Gender and AU
May. 24th, 2014 05:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI dreamed that walking between this familiar universe and the universe next door was, in some locations, as easy as trying to see a magic eye picture. Look at the world one way and there's our road along a cliff edge, look at it another and there's the wall between worlds and a door through it. And on the other side it got weird, to the point that the appearance of identical humanity was just concealing an entirely alien culture.
There were at least six genders. But they were indistinguishable to our eyes. To us they looked just masculine and feminine, but to the locals they were clearly also at least three different modes of being. There were natural born humans, creations of biological origin, and creations of non biological origin. And these were perceived as gender lines, with distinct roles in courtship, mating, carrying children, raising them, as well as distinct relations of power.
Discovering a person of one kind was passing themselves off as the other did not translate to enlightened modern gender attitudes, more like old fashioned panic inducing transphobia. It was a very big deal and considered very creepy indeed. But because there were at least six instead of two it wasn't a simple either or, there were degrees of deception. If someone we would simply consider a man turned out to be a masculine creation of biological origin then the shock horror reaction could be consoled by pointing out that at least they weren't a creation of non biological origin. It could always be worse. And in that hierarchy, being a woman or man passing as the other gender of a similar order of creation was something closer to quirky than the giant social shock of passing between levels. Still odd, still deceptive, but relatively minor.
The kinds were not humans, clones and androids. At one point Thor of the alternate universe was talking in the allspeak, and the words did not translate. There were words a bit more concise than 'creation of non biological origin', but they did not condense to anything like android, no more than clone and twin are the same in their connotations.
In the dream I was discovering these social roles by crunching around clumsily accidentally presenting myself as the 'wrong' gender, so I learned three different ways to be feminine, and that I was failing at all of them.
But by the end I'd stepped out of those levels entirely, since I'd been killed and kind of shrugged it off. Probably a Highlander style Immortal, given that Methos collected me and helped me pack up to run away before anyone twigged. But in that universe realising that about yourself was seen as a change in gender, since once again it put you in a different relation to procreation. Highlander Immortals cannot get pregnant or sire children in the this universe normal sense. So they were all, masculine and feminine to us, perceived as being of one gender, all Princes. Some of those Princes became home makers on holy ground, and some became warriors, and those roles were perceived as masculine and feminine there, but it was expected that any immortal would pass between states sometimes. And whatever you believed yourself to be before first death wasn't deliberately deceptive, since it was always a surprise to the Immortal when they woke up changed, so it was the only social role where fluidity had no connotations of a lie.
There were also Princesses, and they were the most protected and cherished. Whereas Princes were expected to arrange their lives around violence or the deliberate avoidance of violence, swords and sanctuary, a Princess was never offered violence. It just wasn't thought of, much less done. If there was the remote chance of one Princess among a hundred people, those hundred could walk in peace through a war zone, because you just don't do that to them. So a Princess was routinely raised like Amidala, with a retinue of women meant as decoys and bodyguards, but her presence protected them too, since the retinue was made of creations of biological origin who were physically identical to the Princess. Before the age they could reasonably keep a secret not even the Princess knew which one she was. Raising them to safe adulthood was absolutely key, since only a Princess could have natural born human children. It could be that the natural born had fertility problems, and only a small minority of them could bear children. However creations of biological origin were made, they were patterned on natural born humans. So anyone born could have creations for descendants, but only a Princess could have children. The fewer of them there were, the more carefully protected they would be. And if replicative fading was a problem, if copies of copies started to have errors, they'd be essential to the continued survival of the species. The scarcity also suggests that creations can't have born children, or the distinction would be less important. So whatever process they're made by has flaws. It's easy to make one person into an even dozen of herself, but only the original has a genetic future past that one generation. So nobody messes with the continuation of the species.
Except people from an alternate universe, who can think the unthinkable, and avert a war by holding a knife to a Princess's throat.
So there were Princes, Princesses, women who couldn't bear children but could make creations of biological origin, creations of biological origin, and creations of non-biological origin. And men. That's at least six, but maybe ten, genders.
The creations of non biological origin intrigued me. I never figured them out in the dream. Thor in the Allspeak called them something like scathach, which while asleep I didn't understand at all. Having looked it up it's Gaelic for something like Shadow/y or Shade/y, or the personal name of a Scottish warrior woman and martial arts teacher. That makes me think Immortals, because warriors. But there's a lot to work with in an order of creation called Shadows.
If they're non biological are they like androids or AI or uploads? But we have words for those, and this didn't translate. So what if they're created by Immortals? What if they're not children, but new vessels for the Quickening?
It would be a way of avoiding a Dark Quickening. A victorious Immortal absorbs the Quickening of their decapitated enemy, and with it their power... and sometimes their proclivities. So what if they invented a way of shedding unwanted parts? If they could create vessels to pour spare Quickening into they might lose a little power but retain a more tranquil or consistent self. Any part of themselves they were struggling with, they could pour it out into a creation.
