entertainment through their life, and giving into the "cringe" as it's being called now.
They learn to kill their imagination every time it really starts to branch out. Clip the leaves in tight and close to a "normal" shape.
I see it over and over in, for example, watching co-op let's plays? People start to have a wild hypothetical conversation and one of them is mid-idea and stops themselves. Goes "I'm being weird", and they kill their idea. Strangle it and toss it aside. It's too "weird", too "silly". They feel embarrassed and have to stop themselves.
It takes a special skill to get over that impulse to stop yourself, to keep going. People like Drawfee have trained themselves out of the kill. Improv actors train the kill away thoroughly. And some lucky souls avoid learning the kill in the first place.
I started to learn it somewhere in my teens, and have been training to get rid of it every since.
Never kill any idea before I've really seen its wings unfurl and can tell how it'll fly.
Only discard something early if I'm super busy nurturing a different idea and don't have the time and energy to feed both.
>> Hell, humans have a hard time understanding a humpback's fishnet as technology because they cannot hold it in their hands.
Oh yeah.
I absolutely do not remember where I read it, it was yeeeeears ago somewhere online.
But the idea that technology isn't "A Thing" but is Applied Knowledge, really flipped my perspective on the matter.
A bubble net is technology. An octopus hiding in a shell is technology. Language is technology. Some technology is simpler or more "primitive" (for lack of a better word) than others, but that doesn't make it non-technology.
>> Come up with an explanation like "Drow are evil and raped enough other women to leave half-drow littered everywhere, of whom the survivors formed this village of folks who look like drow but have the major strengths and weaknesses buffered by other genetics. So you can play one of these, because they're not all evil."
That's similar to a situation we had in one of the games I tried to DM. One player made a half-drow whose mother had been raped and he didn't have all the drow weaknesses. He focused more on stigma and not quite feeling like he belonged in his own family, and wanting to prove himself.
All very fair places to build roleplay from!
But much different than really wanting to dive into the psychology of a nonhuman.
>> World Tree, for instance, has multiple whole emotions that humans just don't have.
That sort of thing has always been really hard for me. It's much easier for me to handle the idea of lacking a certain emotion, even if I have it (see my amphibians ("Amphiros" is the human name for their species)), or a rebalancing of existing human emotions to a different scale that feels inhuman in total but if you pick at each individual thread, you can see how it connects to us.
One thing I struggle with but in a way that's enjoyable and I keep throwing myself at, is inhuman perceptions. It's mostly a struggle to write? And sometimes to remember "oh yes, [character] should be noticing smells more". But the perspective change just from different senses alone can really make a sophont see the world differently.
As the webcomic Freefall points out, being heavily scent-oriented changes your perspectives on time. Sight and sound are effectively instant, but smell lingers.
>> I liked the observation that certain creature types come with preset assumptions.
Oh yes. It's so hard to properly change certain types of creatures. And some are even less flexible than others. If you write elves, there's a few different ways you can go before you confuse people. Dwarves? Good fricking luck. And I do like writing common pop culture dwarves! But. Even though I'm mostly happy here in the preset fenced in area of "dwarf", I still don't like that the fences are there.
>> Another thing people overlooked is that game rules are loose parts.
Hell all my DnD books have a little section near the start where they basically go "but if you don't want to sue these rules, change them up as you like". A reminder that ultimately the game is about having fun with friends, not Following The Proper Guidelines.
>> It's good that people can make all different kinds of games and characters, because we need that diversity.
For sure!
And thanks for your patience with how long it took me to reply to this. I have to beat my ADHD/anxiety around with a bat sometimes. And then all my internet troubles didn't help. But I was determined to reply eventually, and here I am!