Oral History!

Aero Blue

he hears his master's voice
Original poster
LURKER MEMBER
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Posting Speed
  1. One post per week
Online Availability
5-11 EST weekdays, anytime weekends.
Writing Levels
  1. Give-No-Fucks
  2. Adept
  3. Advanced
  4. Douche
  5. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Primarily Prefer Female
Genres
Superhero, urban fantasy, space opera, crime thriller, supernatural
not to be confused with: The oral history of oral.

Here on Iwaku, we've a fairly large memberbase, which in my mind doubtlessly means we've got a whole lot of cultural representation and interesting stories that have been disseminated throughout our lives. For example, when I was young, my grandmother would basically just drill the battle-filled Chinese classics (Sun Wukong that monkey fuck, the 108 Outlaw Heroes of Water Margin, and Romance of the Dynasty Warriors Franchise Three Kingdoms), which I directly blame for that one time I almost accidentally cleaved my mother while playing around with the kitchen knife.

Did your parents/relatives share oral histories, or tales of their culture, folklore, family history with you? What are some of the more interesting ones? Did it play any part in shaping your identity (sans mother-cleaving, of course)?
 
I don't actually know where it comes from but it took me years to learn that not everyone has a new year tradition like mine.
New year's eve, you put a box on the front step and place things in it (bread, salt, cabbage, and money if memory serves).
Just after the stroke of midnight, the box is brought into the house as a sort of wish for what will come with it into the new year.
The bread is for abundance of food, salt is health, cabbage is... luck I think?, and money is prosperity.
Also the children of the house have to be inside and shouldn't be outside when midnight hits because it's a bad omen?
 
My grandmother used to scare the shit out of me when I was little. She'd regale me with the whole story about the 'Evil Eye' which always interesting and absolutely terrifying to me when I was a kid. Also, apparently, the evil eye is pretty commonplace in a lot of cultures. Did anyone else grow up with that?

:cookie:
 
Apparently, my great-grandfather owned a textile company that brought a lot of precious yen to the family but inevitably went bankrupt after he spent all that money on geishas and booze. When he ran out of cash, he committed suicide. My grandfather had great business ideas and he was good at running them, but he was also very talented at spending his money. A couple of years after my dad was born, world war II started, so the family lived mostly in a state of poverty and ate nothing but potatoes. (Needless to say, my dad hates potatoes now.)