That would leave the stereotype of creations of non biological origin to be somewhat Mr Hyde, to be the dark half, the objectionable. But Immortals fight each other to the death; what an Immortal values about themselves might not be so simple. Many Immortals would consider a Light Quickening equally disastrous, since it takes away their ambition and their chance of conquest. So the creations they would make would be Jekylls, peaceful and humanitarian. Either way, these creations would start out as fragmentary selves, unwanted parts and pieces, simplified and rejected. It's easy to see how that would be the lowest rung of a hierarchy.
They would be non-biological in that the spark of life in them came from Quickening, lightning, not the dance of splitting cells. Being made from Immortals they would not be able to procreate, but having only a partial Quickening they might not be able to collect others. Not Princes, able to conquer and grow more powerful. Not potential mates either. Not Immortal themselves? Perhaps with only a flicker of Quickening they eventually run out? Or their creators fear they will. Or perhaps they're just more fragile than the Princes, dying of quite ordinary injuries, not just losing their heads. In the dream the thing where I could shrug off fatal injuries made me either Prince or scathach, but perhaps there's a limit. Their Quickening then can burn out trying to heal them. It can be used up. That means each creation reduces the possible power of the One. So creating them would be good for the individual Immortal, in that they retain their sanity and purpose, but bad for Immortals collectively, in that they bleed Quickening in a way that can't be recovered.
But it would put the creations outside of the Game - if they can't be retaken there's no point. Really greedy Immortals would try and figure out how to reabsorb them though. Even knowing they're the rejected parts? They'd have to be super strong willed to try it. Or arrogant.
But if Immortals can create new beings from parts of older ones, they would not only do it to save themselves. Some of them would want kids. So they'd make creations. They'd use parts of their own Quickening, maybe giving them bits they really like about themselves, but they'd also use parts of the Quickenings of people they admire. If they kill someone who killed someone they care about, they'd end up with parts they wanted to preserve. There'd probably be creations that were attempts at resurrection, only with the Quickening being a lossy process they'd never quite be successful, even if someone tried to patch them with pieces of themselves.
Oh this has so many stories in it.
Biological children are made from the random combination of genes, combined through sex.
Non-biological creations are made from the... planned? ... rearrangement of Quickening, combined through violence.
They might look to the casual observer like the same men and women, but to the people involved they're different orders of creation, different origins, different possible futures. Raising them would involve different degrees of care, since a creation of non biological origin could have all the pieces poured in to be an instant adult, and then be discarded with a reasonable expectation they could live an independent life. They would only exist because of their living 'parent', but they would also know they were created from killing the other people that went into making them. Emotional connections between 'parent' and creation would therefore be enormously different than those between biological parents and children. And only some of them could have any children or make any creations themselves.
What would be the required elements for a creation of non biological origin? Would it be complex? Would it need learning, or be instinctual? Learning, or it would apply in more universes. Life would be really sincerely different if, before you could have offspring, you needed the equivalent of a PhD. Also, while the phrase 'creation of non-biological origin' sounds nice and clean and android-ish, if they're only referring to the spark of life, what exactly is the Quickening animating?
... Frankenstein's monster is almost inescapable here.
So there's men and women who start out being born because of sex, and there's men and women who start out... what, raised from the dead? Needing a physical form that was once inhabited by someone else? That would get complicated. ... also, you couldn't just start with Princes with their heads sewn back on, that would be too self contained... If Princes need creations of biological origin to make creations of non-biological origin then they have all the supply they could wish for, but if they instead need relatively intact born humans... *blinks*
In Highlander they never know where Immortals come from, they're all just foundlings who turn out not to stay dead. Keeping that element makes it all a bit mystical. Are they born from lightning and holy ground? Would there continue to be more Immortals springing up like that even if there were no more Princesses giving birth to ordinary babies? Or is the special thing about a Princess that some of their children just will not die?
Of course if you leave out the Immortals entirely you can get a tidy six part system: born humans can have genes copied to make creations of biological origin, and either can have minds copied to make creations of non-biological origin.
Other systems tend to treat these more like races, yesno? Racial discrimination based on mode of being, owning creations perhaps? But the way the differences are all about procreation and possible futures kind of lends itself to a gender system. And that's still about power. And defamiliarising in this way can highlight that.
I do like the idea of recombining shades to make a new person from two or more minds. If I keep the mechanism as Immortals and Quickenings then it's going to have to stay fanfic, since that style of Immortality through energy transfer is specific to Highlander rather than a generic mechanism. Filing the serial numbers off would be tricky.
Of course making a story out of all this would be tricky. It didn't have a plot, just an unraveling of why we weren't using words or recognising each other in the same ways. I'd have to tie that to some life and death stuff to get it to move anywhere.
