So. I recently came across this website and it got me thinking about all of the new cultures in the Sixth World. Between the Elf nations, Orksploitation culture, neo-Aztecs, druids, the NANs, feudalist megacorporate enclaves, neo-anarchist street tribes, east meeting west, north meeting south, left meeting right, the matrix, sex changes, and cyberpenises, all sorts of new marriage customs will be created and old marriage customs will be revived and they'll be mixed and matched in ways that no one ever dreamed of.

Of course, I imagine that there will be plenty of matrix sites where an interested party can purchase a bride or a groom, much like the one linked to. But other, more delicate and more specific aspects provide the most interesting possibilities. How would one Tir noble propose to another, and how might a Shadowrunner get involved in such a proposition? What happens when a member of a street tribe which doesn't believe in marriage falls in love with a member of a Sicilian crime family?

These questions and others like them pose limitless possibilities for the employment of deniable assets.

And many of those possibilities involve rescuing people who were married for profit via the matrix.

If I wanted to get married, I'd rely more on my undeniable assets *



*disclaimer: I have no desirable assets or qualities of any sort, but the pun was too good for me to resistd

hyz, how do you run across so much stuff in so many directions? The FAQ was scary, but the testimonials were scarier. I'm tempted to fake a viable proposal just to get a girl away from those parents and into a hippie commune or something.

People who want their children to grow up "old-fashioned" these days have a pretty uphill challenge. I've heard that there are Amish-type communities in the Midwest in which parents encourage their sons and daughters to try mainstream life around 18 or 19 years old... and where they live, mainstream life is mostly trailer parks with recreational crack use, so most of the young adults scoot back to the more restrictive, but safer and happier, subculture they grew up in. In the Sixth World, I see raising children "old fashioned" as an even more uphill challenge, and those who really care will form enclaves. The Idaho Panhandle, for example, may still be a place where one can avoid modern urban life... and establish any one of a variety of possible microcultures.

There are a variety of reasons one might have for forging a pedigree. Another thread described a run based on "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers". People living in an isolated valley kidnap several women from mainstream corp society; corpers hire shadowrunners to rescue the women; but some of the women want to stay... maybe because it's less polluted, rather than a Gor-esque "ah, I cannot resist the Real Man who has claimed me". In this version, the runners kept their deal, but left their van unlocked and programmed with an autonav back through the hidden pass into the valley, so they got paid AND the women got to make their choice.

And they still complain about Japan being Pedoland?

The site was a satire, actually (Note that I did not know this when I posted earlier). It isn't real. Which actually means that this niche has yet to be filled and may be a good investment for an internet entrepreneur. And it really dashed my hopes of finding a goth girl with a old soul who is willing to marry the first guy who plops down 27 grand.


I'm waiting to find the Amazon street tribe in which women with flaming clubs raid sports bars and beat prospective mates with all of their might then drag them back to their dens, creating harems from those who survive and knitting the skins of those who don't into decorative throws.

but they are basically SELLING their daughters on that page . . where's the bureau of youth care or however that is called over there? Why's nobody saying anything against that? if it were somewhere else, say in some arabian or asian country there would probably be a literal uproar through most of america as soon as that becomes public knowledge . . heck, why go that far away? it'd be a scandal if it were mexican or afro american or something from south america too . .

Eh? You are aware that forced marriages do occur in Asia and the middle East, and that dowries and bride prices are still paid in places? I mean, ok, they're generally not arranged on a web site…

~J

yes i know that and i am the first to speak up against that too . .
but if america insists upon being on the moral high horse they should go to work in their own backyard first . .
i might be a bastard, i might hate the church and i might think marriage stupid . . but that website is going too far even in my eyes!
Women/Girls have to be treated with the respect they deserve . . at least as long as they act accordingly and not like snobbdy stuck up arrogant bitches . .

Define 'wrong things'.

As to your outrage at America going 'on about other countries' and their traditional habits, I don't recall a general mainstream uproar coming from America against arranged marriages (or even dowries) in other countries.

As an American, I think Stahlseele has a point. America does bitch a lot about other countries, and it does need to clean up it's own backyard. We go on about democracy, and then support dictatorships. We go on about human rights while supporting a second-class citizenship marriage system and the death penalty. We absolutely give other countries grief about things we don't pay attention to at home.

That said, I think other countries are guilty of the same thing. And it's not even necessarily bad. Yes, America has problems. No, that doesn't mean America should remain silent when it sees what it regards as injustice.

For stability, arranged marriages at a young age are far superior to romantic marriages when one is older. Given that arranged marriages have a substantially lower divorce rate than "love" marriages, I'm surprised that they aren't standard today.

I can certainly imagine the practice of bride (and groom) kidnapping (another good one for long-term relationships, though fraught with an above-average suicide rate) making a comeback and Shadowrunners being hired to perform such extractions.

Hell, with Orkish reproduction and growth rate being what they are, I wouldn't be surprised to see them forego the one-on-one marriage completely and opt for a clan-based child-rearing concept. After all, the biological aspect of marriage (note that I am not saying this is the only aspect) is that for humans it is advantageous to single out a prospective mate, since the child must be cared for and supported extensively for about a dozen years before biological maturity is reached. The Orkish metabolism cuts down on that time significantly (by about a third) to ~8 years, while the litter sizes mean that there is always an extended family to fall back on for support (both financial and in actually raising them damn kids). Shorter life expectation on the other hand means that not all Orks get to breed actively, thereby making a "altruistically motivated" approach to reproduction likely: If only one of the standard four littermates breeds, that is enough to pass on the family genes. The other three support their breeding sibling to the best of their abilities.

