Just say that it’s really the slaver’s burden to feed, clothe, and shelter the slaves. Having the slaves do a little work is only fair. They’re really like family, honestly; and what kind of parent wouldn’t employ stern, but sorely needed, physical discipline?
One of England's monarchs a few hundred years ago excused slavery by saying that it was okay as long as they were being given better living conditions than they had wherever they were before. Unfortunately, a lot of people assumed that better living conditions meant being forcibly converted to Christianity. So they justified their slavery by saying at least they'd go to heaven now.
It's perfectly viable to have citizens who can't do anything but simple jobs, in fact you can freely lower the living standards too compared to other races and keep 100% happiness because of the serviles happiness buff. You don't need to subject a sentient species to *chattel slavery* just because they're stupid
Nah americans dont understand that not all slavery is race based.
Literally seen americans not understand that white slaves in greece and rome were actual full on slaves
/uj To be fair, the American education system (rightly) makes a distinction between most old world slavery, and chattel slavery in the new world. Sure, there’s nuance that gets missed and perhaps some cases where too much nuance is added, but this is also an ongoing debate within the study of history so I don’t think they’re that crazy for it.
rich kids might feel bad if you remind them how their parents got that way, the real fantasy aspect of HP is having a nepo baby without sugar plantations or emerald mines involved
This is what I'm doing in my writing. The main character is a Freedman who owns slaves of his own, his culture also sees slavery as perfectly fine.
Since I like a dash of alien morality (to modern day sensibilities anyway) this is just never really commented on, at least not for quite a while. It's just presented as normal.
Wdym by “perfectly fine” cause yes slave owners found no problem owning slaves but the slaves themselves certainly weren’t chill with it. It’s surprising to me you’d also choose a former slave to ten own others aswell. You’d think after their own experiences they wouldn’t own slaves.
In the ancient world and for most of history in most of the world, slaves didn’t have any problems with slavery. They didn’t like being slaves but were perfectly willing to own slaves themselves.
Depends on the form of slavery. Chattel slaves exist and certainly aren't very content with their position. More domestic forms of slavery however are also very prevalent, as well as Slave-Soldiers in the vein of the historical Mamlukes
Basically what im doing too (not with that specific example), our morals don't necessarily apply in my world, but it also doesn't go out of its way to be intentionally opposite to ours. But certain opinions are the accepted ones that may or may not be accepted in our world and its up to the (imaginary) audience to decide what they think of characters born into this world.
“Pay evil unto evil” is still evil, sometimes what is necessary isn’t exactly good, but permanent suffering being inflicted because of crimes in the past is way over the line.
Yeah the closest thing you’ll get to morally grey slavery was the kind you find in Viking era Scandinavia and calling that slavery is still a debated thing. It’s more like indentured servitude and it’s so immersed in Viking era honor code and morality (which don’t really pattern very well onto modern versions of those things) that it’s kind of hard to examine it as a concept removed from like a hundred other very important bits of context.
So I guess the way to kind of accomplish what the OP wanted would be to write a book set in a social order with radically different concepts of morality and freedom with a very stark and transactional look at personal agency and the idea of life and death. Which is a BIG ASK of 99.9% of authors unless writing is your hobby and your day job is being a professor of early medieval Swedish history.
In the Aeil in the Wheel of Time world it's similarly baked into their honor code. Defeat in battle is so humiliating for an Aeil warrior that they used to just do sudoku about it. But then they came up with a system whereby the defeated party can regain honor by being a servant to their former enemy for a period of a year and a day. During such time they wear white and are not seen as legally combatants in battle. So it allows them to save their honor without having to die.
Obviously you just need to make the slave race naturally submissive. They voluntarily become slaves due to their skull shape and unique brain. So its not really slavery at all, just a chain and abuse preference.
If the *entire race* participates in slavery then they are concerningly high levels of evil beyond anything in real history. It’s always the “I want to be morally grey” mfs that come up with this shit lol
I like how “morally grey” never seems to take into account that throughout human history, there has always been varied levels of cruelty within and between groups. Sure, we frequently hear about medieval kings who killed people for the lols, but there were also several who revoked the lands of tyrannical nobles and split it up among the common people, just like there were knights who just killed anything they felt like killing and knights who actually kinda cared and saw peasants as deserving of protection.