I just liked the new toys it presented though, gender and reproduction broken down into new elements, and how very deeply different that would make a society however much else appeared the same.
There were at least six genders. But they were indistinguishable to our eyes. To us they looked just masculine and feminine, but to the locals they were clearly also at least three different modes of being. There were natural born humans, creations of biological origin, and creations of non biological origin. And these were perceived as gender lines, with distinct roles in courtship, mating, carrying children, raising them, as well as distinct relations of power.
Discovering a person of one kind was passing themselves off as the other did not translate to enlightened modern gender attitudes, more like old fashioned panic inducing transphobia. It was a very big deal and considered very creepy indeed. But because there were at least six instead of two it wasn't a simple either or, there were degrees of deception. If someone we would simply consider a man turned out to be a masculine creation of biological origin then the shock horror reaction could be consoled by pointing out that at least they weren't a creation of non biological origin. It could always be worse. And in that hierarchy, being a woman or man passing as the other gender of a similar order of creation was something closer to quirky than the giant social shock of passing between levels. Still odd, still deceptive, but relatively minor.
The kinds were not humans, clones and androids. At one point Thor of the alternate universe was talking in the allspeak, and the words did not translate. There were words a bit more concise than 'creation of non biological origin', but they did not condense to anything like android, no more than clone and twin are the same in their connotations.
In the dream I was discovering these social roles by crunching around clumsily accidentally presenting myself as the 'wrong' gender, so I learned three different ways to be feminine, and that I was failing at all of them.
But by the end I'd stepped out of those levels entirely, since I'd been killed and kind of shrugged it off. Probably a Highlander style Immortal, given that Methos collected me and helped me pack up to run away before anyone twigged. But in that universe realising that about yourself was seen as a change in gender, since once again it put you in a different relation to procreation. Highlander Immortals cannot get pregnant or sire children in the this universe normal sense. So they were all, masculine and feminine to us, perceived as being of one gender, all Princes. Some of those Princes became home makers on holy ground, and some became warriors, and those roles were perceived as masculine and feminine there, but it was expected that any immortal would pass between states sometimes. And whatever you believed yourself to be before first death wasn't deliberately deceptive, since it was always a surprise to the Immortal when they woke up changed, so it was the only social role where fluidity had no connotations of a lie.
There were also Princesses, and they were the most protected and cherished. Whereas Princes were expected to arrange their lives around violence or the deliberate avoidance of violence, swords and sanctuary, a Princess was never offered violence. It just wasn't thought of, much less done. If there was the remote chance of one Princess among a hundred people, those hundred could walk in peace through a war zone, because you just don't do that to them. So a Princess was routinely raised like Amidala, with a retinue of women meant as decoys and bodyguards, but her presence protected them too, since the retinue was made of creations of biological origin who were physically identical to the Princess. Before the age they could reasonably keep a secret not even the Princess knew which one she was. Raising them to safe adulthood was absolutely key, since only a Princess could have natural born human children. It could be that the natural born had fertility problems, and only a small minority of them could bear children. However creations of biological origin were made, they were patterned on natural born humans. So anyone born could have creations for descendants, but only a Princess could have children. The fewer of them there were, the more carefully protected they would be. And if replicative fading was a problem, if copies of copies started to have errors, they'd be essential to the continued survival of the species. The scarcity also suggests that creations can't have born children, or the distinction would be less important. So whatever process they're made by has flaws. It's easy to make one person into an even dozen of herself, but only the original has a genetic future past that one generation. So nobody messes with the continuation of the species.
Except people from an alternate universe, who can think the unthinkable, and avert a war by holding a knife to a Princess's throat.
So there were Princes, Princesses, women who couldn't bear children but could make creations of biological origin, creations of biological origin, and creations of non-biological origin. And men. That's at least six, but maybe ten, genders.
The creations of non biological origin intrigued me. I never figured them out in the dream. Thor in the Allspeak called them something like scathach, which while asleep I didn't understand at all. Having looked it up it's Gaelic for something like Shadow/y or Shade/y, or the personal name of a Scottish warrior woman and martial arts teacher. That makes me think Immortals, because warriors. But there's a lot to work with in an order of creation called Shadows.
If they're non biological are they like androids or AI or uploads? But we have words for those, and this didn't translate. So what if they're created by Immortals? What if they're not children, but new vessels for the Quickening?
It would be a way of avoiding a Dark Quickening. A victorious Immortal absorbs the Quickening of their decapitated enemy, and with it their power... and sometimes their proclivities. So what if they invented a way of shedding unwanted parts? If they could create vessels to pour spare Quickening into they might lose a little power but retain a more tranquil or consistent self. Any part of themselves they were struggling with, they could pour it out into a creation.
