Culture Clash: Difference between revisions

* This is a huge, ''huge'' aspect of ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' world. Although the world apparently shares one language (with many, many different accents and dialects), almost no other aspects of culture are universal, or even necessarily common among neighbors!

* Both averted and subverted in a scene in Frank Herbert's ''[[Dune]]''. A young Paul Atreides receives "watercounters" (a symbolic currency) as a result of [[Trial by Combat|a duel with a Fremen fighter]] shortly after being accepted into the Fremen tribe. Not understanding their meaning, or how to carry them properly [[Ninja|to reduce their noise]]; he asks his assigned mentor Chani, a female of similar age, to hold them for him; not knowing that doing so was a Fremen courtship ritual. Averted in that the Fremen recognize his cultural difference and accept it as a neutral, purely practical request. Subverted in that {{spoiler|it was actually a prophetic act by the increasingly-prescient Paul, who had already foreseen becoming mated to Chani as part of his destiny, although he didn't fully realize who she was at the time}}.

* In [[Patricia C. Wrede]]'s ''Thirteenth Child'', when Brent tells Eff that the feathers are a symbol of how high they can fly without magic, Eff declares that you can't fly without magic. He laughs and says he sees he will find this very educational in more than one respect—he meant metaphorically.

* In [[Wen Spencer]]'s ''Endless Blue'', Turk and Paige get into a furious argument when Turk discovers that she is partly descended from genetic modified Reds and Blues; Turk himself is a Red, traumatized by his upbringing in a society where Reds are property.

* The women of the Dales and the invaders in Jane Yolen's [[Great Alta Saga]]. Garunian society is extraordinarily patriarchal, whereas that of the Dales is anything but.

* In the [[Incarnations of Immortality]] series, the [[Sassy Black Woman]] version of Atropos laughs at Japanese culture a bit. Also, Mym, a Hindu, is a bit offended by Western culture and the fact that its version of the afterlife is the "correct" one.

* [[Rudyard Kipling]] has a fondness for this trope. Several of his short stories are light comedies about this.

** In the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]], this is one of the main sources of conflict between the Mandalorians and the Jedi. Besides being a [[Proud Warrior Race]], Mandalorians are extreme [[Mama Bear]]s and [[Papa Wolf|Papa Wolves]] who treat protecting family as sacred as their love of battle. They find the Jedi practice of taking Force-sensitive children away from their families for training and the Jedi philosophy of forming no attachments to be repulsive.

* From [[The Kingdoms of Evil]]: Everyone and everywhere.

* The war between the [[Steampunk]] and [[Psychic Powers]] fueled Sharonans and the [[Magitek]] powered Arcanans in [[David Weber]] and Linda Evans ''Hell's Gate'' series stems from this. Also on Arcana itself the three main civilizations are a [[Proud Warrior Race]], a caste system with magicians on top, warriors in the middle and everyone else as serfs and a mildly hedonistic republic.

* Elizabeth Bathory vs. all Slovakians in ''[[Count and Countess]]''.

* The Clans and the Tribe in the ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' series are rather similar, but there's enough difference in them that they can clash at times - especially when the Clan cats insist that the Tribe try to live like them in order to drive off intruders.