Eclipse Worldbuilding Info

[DanielH]

I feel like a psion would by default win in a fight against a mage even if the mage is awake. Does that sound reasonable?

Can Sufficiently Advanced Psionics undo an accidental magic mind wipe? Can a psion do a deliberately reversible memory modification?

I’m not sure I get how strong the dynamic/gender correlation has historically been perceived as. Sadde’s dad seemed to be of the opinion that it should hold 100% of the time, and there were 42 male presidents, but it obviously has always been known and to some extent expected that there would be off-type people given drivers licenses having a dynamic field in addition to a sex field, laws concerning doms vs. subs, etc. A related question: would a female dom (who is the “wrong” dynamic) or a female sub (who is a sub) have a harder time in various historically dom-dominated social positions?

[Moriwen]

I am also interested in DanielH's questions!

Along similar lines (and because I'm now thinking about what my characters' dynamics would be): how often could a female dom expect to encounter people being a jerk about the gender/dynamic thing? (I've been headcanoning "pretty rarely, but more often if she lives in the South/other more conservative areas.)

Is there a media stereotype of domminess/subbiness that doesn't necessarily align with how doms/subs actually want to act? (For instance, maybe there's an expectation that All Doms Are Sadists, while some of them are really just into handfeeding and praise.)

How do switches usually dress/act? Do they usually pick one dynamic and mostly stick with that to avoid issues, or mix up some dom signals and some sub signals, or is there a whole separate set of stereotypical switch traits?

(Also since I have a handful of very religious characters I'm now busily coming up with ideas for how religion works in BDSM-verse. I'm thinking that the "unless ye become like little children" verse gets replaced with "unless ye become like submissives"; priests are supposed to be male dominants (although that's shifting recently) but their vestments traditionally look more like sub clothing; and "Jesus was a switch!" is a big thing in liberal Christian circles)

[Alicorn]

Psions can make other people not need sleep but it's a kind of invasive procedure and has to be redone routinely.

Mage/psion fights basically come down entirely to first mover advantage. Who melts whose brain first. There's not an inherent speed advantage to being a psion unless you've specifically worked on that.

Depends on the nature of the mind wipe. Yes.

It's sort of fuzzy. The publicly acknowledged thing has historically been that men are or ought to pretend to be doms and women are or ought to pretend to be subs, but of course you get the occasional Boston marriage where one of these ladies is secretly domming the other, or pent-up military dudes finding that some of them are more open to being on the bottom than the others, or people in outwardly conventional relationships mixing it up a bit and having fun with that. And some people openly defy convention and they get explained as one-offs or freaks or something. Their ability to get corresponding paperwork has improved over time.

Female doms are (in the culture where our scene lies, anyway) basically just doms Nowadays and can get along just fine in dom-dominated social positions, except, as Moriwen guesses, in more conservative areas. (If for some inexplicable reason Sadde brings Bella home I assume Tobias will find her unsatisfactory because dom or no dom she's a girl.)

There's reasonably widespread acknowledgment that tastes/styles vary, although there is an assumption that a sub can be convinced to like anything by a sufficiently domful dom and their preferences are just loose guidelines.

Depends on the switch. Some of them pick a presentation that they prefer, or alternate, or present all rolefucky. Renée wears her hair chinlength but she's a kindergarten teacher so she mostly just presents sub to avoid awkwardness at work (and because her current partner Phil is a dom), unless she is actively marching in a pride parade, when she'll mess with her outfit or put half of her hair up or whatever. Switches are as a subculture sort of trying to develop a set of signals but it's not firmly established in the gestalt mindset yet.

I have few opinions on how to BDSM AU religion except that a) God is genderless and role-less, b) they do still draw Jesus with long hair but your various conservative gun nut types sort of ignore that.

[DanielH]

I find it hard to imagine that a) would be universally acknowledged by all major branches of the three main Abrahamic religions. In the real world we default to male pronouns for God and I'm pretty sure many people insist He is in fact male.

[Alicorn]

Well, sure, but theologically speaking.

[Nemo]

There is at least as strong an argument for God being a dom as for God being male. It's not even a question of by default; this one's explicit. (Citations available if people care.) In a world where this distinction replaces that one, there should be correspondingly more resistance to changing it.

This doesn't mean the people who want to change it anyway have to end up losing; people are pretty good at rationalizing, but it should be (or possibly was, if the fight happened earlier) harder than its real-world counterpart.

[MaggieoftheOwls]

...There's all kinds of argument to be made that God's a dom. I mean, he is all about people submitting to him and placing their lives and hearts in his hands and stuff.

[Moriwen]

I think I would put my money on:

1) Official Catholic stance: "God incorporates all good things and thus contains within Himself both submission and domination. However he is usually symbolically referred to as a dominant in order to represent His relationship with the Church."

2) Arian heresy: "God the Father is the dominant aspect of God, and God the Son is the submissive aspect."

3) Conservative Protestant stance: "God is a dominant, as evidenced by [various Biblical citations]."

4) General cultural Christian stance: "IDK, God probably transcends earthly roles and stuff? Like, he doesn't have a dynamic, because he's not a person?"

5) Liberal Christian stance: "Each person is free to interpret God in their own way. However there's a strong argument to be made that the historical Jesus was a submissive or a switch."

[Alicorn]

Moriwen's interpretation seems reasonable.

[RoboticLIN]

From OP: " There is some room for deciding you were mistaken, especially before you're in your mid-twenties, and getting all your paperwork changed."

Is there possibilities to redecide later? Some sort of process like a governmental name change to change what you identify as? Is that some sort of major taboo to do?

Also, are switches supposed to put down dom/sub on their record or is it acceptable to put down 'switch'? Is it possible to put down nothing (refuse to classify) or is that a federal crime or something?

Either way, sounds fun. Being really bad at romance aside, I'd be interested in writing something in that world.