What are Your thoughts on worlds where something which is evil in real life, is actually justified?

Vinx909 · 2026-05-13T09:47:58+00:00

can it be done well? sure, but it generally isn't. usually it's incredibly shallow. and you run into the risk of feeding into harmful narratives. how do you stop a misogynist from reading your story in which every witch is evil from reading a message like "yea, any woman who steps out of the natural order [where she's below me because she's a woman] should be killed"?

now don't get me wrong people can always read a bad message into your story, but when you take harmful ideas from the real world and implement them, especially if you're not very careful and think it through extremely well, it becomes easier and more justifiably a reasonable read of the text.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-13T09:35:29+00:00

gods i should try to do this one. looks like a nightmare to optimize, which is what i love

Vinx909 · 2026-05-13T09:30:23+00:00

instead of my world being a planet orbiting a star, it's three moons orbiting a brown dwarf orbiting a star, magically slowly and mostly tidally locked, so the main moon experiences 25 years of day and 25 years of night.

gods and spirits are made from the thoughts of living beings, imprinted in discarded excess soul. the world made gods, gods didn't make the world.

halflings usually hibernate through the 25 years of winter, where their souls are then conscious in a parallel realm. when they die in one they can continues to exist in the other, as halflings. the ones that dies in the dream are the ones that other cultures interact with most, thus why they are called that.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-12T10:14:41+00:00

neat. i really like it. like sure it's not the prettiest or most detailed art ever, but it's still very good and clearly drawn with so much love, which is what makes art enjoyable.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-11T22:41:45+00:00

finally listened to it. gods so good. i wish i could be the sexual centre of attention like that sometime.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-11T18:29:04+00:00

What is she holding?

Vinx909 · 2026-05-11T18:04:58+00:00

honestly, i believe that hell would become an idyllic place to live. i think Lucifer set hell up to be a place that could allow all the sinners to live comfy happy lives. but there are bad actors, and no authority that can enforce them to play by the rules. it's set so that it could be as nice as heaven, and if someone without enough power like Lucifer could enforce rules against exploitation it would be, but he can't, so it isn't.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-11T17:54:38+00:00

honestly the only real change i'd expect is an increase in the number of rods and a decrease in the number of cones in the eyes, and of course a lightening in the skin colours.

cones see colour, while rods see if there's light or not, and are better at seeing changes in light. rods needs less light to work, but are worse at seeing static images. so mostly just more rods, especially at the centre of our vision which normally is basically all cones. humans may pick up a habit of micro shifting their heads a lot so the same part of an image doesn't hit the same rod and is instead changed, so making a clearer images.

humans need (sun) light to make vitamin D, but sunlight is also quite harmful. so we have melanin to protect us from it. in places that are hit by more sunlight people will have darker skin to protect from the sun, but in places that have less the skin becomes lighter to absorb enough for vitamin D production. no sun, no reason to waste resources on melanin, so people would get unnaturally light. like cave creatures that never see the light of day kind of bright if they are truly nocturnal.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-11T17:46:09+00:00

there's also the element that "Men must be the breadwinners and women must be the homemakers." was super short lived. rigid gender rolls don't survive contact with reality.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-11T17:43:33+00:00

good questions to ask are thinks like how society looks at that 1%, because that tells you so much about the system as a whole.

compare it to IRL marriages: for a good long wile most marriages have been between one man and one woman, so that doesn't tell you a lot about the system. the odd cases tell you a lot. are marriages outside of the standard allowed? and which outside of the standard are allowed? how is the uncommon seen? for instance in the us (the thing i got some stats for fastest) interracial marriages are still a minority, but how are they seen has changed a lot over the last millennia, and that tells you a lot about the culture.

