Joining the Corps: Tejula Versus Grevan
Sep. 28th, 2011 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gryphonseggA brief explanation of certain aspects of the recent political history of two neighboring countries on the planet Achiem:
Tejula lies immediately to the west of Grevan. In Tejula, adulthood used to be defined by the end of puberty, until legal reforms set a consistent age of majority for the nation. Neurological development at this age is parallel to that of twenty-year-old humans, across all categories of reproductive development. The popularity of the idea that legal and social adulthood should be linked to reproductive maturity for every individual persists in Tejulan culture and legal thought. Anyone who has not begun puberty by the Achiemite equivalent of age 20 is subject to artificial induction of puberty via hormone injections. A person who fails or refuses to choose a sex in time will have one chosen for them by the state. A movement opposed to induced puberty and sex selection managed to gain a little bit of traction before the nation’s most recent war. This movement was pushed back to the fringes during and after the war, due to its widely presumed (if not necessarily correct) association with foreign influence.
Grevan lies along Tejula’s eastern border. Freshwater and farmland are less abundant in Grevan, especially in the easternmost third of the country, than they are in Tejula. Full adulthood used to be defined, throughout most of Grevan, by the completion of locally determined rites of passage. These customs changed as the region became a unified nation-state with a strong central government, similar to the political condition that Tejula had achieved five or six generations earlier. Legal majority now goes hand-in-hand with meeting Grevan’s minimum education goals (equivalent in many ways to finishing high school). Further education is widely held to be desirable, and students who can master the material faster than their age-peers often choose to enter adulthood early to take advantage of higher-level education assistance for “young adults.” Induced puberty and forced sex selection are generally frowned upon in Grevanian society, but they may be imposed upon members of the lower class when population patterns suggest that a labor shortage is in the near future.
During most eras, Tejula has had more abundant food, a larger overall population, and a larger breeding population than Grevan. For most of the 17th Century Post Chernan (it’s complicated), both nations were overpopulated relative to their native natural resources, which led to a war between them over land water rights. Both sides lost, although it did temporarily solve the overpopulation problem. The post-war political climate posed problems for young people in both nations who would have been happy to remain sexless indefinitely. In Tejula, as previously discussed, the meager gains of the “natural development” movement were pushed back due to popular suspicion that the movement was connected with traditionally Grevanian attitudes toward reproductive development. In Grevan, the ruling class decided to make up for wartime losses by selecting previously sexless students and workers and inducing them to develop female reproductive organs so that they might bear posthumous children for “war heroes” who had left behind preserved gamete samples.
Tejula lies immediately to the west of Grevan. In Tejula, adulthood used to be defined by the end of puberty, until legal reforms set a consistent age of majority for the nation. Neurological development at this age is parallel to that of twenty-year-old humans, across all categories of reproductive development. The popularity of the idea that legal and social adulthood should be linked to reproductive maturity for every individual persists in Tejulan culture and legal thought. Anyone who has not begun puberty by the Achiemite equivalent of age 20 is subject to artificial induction of puberty via hormone injections. A person who fails or refuses to choose a sex in time will have one chosen for them by the state. A movement opposed to induced puberty and sex selection managed to gain a little bit of traction before the nation’s most recent war. This movement was pushed back to the fringes during and after the war, due to its widely presumed (if not necessarily correct) association with foreign influence.
Grevan lies along Tejula’s eastern border. Freshwater and farmland are less abundant in Grevan, especially in the easternmost third of the country, than they are in Tejula. Full adulthood used to be defined, throughout most of Grevan, by the completion of locally determined rites of passage. These customs changed as the region became a unified nation-state with a strong central government, similar to the political condition that Tejula had achieved five or six generations earlier. Legal majority now goes hand-in-hand with meeting Grevan’s minimum education goals (equivalent in many ways to finishing high school). Further education is widely held to be desirable, and students who can master the material faster than their age-peers often choose to enter adulthood early to take advantage of higher-level education assistance for “young adults.” Induced puberty and forced sex selection are generally frowned upon in Grevanian society, but they may be imposed upon members of the lower class when population patterns suggest that a labor shortage is in the near future.
During most eras, Tejula has had more abundant food, a larger overall population, and a larger breeding population than Grevan. For most of the 17th Century Post Chernan (it’s complicated), both nations were overpopulated relative to their native natural resources, which led to a war between them over land water rights. Both sides lost, although it did temporarily solve the overpopulation problem. The post-war political climate posed problems for young people in both nations who would have been happy to remain sexless indefinitely. In Tejula, as previously discussed, the meager gains of the “natural development” movement were pushed back due to popular suspicion that the movement was connected with traditionally Grevanian attitudes toward reproductive development. In Grevan, the ruling class decided to make up for wartime losses by selecting previously sexless students and workers and inducing them to develop female reproductive organs so that they might bear posthumous children for “war heroes” who had left behind preserved gamete samples.