That would leave the stereotype of creations of non biological origin to be somewhat Mr Hyde, to be the dark half, the objectionable. But Immortals fight each other to the death; what an Immortal values about themselves might not be so simple. Many Immortals would consider a Light Quickening equally disastrous, since it takes away their ambition and their chance of conquest. So the creations they would make would be Jekylls, peaceful and humanitarian. Either way, these creations would start out as fragmentary selves, unwanted parts and pieces, simplified and rejected. It's easy to see how that would be the lowest rung of a hierarchy.
They would be non-biological in that the spark of life in them came from Quickening, lightning, not the dance of splitting cells. Being made from Immortals they would not be able to procreate, but having only a partial Quickening they might not be able to collect others. Not Princes, able to conquer and grow more powerful. Not potential mates either. Not Immortal themselves? Perhaps with only a flicker of Quickening they eventually run out? Or their creators fear they will. Or perhaps they're just more fragile than the Princes, dying of quite ordinary injuries, not just losing their heads. In the dream the thing where I could shrug off fatal injuries made me either Prince or scathach, but perhaps there's a limit. Their Quickening then can burn out trying to heal them. It can be used up. That means each creation reduces the possible power of the One. So creating them would be good for the individual Immortal, in that they retain their sanity and purpose, but bad for Immortals collectively, in that they bleed Quickening in a way that can't be recovered.
But it would put the creations outside of the Game - if they can't be retaken there's no point. Really greedy Immortals would try and figure out how to reabsorb them though. Even knowing they're the rejected parts? They'd have to be super strong willed to try it. Or arrogant.
But if Immortals can create new beings from parts of older ones, they would not only do it to save themselves. Some of them would want kids. So they'd make creations. They'd use parts of their own Quickening, maybe giving them bits they really like about themselves, but they'd also use parts of the Quickenings of people they admire. If they kill someone who killed someone they care about, they'd end up with parts they wanted to preserve. There'd probably be creations that were attempts at resurrection, only with the Quickening being a lossy process they'd never quite be successful, even if someone tried to patch them with pieces of themselves.
Oh this has so many stories in it.
Biological children are made from the random combination of genes, combined through sex.
Non-biological creations are made from the... planned? ... rearrangement of Quickening, combined through violence.
They might look to the casual observer like the same men and women, but to the people involved they're different orders of creation, different origins, different possible futures. Raising them would involve different degrees of care, since a creation of non biological origin could have all the pieces poured in to be an instant adult, and then be discarded with a reasonable expectation they could live an independent life. They would only exist because of their living 'parent', but they would also know they were created from killing the other people that went into making them. Emotional connections between 'parent' and creation would therefore be enormously different than those between biological parents and children. And only some of them could have any children or make any creations themselves.
What would be the required elements for a creation of non biological origin? Would it be complex? Would it need learning, or be instinctual? Learning, or it would apply in more universes. Life would be really sincerely different if, before you could have offspring, you needed the equivalent of a PhD. Also, while the phrase 'creation of non-biological origin' sounds nice and clean and android-ish, if they're only referring to the spark of life, what exactly is the Quickening animating?
... Frankenstein's monster is almost inescapable here.
So there's men and women who start out being born because of sex, and there's men and women who start out... what, raised from the dead? Needing a physical form that was once inhabited by someone else? That would get complicated. ... also, you couldn't just start with Princes with their heads sewn back on, that would be too self contained... If Princes need creations of biological origin to make creations of non-biological origin then they have all the supply they could wish for, but if they instead need relatively intact born humans... *blinks*
In Highlander they never know where Immortals come from, they're all just foundlings who turn out not to stay dead. Keeping that element makes it all a bit mystical. Are they born from lightning and holy ground? Would there continue to be more Immortals springing up like that even if there were no more Princesses giving birth to ordinary babies? Or is the special thing about a Princess that some of their children just will not die?
Of course if you leave out the Immortals entirely you can get a tidy six part system: born humans can have genes copied to make creations of biological origin, and either can have minds copied to make creations of non-biological origin.
Other systems tend to treat these more like races, yesno? Racial discrimination based on mode of being, owning creations perhaps? But the way the differences are all about procreation and possible futures kind of lends itself to a gender system. And that's still about power. And defamiliarising in this way can highlight that.
I do like the idea of recombining shades to make a new person from two or more minds. If I keep the mechanism as Immortals and Quickenings then it's going to have to stay fanfic, since that style of Immortality through energy transfer is specific to Highlander rather than a generic mechanism. Filing the serial numbers off would be tricky.
Of course making a story out of all this would be tricky. It didn't have a plot, just an unraveling of why we weren't using words or recognising each other in the same ways. I'd have to tie that to some life and death stuff to get it to move anywhere.
I just liked the new toys it presented though, gender and reproduction broken down into new elements, and how very deeply different that would make a society however much else appeared the same.