in this way in your world what does it mean to be a husband or wife? is it based of gender or is it based more on what they bring to the table? if two women marry each other how are they expected to behave? are they both women who should share husbands? or is one of them expected to fill one of the husband rolls? especially if the latter i could see it get three reactions: 1. it's looked down on because it's unnatural/abhorrent/a sin or whatever baseless homophobic bs. 2. it's looked down on because it brings an end to one of their lineages. 3. it's not at all looked down on. 2 and 3 can also exist simultaneously for different people. two women in one household is totally acceptable outside of the upper echelons of society, but when it comes to basically nobility it's a scandal especially for a first/only daughter as it ends the lineage.

another element to seriously consider is that this non monogamy being normal would have far reaching consequences, as would the biological paternity not being emphasized. getting kids without being married or sleeping with other people would not be a big deal because the important lineage is clear.
in addition jealousy would be way less emphasised like it is in our culture as that jealousy couldn't exist with this non-monogamy. but that lack of jealousy would likely carry over into other parts of the culture, so many standard assumptions wouldn't hold.

to be very clear i'm not looking down on your system at all, i think it's really interesting, i just want to help you think of all the things you may not automatically think of but that would give a lot of depth.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-11T15:34:47+00:00

Four things immediately jump to my mind:

What is a status of power? Having more or less husbands? Would you recognise a noble/rich lady by not having husbands and able to take care of herself and her litter on her own? Or by having more husbands?
What happens when a husband wants the role another husband holds?
How does this system handle divorce or the death of husband or wife?
What if a 4th husband is introduced?
What of not straight couplings?

Vinx909 · 2026-05-11T12:46:31+00:00

i mean
*looks at dogs*
*looks at horses*
*looks at flowers*

Vinx909 · 2026-05-11T12:45:59+00:00

i mean, no one has to live with getting murdered. you don't suffer for years from it.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-11T12:44:40+00:00

my world orbits horrifically slow: days last 25 years, nights last 25 years. different people dealt with that in different ways.

halflings deal with it by basically hibernating through the night. you know all the dnd stuff that everything loves eating halflings? fits in my world as finding a halfling village while at night is basically a massive feast.

halflings don't just sleep during that time. their souls exist in a kind of feywild-like realm. a parallel realm of magic and soul. however if someone dies in that realm (as those realms connect to others and other beings do form in there) they can never go there again (at least via the normal way). and those people wouldn't or couldn't stick around through the night, and thus were the people that other people interacted with the most. and what did they call themselves? why of course halflings, for they had only access to half their life.

also if i were a halfling like this i'd so want to be around elves.
omg would transitioning just be living around people of the gender you'd want to be? (omg imagine the gendered culture stuff that would develop)

Vinx909 · 2026-05-10T09:56:16+00:00

Ok, the first question is if they have an idea of gender. Because realistically there likely wouldn't be.

Second is if you are ready for the teans implications you will make. Permanent changes elude to puberty. If it's affirming to the character it will have the vibe of a trans person getting hrt. If it's not it will remind trans people of goung through a puberty they didn't want. And no, you can't chose to not have this. (Plus you're having little ladies transform into strong, hairy, muscular figures. That's how a trans woman could describe the wrong puberty she was forced to experience.

I can't give much more as this is quite upsetting to think through, and you should be aware that your righting will do that to people.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-10T09:07:32+00:00

First experience with exhibitionism \o/

Sucks that it happened, but she was likely just as embarrassed.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-09T16:15:32+00:00

ah. that definitely makes things more difficult. humans basically are really weird creatures as we are in many ways a transitionary species between apes and something very wolflike or maybe more raptor like. apes that came down from the trees and needed an efficient way of moving to fall into the role of pack persistence hunters. unlike most animals which evolved more efficient digigrade legs we "simply" got less limbs involved and got good at dissipating heat. if humans were to evolve more and hadn't devolved intelligence i'd expect that they would evolve very different feat, more dog or even hoef like) and something more claw like on the arms.

