Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Ciarente on 20 Apr 2010, 05:33
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One of the things that interests me about the diverse SF setting for Eve is the possibility for even more varied ways of organizing family and living arrangements than the multitude of ways on earth. And yet, when I think about it, most of my characters and alts have the 'traditional' (for late 20thC first world countries) nuclear family background: two parents, of different genders, and children who reside with them.
The exceptions would be Hiri Akell, raised in a clan structure in the Republic, and Gaer Anansi, who grew up in slavery, but I've yet to examine what that exactly means for either of them.
So what is your character's family background? How do they organize their domestic/reproductive/romantic arrangements in adulthood? And what other possibilities do you see?
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Katla grew up in various boarding schools while her mother was off flying, and only saw her family a few weeks out of every year. She doesn't do romantic arrangements, and believes that reproduction ought to occur in the laboratory rather than in the bedroom. :P
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Saxon is an only child raised by a mother and father aboard a space station in the Syndicate. A theme that I have only partially explored, however, is his relationship with his grandfather who is a reborn Intaki. In his current incarnation, the grandfather is only a few years older than Saxon and served as an older brother/mentor in his formative years.
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I'm curious whether anyone has speculated on line marriages (a la The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) within the EVE universe.
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My main inspiration for the sort of odd things that these groups could get up to is somewhere between Accelerando and Diamond Age.
There'd have been a great big stack of very accessible evidence in the PF of tendencies to, for example, physiologically switch one's gender on a whim as a capsuleer, despite the technology being available. There's none of the really odd shit one reads about in certain speculative fiction books in EVE, but I suspect this is because the developers aren't interested in greater verisimilitude at the expense of potential legal trouble - or they're just not all that imaginative, or focused on little things like sexuality in their internet spaceships game.
However, I expect that in a lot of these societies, There is likely to be a spreading culture among the middle to upper classes of more freely including technology in the upbringing of children; of optimizing one's genetic lot by a few degrees, and finding elegant solutions for troubling mental conditions, like trauma.
It is very plausible that there are likely 'cures' available for any given societal ailment in this world. You're a homosexual, but you need to start a family to honor Amarrian traditions and pass on the geneline and the lab freaks you out? Go to the doctor, get a microsurgery that's reversible next month and a bottle of pills. You have it in for objects? Barnyard animals? Little boys? We can fix that. Your spouse wants things from you that you have no sexual appetite for? Drop by the sex shop and the pharmacy.
Societally, there's likely enough to be all kinds of odd upper class shit going on in terms of larger families due to near-zero infant death rates, collectives with such technologically interconnected members that they have limited telepathy ("There's a cell phone in mah brain!"), or extreme alienation from one's family because one can afford it. Plus, the psychology of the people involved has been adapted to suit some mildly to extremely terrifying environments; the higher resilience could make certain forms of abuse FAR too acceptable, or create a lot of change in familial standards of a positive bent.
If you're living aboard a leaky hole of a colony over some gas giant in the Republic, and if every day contains a certain calculated risk of having your house venting atmosphere into vacuum, life might just be too fucking short to be neurotic at your family.
...I guess I'll poast about Ashar's family in a bit.
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You seem to presuppose any sort of cultural opposition to that sort of biotech, and I don't know that we can just say, "well the developers aren't very creative".
Now, I don't doubt that some weird stuff exists within the cluster: the bodymodder scene in TBL makes that quite clear. But (without having the book at hand, since I'm at the office) I seem to recall that, even within the fairly permissive Gallente society, that sort of thing received a great deal of popular disdain, much as it does in "mainstream" Western culture nowadays, or whatever passes for it anyway.
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In present-day mainstream culture, you have a yuk factor for things like artificial heart valves and pacemakers, for example. But few'd go without one if their doctor told them it was life and death.
In Amarr society, life extension is a cultural bulwark. So is a sense of bodily purity.
Split the difference on that one for meh :P
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There's ingame evidence for Gallente having marriages and also angry mother-in-laws.
(http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a231/bertcom1/motherinlaw.png)
Amarr, has mention of more traditional structure, there was a thing in one of the articles about the alliance tournament (the one when it talked about ship crews), mentioning someone (a Khanid) was a 10th child or something, and as such, inherited opportunities were very few, so they went out to be a spaceship crewman to make their fortune.
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There's ingame evidence for Gallente having marriages and also angry mother-in-laws.
And from that agent, it appears that same-sex marriage is in, at least for Gallente.
