View Single Post
Old 01-14-2014, 06:27 PM   #143
Prince Charon
 
Prince Charon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Default Re: Five Earths, All in a Row

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
A lot of that will vary from culture to culture, on each world. I think most East Asian cultures have been more tolerant about that sort of thing than those burdened with the sexual mores of the Abrahamic religions, especially if discretion is exercised.
True. There's also the fact that some cultures will have a reaction of 'we don't want people doing that here, but we really don't care if you do it over there'. Not sure which cultures specifically, but cultural busybodying isn't something that everyone does, IIRC.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
A (very) narrow (mostly regional) majority in the United States will have no problems with Mongo's sexual culture. Heck, some might apply to emigrate, only to discover that a "planetary romance" world is just a little too exciting.
Oooh, yes. Even with Flash in charge instead of Ming, there are many Adventures to be had. Sometimes, the Emperor has to go sort things out personally, which means whomever is being sorted out may also have to deal with ******-off Empresses - if whomever is being sorted out lives that long, as many of them seem to be killed by their own hubris.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
Aussies, Canadians, Europeans and Japanese will have the fewest issues, of all the developed space-faring nations of Inp-Earth, while Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and Christian Fundies on both Inp-Earth and Dp-Earth will pitch screaming tantrums. The pope on Clp-Earth will likely issue a writ condemning it, and the pope on Dp-Earth may do the same. I'd bet Inp-Earth's pope will likely restrict himself to sternly-worded lectures about morality, while quietly enquiring about when it might be possible for Catholic missionary priests to hitch a ride to Mongo on an ESA spacecraft.
By the time they're able to make contact, there's probably going to be a working wormhole machine to shorten the journey, so as long as Flash permits it, not too long after contact (unless the ESA has issues with transporting them). The estimated distance between Nemesis and the Sun (according to Wikipedia, so accuracy is not assured) is 1.5 light-years, and that's the distance I'm using, unless someone can provide a reliable source that contradicts it. So, Flash won't hear the radio broadcasts from December, 1940, until May, 1942, and then there's however long it takes to try to get the wormhole machine working.

Of course, the Seleneans, Cythereans, Martians, and so forth know where Mongo is, and the Martians, at least, have a working hyperdrive to go visit them. Contact could thus be established sooner, though transportation would have to be rented. Mongo does not have hyperdrive, or if they did, it was forgotten in the Great Disaster (which could do with a better name).

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
Muslims might not care about Emperor Flash's harem, until they learn the two empresses exercise very real political power, and don't hesitate to lay the smackdown on mouthy critics.
With Empress Aura, it might be either a physical or a verbal-psychological smackdown, as she legitimately earned her ranks in the Imperial Army and Imperial Police (approximate translations), during her father's reign. With Dale, it will almost certainly be verbal and psychological, despite the fact that she's stronger than Aura (Mongo has a somewhat lower gravity than Earth, and she got a lot of exercise during the years between the destruction of the wormhole machine, and Flash's ascension to the throne).

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
For his part, Emperor Flash I, has to keep the peace on a world with a history of insurgency and a violently-fractional political culture. Besides that, Dale has stuck by him through a brutal (and successful) coup that brought him to power, and he may trust her a bit more than he does his other wife. There's no way he throws her under a bus to please reactionaries on other planets.
Very true - he'd be offended at the very suggestion, even if he'd later be surprised at how used to Mongoan culture he's become, to find the suggestion surprising.


Quote:
Originally Posted by warellis View Post
I don't think East Asian cultures on Inp-Earth are really any better about homosexuality. Take Japan for example and that whole "Schoolgirl Lesbian Romance" thing a lot of anime has. One thing you notice is that it's considered okay for the girls to engage in that when they're younger but as they grow up they're supposed to drop it and get married to a man because Schoolgirl Lesbianism is childish and a sign of immaturity. That doesn't seem very friendly to lesbianism.

Admittedly that's for Japan, which really isn't a homosexual-friendly country. I don't know enough about other East Asian cultures to comment on them.
Not sure. Japan might be one of those cultures I mentioned earlier, that doesn't care what you do, as long as you do it far away. Anyone know?

Quote:
Originally Posted by warellis View Post
My comments about Fa-Earth were more focused on Rome and Greece admittedly. I suspect the Iroquois nation will have less a problem about Mongo due to Native American cultures being more tolerant of different sexuality. But I suspect the Old world cultures (Europe, Middle East, and Asian) will be less tolerant of lesbianism. I'm speaking of Fa-Earth.
Most likely.

I mentioned a Great Disaster on Mongo earlier in this post, and I think I should elaborate on it - perhaps someone will be able to suggest a better name:

Some centuries ago, a (very) mad scientist on Mongo wanted to be the Greatest Scientist in the World. Rather than work and study hard enough to achieve that legitimately, this scientist, whose name has been erased from history, chose to develop and detonate a 'thought bomb', a powerful, single use telepathic device which induced permanent incompetence in many scientific and technical fields, in practically everyone on Mongo, or in the Nemesian system (an achievement of such difficulty that the mad scientist might even have deserved the title they sought - if they hadn't detonated it). The changes wrought by the thought bomb even breed true, though these effects are fading, as the generations go by. Already, it's fairly rare to find someone who cannot learn Biology, or various medical skills, for example, and Machinist & Mechanic are likewise growing common.

The most common incompetencies are as follows:

Incompetence (Bioengineering) [-1]
Incompetence (Chemistry) [-1]
Incompetence (Computer Programming) [-1]
Incompetence (Electronics Repair) [-1]
Incompetence (Engineering) [-1]
Incompetence (Mathematics) [-1]
Incompetence (Physics) [-1]
Incompetence (Psychology) [-1]
Incompetence (Sociology) [-1]
Incompetence (Weird Science) [-1]

Of these, only Incompetence (Bioengineering) was generally present in Mongoan humans before the thought bomb was detonated (in fact, it's common to practically every human in the Dp-Earth universe who isn't from Dp-Earth). The reason they haven't been grouped together in a single advantage is that specific Incompetencies are sometimes absent from specific people (e.g. Aura, who is quite good at Psychology and Sociology), who if discovered, often become scientists and technicians, and tend to have some level of Social Regard... except in places where they have a Social Stigma for being strange, or where they blame all 'thinky people' for the actions of one nut (Dr. Zarkov, being one of those polymath geniuses that seem so much more common on Dp-Earth and Stp-Earth than they are on the ones in the middle, has a whole lot of women wanting to breed with him, something he's really not used to). The thought bomb is one of the primary reasons for the eccentric Tech Levels on Mongo, as the Old Civilization built things to last, while the New Civilization is still recovering from TL2-or-so barbarism.

A campaign set on Mongo right after the thought bomb went off, or for two or three generations thereafter, would also have Incompetencies in the various Operation skills (Computer Operation, Electronics Operation, Driving, Piloting, et cetra) that involve higher-tech vehicles, as well as Research, most other scientific and technical skills, and medical skills beyond First Aid & Esoteric Medicine (the population numbers are still recovering from the massive post-Disaster crash). They didn't start being able to reinvent the old skills until the Old Civilization was little more than tales from long before living memory, so the fact that they're doing even as well as they are is really quite impressive.

It takes some effort to plausibly justify a 'planetary romance' world like Mongo, but I think this works well enough, and if there are significant problems, I hope someone will point them out.
__________________
Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life.

"The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates."
-- Tacitus

Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.

Last edited by Prince Charon; 05-10-2015 at 03:15 AM.
Prince Charon is online now   Reply With Quote