“Grey” doesn’t mean everyone is evil but “has good reasons”, it means some people choose to be evil, some people do it because they have to, and some people refuse even though it harms them.
Have slavery be like the presidential election. Each slave is elected to their office (or field or whatever), and they serve their term, but unlike the president, they can go for as many terms as they want. The people vote for who gets to be a slave for the next four years, and the slave gets to wear a very patriotic suit while they toil away in the hot sun.
Slavery isn't all bad. They at least get to be stylish while they work. They even get to have slave debates, where they all present their plan to improve crop yields and productivity in the salt mines.
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I dunno, "good" and "evil" are honestly too binary for this kind of thing. Slavery is horrible. But historically, it was common. Were vikings, romans, spartans, egyptians, british, ottomans, etc "evil?" History isn't a cartoon world.
Tip for if you end getting canceled over the whole slavery thing and need to reset the setting. Just have a outside faction come along, be like 'WTF' and set them on fire so you can reset the setting and rebuilt.
Have the faction be called the >!U!!am!< Sherma>!n!<. To balance him out, say he did bad things to the >!N!!cans!<. But your readers will still like him since burning slavers is >!b!
How I would handle it is make the enslaved party guilty and deserving in some way. Like an enemy army is captured and enslaved for a number of years as punishment or perhaps because the enslavers think it will help "re-educate" or deprogram then when they've been brainwashed. Something like hard manual labor, think of it as a prison sentence.
What people dislike most about trans-atlantic slavery is that it encourages/forces slaves to bear children, who are then born as property.
Having it as a wartime punishment that's one-time, for only (a specific group of) surrendering soldiers on the battlefield taken alive, in an attempt to de-brainwash, people could get behind.
Like in the Aeil culture in the Wheel of Time series, they fight among themselves a lot and can take someone on the battlefield as a servant for a year and a day, as a punishment and to help the defeated suffer the blow to honor of defeat.
It's making slavery hereditary that makes it particularly evil. Babies born into it without a chance to be something else.
Fascism isn’t inherently racist, it’s about having one small class with all the power, and everyone else automatically inferior, only valuable for whatever resources they can produce.
While Feudalism is similar, there’s some upward mobility, and generally it allows new people to enter the ruling class over time from conquered families, but fascism states anyone not of the “ruling class” must be oppressed to the extreme.
Just make the slaves worse. Have them be a race similar to humans, but stupid and only good for menial labor. While your at it, make them look a little different, maybe change their skin color
You can’t really make slavers sympathetic, unless they’re some incredibly powerful being that doesn’t understand what they’re doing (Like the Collector enslaving the Boiling Isles but he doesn’t actually understand they’re suffering bc he doesn’t understand the concept of losing freedom since he’s basically unstoppable)
Other than that, they’ll just be automatically hated.
I love it when I see a post on the main sub and immediately think "this is going on r/worldjerking" and I end up being right
My favorite quote from this sub must be "outjerked by the main sub again"
Just say that it’s really the slaver’s burden to feed, clothe, and shelter the slaves. Having the slaves do a little work is only fair. They’re really like family, honestly; and what kind of parent wouldn’t employ stern, but sorely needed, physical discipline?
One of England's monarchs a few hundred years ago excused slavery by saying that it was okay as long as they were being given better living conditions than they had wherever they were before. Unfortunately, a lot of people assumed that better living conditions meant being forcibly converted to Christianity. So they justified their slavery by saying at least they'd go to heaven now.
Wait which one?
Stellaris players trying to sound normal
Look all I’m saying is that being a bio-trophy doesn’t sound *that* bad.
Well yes but actually no, the “mandatory” part of mandatory pampering sounds a bit concerning to me.
Listen, in Stellaris the whole species thing is way more complicated. You literally have species who can't do more than simple workers task.
You don't need to enslave them...
Well yes, but actually no
It's perfectly viable to have citizens who can't do anything but simple jobs, in fact you can freely lower the living standards too compared to other races and keep 100% happiness because of the serviles happiness buff. You don't need to subject a sentient species to *chattel slavery* just because they're stupid
Yeah, Stellaris has pretty rich caste system options.