And of course, Orks, being as fanatically identity-obsessed as they are, would have no problem adopting a lifestyle that sets them apart from the rest of Metahumanity while simultaneously being more suitable to their racial characteristics.

In a representative government, there's only so much blame the public can avoid for the actions of its government, and I'm not buying it anymore. Hell, there's only so much blame the populace can avoid for any government without quashed uprisings to at least show effort.

I'm also not buying the Western Europe-bashing—do we have anything other than vague stereotypes to back up the attitude going around in this thread? I'll admit that it has been around two, maybe two and a half years since I was last in any part of Western Europe, but I wasn't really feeling the hate, and I can't say as I've heard otherwise from people I know who've been there more recently.

~J

Before this thread gets closed, just wanted to say that I think amongst corporate mid-management and up there would probably be a whole lot of marriages of convenience/alliance that from a corporate politics point of vue would suit both parties well.

Also, amonst the numerous Japanacorps, who often operate as 'family' units, you probably can't get a mid+ management job if you are not married.

With the billion-hour work week that the corporate drones, and especially ladder climbers, have to pull in, marriage is probably a loveless thing. Just two people getting together to divide house keeping tasks. Business at work, business at home. Spouses check up on each oher and the tasks they have to do, then go their seperate ways to their individual simsense experiences and go to bed. Sex is overrated anyway - they barely know and like each other in the first place, and simsense is better than sex anyway.

Plop out a kid, again as a convention, appearances sake. Send the kid off to corporate boarding school, get the damn bugger out of trouble and out of your hair.

Sure, they expect you to ignore your family to stay at your desk for the corp, but they like the nice picture of the corp as home to happy families. The sort of two faced mind set we've learned to expect from the corporate world.

Imagine the deals you get if the corp does your wedding though. I mean they own the site, the caterer, the clothes the DJ. etc. and you can get special themes, like at Disney today.

I've heard in Japan weddings are remarkably expensive affairs with the happy (but suddenly improvrished) couple having to wear at least 3 outfits. 1 for the ceremony, 1 for the reception and 1 for going on honey moon. Often a forth outfit for pictures between the ceremony and the reception.

Also a big style trend in Japan is now western style weddings with caucasian men with good voices being asked to play the role of a minister, after the real official or priest has done his part. that having been said, sure, these could get really wild for costs and I'm suddenly thinking of a whole new set of runs. hee hee hee

I don't believe so. I mean, I suspect that having taken the element of choice out of it has something to do with it, and societal expectations probably do as well, but I don't believe the outcome in terms of divorce rate is higher for cultures with strictly-arranged marriage (in contrast to something like the Japanese-style arranged marriage, which as far as I can tell is "here, let me introduce you to this person. Now go decide whether you're going to marry them or not.") where repercussions for deviating from expectations are less severe (say, no mobs out for blood because of a divorce).

For what it's worth, there's evidence that humans tend toward serial monogamy rather than strict monogamy—I believe the span is generally considered four years. As such, arranged marriages could be considered unnatural because of how frequently they last longer than four years.

~J

one of our politicians just proposed a law that would limit marriage to a seven years span and would have to be re-established by then

Probably not a bad idea, though a similar clause for laws would be more beneficial (possibly with a shorter duration).

~J

Right. People just aren't meant to stay together after the dopamine-intense phase—you should be getting out there and diversifying your gene pool commitment, not sitting around with the same old batch of genetic material. Arranged marriages short-circuit that "move on" cue.

~J

Fun fact: reducing even further the weight of the "social expectation or threat of violence" theory, this USCIS report indicates that fully 80% of marriages to mail-order brides reported have lasted throughout the period for which reports are available.

~J

you're not so out of it, that's what I was thinknig about, especially when you hear of araband indian cultural groups in the west were someone, usually a woman, rebells against going into an arranged marriage and is later the victim of an 'honor killing."

http://www.shaadi.com/

It's real. And it extends into the US. 60 pages of potential brides aged 20 to 25.

-Frank

It's classier than buying a 17 year old Moldavian girl for 1,000 euros in Bosnia. Which is also a real option.

A Thousand Euros for a Moldovan girl!? You are being overcharged my friend, Moldova is practically on the barter economy these days and you can get a whore or a wife literally for peanuts.

I think you're out about 200 kilograms of peanuts, which will set you back about 300 Euros.

-Frank

See, I just tell them I run a restaurant where they can sing for money, and all I have to pay is the cost of a plane ticket.

Do I even want to know what the hell Gor is?

Gor is counter-Earth, a planet directly across the sun from Earth, the setting for John Norman's fantasy book series of manly men weilding swords and slave women who wear clothing at the desire of their manly men masters. Soft porn in nature. Priest kings limit technology and people seem to be in prime health and live long natural lives, probably to make up for all those that die during manly men conflict.

The Gor poses probably references typical fantasy art for book covers with scantily clad women, or nude women with long hair that happens to obscure anything that would call for a PG13+ rating.

A mildly non-work-safe picture is worth a thousand words.

~J

Where do I sign up?