History

EarthUnbound is a shared universe for fictional stories which take place in an alternate version of our own modern world. This alternate world is imagined to have been exactly the same as the real world, up until the mid-twentieth century. The key differences between the world of EarthUnbound and the real world began in the early 1900’s.

In the world of EarthUnbound, the severe political tensions in early twentieth century Europe never quite boiled over into a global war. As a result, the global conflict we now know as World War I never happened in the world of EarthUnbound. Not in same same way, at least. Some local, regional wars did still take place, but they ended more quickly—all by 1916—and none of them ever involved more than a few nations at a time. The U.S. never fought at all, although its economy did receive a tremendous boost from the sale of military and post-war industrial supplies to many other warring nations.

Without the aftermath of the Great War leaving national tensions and economic disasters in its wake, the second World War never took place, either. Nor were nuclear weapons ever developed or used (although nuclear power was developed for energy purposes, the technology came rather later without the pressure of military use behind it). Without the threat of nuclear war, and with no Eastern Bloc or NATO carved out after any World Wars, there was never a Cold War, either. Without the support of satellite nations, or the need for a global military machine, the U.S.S.R. broke up much sooner: in 1976. Most importantly for the modern world of EarthUnbound, however, there was no civil war in Vietnam.

Global cultural history progressed very differently in the world of EarthUnbound as a result of these major differences in the middle of the previous century. The youth movements which were seen in the real world after World War II occurred much earlier, without the economic or cultural distractions of either World War: in the mid-1930’s. And without any equivalent of the Vietnam War to blur the focus of the youth movement between cultural change and political campaigning, the “hippie” movements really took off in the world of EarthUnbound. The **** culture still fizzled out after a while, in the same was as in the real world; that sort of overuse is impossible to sustain in the long term as a whole, functional society. However, the “free love” movement really started to take hold as time went on.

Without the severe political controversy of a war like Vietnam to polarize public opinion, the media and political establishments did not make much effort to demonize youth movements or their attitude towards open sexuality. Although religious groups and traditional moralists still opposed these practices vehemently, of course, their voices remained mostly confined to their own churches and street corners without the engines of a motivated media or political pundits to push them into the public view. As a result, Hollywood began to glorify “hippie,” “free love” lifestyles and character types, and it soon gained enough popular support among the youth, and enough tolerant indifference among the older generations, that legal concessions began to be made.

Laws about what constituted public indecency became more tolerant, allowing for the open practice of nudism. Polygamy and “adultery” were decriminalized; open relationships in general became more culturally accepted, and legal frameworks grew to support them with the same regard as more familiar forms of marriage.

Although bigotry regarding alternative orientations and gender identities didn’t change overnight, it did change much, much earlier than in the real world. In the late 1940’s the gay community led a civil rights movement similar to that which was seen in the early twenty-first century in our world. In the world of EarthUnbound, with its already open attitudes towards sex and sexuality, the movement gained fast support, which led to the changing of laws in support of universal rights regarding marriage equality and freedom from discrimination for persons of all orientations and gender identities. Attitudes changed almost as quickly as laws within such a sexually-liberated culture, and by 1960 discrimination based on orientation or gender identity had all but vanished everywhere but within the most backward, intolerant communities. With virtually all people having overcome bigotry based on orientation and gender identity in contemporary society, even major religions which had previously condemned such practices gradually became more accepting as older members’ attitudes changed, or they were simply supplanted by younger members with more modern, progressive attitudes.

All of these cultural changes tended to happen first in Western cultures, although a few progressive cultures in Asia and Africa had either embraced similar attitudes already and finally gained recognition for them, or took some forward-thinking steps ahead of their American and European counterparts. Even when Western culture was leading the way with these sexually-liberated attitudes, however, pop culture as well as political and trade influences served to spread these ideas globally before too long, much as Western culture has had global impacts even in the real world. As a result, the attitudes of sexual openness described in the stories of EarthUnbound, while often focused primarily on a Western setting, are global in reach.

As a result of the widespread practices of open relationships and sexually free attitudes in general, the problem of STDs became a serious concern for society before long. However, without a Cold War diverting a massive proportion of global resources into defense, the scientific community was well-provisioned to combat these threats. Treatments, cures, and vaccines for STDs were developed and improved rapidly over the course of the later decades of the twentieth century. By the turn of the millennium, a few childhood vaccines, and a monthly, vitamin-like, multi-purpose preventative pill (often combined with birth control, which was developed for both men and women) had become all that was needed to prevent all known STDs.

Near the beginning of the development of free sexual attitudes in the world of EarthUnbound, parents typically fell into two groups: those who largely ignored the sexual development of the younger generation, with a “they’ll figure it out” sort of approach; and those who gave “the talk” to their kids, which was often nothing more than a very metaphoric, vague explanation of how pregnancy worked. Starting in the early 1950’s with the growth of “parenting” as a concept, it became more common for parents to have a different version of “the talk” with their kids when they reached adolescence. These young parents had largely grown up during the development of the new, sexually-free attitudes, and their children would have been seeing their parents engaging in open sexual relationships all their lives. In some families parents would even have freely had sex in front of their children, making a talk on the mechanics of sex largely unnecessary. The new “talk” would instead be the beginning of an open dialog regarding favorite sexual techniques, positions, fetishes, and the like, as the parents began to invite their children to openly watch them carry out their sex lives and explain to the children what they were seeing, and also ask their children to be open about their own sexual explorations.

In this sexually liberal time, when adults who had themselves been raised in a sexually open society were now raising children of their own, it became common to allow adolescents to freely experiment sexually with their peers, and among the most sexually liberated families, this even included the adolescents’ own siblings and similarly-aged cousins. This increasing acceptance of **** led, in the 1960’s, to some of the parents who had been the most open about their sex live with their children to go so far as to actually start sleeping with their older teenage children who expressed an interest in learning more directly from their parents than by observation alone.

By the late 1970’s **** among adults was becoming increasingly more prevalent: many of the young adults of the time had been the adolescents in the 1950’s and 1960’s who had grown up sexually experimenting with their siblings or cousins—relationships which sometimes carried on into adulthood. Although ongoing **** among adults was still not exactly common, the practice of sexually experimenting with siblings and cousins, and later on with parents, had become so widespread—even universal—that it could be almost presumed; learning that an adult had never slept with any family members at all would seem unusual.

By the 1990’s, after a few generations of acculturation, **** among any and all family members had become the norm, and it would seem odd not to have sex with any given family member of compatible age and orientation.