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[TheBiggerFish]

Don't forget Thor and his goats. Just normal goats, disregarding the whole "regenerating" thing and the drawing a god's chariot thing. Not fiery or stormy or whathaveyou, just goats.

And I don't think that spheres can truly render each other nonsensical.
Even pregnancy & virginity, which you pointed out, don't render each other meaningless. They render a different meaning to the god(ess), of course, but not cancel. One ends the other, yes, but they don't cancel for the same reason death and life don't cancel. They might belong to a god presiding over children growing and becoming adults, perhaps. Both halves are there, and both would be needed for the god to preform their duty.

+.
*perform, though.

[Bumber]

Don't forget Thor and his goats. Just normal goats, disregarding the whole "regenerating" thing and the drawing a god's chariot thing. Not fiery or stormy or whathaveyou, just goats.

Or jolly St. Nick and his reindeer.

[LMeire]

Don't forget Thor and his goats. Just normal goats, disregarding the whole "regenerating" thing and the drawing a god's chariot thing. Not fiery or stormy or whathaveyou, just goats.

Or jolly St. Nick and his reindeer.

Also Poseidon was said to have invented horses for no other reason than to prove he could be as creative with making a land animal as he was with sea creatures.

[GoblinCookie]

Don't forget Thor and his goats. Just normal goats, disregarding the whole "regenerating" thing and the drawing a god's chariot thing. Not fiery or stormy or whathaveyou, just goats.

And I don't think that spheres can truly render each other nonsensical.
Even pregnancy & virginity, which you pointed out, don't render each other meaningless. They render a different meaning to the god(ess), of course, but not cancel. One ends the other, yes, but they don't cancel for the same reason death and life don't cancel. They might belong to a god presiding over children growing and becoming adults, perhaps. Both halves are there, and both would be needed for the god to perform their duty.

Both opposites can be combined into one larger sphere of womanhood but that does not really fit well with the basically genderless society that dwarves presently live in.  They have basically no abstract concept of gender at all, beyond the crude biological functions which in this case are opposed.

[cochramd]

Both opposites can be combined into one larger sphere of womanhood but that does not really fit well with the basically genderless society that dwarves presently live in.  They have basically no abstract concept of gender at all, beyond the crude biological functions which in this case are opposed.

Do they? Dwarven society is a perfect meritocracy other than the nobility, but then that only pertains to governance and labor. There could be gender-based social customs present that we would never know about because they effect neither governance nor labor. An IRL example of this, for instance, would be the long-held (though admittedly fading somewhat) western tradition of the man always proposing marriage to the woman, never the other way around.

[GoblinCookie]

Do they? Dwarven society is a perfect meritocracy other than the nobility, but then that only pertains to governance and labor. There could be gender-based social customs present that we would never know about because they effect neither governance nor labor. An IRL example of this, for instance, would be the long-held (though admittedly fading somewhat) western tradition of the man always proposing marriage to the woman, never the other way around.

Really? Not even the names are distinguished by gender!  Virtually the only way to tell something gender is to actually open up the creature description and check whether the creature is described as he or she.  Of course you can always say "what else do we not know about" but ultimately the burden of proof lies on the claimant to prove that despite all evidence to the contrary the dwarves care about gender.

[XXXXYYYY]

I would like to note that I avoided gender in the god's description. Virginity is something in both sexes, after all, and pregnancy takes two doing the tango, so to speak.

I actually explicitly changed it from "girls growing and becoming women" to "children growing and becoming adults" before posting because there isn't that aspect in their culture. Heck, virginity being a primarily female thing is a rather strange link even in our culture. The idea of children growing into maturity is something that they do perform, however, with children not doing 'adult' things, such as work or relationships, until they're 12 years of age.

[cochramd]

Do they? Dwarven society is a perfect meritocracy other than the nobility, but then that only pertains to governance and labor. There could be gender-based social customs present that we would never know about because they effect neither governance nor labor. An IRL example of this, for instance, would be the long-held (though admittedly fading somewhat) western tradition of the man always proposing marriage to the woman, never the other way around.

Really? Not even the names are distinguished by gender!  AND AS WE ALL KNOW, THERE HAS NEVER EVER BEEN ANY CULTURE, REAL OR FICTIONAL, THAT CONTAINED SO MUCH AS A SINGLE GENDER-NEUTRAL NAME, SO A CULTURE WHERE ALL NAMES ARE GENDER NEUTRAL THAT STILL ACKNOWLEDGES GENDER IS UNTHINKABLE!