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rofl @ npc called "mother-in-law"
Anyway, I imagine Jin-Mei families would behave more like corporate units. Lots of brothers and sisters, with a patriachal heirarchy (old men, old women then younger men). An otherwise not very intimate family structure, but very strong nevertheless.
That's assuming lolmedievalChina stereotypes.
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Anyway, I imagine Jin-Mei families would behave more like corporate units. Lots of brothers and sisters, with a patriachal heirarchy (old men, old women then younger men). An otherwise not very intimate family structure, but very strong nevertheless.
IIRC the biggest PF item about the Jin-Mei is the rigid caste system that excluded many otherwise competent individuals from positions of responsibility, which has changed somewhat but not been eliminated.
There's no indication at the wiki (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Jin-Mei) that I can see that suggests gender plays a significant role in their social organisation. The line "Jin-Mei females were the largest supporters of lowering the social barriers to spaceflight" seems to hint that women in Jin-Mei society play an at least equal role in decision making.
I wonder if a rigidly class-based system might lead to weaker familial ties and stronger ties across one's 'caste'? Hypothetically, I mean.
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So what is your character's family background? How do they organize their domestic/reproductive/romantic arrangements in adulthood? And what other possibilities do you see?
Ulf grew up in a clan. His father died when he was young, but essentially he was raised by a collection of "aunts" and "uncles" so that wasn't a huge deal for him.
Because of various circumstances, the clan likes to encourage late-teen/early 20s people to have at least one child before heading off to join the military, or go to higher education, or get a job in the city... the people who look after those children are the aunties. It is not expected that marriage is necessarily involved in producing these children.
In some respects, it's considered better for a child to be raised by someone other than their biological parents once they've reached a certain age, because parents either don't discipline their children enough, or they drive out the spark of resistance that can make a good warrior.
Ulf's clan is Exogamous and Matrilocal. They marry outside the clan, and usually the women stay, and the men go off to their new clan (There are exceptions, but that's what is usual).
Marriages above a certain status level are usually political and a matter of negotiation between clans. There's been at least one marriage offer made for Ulf since he came back to the republic, although he doesn't know the details of it since it was turned down. It would be a political match since Pod pilots are a source of wealth and influence (and yes, Ulf contributes isk to his clan).
Who Ulf gets into bed with is less a matter for the clan than who he marries, although the aunties do follow the gossip sheets, and giggle at the stories.
Generally, on the clan lands, the unmarried people hang out together in shared buildings where they share the cooking and entertainment, and be basically social in groups. Not everyone in the clan shares the same groups, but they're generally of similar ages and work together. Everytime Ulf goes home to visit, one of his "cousins" makes him chop onions for the group meal to remind him that he's still part of the social group, desite being a high and mighty pod-pilot.
Once married, couples can ask for the clan's help building a marriage house - where they get to have their own space. Married couples will often share group meals with other married couples, or with their age-group cohort social groups, but sometimes have private meals as well. There isn't really the nuclear-family-housing-unit as such.
Spread around the clan lands are different groups of these buildings, with central halls, dorms, and marriage houses clustered around them and near some part of the working clan lands. There is some movement between the building groups, as seasons change, or people get irritated with their cousins and go off to one of the other areas for a few months etc.
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That 'mother in law' mission also happens in Republic Fleet missions. I've killed her a few times. I can't say for sure which race the agent decided to marry into, or if he stayed within the Matari race, but he had apparently married someone and pissed off their mother. Since it was an Angel kill mission, I'll assume it was a Matari wife/mother too.
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Zu's mother was a painter who would "model" for "learning artists" aka a whore - so Zu didn't find her real dad until as a capsuler she paid to do the blood research to track her dad down. Ironically this father was going to be played by my hubby until he flunked the eve tutorials.
Later when her mother closed her legs and decided to marry her step-father - she had a half sister. Once the half sister came about Zu was the "bastard child" who had to be perfect and everything she did was "wrong" compared to her perfect little sister.
Zu eventually tried to marry herself, but ended up finding herself preguant and walking in on her fiance cheating on her with a hired whore. So she made plans to be a single mother - and then the baby didn't make it.
Perhaps I made her a little too messed up - but it makes her fiercely loyal to Du'uma Fiisi in a very odd way which I like.
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My other character was orphaned when rogue drones attacked the mining colony on which her family lived. She managed to survive by sheer dumb luck and a pilot salvaging the wreck after the drones were destroyed spotted her life sign and pull her out.
