So, our winners here:
Nonhumans: Yes, by a landslide.
Alt-History: Yes, by a smaller landslide.
Designer Species: No, by a wide margin.
Gaian Only: Tie. I'm going to go with "Yes" as the more restrictive option.
The Rarity vote is more interesting. We have:
"It's like glasses", with 6 votes.
"1 human in 10", with 6 votes.
"1 Elf in 5000", with 6 votes.
"1 Elf in 250", with 5 votes.
"Literally an isekai", with 5 votes.
From this I can infer the following:
- Pretty much everybody wants elves to be people you might have met in everyday life.
- The other side of this coin: nobody wants elves to be so rare that it's actually difficult to find one.
- Almost nobody wants humanity to be a serious minority. It's fine if our heroine is the only human, but that's because being the only human is then a characteristic
of the heroine.
We'll come back to this section once we look at what "elves" could actually be like.
For the alien minds and bodies portion, we have:
We're fine with any mind that's human-with-exceptions. (12 votes, a landslide.)
We're fine with any mind extrapolatable from a source human. (10 votes, again a landslide.)
We're considerably cooler on genuinely nonhuman minds. (7 votes.)
I'm fine with this: true speculative-fiction treatments of alien minds - such as
Crystal Society and
Blindsight - tend to have to dedicate a very large portion of the narrative to the implementation of that. I could do that, and it'd be fun, but this vote says it's not what this quest is about. The easier treatments of "sort of human" minds are more than we need here, honestly.
As for alien bodies:
The majority is fine with "monstergirl" level stuff. (10 votes.)
Shapeshifters have significant support. (7 votes.)
True nonhumanoids also have some interest. (7 votes.)
The uncanny valley of anthros and "monstrous humanoids" has very little interest. (4 votes.)
The upshot of this is that
people who could never be mistaken for human are rare.
Since we already know that beings from other worlds don't exist,
I'm going to steal the word "alien" to describe this category.
Eyeballing proportions here, I'm gonna say that
aliens are 1-in-5000 rare. Available if the voters choose to go looking, and usable in the background for flavour, but the default state is that they don't exist in real life.
The first upshot of this is that in order for non-alien elves to be significantly more common than aliens, they have to be
significantly more common. Which means that we can't have "elven presence overall" be 1 in 5000.
Our second rarest high-voted option is 1 elf in 250, which would mean that 1 in 20 elves is an alien. This is probably too high a proportion: it makes us near-certain to socially encounter an alien if we become involved in the elven community.
The next step up in the high-ranked votes is "Elves are as common as people with glasses", so now we know that
elves are not a minority.
That implies that the history of this world must be very different from ours. You can't replace half the population of Earth with people who have different physical and mental capacities and expect it to stay the same. (Doubling the population will only cause
more issues.)
Now we're getting down to brass tacks. The next few votes will determine the shape of the society our heroine is venturing into.
On that note, let's take a moment to review what we know already.
What We Know:
- About 1 in 5000 people are aliens.
- More than half the population is nonhuman.
- Extraterrestrials and constructs don't exist.
- Our heroine is the leader of an organization which does both science and art.
- Our heroine was able to gather a fairly detailed knowledge of sex without ever meeting anyone in person.
- Our heroine is a twentysomething virgin.
- Our heroine bikes everywhere.
- Our heroine LARPs. (What a dork.)
- Our heroine is a blacksmith.
- Our heroine is some form of performer.
- Our heroine has a serious chance to change the world.
- The genre is "Romantic Drama".
- The tone is light, but realistic.
Implications:
- It's possible for a twentysomething to be in charge of a significant organization in this world.
- The culture is not so sexualized that a twentysomething virgin is remarkable.
- Something similar to the internet exists. This implies mass manufacturing and distribution networks. In turn, this implies settled answers to questions about who can do what where - so some large-scale form of government exists.
- If robots exist, they're not intelligent like humans are.
- The scientific method exists in this world, which implies the existence of a scientific community.
- It's possible to learn how to blacksmith in this world: the art still exists.
- A major segment of the population has nonhuman enough bodyplans that some human stuff is difficult or impossible to use.
- That last has a ton of knock-on effects:
- Buildings are on the whole built larger and more accessibly, which also means they're more expensive compared to our world.
- The same is also true of cars and other heavy machinery, which means they're less common.
- That in turn implies:
- Cities are more walkable and have better public transport.
- Cities have more parks and public spaces. Boardwalks and open-air markets are still everyday.
- You probably know your neighbours better.
- People have to get more places under their own power, so they get more exercise, and are therefore healthier. Hiking is also more popular.
- Automation is probably more developed, because skilled machine operators are even more expensive.
- Adjustable or transformable furniture is very common. Sofa beds and beanbag chairs aren't declassé.
- Species with similar bodyplans tend to share spaces. There's probably a "tauric district."
- That means there are places where it's hard for humans to use the locals' stuff!
- Discrimination works differently than in our world. I'm going to go the lighter and softer route:
- An increased awareness of diversity decreases intolerance, rather than promoting the narcissism of petty differences.