Female dwarfs carry their infants and male dwarfs do not, so no matter how you slice it there is some level of distinction between the genders. It will be many updates before we understand the exact nature of this distinction, and until then we are free to speculate.

[TheBiggerFish]

Do they? Dwarven society is a perfect meritocracy other than the nobility, but then that only pertains to governance and labor. There could be gender-based social customs present that we would never know about because they effect neither governance nor labor. An IRL example of this, for instance, would be the long-held (though admittedly fading somewhat) western tradition of the man always proposing marriage to the woman, never the other way around.

Really? Not even the names are distinguished by gender!  AND AS WE ALL KNOW, THERE HAS NEVER EVER BEEN ANY CULTURE, REAL OR FICTIONAL, THAT CONTAINED SO MUCH AS A SINGLE GENDER-NEUTRAL NAME, SO A CULTURE WHERE ALL NAMES ARE GENDER NEUTRAL THAT STILL ACKNOWLEDGES GENDER IS UNTHINKABLE!

Female dwarfs carry their infants and male dwarfs do not, so no matter how you slice it there is some level of distinction between the genders. It will be many updates before we understand the exact nature of this distinction, and until then we are free to speculate.

Do they? Dwarven society is a perfect meritocracy other than the nobility, but then that only pertains to governance and labor. There could be gender-based social customs present that we would never know about because they effect neither governance nor labor. An IRL example of this, for instance, would be the long-held (though admittedly fading somewhat) western tradition of the man always proposing marriage to the woman, never the other way around.

Really? Not even the names are distinguished by gender!  Virtually the only way to tell something gender is to actually open up the creature description and check whether the creature is described as he or she.  Of course you can always say "what else do we not know about" but ultimately the burden of proof lies on the claimant to prove that despite all evidence to the contrary the dwarves care about gender.

Ahem.
I get that you have an issue with a point here.
However, that was uncalled for.

[GoblinCookie]

Female dwarfs carry their infants and male dwarfs do not, so no matter how you slice it there is some level of distinction between the genders. It will be many updates before we understand the exact nature of this distinction, and until then we are free to speculate.

Do not edit quotes from other people in order to modify their content Cochramd, there is no need for it and it is bad manners.   

We know that the situation baby-wise is not the final situation since fatherhood is a thing in the world in the social interactions.  As such any further development of the baby carrying situation is likely to reduce the distinction that does exist since we will likely see fathers being able to carry babies as well some of the time.  However there is still the biological situation but that could be sorted out by seperating the feed baby job from carry baby, so the babies will be handed over to a suitable female humanoid that produces milk when they get hungry. 

I would like to note that I avoided gender in the god's description. Virginity is something in both sexes, after all, and pregnancy takes two doing the tango, so to speak.

I actually explicitly changed it from "girls growing and becoming women" to "children growing and becoming adults" before posting because there isn't that aspect in their culture. Heck, virginity being a primarily female thing is a rather strange link even in our culture. The idea of children growing into maturity is something that they do perform, however, with children not doing 'adult' things, such as work or relationships, until they're 12 years of age.

Pregnancy is however unlike virginity entirely a female thing; without the gender concept to unify the two things the opposition between the two things cannot be reconciled in any rational way.  Since women get pregnant virginity has a greater significance in that it creates a class of female beings that will not pregnant, which distinguishes them from the normal women that get pregnant regularly with all that entails.  Male virgins and male non-virgins are not significant in the same sense because they do not form different classes of people in that respect, hence male virginity is of less social importance. 

The reason for our harmonising super-divinities that unify logically opposing concepts is to unify classes into a larger class.  In this case the class of women are divided into the non-virgins and the virgins, by having a god or goddess of both concepts one creates and mantains a unified class of women with certain common characteristics; that is you create a gender.  In the present DF social arrangement however, what we wil have is the original division between the two without any unifying element; indeed the division takes the place of gender. 

The population is not divided by gender, instead they are simply divided into the pregnancy-prone and the non-pregnancy-prone populations.  Female virgins are classified as part of the second category, so effectively they are lumped in with the men.  The female non-virgins form a distinctive category defined by their potential to give birth, so the fundermental division is between them and everybody else.  Much the same principle can be applied to other categories, the reason to unify opposites poles is fundermentally a drive to erase class divisions within a group.