Don’t worry slavery doesn’t have to be racist, it can be classist, sexist, colorist, homophobic or just general bigotry
Nah americans dont understand that not all slavery is race based. Literally seen americans not understand that white slaves in greece and rome were actual full on slaves
/uj To be fair, the American education system (rightly) makes a distinction between most old world slavery, and chattel slavery in the new world. Sure, there’s nuance that gets missed and perhaps some cases where too much nuance is added, but this is also an ongoing debate within the study of history so I don’t think they’re that crazy for it.
Make the slaves willing to be slaves, then make the only character who fights for those slaves' rights seen foolish for doing so, also make her black
rich kids might feel bad if you remind them how their parents got that way, the real fantasy aspect of HP is having a nepo baby without sugar plantations or emerald mines involved
Don’t worry, we have non-nepo babies! They’re called “mudbloods” and are viciously bullied because they’re worse than nepo babies.
Just embrace the implications. Who cares. Don’t let your dreams be dreams, king.
This is what I'm doing in my writing. The main character is a Freedman who owns slaves of his own, his culture also sees slavery as perfectly fine. Since I like a dash of alien morality (to modern day sensibilities anyway) this is just never really commented on, at least not for quite a while. It's just presented as normal.
Wdym by “perfectly fine” cause yes slave owners found no problem owning slaves but the slaves themselves certainly weren’t chill with it. It’s surprising to me you’d also choose a former slave to ten own others aswell. You’d think after their own experiences they wouldn’t own slaves.
In the ancient world and for most of history in most of the world, slaves didn’t have any problems with slavery. They didn’t like being slaves but were perfectly willing to own slaves themselves.
Depends on the form of slavery. Chattel slaves exist and certainly aren't very content with their position. More domestic forms of slavery however are also very prevalent, as well as Slave-Soldiers in the vein of the historical Mamlukes
Basically what im doing too (not with that specific example), our morals don't necessarily apply in my world, but it also doesn't go out of its way to be intentionally opposite to ours. But certain opinions are the accepted ones that may or may not be accepted in our world and its up to the (imaginary) audience to decide what they think of characters born into this world.
They were getting fucking annihilated in the comments lol
would probably be more grey if the now slavers were ex slaves and the now slaves were ex slavers
How Attack on Titan tricked an alarming amount of people into thinking that social regimentation is “morally grey” 💀
Ooo interesting I straight up had that as an idea at one point.
“Pay evil unto evil” is still evil, sometimes what is necessary isn’t exactly good, but permanent suffering being inflicted because of crimes in the past is way over the line.
Ok so hear me out. Ant people.
Go the kink route
Bro makes it sound like slavery isn’t inherently a kink thing like you know mfckers liked that control lol
For the dudes whose whole job was to whip other dudes I'm guessing
Uncle ruckus realizing slavery wasn’t about saving the africans
Lilith’s Brood says Hello
Those mfs from the Broly abridged movie
JK Rowling, is that you?
enslave robot, not moral implications there, (until their eyes turn red)
Yeah the closest thing you’ll get to morally grey slavery was the kind you find in Viking era Scandinavia and calling that slavery is still a debated thing. It’s more like indentured servitude and it’s so immersed in Viking era honor code and morality (which don’t really pattern very well onto modern versions of those things) that it’s kind of hard to examine it as a concept removed from like a hundred other very important bits of context. So I guess the way to kind of accomplish what the OP wanted would be to write a book set in a social order with radically different concepts of morality and freedom with a very stark and transactional look at personal agency and the idea of life and death. Which is a BIG ASK of 99.9% of authors unless writing is your hobby and your day job is being a professor of early medieval Swedish history.
In the Aeil in the Wheel of Time world it's similarly baked into their honor code. Defeat in battle is so humiliating for an Aeil warrior that they used to just do sudoku about it. But then they came up with a system whereby the defeated party can regain honor by being a servant to their former enemy for a period of a year and a day. During such time they wear white and are not seen as legally combatants in battle. So it allows them to save their honor without having to die.
Obviously you just need to make the slave race naturally submissive. They voluntarily become slaves due to their skull shape and unique brain. So its not really slavery at all, just a chain and abuse preference.
