Question: Choosing Moeities

[anxious_songbird]

Not much is actually said about moeities in Ursula's works outside of the marriage aspects, despite the text saying it has to do with ancient religious reasons. How do you decide on what moeity a character is in?

Do you just go by gut instinct or go with what aesthetically makes sense? Do you create your own worldbuilding around it or are you lax with it? Are there in your headcanons markers of what moeity someone is in and if so what are they?

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> If it's a one-off, I'll probably go by what works best for the characters (so vibes, basically.) If I'm going to continue writing for the characters, then I do pretty much have to map it out - figure out whether the basis is from parentage or from something else.<<

That makes sense.

>> (One of my ideas for the alternate version I had was based on time of birth and ancient tidal calendars for a massive collection of souls/spiritual energy that behaves like an ocean.) <<

I've seen it done a few times. One of the more interesting had the Day caste (nearly half the population) as farmers I think it was, and the Star castes were determined by what constellation was overhead when they were born at night, which then sorted them into different roles in society. It seemed to work.

>> I like the ideal of markers to tell if someone is in a particular group, if there's a basis for that (magic or even some kind of spiritual component.) <<

Any time there is something that determines mate selection, people want to know about it in relation to others. They can get very aggressive about that, which is why women have been murdered for wearing masculine clothes.

>> But it would depend a lot on the fandom. Maybe only a select group of people could ever see them, and those people are gone, or their civilization has more or less died out, so almost no one is left. <<

That can happen.

>> Which means, really, why couldn't someone just alter their birth records and pretend to be whatever they want? <<

They could. However, if anyone else found out, the reaction would likely be violent. It would be perceived not only as practicing incest but deceiving other people into doing it also -- and a kind of rape by deceit, since most people would not consent to sex inside their own moiety. That could make for a lot of plot tension.