#I don't care that it's not Wednesday it's worldbuilding every day my dudes

[void-botanist]

Thanks for the tag! I had to think for a bit about what customs I'd built around weddings and funerals themselves since neither have had much opportunity to feature in my work (yet) but I came up with a few things.

Zalen, Zel, and Keearo are all Toru-Kavran, though their experiences and practices vary due to the specific contexts they're from. But one thing that they all do share is the matrimonial choker, which you can see Keearo wearing (Aza wears one too, but I apparently never drew that). It's a black leather band with a metal ring in the middle that acts as the clasp. Where Keearo is from, it's common to have a gold ring for the engagement period, a silver ring when you're married, and in the case of his widowed parent, a transparent ring. One idea from Triad that I still really like is Aza and Keearo putting their gold engagement rings on a leather cord for Kirnus as a token of their affection and a going-away present when he heads back home. I suspect based on other worldbuilding that the custom in Zalen and Zel's part of the world is to swap out the band itself instead of the ring, with different colors and possibly shapes associated with different stages. There are also specific intricate ceremony hairstyles that their grandmother has always been in charge of crafting upon their heads (in their cases, for graduations).

But the most unique perspective on marriage as an institution comes from Hoven's society. Sha-nawwenn are bipedal goat people based on chamois, and because chamois generally divide themselves based on sex and age, the small country, Litroj, that sha-nawwenn come from is similarly split: women live in West Town, men live in East Town, and River City, built around the river in the middle of the country, is where they come together (figuratively and literally - it's where you go for both grand libraries and grand love hotels). (Both towns include trans/nonbinary people who have chosen to live there, though many opt to live in River City long term.) Marriage was initially conceived as a way to codify connections between West Towners and East Towners, which in some ways was just a legal system for getting dibs on the person you planned to have kids with. The Elders (panel of government leaders, who are in fact actually old) added other incentives over time to help encourage people to have more kids, which eventually made the gays go, "hey can we have that too?" They got it after a lot of hemming and hawing that had nothing to do with anti-gayness and everything to do with the Elders not wanting to lose the power of their incentives.

The more contentious thing about sha-nawwen marriage now is whether this legal marriage should apply to couples made up of different sapient bipedal species. People like Hoven's brother, who married an orea-nawwen guy (like Cirrus, a bipedal goat person based on mountain goats), currently have to get their legal marriages done elsewhere, and usually end up living there. So anytime someone sees a sha-nawwen outside of Litroj the first thing they look for is the horn rings that would suggest said nawwen left Litroj for a marriage.

HAPPY WORLDBUILDING WEDNESDAY!

I’ve been doing a lot of cultural worldbuilding for a couple of my wips, and something I’ve really come to appreciate are fictional wedding and funeral customs! So, what are, if any, some traditions and/or customs when it comes wedding and funerals in your world? Do the societies in your world look at death or marriage in a particularly unique way?

This is a little late arriving for Worldbuilding Wednesday, but it’s here nevertheless! I wanted to put something out there for all of the new writeblrs I’ve gotten to check out over the past couple of days, so, if you’re one them, then definitely this applies to you! Tagging is a nightmare, but I’ll try my best! And, this should also go w/o saying, but if you see this and you just want to participate, then please feel free to!

Tagging some new followers (with no pressure, obviously!): @toribookworm22, @calicojackofficial, @westcountrygothic, @mz-elysium, @wearfinethingsalltoowell, @leighvalentin, @happystarfishnightmare, @an-elegant-void, @littlepatchofhell, @spookyceph, @thatndginger, @aesa, @theskeletonprior

Also tagging some OGs (again, with no pressure): @thetruearchmagos, @cryptid-s-wips, @citruswords, @reowrites, @highlycosmic, @make-the-heteros-upseteros-2022, @blackwidow2005, @ellatholmes, @floppydiskdoc