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Ok, girls can go shirtless? Does that include the women, too? I would think they'd at least want a bra.

The schooling here does seem a lot different than those on Libertas.

And I know you want to get information across, but I kept thinking those girls were awfully nosy.

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Jul 6Author

Yeah, one nice thing about written fiction is you can have a different culture without being graphic about it.

For a lot of history the rules on what should/must be covered has been very different from what it is here and now. So this culture has sort of reversed men and women… men’s chest are seen as slightly indecent (except when swimming etc) but women’s are not. Which makes sense when you think about breastfeeding, but I just threw in to add to the ‘dystopia’ aspect for Americans.

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Still, I can assure you, going around braless would be highly uncomfortable. Maybe fine swimming, and such, depending.

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Jul 6Author

Well, we all know that there are primitive socities without bras (or shirts) and that historically they are relatively new… but since I don’t actually state it, and don’t want to make it a big deal, I’m not panicked :)

My points are two fold: 1) To get the ‘cross culture’ thing across in a sort of shocking way and 2) To give a bit of dystopia.

For example the Ephemera girls are supposed to be kind of shocked that it is the boy living in the house (the father figure) who decides what they wear… not the mother. They are used to the mother telling them what to do. On Liberats either nobody or the father will be the one to tell them. Shocking :)

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Jul 6Author

Yes, the schooling here on Libertas is meant to be different from Ephemera, and from modern US.

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Jul 6Author

Ah, data dumps… always tricky :)

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