Instead of giving her up to adoption, he took her in himself. Many years later he got his capsuleer license and sponsored her education for the same. She still remembers her birth family very pointedly and due to her parental figure being an outlaw for most of her growing up (-10, flashy and all ya know) she would go months without seeing him at times - which indirectly lead to her being somewhat reclusive. She also has many habits that practically mirror her rescuer.
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Ashar's early years were...sparse.
She got implants quite early; it was the family way. She was okay with her parents, and they're both still alive, as is her wider family. They're a bit like the victorian Huxleys were - it's kind of an accomplishment for some among their (minor, non-succession-eligible) branch of the House of Kor-Azor to stay on good terms with their children, which I took as an odd twist on Doriam/Aritcio action. It's an accomplishment often striven for, and one realized a good deal, but you can screw up pretty badly.
For reasons which will be very hard to explain openly because they're private, Ashar was raised nowhere near Domain or Kor-Azor; as such, she is not a good representation of her House, but what can you do.
When she became a person of means and then a capsuleer, she did much for both her immediate and extended family; it would be fair to say that she normalized their lives.
At this point, they have relatively small estate on Kor-Azor prime and some holdings elsewhere. The living is almost communal by Heir family standards - the servants are incredibly few, and that's okay by Ashar.
I try to get things sorted out such that visitors to Ashar's familial estate will be reminded of the Ramkin House in the works of Terry Pratchett to a certain extent, or the feeling, at least - excepting the multitude of servantry and lack of real numbers in the Ramkin family. And the dragons. They don't really breed anything there that isn't a food crop.
Ashar's domestic situation is complicated by running a nunnery, in which she lives some portion of the year. She might be in the market for something monogamous and egalitarian with a capable individual with whom she could partner, but I sure as hell won't be in it for the cyborin'. God, that gets banal and repetitive ><
Any children she had, she would hold to high standards almost unconsciously, though the aim would be to assist them in accomplishing such heights without crushing them with constant statements of the expectant and nagging variety. They'd be within arm's reach growing up, though they'd get to see how their mother lived and worked, and know the limits on her time. It is likely that a failure to create such conditions for them would cause her quite a bit of grief.
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Well, marriage (in some form or other) is a near constant in human cultures as I recall. At least historically, up to this point. Now, it isn't always between one man and one woman. Historically, one man and multiple women is a common model, but that is historically (more on that in a minute).
In Eve, I'm sure one man/one woman is still common. I suspect that other models are also fairly common, perhaps depending on where you look. I don't just mean which empire, but down at a more local level, particularly with empires that are less homogenous culturally (Gallente, Minmatar, most of the 'minor' factions, perhaps some places in the Empire.)
In the State, there is evidence of some cultural taboos, the one we know about for sure being homosexuality. On the other hand, there is heavy use of growing children in tubes. That means that in terms of reproductive strategy, women don't have to go through an entire pregnancy. I would be interested in finding out about the State's (or perhaps it would be by corporation?) position on abortion. If the attitude about homosexuality is population-driven, it suggests potentially a corresponding anti-abortion stance (particularly when they can grow the kid in a tube instead).
OFC given the ability to grow population on demand via tube child programs, a taboo on homosexuality seems maladaptive. Cultures do change only so fast, though. It may be rooted in the pre-diaspora (pre-tube-child) culture too, Caldari Prime not being the nicest place to live.
Anyway it seems to me that the tube child program essentially removes practical, reproductive issues for nearly any family arrangement. That doesn't mean the culture is in a place where people could actually take advantage of that (particularly in more conservative parts of the State). There might be more liberal corporations (not in the political sense, since Hyasyoda, for example, is liberal politically, but being one of the oldest corporations and run by the same family might have a more conservative culture internally, whereas NOH is 'practical' but strikes me as having a liberal internal culture) that are open to non-traditional models (whatever the traditional models are, for the Caldari).
There is also the issue of entirely new family models arising solely from tube child programs. One of my characters was raised in a crèche, and 'family' to her is siblings (some closer than others, not necessarily blood-related). In her crèche, there wasn't a strong parental bond with supervisors etc, so the extent of her 'family' is the other kids from the crèche. This gives rise to an idea of non-blood relations being 'family' in (to her) a very real sense.
This also means that her domestic arrangements growing up were not unlike being in barracks, with everyone living largely in common areas.
Outside the State, particularly in the Federation, I imagine that they have the tech for tube child programs, but not the Caldari cultural baggage. So, assuming someone can afford tube-growing, it opens up a great many possibilities.
