Sythyry placement and displacement

[sythyry]

Sythyry is not quite canonical World Tree! Canonical World Tree is defined by the RPG sourcebook. I've generally been trying to keep quite close to canonical. But I have drifted away from it in a few respects. Here's what I can think of just now:

1. Transaffection is far more despised in Sythyry's version of World Tree than in the canonical one.
2. Vae is far more dangerous and brainwarped than the baseline nendrai in the rulebook, though that is explained in-story.
3. Sythyry is using some as-yet-unpublished rules to enchant things fast.
4. Sythyry is not perfectly reliable on some topics, like how well Cani read emotions -- they read them far better than a human (or Zi Ri) does, but not the near-mindreading that Sythyry sometimes seems to think.
5. Oh, and not many people but Sythyry, Kantele, and Inconnu actually agreed with Sythyry's previously-held, now-abandoned theory of transaffection.

[Poll #1593581]

Comments

Re: Departures from canon

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Same-sex relationships do seem to be more tolerated in World Tree. The primary exception seems to be Gormoror and Herethroy; nowhere else do I see it prominently mentioned either way, but for Herethroy, anything other than a triad is significantly less satisfying(and a union of all co-lovers even more so). Even then, though, it doesn't seem to be taboo - there's a note right there that a member of a triad might scoot off for some extramarital attention, and so long as it's not another triad*, receive teasing at worst. Gormoror are just mentioned as usually settling down in heterosexual marriage, but I can't find anywhere that anyone else would mind something else very much(or even Gormoror, though it's not the norm).

(*: Of course, males and some co-lovers might well be officially members of another triad; this would presumably be "outside both triads").

Re: Departures from canon

[rowyn]

It's not so much that, canonically, there is stigma attached to same-sex relationships as that they're not identical to opposite-sex relationships. The sample Cani marriage in the book, for example, suggests that each female in the marriage only has sexual intercourse with a select number of the males (although this is vague: it says that the female's "husband" or "mates" in the marriage will father her children; one could argue that she would be expected to have sex with the "house-partners" just for fun). In Sythyry's writings, same-sex relationships and marriages are just as common as opposite-sex ones.

I am sure there was a sentence in the sourcebook somewhere about this -- explicitly lumping all non-fertile unions together -- but I cannot find it anywhere now. x.x It's driving me nutes.

Re: Departures from canon

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, the greater issue there could well be the treatment of a trans-species relationship. Lighten up the perspective on that sufficiently, and you have it at "it's a bit odd, but okay" levels.

I think I do see your point, though. Even in the species which could be expected to care more about such things(Rassimel being the chief one involved in Sythyry's journal), that seems to be getting quietly ignored. Cani marry in large, mixed-sex units and Orren families are all over the map, so either of them being intimate with someone of the same sex is hardly of note. (Not that all Orren family partnerships are intimate, even.)

Re: Departures from canon

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

I do not have my sourcebook with me at the moment, but that statement was in the middle of the chapter describing general attitudes and the nature of the tree; if you can find where it discusses religion, orthodoxy vs. non, and such, you're in the right area. I cannot remember the exact segment, but I would look for one talking about relationship, love, or marriage.

Re: Departures from canon

[rowyn]

Yes, that's where I think it is, but I looked through that chapter three times trying to find it this weekend, and never did. x.x I must be skimming past it each time or something.

Re: Departures from canon

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

Aha! Found it. Page 77, second column, last paragraph (and sentence) of the "cities" section; "Interspecies marriages (and other fundamentally infertile kinds of marriage) are regarded with some mixture of amused tolerance and confused scorn."

Now, my extrapolation from this and the earlier sections on the eight species was that what forms this took would indeed depend on the species; by the sound of it, because Cani are close-knit, it would not be uncommon for...ah...body-play between mates and mates-of-mates and such, but to have a marriage or mateship between a pair of same-gendered Cani (or a member of another species) would be unusual, and fit the above; some longhouses would be more or less tolerant. Similarly, I'd wager that it may not be uncommon for an Orren marriage of several partners to end and leave a same-gendered couple, or to have a same-gendered couple seeking another (likely of the opposite gender) to join their marriage, and that is all likely more social acceptable then the above Cani example. And then there are the Zi Ri...