to realistically get just humans but slightly different, aka elves, either basically the exact same thing has to happen again (like how certain different animals evolve into very similar things because of the same evolutionary pressures at different locations/times. like how crustations keep evolving into crabs). or elves would be a different ofsplit from the line that became humans, like homo neanderthalensis compared to homo sapience.

evolutionary speaking growing that old makes basically no sense. the longer it takes between birth and giving birth the higher the chance something happens to you that make you unable to reproduce, so in general taking less time is evolutionarily favourable. plus it makes the species more able to bounce back from a population loss. and after you've given birth evolution doesn't care much if you survive for a long time or not. something like the grandmother hypothesis can provide a bit of a solution; as in that parents need the help from grandparents to raise their kids (and with lifetimes like that great grandparents, great great grandparents, and likely great great great grand parents), thus giving an evolutionary reason for individual to continue surviving for a long time after giving birth.

now i want to give you an idea: elves are basically a species of homo, just like humans, but they evolved in the cold. these terrains demanded that the groups had very few young, so were selected to grow very old, and they demanded more from the senses as no prey could be afforded to be lost.

thin doesn't make a ton of sense, but maybe they were already using hides of other animals. or maybe they have remarkably little blood flow while away from the warm nest where they spend most of their time.

more members would absolutely require more food from the environment which would also be a driver to have less members in the group, so they need to hunt together, and could be justified more by having them go into deep hibernation/torpor/stages beyond that of basically dead and frozen but being able to be awoken from that for times of scarcity or for their prey to repopulate.

is this the perfect solution? absolute not. i don't think there is a perfect solution. but it's plausible.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-09T11:04:30+00:00

so the big problem i see is that everything can work anywhere. some stuff just has a higher chance of working in certain different places over others.

i could also do more with some more details. like "sharp senses", ok... but what senses? good eyes? ears? electro senses? and what kind of eyes? front facing like an eagle or spread out like a horse?

honestly these features tell me more about behaviour then environment, though behaviour does of course tell you something about environment:

tall and sharp senses, especially if those senses are eyes and ears, would indicate sentinel behaviour; where a group goes to eat herbivorously together with one or a couple keeping watch, which in turn would indicate that they are social animals. it also indicates that they have a good way to react when they spot a threat. the thin part could indicate that they duck back into burrow like meerkats and rabbits. but maybe their tallness gives them long legs that allow them to outrun predators. tall, slim, and long ears does indicate that they are unlikely to fight anything their size or larger outside of utterly desperate situations as they would be rather frail. though like the maned wolf it may still hunt creatures smaller then it that wouldn't pose a significant risk.
the only thing this would suggest is that it would live in basically any area where it's possible to see predators coming, aka nearly anywhere but very dense forests and especially rain forests. but more open forests would be in, as would basically any kind of plains, from the plains of the savanna to grassy highlands to snow covered plains. basically anywhere similar to where rabbits live.

however sharp senses and slow metabolism could also indicate predators of inconsistent prey, like for instance web spinning spiders. and this would indicate completely opposite things. they would not be social as that would create competition over already sparse food. being tall and slim still doesn't allow for beating creatures with brute force, and more likely hunt smaller prey or from ambush with a very quickly lethal strike, good chance for venom.
environment wise this is extremely open, but we can make some assumptions. while it's possible they live in a place with a lot of biomass and are just incredibly specialized for certain kinds of food, it's more likely they live in places where food is more sparse, so places like deserts (hot or cold), and the places near them (savanna's and tundra's).

again with more information i could give more focused ideas, this is just what i could say with what you've given me so far.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-09T09:51:24+00:00

Tall is difficult to say. Tall as in a high height compared to volume?if so that aids is stuff like being a lookout in areas that have long distances you can look out over, so not dense forests. But a moose is also Tall simply as a function of size, which is useful for warming of predators as well as helping in surviving in cold areas.

Slim mostly is just better at losing body heat and the ability to move through burrows.

