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personalapocalypse2024-02-18 07:22 pm
wallwalker) wrote in personalapocalypse2024-02-18 07:22 pm
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FFVII Sedoretu worldbuilding
I came up with an alternate moiety system on FFVII for a Sedoretu challenge that I ended up having to drop because I forgot something, and now I keep having more ideas about it. So writing up a long meta/headcanon post as to how they might work. I might go more into depth about how these relationships worked later. A lot of this is from the traditional Sedoretu structure created by Ursula K. Le Guin.
(If you don't know what a Sedoretu is, this explains it fairly well.)
The Sedoretu idea, in this case, would be modeled on relationships and marriage practices of the Cetra - or at least the popular perception of "Ancient" relationships. Whether or not this is actually how the Cetra did things is unclear. There was one person who might've known, and it's not clear whether or not she had the chance to pass it on to her daughter before she died, or if her daughter would've been old enough to remember it in detail. We all know how much things get lost over time, and how the research of a single person can color people's belief in history even if it's completely made up. So it's very possible that all of this came from what someone else thought the "Ancients" would've done, since there's very little history that's survived from back then. Even in FFVIIr canon, the Shinra have this incredibly idealized version of the Cetra in their little VR show, so there are probably all of these very idealized notions of how their relationships went.
At any rate, in my head it would've been most popular a century or three back. In the present game time there wouldn't really be that many of these forming; they would still exist, but people consider them quaint and old-fashioned. In the fic I've actually finished about this concept so far, Barret, Dyne, Eleanor and Myrna discuss a wedding party of sorts, and they think that it's not a bad idea, that the town could use a bit of a chance to celebrate, even if the occasion would've seemed a bit old-fashioned to most of the younger people in Corel. The entire idea of moiety and four-person marriages would've only really started being pushed out of favor in the past couple of generations... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The main differences I came up with would be the nature of moiety and how people are assigned to it. It's more like modern Western astrology than the system used by Le Guin; it's assigned by the place of birth and time of birth, and specifically whether the tides of the Lifestream were coming in (Flood) or going out (Ebb) in that area at the time of birth. (Children born at a high point are Flood and at a low point are Ebb, and in both cases the child is considered to have a special connection to the Lifestream.)
Relationships between two people of opposite moieties are encouraged, as are four-person marriages. In specific the so-called Ancient lore that this was based off of said that children should be borne between people of the high tide and people of the low tide, to maintain balance. Some of the historians speculate that the four-person marriages are most common because of the nomadic lifestyles of the Ancients and to ensure that a family can endure even in dangerous journeys.
At the point of the game, this is seen as old-fashioned at best and outright ridiculous at worst. This is largely because of President Shinra's attempt at such a union. It was, at the best of times, little more than a publicity stunt and nothing like an actual marriage between four people. It was a union proposed between President Shinra, his wife, the then-newly-appointed Mayor Domino of Midgar, and his assistant and partner Hart. For all that it was seen as old-fashioned, it was billed very much as a union of four people who were all very much invested in Midgar's success and the success of all of the people living there.
It ended with Mrs. Shinra dead, President Shinra the sole guardian of her son with him, Domino basically sent to his dead-end job in the Shinra archives, and Hart staying loyal to Domino. Shinra, probably with an appropriately sad face, had said that their relationship had shown the fundamental weakness of these old ways, even among people who were truly like-minded, and that it proves that moieties and sedoretu marriages were no longer needed in a new, modern, Mako-powered world. And that was the moment when those beliefs and relationships started being treated with open disdain. Same-moiety relationships became more common and those who complained about them were mocked and called old-fashioned. As young people flocked to Midgar and Shinra's other holdings, they left old ideas behind as well.
Hart maintains that it had been the President's goal all along, to undermine something that people believed in more than they believed in Shinra's vision of the future. The President will neither confirm nor deny it.
The tides are an actual phenomenon that occur. Planetologists have published papers saying that there are places in the world where more life had existed in certain phases of time than others, even when controlling for climate and other ecological factors. Likewise there were places/times during so-called low tides, where there was much less life (plants growing, animals of any sorts thriving) even when other conditions were equal to high tidal areas. However they've also observed that these tides are weakening as Mako Reactors become more commonplace.
Whether or not the spiritual components of those things are true or not is impossible to say in the modern world. If any of the older, more traditional Cetra were still alive, maybe they could tell. But Ifalna died before she could speak of it to her daughter... or else she spoke of it so long ago that Aerith couldn't remember. And so the only person left who could perceive such things just... doesn't know.
(That's the Watsonian explanation as to why no one knows. The Doyalist explanation is that I haven't fully decided yet. I do like the idea of there being some indication of how high or low the tide was when one was born, and it being something that only those with the Cetra's abilities could potentially see. So I'm leaning towards there being some form of spiritual mark that probably doesn't factor in nearly as much as most people who followed the practices believed, but that the only person left who could see them is Aerith, and she just doesn't know how or where to look.)
There are a few obvious differences between this and the version that le Guin created. The main one is not using the Morning/Evening dichotomy. Another is that I don't tend to factor in gender. I don't tend to factor it in for any kind of Sedoretu AU, just because... well, it doesn't really work for me. And I feel like it leaves out people who don't fit in the gender binary.
