Questions tagged [social-norms]
For questions asking about current or future normal behavior in a given society.
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A religion where everyone is considered a priest [closed]
I have imagined a universalising polytheistic religion of around 5 million adherents.
The pantheon is composed of 120 deities.
A strange thing about this religion is that everyone is considered a ...
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Looking at unconventional (by Western Standards) partnerships/marriages
Clarified and narrowed down as requested!
The following guidelines have already been established for the world. These are presented so you get an idea of the people we are dealing with:
1. The ...
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What are the parenting options available to species that reproduce by fragmentation?
How would a species that forms new life only when the parent fragments, do parenting?
Like sea stars and molds, my species forms a new child when the parent is broken. However, this is the only means ...
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Is it reasonable that magic would become a subject and magi would become students in military academies in a world with rediscovered magic?
Until twenty years before the time at which my story is set, the world was pretty much as our modern-age world is now. Magic was thought to be nothing more than myth and superstition. Alien worlds ...
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A country where citizens are supposed to have a name with three to ten parts [closed]
In my world that is set in a near future, there was an EXTREMELY big country fusion.
Since the country has more than 500 million inhabitants, people are required to have a name with at least three ...
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How can I incorporate demigods into society peacefully?
Demigods, called devas, are humans born with a divine spark attached to their soul. They are marked by their golden eyes, amber-like blood, and divine aura that they give off. Devas are human ...
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Uses for a gastric bypass
The world of Pandemonium is a world in another universe where humans may exist, that is gravitationally connected to Earth in our universe. Over the course of history since the big bang, these ...
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What factors would determine the behaviors of post-scarcity society?
I'm looking for something more like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but extended beyond the purely physical. I'm not looking for a list of things people would do, or "Here's what I would do", ...
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In modern day combat, what would warrant singing during battle?
Cicad the singer is having a downtime in his career.
Over the millennia, Cicad sang anywhere from royal courts to farmers' cottages and have been rewarded with many, many hand-claps.
But to keep ...
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Could a humantaur in the US be accepted to West Point and/or have a career in the US Military?
For the last seventeen years, Kerner Syndrome children, known colloquially as humantaurs (as in the image below, having a fully functional second abdomen and second pair of legs, plus a horse-like ...
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How fast can you radically change society without violence? (And when has it happened?)
The Backstory (Actually important)
From the current day to an unspecified number of decades in the future, a brutally efficient, totalitarian dystopia-state rises and runs basically all of humanity ...
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Why would a society persecute people who are antisocial misanthropes (sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists, and sadists)? [closed]
An alternate-historical story is set in a third-world country in 1977 of the Gregorian calendar (the year George Lucas' masterpiece, Star Wars, was released). The country is a Costa Rica pastiche (...
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How would California Child Protective Services deal with a feral humantaur child?
For the last thirteen years, Kerner Syndrome children, known colloquially as humantaurs (as in the image below, having a fully functional second abdomen and second pair of legs, plus a horse-like tail ...
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What psychological strategies could be used for keeping an anti-military crew as close to military doctrine as possible?
I hope this question isn't too broad to be answered and clear enough (which I have a hard time figuring out by myself).
Context:
In this Earth-like world the society is still quite retrograde in the ...
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Could a group of nobles in a tolkienesque society repress knowledge belonging to their children?
With reference to how society works in a classical idea of tolkienesque worlds, could a group of nobles stop a warning reaching the king, from the peasant children?
Assume that the nobles don't want ...
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Why would an advanced civilization keep slavery? [closed]
In my world, there is a country made up of mostly demons (a species) and ghouls. Their economy is both capitalistic and mercantilistic, and their government is a constitutional dictatorship. Currently,...
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What would lead an entire country to systematically ignore home invasion, theft and vandalism from 1 particular person? [closed]
Evie is reading a book, when L. runs into her house, smashes all the pots, rifles through her wardrobe and runs off with her life savings and a bottle of red liquid. She doesn't even look up.
Carl is ...
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Could it ever become a custom for human women to breed with ogres?
I'm in the process of constructing a fantasy world that resembles our world and is predominantly inhabited by humans just like us, but which also contains ogres. The ogres in this world are between ...
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Is it reasonable to assume the near-extinction of women?
The world of Ruquelis has some problems. It is populated by men, women and winged lilim as in this question: How to get the Lilim to breed true?. People on Ruquelis reincarnate according to the ...
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Impacts of matricentric reproductive laws [closed]
My world is a matricentric America that holds men legally responsible for unplanned pregnancies. Roughly, the idea is that if an unplanned pregnancy occurs and the woman does not get an abortion, the ...
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Biological CPUs - why would the developed world fear them?
There is a bottleneck towards Strong AI in my universe. For whatever reason, no one has ever figured out an AI that is sufficiently autonomous to be left alone without intervention, and no one has ...
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What cultural movement(s) could cause pedophilia to be normalized in the west?
Note: This is a touchy subject even for a fantasy-theory site. It's probably best that I say that this question stems from an conversation I had with a coworker the other day (we're software engineers)...
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Why does fantasy racism exist in my world if there isn't a reason for it? [closed]
In order for you to be able to hate a certain group of people, they must fulfill two criteria:
They're within your vicinity
You have some a (real or perceived) conflict of interests with them
In my ...
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Is it reasonable that a nation reject reincarnation?
On my world, a magical device known as a Reincarnation Anchor (RA) was invented. The effect of a RA is that any human who spends a significant portion of their life within sight range of a RA becomes ...
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A subtle war between the sexes
In this question, I detail a world with a third human sex, lilim, who have bat-like wings and taloned feet like a bird's. The TL;DR is that lilim give birth to equal numbers of men, women and lilim (...