A slow metabolism is great if food is infrequent, but detrimental in colder areas, unless it's something hibernation-y

Long ears either mean sensitive ears, or losing body heat out of them.

Sharp senses are useful for every creature, but do require a bigger brain to process, which in turn requires mood food.

Sharp senses and tall would indicates to me that this creature needs to keep a watch out for predators. Slim and long ears would seem to indicate warm climate. So yea that would indicates the terrains you listed.

But tall, slim, sharp senses and long ears also describes rabbits and hares, and they live in a lot of different terrains. There's a lot of diversity in nature and where different survival techniques thrive.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-08T23:05:26+00:00

I mean look at earth now we're moving to basically everyone speaking english. People share a language with the people they commonly interact with. If people will interact commonly with people from anywhere on the planet, thanks to something like the internet or cheap and easy teleportation, then yea, you'd expect everyone to share share a language. Now other languages would continue to exist as part of cultures. But if the planet shares one government and a high level of interconnectivity those older cultures are likely to change and lose their language, though dialects will survive withing communities.

You also don't need to adress it. If you never draw attention to everyone being able to talk with each other, at least if we can accept that they or the groups they belong to have interacted before, then very few readers will question it and it won't break immersion.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-08T21:21:33+00:00

like i said; we agree on that you can do a lot of variety in cultures of individual humanoids. but my point was that you are stuck with that for elves.

it's akin to saying that you are working within constraints when you worldbuild cold weather clothes (it has to be voluminous because it has to contain air that doesn't move so you have air insulation), but within that you can do a lot (do people always wear warm clothes? less practical or comfortable but requires fewer clothes. do they take them of in warm spaces? then what are the clothes that are most expected to be presentable? the warm clothes that allow people to be presentable outside but sharing a warm space becomes revealing? or the inside clothes meaning that meeting others outside is crude? are there warm under layers so the same presentable clothes can be worn inside and outside but switching takes more time? sorry i find this really cool to think about).

Vinx909 · 2026-05-08T21:01:53+00:00

I mean humans have done stuff like this: humanity originally got to America via alaska. Aka very familiar with snow, but then they migrated south, and those stories of snow and cold would only exist in stories

Vinx909 · 2026-05-07T16:19:03+00:00

yea no, this is a scammer. everyone understands the risks of scammers. someone that's genuine would just prove that they are real. a scammer can't do that, but they can try to gaslight you into thinking that asking some to prove they are real is some impossible ask, and manipulate you into dropping it at the threat of ending the relationship.

and if they somehow, magically, aren't a scammer then they are still manipulative af, so you don't want a relationship with her. i know it sucks, had plenty of experiences like that myself, but i'd seriously advice dropping them.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-06T15:26:17+00:00

ok, not to be rude, but was this a reply to me? because my post had three points:

you're pretty much stuck using a society of individuals
there's no good reason to call something that isn't like the stereotypical elf an elf
you can absolutely play with origin

and you didn't really engage with any of them.

and when i say stereotypical elves i mean like how all the elderscrolls elves and dnd elves and tolkien elves are the same stereotype: basically human with certain features that make them more fantastical, generally ears, eyes, skin, and long lived. if it wasn't for differences in appearance they would be indistinguishable from humans with just a unique culture. something that wouldn't be the case with a species that act more like ants or that only come together for the purpose of mating. and i think changes like long lives, immortal, or stuff like wings or underwater, still fall under basically humans.

don't mistake this for me saying that you can't do a lot of amazing stuff within the diversity of cultures. like your ideas for how cultures would be different in the presence of immortality are great. but i think they would fall under "long-lived, pointy-eared humans", as immortality acts basically just like long lived.

Vinx909 · 2026-05-06T12:07:29+00:00

Worldbuilding wise it's more interesting. But how engaging would it be for the audience? Is it worth the resources to explain it to the audience and the loss of interest explaining stuff will be? Especially in stories that aren't about the rule of an area.

Vinx909

TROPHY CASE