I also suspect that whatever 'traditional' is for the Caldari, you see a lot of 'non-traditional' among the Guristas. Kinda the point, after all. :D
I suspect that in the State, setting aside the tube-kid part, there might be a lot of extended family living together. Probably also common in the Empire. I do wonder how things like inheritance are worked out in the Empire, since by all evidence there is essentially gender equality. Oldest child? What if there is a child from before a given marriage, and one from the marriage? Who inherits what? Seems like it has potential.
Others have a better grip on the Republic than I do, and I think the stuff that has been written about it is fascinating. I have thought a lot about Thukkers, and imagine it might be 'it takes a ship to raise a child' in many cases.
I wonder about people who travel far, often, but unlike the Thukkers not with their family. If you fly for the Cartel, say, and you only go 'home' once in a great while. Do those poor men and women in frigates in .5 Republic space have families waiting for them back in Curse? Husbands, wives, or some other arrangement (as doesn't seem unlikely with the Cartel) waiting, worried, for word from them?
I've a character (Hilion Narath) who is an ex-Cartel pilot. He never settled (and his family background was growing up with a large extended family of well-to-do commoners in the Kingdom) but surely there are pilots in that situation who do try to start a family, of whatever stripe. Maybe there are certain arrangements that would work particularly well, for that? Larger family groups for example, to provide support.
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I think of the majority of EVE players being Caldari, and I expect a preponderance of State-originating mouth-breathers among the playerbase who use expressions like 'no homo,' and I giggle at how this correlates with State culture.
[mod]using "mouth breathers" to refer to other players, isn't really on, is it? Please don't do this.[/mod]
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At least in the little spot Lae' grw up in marriage is seen as just the perfect way to seal a contract, much better than by handshakes or signatures anyways.
The khanid flavour texts I know point us towards a distinct rolemodel for their families, where the men are occupied by whatever tasks they have (the example is warfare iirc), and the women have to run the household and their families business in their husbands absence.
On the topic of household slaves I think a good way to deal with them is by taking roman society (I know, *hiss bitch* romans aren't amarrians) and their handling of slaves ... or most other societies who dealt with people of such status on a daily basis.
In general I think marriage out of love would be, if not looked down upon, at least be considered a show of weakness or a childish affliction. The amarrians do not strike me as very kind towards the individual when the greater whole is concerned and I guess this involves family life as much as anything else.
P.S.: Political marriage also makes for a good background for intrigue and other such fun stuff, which, as many early chronicles (i.e. Dam Torsad), are all too common amongst the upper class of the empire.
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Polygamy of the Ni-Kunni.
That would be an interesting mess to roleplay with.
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/me rolls a Ni-Kunni male. >.>
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Historically, a lot of cultures are polygamous. OFC, going back to the tube kid thing - and gender equality - it would seem to open the door to women having multiple husbands being more likely than in current cultures (since as I recall, historically, it is most often the other way round).
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Most often, sure, but I recall polyandry (as opposed to polygyny) being practiced in Nepal... I think it was?
Anyway, yeah, harems FTW.
/me cloaks and hightails it for the covert cyno.
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As I recall there is a matriarchal, and matrilineal Muslim culture somewhere in Indonesia too (though I don't recall rules about marriage for them). It is just less common.
What about rules of inheritance etc in general? How names are passed on?
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Jak was the only child and thus only apparent heir to a Holder family in the high end of the Kingdom's political sphere (Though they own very little actual land - most of their Holdings are space-based). It was a typical one man/one woman couple (Though I've never been of the belief that homosexuality is considered a 'sin' in Amarr, unless I've missed something) but he spent almost all of his time in classes, being tutored by his guardian slave Kaarn (Who he still brings along with him), being lectured by his father (Stern man), or playing with his friend (And now sweetheart) so he doesn't have a very strong relationship with his mother (Are the brackets annoying you yet?).
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I started writing about the complicated family relationships of my characters, but I started laughing and couldn't stop.
In this corner of the EVE sandbox, I have a mother, her two (or three) daughters, and a son and grandson who I'm grateful are both way too young to have around as PCs or invested NPCs. That's not even counting their extended family. Or the ones of my completely unconnected alts.
Good grief.
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See, I would worry that I would have trouble portraying a 'non-standard' (by current western standards etc) family structure well. It's outside my experience, which I suppose is part of RP, but I would still be concerned about it.
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Writing about it (perhaps not in the context of your main character) might provide a great opportunity to explore the implications of such a "non-standard" family. How does the Intaki "rebirth" concept affect things, for example?