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I have the Propagation Hivemind, an all-female human hivemind(many minds aggregating to form one big mind) numbering in the hundreds of billions populating East Asia. Every member of the Hivemind holds the Dao of Propagation. They've recently expanded their Dao. Now, any viewer gazing at her uncovered form would make them magically feel crippling pleasure, leading to absolute infatuation and subservience towards her. Unfortunately, she herself isn't immune to her own Dao and she can't turn it off so she's trying to find a solution that can be universally adopted to hundreds of billions.

  • Looking at any 'naked' part of her body, including face, hair and nails, without any physical object completely covering or obscuring its image activates her Dao. You can succumb to the Propagation Hivemind by accidentally looking at a singular strand of hair.
  • Clear reflections also count. It won't count if the image has been distorted to the degree of being unrecognizable. For example, obscure glass won't trigger the Dao even if it shows a blurry outline but concave mirrors will as the reflections are still clear albeit distorted.
  • Photos can also activate the Dao.
  • Drawings, descriptions, and redacted photos won't activate the Dao.
  • If any body part is detached from the body, it can still hold the power of her Dao.
  • Looking at herself will also activate the Dao.
  • As long as the whole Hivemind is not dead, the Dao will still work on individual hivemind members even if they die or their bodies are mutilated/changed beyond recognition. For example, cremating one and reducing the body to ashes wouldn't work as the Dao will still activate if any observer sees the ashes.

Considerations for the solution:

  • It must be adopted to universally encompass the entire landmass of East Asia and the hundreds of billions of women that inhabit it.
  • Tech and civilization level is modern day and slightly beyond if the answers require it but no far future sci-fi.
  • Assume perfect coordination between all the women comprising the Propagation Hivemind and that it holds absolute knowledge and awareness regarding everything happening to her home.
  • It has to be 'simple' and requires as little complexity as it can. This is to prevent any accidents arising from complicated mechanisms.
  • It must not impede how the nation is run in any meaningfully or significantly negative manner.
  • Due to her Dao, any baby born develops into an adult woman immediately.
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    $\begingroup$ Is blindness out of the question? $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Commented Jul 15 at 11:24
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    $\begingroup$ "Hundreds of millions" in East Asia??? The tech level must be much greater than today for that to be possible. Ignoring that, at what age does a "female" become a "woman" and therefore part of the Hivemind? If it's impossible to view babies and infants then this will be a very short-lived Hivemind. $\endgroup$
    – KerrAvon2055
    Commented Jul 15 at 14:08
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    $\begingroup$ @KerrAvon2055 Simple solution: the Dao can be obtained by small children, but is ineffectual until they reach a certain age/cognitive development threshold in most cases. Relate it so some age-varying biological process, and we're good to go. (This scenario is already very science-fiction, so this feels realistic enough to me.) $\endgroup$
    – controlgroup
    Commented Jul 15 at 15:54
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    $\begingroup$ Note that the current world population is at 8.3 billion. With over 200 billion members they will facing mass starvation, over crowding, and if they have normal life spans over 3 million corpses a day that are still effected with the Dao that would need to be treated as toxic waste. $\endgroup$
    – Anketam
    Commented Jul 15 at 21:21
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    $\begingroup$ In my opinion, this idea (although it has some creative elements) is far too close to the tired and harmful trope of framing female characters simply as vehicles of pleasure for those looking at them—sexual objectification, in other words—as well as reinforcing the myth that an onlooker's attraction is the woman's fault and thus the onlooker can't be considered to be in control of their actions. Unless you've thoroughly discussed the implications of your premise with knowledgeable women, I would recommend setting this idea aside. $\endgroup$
    – Greg Martin
    Commented Jul 17 at 5:24

5 Answers 5

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So one question is does one of her bodies seeing itself activate the dao, or just seeing a different one of her bodies.

If not, then each body would take care of things like person grooming, eating, and any other "dangerous" activities that can easily be taken care of by yourself.

All hundreds of billions of them would need to basically live in an individual apartment, and wear something like a fully body suit like Going Durden's answer whenever they leave. These body suits would need to be extremely durable, if she accidentally tore a hole in one on something, that would be catastrophic, and because she has so many bodies, even something that had literally a one in a billion chance of happening, would on average happen at least 200 times. Probably lots of kevlar, maybe even titanium plates on the parts where it's not a issue, like forearms and shins.

If a body cannot even safely look at itself, then she would basically just never remove the body suit. It would probably need to have ports on it to pump water through it to clean her, and other ports to supply food and water, and to remove waste. These last things can theoretically be done without seeing yourself, but there is a risk involved and again, multiplied by 200 billion, even the smallest risk is just certain to happen.