I do still need to know if I can find names for the different kinds of relationships within the sedoretu (day/night/etc) but I'll have to do more research on oceans, tides and other related phenomena to actually come up with that.
(If you don't know what a Sedoretu is, this explains it fairly well.)
The Sedoretu idea, in this case, would be modeled on relationships and marriage practices of the Cetra - or at least the popular perception of "Ancient" relationships. Whether or not this is actually how the Cetra did things is unclear. There was one person who might've known, and it's not clear whether or not she had the chance to pass it on to her daughter before she died, or if her daughter would've been old enough to remember it in detail. We all know how much things get lost over time, and how the research of a single person can color people's belief in history even if it's completely made up. So it's very possible that all of this came from what someone else thought the "Ancients" would've done, since there's very little history that's survived from back then. Even in FFVIIr canon, the Shinra have this incredibly idealized version of the Cetra in their little VR show, so there are probably all of these very idealized notions of how their relationships went.
At any rate, in my head it would've been most popular a century or three back. In the present game time there wouldn't really be that many of these forming; they would still exist, but people consider them quaint and old-fashioned. In the fic I've actually finished about this concept so far, Barret, Dyne, Eleanor and Myrna discuss a wedding party of sorts, and they think that it's not a bad idea, that the town could use a bit of a chance to celebrate, even if the occasion would've seemed a bit old-fashioned to most of the younger people in Corel. The entire idea of moiety and four-person marriages would've only really started being pushed out of favor in the past couple of generations... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The main differences I came up with would be the nature of moiety and how people are assigned to it. It's more like modern Western astrology than the system used by Le Guin; it's assigned by the place of birth and time of birth, and specifically whether the tides of the Lifestream were coming in (Flood) or going out (Ebb) in that area at the time of birth. (Children born at a high point are Flood and at a low point are Ebb, and in both cases the child is considered to have a special connection to the Lifestream.)
Relationships between two people of opposite moieties are encouraged, as are four-person marriages. In specific the so-called Ancient lore that this was based off of said that children should be borne between people of the high tide and people of the low tide, to maintain balance. Some of the historians speculate that the four-person marriages are most common because of the nomadic lifestyles of the Ancients and to ensure that a family can endure even in dangerous journeys.
At the point of the game, this is seen as old-fashioned at best and outright ridiculous at worst. This is largely because of President Shinra's attempt at such a union. It was, at the best of times, little more than a publicity stunt and nothing like an actual marriage between four people. It was a union proposed between President Shinra, his wife, the then-newly-appointed Mayor Domino of Midgar, and his assistant and partner Hart. For all that it was seen as old-fashioned, it was billed very much as a union of four people who were all very much invested in Midgar's success and the success of all of the people living there.
It ended with Mrs. Shinra dead, President Shinra the sole guardian of her son with him, Domino basically sent to his dead-end job in the Shinra archives, and Hart staying loyal to Domino. Shinra, probably with an appropriately sad face, had said that their relationship had shown the fundamental weakness of these old ways, even among people who were truly like-minded, and that it proves that moieties and sedoretu marriages were no longer needed in a new, modern, Mako-powered world. And that was the moment when those beliefs and relationships started being treated with open disdain. Same-moiety relationships became more common and those who complained about them were mocked and called old-fashioned. As young people flocked to Midgar and Shinra's other holdings, they left old ideas behind as well.
Hart maintains that it had been the President's goal all along, to undermine something that people believed in more than they believed in Shinra's vision of the future. The President will neither confirm nor deny it.
The tides are an actual phenomenon that occur. Planetologists have published papers saying that there are places in the world where more life had existed in certain phases of time than others, even when controlling for climate and other ecological factors. Likewise there were places/times during so-called low tides, where there was much less life (plants growing, animals of any sorts thriving) even when other conditions were equal to high tidal areas. However they've also observed that these tides are weakening as Mako Reactors become more commonplace.
Whether or not the spiritual components of those things are true or not is impossible to say in the modern world. If any of the older, more traditional Cetra were still alive, maybe they could tell. But Ifalna died before she could speak of it to her daughter... or else she spoke of it so long ago that Aerith couldn't remember. And so the only person left who could perceive such things just... doesn't know.
(That's the Watsonian explanation as to why no one knows. The Doyalist explanation is that I haven't fully decided yet. I do like the idea of there being some indication of how high or low the tide was when one was born, and it being something that only those with the Cetra's abilities could potentially see. So I'm leaning towards there being some form of spiritual mark that probably doesn't factor in nearly as much as most people who followed the practices believed, but that the only person left who could see them is Aerith, and she just doesn't know how or where to look.)
There are a few obvious differences between this and the version that le Guin created. The main one is not using the Morning/Evening dichotomy. Another is that I don't tend to factor in gender. I don't tend to factor it in for any kind of Sedoretu AU, just because... well, it doesn't really work for me. And I feel like it leaves out people who don't fit in the gender binary.
I do still need to know if I can find names for the different kinds of relationships within the sedoretu (day/night/etc) but I'll have to do more research on oceans, tides and other related phenomena to actually come up with that.