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How complex can racism get? [closed]
In my world, there are humans and a variety of fantasy races. Of course, due to instinct, there is going to be racism and forms of discrimination. For realism, and just tired of the usual fantasy ...
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Why would murids (such as rats and mice) be sacred animals?
In a future web-series I want to create, there is a species of massive humanoids named giants (Homo gigas) (technically, there are still humans, just not Homo sapiens). They are less social than ...
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What would social media look like in a setting where communication wasn't instant, and where content quality might be deliberately downgraded?
It's the near future, humanity has discovered a new element in the asteroid field that allows faster than light travel and communication through a brute force methods that's largely handwaved away at ...
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How does interspecies romance work between fantasy races? [closed]
In my world, most of the fantasy races are very different from the typical. While there are some like ghouls, trolls, etc., there are animal people races instead of elves and dwarves. At some point, ...
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What would be the differences between our society and one where almost everyone is half-sisters? [closed]
Imagine a medieval society composed entirely of women, with some small number of machines (let's say 7) which can take material from two women and combines it to create an embryo that's implanted in ...
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How can i make my worldbuilding magical, fun and a little dark, but still maintain realism? [closed]
I'm trying to make a character, and I'm first creating their world, but I'm can't figure out whether I want it to be all magical or more realistic. Helluva Boss did this great. It took place in hell, ...
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Why does this society eat bones? [closed]
Animals eat bones but most human societies do not. I have a fictional modern society which engages in this practice, but what sort of history or culture would lead to it?
Objectively, there are health ...
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Would an extra-terrestrial human settlement rely on their endogenous or environmental rhythmic cycles to set their routines?
Setting: We have settled a planet with days and years not even approximately like earth. The settlers must decide what their workday is and their week, year, etc.
Premise: Colonists will establish ...
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How to design a realistic school with coed rooms?
I am trying to design a "progressive", every high schooler's dream high school/boarding school where grades 9-12 attend (but could make it just the more senior years if that would work ...
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Why would great white sharks be sacred animals?
In a future web-series I want to create, there is a species of massive humanoids named giants (Homo maximus) (technically, they are still humans, just not Homo sapiens). They are less social than ...
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If a civilization has biotechnology, why do they still prefer mechanical augmentations?
Background
This is a sci-fi setting. People there have advanced biotechnologies, being able to edit the genetic code of embryos (governmentally enforced to be strictly regulated and only for medical ...
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How do werewolves cope with integration into human society with tough ban on transformation? [closed]
In my world werewolves are humans but would transform into part man part wolf when they stares at round and shiny object such as a full moon, the humans knew about it and even extended their welcome ...
CommunityBot
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Why is there a universal (both de jure and de facto) ban on necromancy in the world despite xenophobia and distrust between countries?
The world consist of several different countries who are no strangers to being at war with each other. Even more, some countries are ruled by different races, like humans, elves, dwarves, etc. Racism ...
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What would realistically be the secret base for someone who can teleport?
In this world, mutant animals and humans exist on earth, along with regular people. The MC can instantly teleport anywhere on earth freely (his super-power) no matter the distance, and can teleport ...
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What would be the societal effects of a human subspecies that can live for 200-500 years, and look young until death? [closed]
The basic conceit is this: the human subspecies in question has some magical abilities, and thanks to them every single member of their society has extreme ability to stay young and healthy until ...
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Creating a Society of Warrior Nymphs
Yep, it's another Nymph-related question!
Recap:
Nymphs are "born" when large amounts of residual life force (say, in a town cemetery or slaughterhouse) build up and combine with the magic ...
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How to explain conservative sexual attitudes in an atheist society
This would be a human culture in what I would consider the distant future. Depending on the individual asked, either religious traditions and notions are something a society needs to eventually ...
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How Would A Society of PCs Deal With Overpowered Individuals? [closed]
Background: Through use of a reality-altering force, people were brought into a fantasy-style MMORPG (as PCs) on a whole new continent made just for them and formed a society. These people all hold ...
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What Would The Result of Tangible Chaos Be On The Military?
Backup Information:
This world is similar to ours, but it has a substance called Desonia that acts as a manifestation of chaos. Once damaged, Desonia integrates itself into whatever damaged it. If an ...
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A functional fatalistic daredevil civilization in history?
I have been reading about fatalism: the belief that all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable. It made me consider designing a fictional civilization based around fatalism, but with the ...
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What circumstances would lead art and artisan works to be considered 'worthless' or detrimental in society?
Context: I'm looking for justification of the above in my story so I can have clandestine artists.
But I'm having a little dificulty finding a situation in which art becomes to inherenty detrimental ...
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AGII Virus broke out, how does world surrive?
I am planning to start a post apocalypse centered web comic, however apocalypse is more social in nature, i.e no zombies or nukes for you.
In near future AGII (Acute Gerontophobia Inducing Infection, ...
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Rite of Winter: How to Stop Crescian Couples from Mutual Assassination
Crescian Society
In the Crescian society, on alternate Earth, the nobles take to settling disputes with mutual assassination.
The unspoken rule is that assassinations must be carried out directly by ...
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Linguistics in a society with contrapositive thermodynamic philosophy
Our philosophy is based on the concept of energy as a positive, because we generally live on a planet in a low energy state which does work via fuel. As such, we don’t really have articulate language ...
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Societal implications of a portion of the population possessing immortality?
Background Info: All human beings possess magic in some way, shape, or form. This magic can express itself in a variety of ways, which is where the different types of magic-users come into play (...
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