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🦊 FM of Neshaten
This is actually a bit of an interesting question which came across my mind earlier today, and I'm just now getting around to typing it out; I was originally planning to only ask Wes in DMs about Yamatai, but I figured it might be nice to get a general scope of this for other species/factions/etc.

So, I'll ask this out a bit generally: What's the general like, ethnicity of some of the species and factions in SARP? For example, are Minkans and Nekos typically comparable to japanese people in appearance, do Nepleslians reflect more american features, et cetera? Obviously there are exceptions, but I think it would be interesting to see what the "normal" person would look like.
 
Well all ethnicities of the Iroma have very specific charts that give you an idea of what they can look like. Here is an example.

Feature-wise they are (I AM BAD WITH GEOGRAPHY) Middle Eastern or West Asian (Is that a thing?) in appearance.
 
I think Nepleslia and Yamatai have most of the larger ethnicities from Earth. There's been black, Jewish, Koreans, Russians, Italians, and viking style people in the Star Army of Yamatai - I think there's room for basically all types of human ethnicities and futuristic versions of most cultures to be represented. Nepleslians, if you go back far enough, are from Earth, and Yamataians are mostly an upgraded (body-wise) version of Nepleslians.
 
Like if you ask one person the average person of America or England, you're going to get different answers. You may think of English people as pasty and pale but in reality they come in many different hues and backgrounds, all worth exploring. America is not mostly white as is thought, as well.

Choosing to focus on specific ethnicities that define the larger populace and defining them as "average" seems to saturate and water down the cultures of many while focusing on one.

Despite that, I had an answer because I know what Exhack intended >.<

Though there are also Mediterranean influences but that might also be Middle East??
 
For Yamatai, here's what I noticed throughout the years:

- Strong japanese, bits of Chinese and Korean; "Yamato" seems to be the word to use (i.e.: "yamato-styled clothes" vs. "oriental-style clothing"; also replaces the mongoloid-phenotype);
- Strong nordic, including various cultures north of europe and asia; I've seen "Norfolk" used as monicker for that group (i.e.: "norfolk fashion"; also replaces the caucasian-phenotype).

It's a bit of a hodge-podge, since there's Wes' starting description, then the interpretation of other people; and of that the most endearing elements seem to be retained overtime.

"Yamato" seems to be an older word than another used in similar context: "Yamataigo". The wiki entry clearly states that "Yamataigo" is meant to define the language equivalent of japanese, but I've seen a few instance of it being used to fill in the context of "I speak japanese" and then on to "japanese cuisine", "japanese swords", "japanese clothing" ever since it was brought up in 2014. I'm still relatively secure in the knowledge that "Yamato" as a more archaic word is more easily used to describe items tied to more traditional elements of japanese culture (i.e.: kimonos).
 
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Anywhere that humans live in a sci-fi setting is going to be pretty multikulti with a few exceptions. But every melting pot has a majority or at least a dominant crosssection of society.

So Yamatai's mostly Japanese-style dudes with Nordic types making up their body of "white people," though there are other historical ethnicities as well. Kind of like if some samurai had been George Washington instead of a British man. Nepleslia on the other hand is more in the vein of real life Western cultures, particularly America, where you'll see a uniformly heterogeneous society.

Anyway, that's what I think since we're all sharing even though Wes already posted. And as a note off Fred's discussion of "Yamatai" as a word: It's a shortened form of Yamatokoku, a Sino-Japanese kingdom in Japan's Yamato region during China's Three Kingdoms period that was ruled by some kind of priestess-queen named Himiko. So it's kinda obvious that the Japaneseness from our inspiration doesn't stop at the name lol.
 
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