IV. CULTURE
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GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS◊ A generally fatalistic society, but in a very broad sense rather than on an individual basis. Starstrider elves believe that eventually nothing will remain of the universe but the void, as one by one each star dies out and everything collapses upon itself. They know there is no possible way to stop this from happening, and so have put their efforts into accepting it instead.
◊ Their fatalism is also tied with the concept of Resonance, and being destined for one person only in their lifetime.
◊ Are phenomenally nonreligious, though depending on the culture an individual lives within, can adopt foreign philosophies and even reference foreign gods in regular conversation.
ART◊
LANGUAGE◊ N/A. There was likely an elven language several millenia ago, but with there being very few entirely elven populations in the galaxy, they’ve stopped utilizing their mother tongue. It’s complex and difficult to learn, and it’s much simpler to match the language of whatever culture they live in.
FOOD◊ Spicy as fuck for a vast majority of their dishes.
◊ Typically mostly a protein, usually with a sauce, over a small amount of easy to eat vegetables or rice. Starstriders can’t chew like humans do, and so anything that they can’t just shred and/or swallow whole is difficult to eat.
◊ Seriously, don’t rub your eyes if you get any of the food on your hands, you will be full of regrets.
FAMILY◊
FUNERARY PRACTICES◊ There is no concept of an afterlife in starstrider culture; hell is a thing you make for yourself, and death is absolute. A person’s spirit will only live on in the memories of those who knew them, and with starstrider elves being as long-lived as they are, there is a real emphasis put on remembering those who passed.
◊ After death, bodies are often cremated and condensed to a dense block of ash and bone. This part of the process is largely without any kind of ceremony and is typically left to professionals with very little involvement from the family.
◊ Once the ashes are condensed, they are typically placed in a kind of reliquary, often as a long pendant and worn by the surviving family members/those left behind. Multiple bodies can be placed into larger reliquaries, with the largest being about the size of a cigarette pack all the way around.
◊ These reliquaries are often incredibly ornate, with overlapping details to where it’s hard to tell where the reliquary opens. Oftentimes the only ones who know how are the funerary practitioners who insert the remains.
RESONANCE◊ A very strong emotional attachment, and unbreakable.
◊ Starstriders don’t typically get “married” like nonelven couples do, and so they don’t usually use the words “husband” or “wife”, instead referring to their significant other as their “Resonance”.
◊ Essentially what we would call being ‘soulmates’; Resonating happens when the vibrating frequency of an individual’s spirit harmonizes with that of another. Once elves are adults, their frequency is set in stone, and thus they mate for life.
◊ Shit happens, though. While it’s not culturally the norm to be promiscuous, certain circumstances could lead a starstrider to such a lifestyle, whether because they cannot resonate, lost their resonance, or their resonance rejected their affections.
◊◊ This happens much more often with elf/nonelf couplings, as many individuals from other species don’t feel the same way.
◊ Resonance isn’t always obvious; sometimes it takes a good amount of time for a starstrider to realize why they feel the way they do about a person. Unconsciously, however, their behavior will shift to be more protective of their desired mate, and they will seek to spend as much time together as possible.
CHOIRS(This where shit gets sexy. Lololol. lots of NSFW discussion below.)
◊ Biologically speaking, starstriders feel emotion and thus certain sensations much more strongly than nonelves do. Sexual intercourse is an intense experience, often to an addicting degree.
◊ However, a general desire to only be physically intimate with one’s resonance makes it difficult to experience sexual pleasure, especially when it can take a long time to find one’s resonance in the first place.
◊ So, starstriders tend to engage in sexual voyeurism and exhibitionism in what are called “choirs”. This is named for the sounds starstriders tend to make during periods of high emotion— nigh imperceptible to human ears, they make secondary sounds that are very musical, a kind of audible projection of their own internal frequency.
◊ It’s fairly common for communities of starstriders to have devoted “choir houses” where they can engage in masturbatory practices around other starstriders. It serves a double purpose of having sex without physically touching one another, as well as providing a space where younger adults can better learn about copulation.
◊ Touching another elf in a choir house is absolutely not allowed. It’s seen as being incredibly inappropriate and boundary-crossing, and so there’s usually plenty of space to accommodate ‘performers’ and ‘viewers’ alike without ever making actual contact.
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