[LMeire]

...
Pregnancy is however unlike virginity entirely a female thing
...

Not always, in seahorses the female lays her eggs in a special pouch on the male, and then he "gives birth" when the offspring hatch; so if a pregnancy god were to ever take the form of a seahorse-beastperson, they could easily and logically be male. There's probably more examples than that, but seahorses are the first thing that came to mind.

[SixOfSpades]

Don't forget Thor and his goats.  Not fiery or stormy or whathaveyou, just goats.

Or jolly St. Nick and his reindeer.

Also Poseidon was said to have invented horses for no other reason than to prove he could be as creative with making a land animal as he was with sea creatures.

Hey, my point was that maladapted pairings wouldn't be good for DF, not that they didn't exist. Although I do have to say that (the various incarnations of) Santa's reindeer were very likely perfectly normal, land-bound reindeer at first, until somebody said, "Oh hey, you know what would be even cooler? They should totally be able to fly." And that story about Poseidon creating horses is pretty plausible, actually--just don't put any normal horses at the bottom of the sea. (Fun Fact: Horses are actually fairly good swimmers. You wouldn't think so, what with those skinny legs that don't look like they could push much water.)

And I don't think that spheres can truly render each other nonsensical. Even pregnancy & virginity, which you pointed out, don't render each other meaningless. One ends the other, yes, but they don't cancel for the same reason death and life don't cancel.

I can see a god of the "Life Force" bestowing Birth (or Rebirth) with one hand and dealing Death with the other (and perhaps animating Undeath with its third hand?), particularly because most animals, in order to prolong their own Life, must inflict Death upon something else.
I can see a god of Daily Cycles, whose hair changes from black to blonde and back depending on the time of day.
But barring the extremely rare case of non-penetrative conception (and fat chance Toady is ever going to code sexual specifics that detailed into the game), virginity and pregnancy are 100% mutually exclusive. The two can never coexist in the same body. While Day/Night is clearly a cycle, and Life/Death can be viewed as one, the change from Virginity to Pregnancy is strictly one-way & irreversible. Now, it's true that every (successful) pregnancy results in the birth of a new virgin, and therefore perpetuates the "cycle" of virginity . . . but by that exact same logic, the deity should be a goddess of "Pregnancy and Armpits", because every newborn baby has armpits. The pregnancy/virginity pairing is also not a cycle due to the fact that the vast majority of virgins (unmarried females and all males) never become pregnant.

They might belong to a god presiding over children growing and becoming adults, perhaps. Both halves are there, and both would be needed for the god to perform their duty.

Both virginity and pregnancy do have direct ties to the sphere of Youth, yes, but from opposite directions. The goddess cannot be both mother and daughter to herself. (Unless you want to show her umbilical cord running from her navel into her own vagina--again, good luck getting that past Toady). It just makes a far neater arrangement to align virginity with a Youth deity, and pregnancy with a separate Mother goddess.

Heck, virginity being a primarily female thing is a rather strange link even in our culture.

It's based on the old "females as chattel" traditions. A family would get a much better price for a daughter if they could assure she was a virgin because A) her husband wouldn't be catching any STDs from her, and B) any kids that she squeezed out were assured to be his (provided that he himself would be similarly controlling after the wedding, of course). Young males, on the other hand, were allowed--even expected--to screw around, because obviously they wouldn't be popping out kids, and who cares if they infect a few worthless females with syphilis. So pretty much every patriarchal culture become obsessed with preserving their daughters' virginity, and celebrating their sons' promiscuity.
But, as said, none of that is reflected in DF. What with the game's zero instances of sex outside wedlock (in the current version, at least), and marrying for life, then the two sexes are absolutely equal in this regard, and every marriage is between two virgins. So while virginity is very closely tied to femininity in RL, in DF it's purely genderless.

The population is not divided by gender, instead they are simply divided into the pregnancy-prone and the non-pregnancy-prone populations.  Female virgins are classified as part of the second category, so effectively they are lumped in with the men.

