Values Dissonance/Literature: Difference between revisions

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** The psychic connection between dragons and their riders is so powerful that, when the dragons mate, the humans do also. Green dragons are female, but their riders are male (except for a one or two women in "modern times"). The consequent gay sex is not explicit, but obviously there. So, volunteering for the exciting job of dragon-rider is consenting to sex with whichever human rides any dragon your dragon mates with. The bond works both ways, so these foursomes tend to like each other all around, but dragons appear to be less monogamous than humans. Plenty of raw material for squick, for 20th-century westerners.

*** It's mentioned in one book that incompatible human couples with compatible dragons occasionally find someone ''else'' to [[Kissing Under the Influence|mate with under the influence]], and do a kind of 'swap'.

** At least one disability-activist has objected to ''[[The Ship Who Sang]]'', for its premise that those born with severe disabilities might be better off enslaved as cybernetic ships and facilities, rather than accommodated to lead a normal life.

** At least one disability-activist has objected to ''[[The Ship Who Sang]]'' for its premise that those born with severe disabilities might be better off enslaved as cybernetic ships and facilities, rather than accommodated to lead a normal life.

*** And "enslaved" is not a euphemism; all "shell people" inherit mountains of debt for their care since infancy, the operations they've had to have to make them functional cyborgs, the installation in their permanent "bodies" (ships, space stations, etc.) and any upgrades to these "bodies." Few ever manage to pay off what they owe, forcing them to labor for Central Worlds, the government bureaucracy, for ''centuries''. It does indeed amount to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage| debt slavery].

* Pretty much ''anything'' written by [[H.P. Lovecraft|HP Lovecraft]], whose racism went ''far'' beyond what was common even in his day and age. Due to his belief in Britain as the pinnacle of civilization, he would regularly describe other ethnicities with the same revulsion as his [[Cosmic Horror]] beasts. According to his divorced wife, "Whenever we found ourselves in the racially mixed crowds which characterize New York... Howard would become livid with rage. He seemed almost to lose his mind."

** Though he did recant his racist views and admitted that the racial mixing of New York was a good thing.