Eclipse Worldbuilding Info

[Alicorn]

Probably depends on the community. People's tastes are such that it's easier to carry on a long-term sexual relationship without coming close to risking pregnancy but that won't evaporate every real and supposed reason to frown upon it.

[Moriwen]

Speculation about how Catholicism might shake out in Eclipse! Because I have odd ways of entertaining myself. (Obviously all just me making things up, despite writing in the Declarative Voice for convenience.)

Priests are supposed to be male doms, but priestly dress reads submissive as a servant-to-all-people thing. This actually works out nicely to look a lot like real-world priest clothing: cassocks because dresses are traditionally feminine-therefore-submissive, the clerical collar gets replaced with something that looks more like a sub's collar but with a cross instead of someone's name on it.

Marriage is of course traditionally supposed to be one male dominant, one female submissive. The whole men-can-be-subs, women-can-be-doms thing messes this all up. Lots of Catholics go "yeah, forget this" and start doing whatever including polyamory. (Roughly the same subset of Catholics who go ahead and get divorced and remarried in the real world). Other people are more invested in following church doctrine. The Vatican, moving slowly as ever, hasn't put out an official verdict on the matter, but every time there's a synod everyone gets very excited and wonders if this will be the time. Of course there's a range of views on what the Official Verdict should be, breaking down roughly as follows: Liberal Catholics want to just toss the whole thing out and let any two consenting adults get married. Moderate Catholics think that marriage should stay between a dom and a sub, but there's no reason that they can't both be the same gender. Conservative Catholics think they should stick with requiring a male dom and a female sub. The handful of traditionalist Catholics think that they should require a man and a woman, but it might be permissible for them to be both doms or both subs. Until there is an Official Decision churches are supposed to stick to male-dom-female-sub, but in practice plenty of pastors start marrying same-gender dom-sub couples, and the Vatican turns a blind eye. A Catholic priest performing same-role or poly marriages gets cracked down on smart quick. (Switches can generally get away with marrying who they like, because anyone with more conservative views will assume that they are Just Confused and actually a dom if they're marrying a sub or vice versa.)

Male subs in the priesthood is actually less of a crisis than you'd expect, because it's just been such a common thing for so long. Going into the priesthood means you get to dress submissive and aren't expected to marry, so male subs have been doing it for as long as the priesthood has been a thing. Augustine actually mentions this in his writings, although it's usually made somewhat oblique in modern translations; he refers to "imperfect men," meaning eunuchs or subs, entering the priesthood, and comments that some theologians think this is forbidden but he disagrees. He quotes the bit from Paul about eunuchs and goes through some complicated reasoning to decide that it is sufficient for a man to make an act of the will to be dominant, and then he can be validly ordained a priest. In modern times everyone is happy to stick with Augustine, especially because like half of priests are subs anyway so it would be a disaster to try to kick them all out.

(Couldn't decide whether to put this here or in my author thread. Happy to move it to the latter if people would like to avoid my AU theology speculation.)

[Alicorn]

Liberal Catholics want to just toss the whole thing out and let any two consenting adults get married. Moderate Catholics think that marriage should stay between a dom and a sub, but there's no reason that they can't both be the same gender. Conservative Catholics think they should stick with requiring a male dom and a female sub. The handful of traditionalist Catholics think that they should require a man and a woman, but it might be permissible for them to be both doms or both subs. Until there is an Official Decision churches are supposed to stick to male-dom-female-sub, but in practice plenty of pastors start marrying same-gender dom-sub couples, and the Vatican turns a blind eye. A Catholic priest performing same-role or poly marriages gets cracked down on smart quick.

...uh, what about female doms with male subs?

[Moriwen]

Right, good point, that got lost in my brain somewhere among the combinatorics. I think the official ruling is "uh, that's technically allowed, we guess," and then it varies socially from "practically gets you shunned" to "no problem, you guys are cute."

[DanielH]

I think it makes sense for AU theology suggestions to go in the relevant AU thread.

[anthusiasm]

Do you have specific thoughts about how dynamics interact with race?

[Alicorn]

Vague ones. Probably in the US, Asians are stereotyped as subby and black people as dommy but don't actually have unusual rates of either.

[DanielH]

How can you learn to telepathically communicate with a specific person while still in virtuality? Shouldn’t the virtual world eat all the attempts?

[Alicorn]

It only eats uncontrolled bursts. Your magic doesn't know any better, but you do.

[Bluelantern]

How long it takes to learn to shutdown other psions? Or boost VR? Are they well paid jobs?