I need
a distraction… so
Sex work in Alternia: Illegal or Legal??
LOTS OF THOUGHTS SO IVE GOT A LONG ANSWER LMAO
I think on-world it’s illegal because when I think of trolls being put under culling scrutiny for genetic material, I tend to think of it as being a one-off coming-of-age event that happens at around 11 sweeps, roughly a sweep before trolls get conscripted.
so on homeworld Alternia it’s a pretty big deal to make sure you’ve got your own partners with which to produce genetic material, so people know you’re the real deal and you’re capable of finding the sufficient amount of breeding partners to keep Alternia’s baby factory running.
of course, Alternia is run by under-12s with supervision from only a relative handful of adults, so there’s not that much to actually stop people from running sex business, especially given that the higher-ups in the Alternian land dweller social order seem far more hedonistic than conservative (let’s be honest, pole dancers are pretty much essential when it comes to clown gangster speakeasies - subjugglator families and their indigo-down lackeys are just gonna keep getting away with doing things deemed illegal by the sea dweller royal court because that’s how Alternia functions).
the main thing that stops it from becoming an issue is the fact that you look like a total loser when you walk out of the brothel carrying a bucket of material mix. it basically means you’re not good enough to find a breeding partner of your own, and that makes you a useless member of Alternian society. everyone’s gonna make fun of you because at the end of the day the idea is to have as much fun as you can while still making time for providing your dues to the empire - and if you’re accepting a sex worker’s contributions as part of your own, you’re clearly losing at the providing your dues part of the game.
I think a big thing that stems from this is sex workers being held with a very special high regard of their own by others, for several reasons. one reason being that in a society run by clown gangs, illegal stuff is cool, the illegal-er the better; and being a sex worker ranks pretty high on that scale. another reason being that people are literally PAYING YOU MONEY to mate with you; it doesn’t get much better than that on the breeding success leaderboard!
basically sex workers are accruing several times as much contributed material as anybody else is and they’re getting PAID to do it. when they walk away from a job with a pail of material in one hand and a wad of cash in the other, that’s a walk of power. which sort of just adds to the shame of being the guy who pays for sex and then comes away from it with their own bucket; you probably either begged or paid a ton of extra cash to have your share of the interpersonal slurry. how much more uncool can you get?
while this specific described practice is probably more of a land dweller thing, since sea dwellers aren’t constricted by the law enough to really have to develop such a culturally intricate practice, I think it’s probably one of the things the Condesce loves most about the Clown Culture she’s so obsessed with - Nicki Minaj (more commonly known as Human! Queen Peixes) literally wrote a song simply entitled “I Endorse These Strippers” and it’s a sentiment she’s supported in several of her other verses. because of this, what’s generally considered “The Condesce Look” in modern Alternian fashion is very likely derived heavily from subjug/highblood/land dweller stripper and sex worker culture.
on the off-world the laws are probably a lot more lax regarding this sort of thing, since anybody off-world has already proven themselves capable of finding a mate and only need to be able to cough up (usually not literally) the required material when the space-local collection season comes around. but the sex workers themselves still hold the same power, and homeworld Alternia doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so many of the opinions held about the industry by trolls in their pre-twelves would persist through a majority of their adult life. (even though most people up there are soldiers and really should be able to agree on the fact that sometimes you just wanna be able to relax).
ANYWAY THAT WAS LESS LIKE MY TWO CENTS AND MORE LIKE MY TWO DOLLARS I hope….. it’s actually readable SOZ