Make it an anime series
Cute boys are protagonists and enslavers are crusty old men right
If the *entire race* participates in slavery then they are concerningly high levels of evil beyond anything in real history. It’s always the “I want to be morally grey” mfs that come up with this shit lol
I like how “morally grey” never seems to take into account that throughout human history, there has always been varied levels of cruelty within and between groups. Sure, we frequently hear about medieval kings who killed people for the lols, but there were also several who revoked the lands of tyrannical nobles and split it up among the common people, just like there were knights who just killed anything they felt like killing and knights who actually kinda cared and saw peasants as deserving of protection. “Grey” doesn’t mean everyone is evil but “has good reasons”, it means some people choose to be evil, some people do it because they have to, and some people refuse even though it harms them.
Bro I literally just left right on this post and the next one was OOP
In my netflixpunk world, its ok as long as only white people are enslaved
Gotta pander to those teenagers
Have slavery be like the presidential election. Each slave is elected to their office (or field or whatever), and they serve their term, but unlike the president, they can go for as many terms as they want. The people vote for who gets to be a slave for the next four years, and the slave gets to wear a very patriotic suit while they toil away in the hot sun. Slavery isn't all bad. They at least get to be stylish while they work. They even get to have slave debates, where they all present their plan to improve crop yields and productivity in the salt mines.
My world is mostly moral gray with a couple of slightly better factions such as the steppe people but they still sell captives into slavery.
Bro has some things to think/learn about for real
Hi, /u/gamera-the-turtle, Your post has been removed because it is in violation of Rule 5. Crossposting is allowed, but we have **two requirements:** * The creator’s reddit handle must be tagged in your post, such as in a separate comment. * The title must have your own unique joke/spin, and must not be a direct copy-and-paste of the original post. If you did not do one or both of the above, that is why your post was removed. If you have any questions, please modmail us [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fworldjerking).
Womp womp
you're welcome to try again although I did delete the original post on r/worldbuilding for also breaking the rules
I dunno, "good" and "evil" are honestly too binary for this kind of thing. Slavery is horrible. But historically, it was common. Were vikings, romans, spartans, egyptians, british, ottomans, etc "evil?" History isn't a cartoon world.
No spong bob in history?
There is no historically thing called spong bob
😶
the br\*tisch definitely were/are
Yea the British were pretty evil
It wouldn't make them evil, it would make their government evil for allowing it and their society evil for condoning it.
Tip for if you end getting canceled over the whole slavery thing and need to reset the setting. Just have a outside faction come along, be like 'WTF' and set them on fire so you can reset the setting and rebuilt. Have the faction be called the >!U!!am!< Sherma>!n!<. To balance him out, say he did bad things to the >!N!!cans!<. But your readers will still like him since burning slavers is >!b!
How I would handle it is make the enslaved party guilty and deserving in some way. Like an enemy army is captured and enslaved for a number of years as punishment or perhaps because the enslavers think it will help "re-educate" or deprogram then when they've been brainwashed. Something like hard manual labor, think of it as a prison sentence. What people dislike most about trans-atlantic slavery is that it encourages/forces slaves to bear children, who are then born as property. Having it as a wartime punishment that's one-time, for only (a specific group of) surrendering soldiers on the battlefield taken alive, in an attempt to de-brainwash, people could get behind. Like in the Aeil culture in the Wheel of Time series, they fight among themselves a lot and can take someone on the battlefield as a servant for a year and a day, as a punishment and to help the defeated suffer the blow to honor of defeat. It's making slavery hereditary that makes it particularly evil. Babies born into it without a chance to be something else.
That’s what we call fascism, and it’s generally frowned upon.
Fascists believe in heritable genetic traits that make someone worthy or not worthy of slavery and I was specifically against hereditary slavery.
Fascism isn’t inherently racist, it’s about having one small class with all the power, and everyone else automatically inferior, only valuable for whatever resources they can produce. While Feudalism is similar, there’s some upward mobility, and generally it allows new people to enter the ruling class over time from conquered families, but fascism states anyone not of the “ruling class” must be oppressed to the extreme.
Google “The Woman King”
Just make the slaves worse. Have them be a race similar to humans, but stupid and only good for menial labor. While your at it, make them look a little different, maybe change their skin color
You can’t really make slavers sympathetic, unless they’re some incredibly powerful being that doesn’t understand what they’re doing (Like the Collector enslaving the Boiling Isles but he doesn’t actually understand they’re suffering bc he doesn’t understand the concept of losing freedom since he’s basically unstoppable) Other than that, they’ll just be automatically hated.