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Family Structure in Eve

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Ciarente:
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? 

Natalcya Katla:
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

Saxon Hawke:
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.

Casiella:
I'm curious whether anyone has speculated on line marriages (a la The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) within the EVE universe.

Ashar Kor-Azor:
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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