My 2 cents: I would consider actively married males to be "pregnancy-prone" in the sense that they contribute to your fort's population. If you've got a married man with good stats & attributes that you would like to see propagated in future generations, you get that guy OUT of the military, whether he's got a baby clinging to him or not. While I still consider pregnancy itself an overwhelmingly feminine condition, and any deity of pregnancy would have to be portrayed as female (barring seahorses as the exception), the social/military dynamics of DF do demand at least this token acknowledgement of the male.

[AceSV]

This is a repeat, but I still think we should acknowledge that a lot of our mental connections are completely arbitrary, and a new culture in a new world should be able to have its own arbitrary connections.  Sure, there will be combinations that are completely ridiculous, but I like it when something ridiculous happens in Dwarf Fortress, and I would rather put up a few mind boggling wtfs than limit DF's mythology system to something bland and predictable.  The point of any decision is obviously to make DF's mythology believable and interesting, and it comes down to whether you believe that the connections we make in western culture are absolute, or if a fantasy culture would develop new ones that seem strange and random to us.  The proponents of limiting randomization have mentioned that it would be unbelievable for a culture to make connections that we in our culture perceive as opposites.  I, however, would expect to encounter something strange and unique about the way a fantasy civilization would analyze the world and form its mythologies and beliefs. 



We think of Fire and Water as opposing forces, but why should they be?  Fire and Water could make good buddies.  Fire can sterilize water.  Modern humans combine heat and water to make steam to power our electricity and heat our houses.  Blacksmiths quench hot metal in water to make it the proper hardness.  The sun's fire makes water evaporate into clouds, where they are closer to the sun.  Would a pragmatic dwarf see Fire and Water as anything but simple tools or oddities of nature? 

Also, a lot of Earth's mythology is, and by extension so should DF's be, poetic or allegorical in nature.  So if, say there's a god of Fire and Water, there is meaning within that.  The Fire-Water god might represent the power that can come through balance, ie power to distill booze or quench metal, or more metaphorically balancing "fiery" elements in human nature with "watery" elements.  The god could represent inner struggle, adaptability, invention, power of nature, etc, rather than Fire and Water specifically. 

There's also the question of whether or not gods are "real" in DF.  If the dwarves worship a god of Fire and Water, is this because the ancient dwarven ancestors beheld the world about them and concluded that there must be a single persona that encompasses both of these powers, or is there actually a divine entity that has the power to ignite you with his right hand and drown you with his left.  If gods are real, then heck, why would any combination be impossible? 

[GoblinCookie]

My 2 cents: I would consider actively married males to be "pregnancy-prone" in the sense that they contribute to your fort's population. If you've got a married man with good stats & attributes that you would like to see propagated in future generations, you get that guy OUT of the military, whether he's got a baby clinging to him or not. While I still consider pregnancy itself an overwhelmingly feminine condition, and any deity of pregnancy would have to be portrayed as female (barring seahorses as the exception), the social/military dynamics of DF do demand at least this token acknowledgement of the male.

The biological realities of pregnancy and childbirth still exist.  Barring the abstract concept of gender the population is divided up in functional terms according to who gets pregnant and who does not, virgin women are simply lumped in with the men as part of the does not get pregnant category.  Married males are able to help out their wives while they are pregnant, but so is everybody else in the fortress.

I cannot see why a god of pregnancy would have to end up being female, the matter is basically 50/50 I think.  Is your god a god of pregnancy because she gets pregnant herself or is he the impregnator, the god that makes it's followers pregnant; a phallic deity basically.  As women do not get pregnant all on their own and it takes both genders to create a pregnancy, a male god of pregnancy makes as much sense as a female one. 

This is a repeat, but I still think we should acknowledge that a lot of our mental connections are completely arbitrary, and a new culture in a new world should be able to have its own arbitrary connections.  Sure, there will be combinations that are completely ridiculous, but I like it when something ridiculous happens in Dwarf Fortress, and I would rather put up a few mind boggling wtfs than limit DF's mythology system to something bland and predictable.  The point of any decision is obviously to make DF's mythology believable and interesting, and it comes down to whether you believe that the connections we make in western culture are absolute, or if a fantasy culture would develop new ones that seem strange and random to us.  The proponents of limiting randomization have mentioned that it would be unbelievable for a culture to make connections that we in our culture perceive as opposites.  I, however, would expect to encounter something strange and unique about the way a fantasy civilization would analyze the world and form its mythologies and beliefs. 