- Different bodyplans reduce ableism and make everywhere more accessible, rather than ghettoizing those with nonstandard shapes.
In summary:
- Tech or magitech is comparable to the real world, but with less cars and more robots.
- Cities are nicer than in our world.
- There's a tauric district in every city. "Taur culture" exists.
- It's socially acceptable to be cozy!
- Discrimination is rarer and about different things.
- Unlucky people's morning commutes suck even more than in our world.
- Long-distance travel is harder overall.
Given all this, I have a few more questions...
Rithsathra
There's a lot of ways that having sex with an alien could differ from having sex with a human. Let's go through them.
1: Overall bodyplan.
Recycling our earlier categories. Mark all that you're interested in:
[ ][Bodyplan] Humans.
[ ][Bodyplan] Vulcans, elves, androids, catgirls, and other Star Trek aliens.
[ ][Bodyplan] Draenei, angels, pixies, giants, and other fantasy races.
[ ][Bodyplan] Driders, lamia, harpies, dullahans, and other monstergirls or taurs.
[ ][Bodyplan] Gungans, minotaurs, Kzin, Thri-Keen, and other monstrous humanoids.
[ ][Bodyplan] Werewolves, slimegirls, free-roaming AI, and other shapeshifters.
[ ][Bodyplan] Dragons, tentacle monsters, Daleks, and other nonhumanoids.
2: Sexual anatomy.
Obviously the actual sex organs are going to be important. Mark all that you're interested in:
[ ][Genitalia] Bioluminescence, alien skin tones, and other visual edits.
[ ][Genitalia] Temperature, texture, and other tactile edits.
[ ][Genitalia] Exotic penises. (Knots, ridges, barbs, tentacles, etc.)
[ ][Genitalia] Exotic vaginas. (More than one clitoris, internal cilia, etc.)
[ ][Genitalia] Partners with multiple penises.
[ ][Genitalia] Partners with multiple vaginas.
[ ][Genitalia] Partners with both a penis and a vagina.
[ ][Genitalia] Unusual placement of genitalia.
[ ][Genitalia] Unusual sexual fluids.
3: Sexual response.
Genitalia are cool and all, but they're hardly the be-all end-all. Mark all that you're interested in.
[ ][Response] Unusual erogenous zones. Ears, tails, wings, hair, etc.
[ ][Response] Atypical refractory periods.
[ ][Response] Hypersensitivity, lack of sensitivity.
[ ][Response] Atypical libido - heats, hypersexuality, species-wide arousal triggers, etc.
[ ][Response] Unusually visible or hidden arousal.
... I could continue, but this is probably already too much detail. MOVING RIGHT ALONG
Sexual Mores:
How is sex treated by our heroine's culture? Not to put too fine a point on it, how lewd is it?
[ ][Mores] Sex is treated as immoral save in very specific circumstances.
[ ][Mores] It's basically like real life back in the 90's. "Gay" is an insult. Trans people don't exist.
[ ][Mores] It's basically like real life circa 2010. Gays can marry. Trans people sorta exist.
[ ][Mores] It's basically like real life circa right now.
[ ][Mores] Today's issues have been resolved in favor of more open sexuality.
LGBT people have rights pretty much everywhere. There's also decent sex education pretty much everywhere. Prostitution has been legalized, but is under tight regulation and still carries major stigma: other forms of sex work are less discriminated against than today, though still disreputable.
[ ][Mores] We're a few decades further down that same road.
LGBT issues have been basically resolved; transphobic jokes only get told by your embarrasing granddad. Sex education is now pretty good; it stresses reciprocity, communication, and mutual enjoyment. It's no longer embarrassing to admit you met your partner via a hookup app. Sex work is beginning to gain traction as a major activist cause, though it still faces stiff opposition.
[ ][Mores] It's been another few decades, and the world continues to become more open.
Sex work is starting to lose its stigma, being seen more as
embarrassing than
disreputable. Brothels and sex shops remain tucked away in weird corners, but a few brave universities offer courses on sexuality with hands-on components. Approximately a mountain of waivers is required. The use of sex surrogates to aid in therapy for sexual issues is now largely uncontroversial.
[ ][Mores] It's been about a century, and sexuality is starting to come into the light.
You can take a 2-year program on sex work at a technical college and get a certification. Most cities have a well-regulated red-light district, with sex clubs that advertise as such. "Sexologist" is no longer a job title that raises eyebrows. The sex education you get in high school admits that kinks exist. Sexual diseases and dysfunctions receive serious investment. Better methods of contraception are invented, and many STDs are vaccinated out of the population.
[ ][Mores] The world has started to slide into blatant eroticism.
You can get an MA in sex work from a reputable university. While sex work continues to have unique issues as a profession, there are now established certification standards and a strong professional association, just as in law, engineering and medicine. Saying the word "whore" is a seriously career-limiting move if you're a politician. A high school sex education teaches RACK.
[ ][Mores] A sex theme park along the lines of
Mizuryu Kei Land actually exists ethically.