For tasks that can't be done in the suit and require help from another person, I assume it would be done by people who are already subservient. These tasks would include things like cremation, medical care, maybe even hair cutting. If a body can't look at itself, that would also include even simple things like nail trimming and of course putting on the suit.

These would either take place in complete darkness, or she would wear a blindfold. This is a small thing, but it would probably be wise for her to also just always have a layer of opaque paint on her nose, because you can actually see your own nose out of the corner of your vision, and if any light leaked past her blindfold, she'd be able to see it.

Babies would need to be taken care of by other people obviously. I'm not sure exactly how the neurology of the hivemind would work for mental development or basic motor skills like walking or talking. I would actually expect that even if a newborn baby was given the mind and knowledge of an adult, their brain would simply not be developed enough to do anything, even talking.

Assuming the body suit works flawlessly, there is still a huge amount of effort/risk just dealing with hair and body parts. The entire doa is built around "seeing", so I would think that basically being no longer visible, either from being too small, or even just from being "camouflaged" by it's surroundings or by just being mixed with something. One other thing to keep in mind is whether bodily fluids like blood or saliva count. In your cremation ash example, what if you dissolved it in water, or even acid? If you dropped a small amount on the ground and it basically spread out enough that it was no longer possible to see would that be enough? Whatever the suitable method is, all hair, bodies, blood etc, would need to have that done to them.

Honestly, I think it would pretty much make the most sense for all of her bodies to get full body laser hair removal... It just removes so much risk and makes staying clean in the body suit much simpler as well.

The factor of "not impeding how the nation is run" and "modern day tech level" is kind of difficult to account for. A population of at least 200 billion is so far beyond what exist currently, that it's simply impossible to sustain with current technology in that land area.

It pretty much requires massive multistory hydroponic/aeroponic farms, enough nuclear reactors to power all of these farms, and any other directly related technology.

The whole society and nation would be so different from ours that the bodysuits are pretty minimal in comparison.

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Blindness

The only way that these woman would not be impacted would require them to all be blind. Because of how effective the Dao is this is the only avenue left to them.

The good news is that in other settings/worlds there are plenty of examples of species and individuals that rely on other senses or magic to give them a form of sight. As such it would still be in the realm of suspension of disbelief if this hive mind had their own substitute for sight.

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You're going to have a dust problem

Household dust is in large part dead skin. It really depends on how powerful you want this ability to be, but seeing a single flake of dust could mean the end. you'll also have a similar problem with hairs. Your characters may cover themselves entirely so that no part of them is visible, but at some point, if they are capable of sight, they are going to have to look at dust or fallen hairs.

your characters could be blind as suggested in other answers, and that works, but they could also be heavily nearsighted so that they are unable to discern individual hairs and dust particles. they would still need to conceal their bodies, but at least it'd be livable for them (who knows what would happen to the general population though).

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RThere are two simple, but not cheap solutions here:

  1. Full body suits. East Asia already has the infrastructure to produce billions of full body suits, like a catsuit but with a mask and goggles, so that not only is the whole body covered, but there is little to no possibility of a stray hair etc falling out. An additional solution might be permanently dyeing or tattoing their skin, so that their actual flesh is not truly seen, but obscured by pigment.

  2. Image alteration goggles:

Drawings, descriptions, and redacted photos won't activate the Dao.

This means that wearing goggles that redact what you are seeing should be enough. Couple a VR headset with a camera, and have their vision be translated to animation at all times. A simpler solution, though one that might not be sufficient, is to use analog kaleidoscope glasses that flip the image upside down, change the color and impose strips on dots on the field of view. After some getting used to, their brains would learn to navigate with these goggles, but they will not be able to see each other with sufficient clarity to trigger the Dao.

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    $\begingroup$ Sort of like shattergoggles (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story). $\endgroup$
    – controlgroup
    Commented Jul 15 at 15:50
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    $\begingroup$ "so that their actual flesh is not truly seen, but obscured by pigment" -> Tattoo ink sits beneath your skin, so technically you'll still see the skin itself, even if it's showing a different color from underneath $\endgroup$
    – Benito-B
    Commented Jul 15 at 20:24
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Another Dao that makes one instance >X<plode as soon it sees itself or one other BEFORE the effect is transfered into the hivemind. In other news, the fact that ashes and dandruff will also count will break your story completely.

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  • $\begingroup$ This would only serve to scatter organic matter in a large area, which all of that organic matter would still be fully capable of activating the Dao as per the seventh bullet point in the question. $\endgroup$
    – Anketam
    Commented Jul 16 at 19:38

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