Not arbitrary as such but merely changable.  The connections we make derive from our experiance of the world, so the dwarves will form a set of connections that relate to the world as the dwarves are presently experiancing it.  For instance a god of both virginity and pregnancy will never arise because gender is not part of the world as presently experienced, both sexes have the same names, the same clothes and the same social roles.  This means that what made virginity/pregnancy connections possible, that is the idea of the feminine does not exist and so nothing exists to unify the realities that are opposed in actual experiance. 

We think of Fire and Water as opposing forces, but why should they be?  Fire and Water could make good buddies.  Fire can sterilize water.  Modern humans combine heat and water to make steam to power our electricity and heat our houses.  Blacksmiths quench hot metal in water to make it the proper hardness.  The sun's fire makes water evaporate into clouds, where they are closer to the sun.  Would a pragmatic dwarf see Fire and Water as anything but simple tools or oddities of nature? 

Also, a lot of Earth's mythology is, and by extension so should DF's be, poetic or allegorical in nature.  So if, say there's a god of Fire and Water, there is meaning within that.  The Fire-Water god might represent the power that can come through balance, ie power to distill booze or quench metal, or more metaphorically balancing "fiery" elements in human nature with "watery" elements.  The god could represent inner struggle, adaptability, invention, power of nature, etc, rather than Fire and Water specifically. 

There's also the question of whether or not gods are "real" in DF.  If the dwarves worship a god of Fire and Water, is this because the ancient dwarven ancestors beheld the world about them and concluded that there must be a single persona that encompasses both of these powers, or is there actually a divine entity that has the power to ignite you with his right hand and drown you with his left.  If gods are real, then heck, why would any combination be impossible? 

Because the two things are opposed in general everyday reality.  Fire kills water or water kills fire, that is one annihilates the other in the everyday sense and from this basis more advanced concepts are developed.  Once dwarves understand about steam they will conclude that steam is water trying to run away from the fire that it hates so much, ditto with the whole situation with boiling water in general.  Dwarves might find the opposition useful but it doubtful they would conclude that their relationship is somehow unified or harmonious.

[AceSV]

We think of Fire and Water as opposing forces, but why should they be?  Fire and Water could make good buddies.  Fire can sterilize water.  Modern humans combine heat and water to make steam to power our electricity and heat our houses.  Blacksmiths quench hot metal in water to make it the proper hardness.  The sun's fire makes water evaporate into clouds, where they are closer to the sun.  Would a pragmatic dwarf see Fire and Water as anything but simple tools or oddities of nature? 

Also, a lot of Earth's mythology is, and by extension so should DF's be, poetic or allegorical in nature.  So if, say there's a god of Fire and Water, there is meaning within that.  The Fire-Water god might represent the power that can come through balance, ie power to distill booze or quench metal, or more metaphorically balancing "fiery" elements in human nature with "watery" elements.  The god could represent inner struggle, adaptability, invention, power of nature, etc, rather than Fire and Water specifically. 

There's also the question of whether or not gods are "real" in DF.  If the dwarves worship a god of Fire and Water, is this because the ancient dwarven ancestors beheld the world about them and concluded that there must be a single persona that encompasses both of these powers, or is there actually a divine entity that has the power to ignite you with his right hand and drown you with his left.  If gods are real, then heck, why would any combination be impossible? 

Because the two things are opposed in general everyday reality.  Fire kills water or water kills fire, that is one annihilates the other in the everyday sense and from this basis more advanced concepts are developed.  Once dwarves understand about steam they will conclude that steam is water trying to run away from the fire that it hates so much, ditto with the whole situation with boiling water in general.  Dwarves might find the opposition useful but it doubtful they would conclude that their relationship is somehow unified or harmonious.

But see, Fire and Water do not "kill" each other, that's your own arbitrary assessment.  Fire will "die" if smothered by anything, sand, wool, whatever, there's nothing especially oppositional about water, it's just readily available to us.  The idea that Fire and Water are opposed isn't even a particularly old concept, it mainly comes from video games.  The concept of the Classical Elements was that every piece of matter could be broken down into "atoms" of four types, Earth, Water, Air and Fire.  Pairs might have contradictory properties, but it was understood that they still needed to coexist in order to complete more complex forms of matter.  I imagine it was not unlike our current understanding of protons and electrons; they are opposites, but nonetheless coexist harmoniously most of the time. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element