Talyn: Aristotelian Offenses

[bellatrys]

You may recall that Aristotle when discussing the dramatic and narrative arts and the Suspension of Disbelief said that it's better to go with a Probable Impossible in fiction, than with an Improbable Possible (and then of course complicated it by pointing out that all that in part depends on the skill of the artist, the medium they're working in,

Comments

Cows with passports

[deiseach]

"...there aren't smugglers' trains going through the mountains both ways

Re: Cows with passports

[deiseach]

Oh, and the 'cows with passports' thing? Due to esoteric EU regulations on farm subsidies, imports/exports, and the divil an' all to do with makin' the few bob from the land, since Norn Iron was part of the U.K. which is a member state of the EU and the Republic was a separate, different member state of the EU, it paid farmers to transport their cattle back and forth across the border (allegedly 'sold' to a new farm each time, but it might be no more than moved from fields of farm A on the northern side to fields of farm A on the southern side). The joke was that some cows had crossed so often, they had their own passports.

Re: Cows with passports

[fledgist]

Littlewoods Pools form smuggling? Now there's got to be a tale in that, somewhere. My father, when I was a lad, used to do both the pools and the Irish Sweepstakes.

It's to do with the whole U.K./Eire thing

[deiseach]

We get so much stuff (TV, newspapers, groceries, what have you) from the U.K. as overspill or direct export that you often get offers of 'enter prize draw!' and it's only in the fine print that you see 'limited to U.K. residents only

[randwolf]

"...swapping clothes, food, music, beliefs and genes..."

And dances, and words. Serbian and Croatian are mutually comprehensible.

[fledgist]

Isn't that because they started out as the same Slavic tribes back in the fourth century and stayed pretty close to each other?

[randwolf]

And also because they kept on swapping words, otherwise the languages would have diverged.

[fledgist]

Not to mention husbands and wives.

[sajia]

I was under the impression that Hindu-Muslim intermarriage was rare in past Bengal, but now I'm wondering. I mean, we even share some common surnames ( usually surnames are used to differentiate us, eg Ganguly vs Karim, Ray vs Rahman) - Choudhury, Majumdar, Biswas.

[fledgist]

Which leads to the question of whether there's a house for Mr Biswas. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

[randwolf]

The likelyhood is high, and the likelyhood of extra-marital contacts is even higher; humans seem to be instinctively exogamous--the lure of the strange and forbidden is powerful. Were patronymic surnames forced on the Bengali by the British, or was there a previous custom, I wonder.

[sajia]

Were patronymic surnames forced on the Bengali by the British, or was there a previous custom, I wonder.

well as the religions that shaped teh area are all deeply patriarchal, and arose and grew with the various empires (with its bastard child - administration! with its clerks and census records, laws and property ownership, boo! hiss!) it's likely. Child ownership having to err towards men when possible in case of divorce (whether by the law or by the knife) to make sure that each family was given what it considered its own or as near abouts so that everyone felt, if not happy with the arrangements then at least accepting of them, lest the clans get a-fueding and undermining the civil authority (which might just be our jason and his trumpet when it comes right down to it, out in the sticks) because the last thing a striving empire needs is a group of clans getting some good crotch kicking practice in on each other only to find shinier mutual interests waiting back towards civilisation, with clerks to pillage and their gold to ravage

[anna_wing]

Yes, traditionally nomads and cities in close proximity don't get on at all.

[fledgist]

Well, it's a little more complicated than that. The nomads need places to trade. They need places which are neutral. And, above all, they need places where they can take a break from their regular lives. Cities provide this. Look at the relationship between cities and nomads in the Arabian peninsula (where the city-dwellers and the nomads are often related, if I recall correctly).

[anna_wing]

Ah yes, I had forgotten about those, sorry. My reference for nomads is Mongols vs China.

Except the Mongols - some of them - urbanized

[bellatrys]

and became city-dwellers (and builders...) themselves ;)

Everything's more complicated than it seems on the surface. Except when it isn't.

More worldbuilding holes

[deiseach]

So if the nomads have no rights and no representation and just wander about the place, how do the settled Tonks draft nomads

well, that's solved by the nomads just sending volunteers

[bellatrys]

and not fielding any regular regiments, which is all tied in (it seems) with them not having any votes because they're not fixed residents of any place, there's no way to keep track of them.

Which seems a notable lack of imagination on the part of the city-taaks, given that they have Magic that can spot spies and foreigners by the color of their souls or something, there ought to be some way to deal with it (how are they doing it in Mongolia i wonder, where something like half the population are still peripatetic?) but at least given that, I don't expect that they'd be blandly complacently submitting to whatever the urban Tonks think is best for the whole population...

Volunteers. Riiiiight...

[deiseach]

Why should the nomads volunteer? What's in it for them? Even if the Eastils win, what's the worst that's going to happen

Re: Volunteers. Riiiiight...well, maybe mercenaries

[deiseach]

There's another more logical explanation why nomad Tonks might join up. Suppose the civilians in the city states have neat magical gadgets the nomads want, and the warriors have too much battle magic to make raiding possible. Maybe the nomads hire out members of their tribes to get money to buy civilized goodies