Taboos as Time Goes By

I've been musing over the past couple of days about social taboos, particularly constraints on language. The latter especially affect writers; there used to be words that were labeled "unprintable" and seen on the page only in pornography. Norman Mailer's novel THE NAKED AND THE DEAD subsitutes a similar-sounding nonsense term for a common four-letter word frequently uttered by soldiers. An oft-repeated anecdote claims Dorothy Parker once said to him, "Oh, you're the young man who doesn't know how to spell f--k."

In everyday polite interaction, there are still some taboo conversational topics. We can hold forth at length about the excellent dinner we ate at a restaurant over the weekend. Among relatives or close friends, it's okay to "geeze" about one's bathroom-related physical problems. But we can't remark that we had great sex over the weekend, except to the person we had it with (or possibly in intimate, alcohol-fueled same-gender gatherings). That's never an acceptable topic for general conversation.

Taboos change over the decades, generations, and centuries, of course. Eighteenth-century novelist Laurence Sterne includes what appears to be a perfectly sober, respectable mention of the four-letter word for excrement in his TRISTRAM SHANDY. Radical shifts have occurred within my own lifetime. The "unprintable" F-word for sexual activity and S-word for excrement are now printed and spoken freely with (in my opinion) regrettable frequency. On the other hand, we're well rid of a term that was commonplace, although not considered polite, in my youth and is now so taboo that published works never show it written out, except sometimes in fictional dialogue—the N-word for Black people.

Consider the film of GONE WITH THE WIND. It gives the impression that the director made numerous concessions to be allowed that single "damn" in Rhett Butler's final line of dialogue. In the book, Prissy objects to being sent to look for Rhett at a "ho'house." In the movie, she has to say something like "Miz Belle's place." Earlier, we don't hear Scarlett's whispered question about the woman Rhett compromised; in the novel, it's shown as, "Did she have a baby?" When Rhett and Scarlett have a furious quarrel during her last pregnancy, Clark Gable says, "Maybe you'll have an accident," instead of using the word "miscarriage" as in the book. Most absurdly, when Rhett angrily tells Scarlett in the novel, "Keep your chaste bed," the movie rephrases the line as, "Keep your sanctity." Mentioning chastity is borderline obscene? LOL.

Non-verbal taboos, naturally, change too. In the 19th century, exposed feminine ankles were considered risque. Yet in some tribal societies, women routinely go bare-breasted in public. Film-makers used to be forbidden to show a man and woman in a bed together, leading to the notorious twin-bed arrangements of married couples on old sitcoms. Although I lived through part of that era, it still jars me when I watch old movies and TV shows and witness almost everybody casually smoking EVERYWHERE. And, to cite a custom not grounded in either health considerations or sexual mores, in my childhood a woman wouldn't be dressed correctly if she showed up at church without a hat or shopped at a department store in slacks instead of a dress or skirt.

Robert Heinlein casually drops references to changing social taboos into his novels. The protagonist of twin-paradox interstellar adventure TIME FOR THE STARS returns to Earth after almost a century of near-light-speed travel (still a young man) to be shocked that decent girls and women are no longer required to wear hats in the presence of unmarried males. After thirty years in cryonic sleep, the narrator of THE DOOR INTO SUMMER wakes from suspended animation to find that in the year 2000 a formerly innocent word, "kink," has become an unspeakable obscenity. In some subcultures in the far-future universe of TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE, nudity is perfectly acceptable at mixed-gender social gatherings.

For a fascinating exploration of why certain apparently irrational taboos and other "bizarre" customs have rational origins and serve pragmatic social purposes, check out COWS, PIGS, WARS, AND WITCHES (1974), by anthropologist Marvin Harris. Also recommended: His follow-up book THE SACRED COW AND THE ABOMINABLE PIG (1985), more tightly focused on food-related taboos and customs.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Omnivore's Dilemma

No, not the book of that name, which was the only reference that popped up on a full page of Google results. I first encountered this term in the section on "Disgust" in HOW THE MIND WORKS, by Steven Pinker, who attributes it to psychologist Paul Rozin. The omnivore's dilemma encapsulates the double-edged nature of our ability to digest a vast variety of different foods. Therefore, human beings can survive in almost any environment on Earth. The negative side of this advantage is that we can't be sure whether a new potential food source is safe to eat until we've tried it.

As Pinker puts it, "Disgust is intuitive microbiology." After a certain age (when they outgrow the "put everything in their mouths" phase), children avoid things we would consider intrinsically disgusting, such as decayed organic matter or body fluids and excretions. Most people will even refuse to put in their mouths harmless items that resemble disgusting objects (e.g., fake vomit). Contact or resemblance equals contagion, an emotional aversion that overrides mere rationality. But what accounts for "disgust" reactions to items that we dismiss as inedible but many other cultures classify as food?

Pinker points out that we accept a very narrow range of animal products as food, even though those we shun are perfectly edible. Most Americans confine their animal diets to chickens, pigs, cattle, sheep, and selected types of fish and other seafood. From the mammals we raise for food, many of us eat only certain parts of their bodies and avoid the rest (e.g., organ meats, feet, tails, etc.). Pinker discusses how we learn these dietary prejudices as a byproduct of the omnivore's dilemma. In infancy and early toddler-hood, the "put everything in their mouths" stage, children have to eat what their parents offer them. When the child gets mobile enough to forage for himself or herself (in a hunter-gatherer society), the "picky" stage sets in. (It's probably not a coincidence that the food-finicky phase coincides with the drop in appetite when the rapid growth spurt of early life slows down.) Now the child regards new foods with suspicion. The items fed by the parents during the early months are accepted as edible. All other potential foods are, by definition according to the child's world-view, repulsive. Whatever isn't explicitly permitted is forbidden and therefore disgusting. As a practical corollary of this process, it seems parents should try to introduce their toddlers to as many different foods as possible during the sensitive learning period.

I was reminded of this section in HOW THE MIND WORKS (a fascinating, highly readable book—check it out) by Facebook videos of our seven-month-old grandson trying his first solid foods. He likes avocado. Until recently, he liked applesauce. Last week, he rejected it; maybe that's just a temporary fluke. Babies, like human beings in general, crave sweet tastes, because in a state of nature our ancestors depended on sweetness to tell them when fruit was edible. This natural attraction to sugar inspires infant-care experts to advise starting babies on less sweet foods (e.g., vegetables) first, rather than letting them get fixated on sugary things such as fruit right off the bat.

Pinker, by the way, says that not only are most parts and products of animals considered disgusting (see above), but also most or all disgusting things come from animals. Vegetables may be rejected because they taste bitter, but they're not viewed as disgusting. I reacted to that statement with, "Speak for yourself, Dr. Pinker." As a child, I was disgusted—i.e, nauseated—by several kinds of vegetables because they were served in a cooked-to-mush condition. The combination of change in taste from overcooking and the yucky texture made my stomach revolt. I believe, by the way, that the cliche of children hating vegetables arises from the crimes perpetrated on perfectly harmless plants by 1950s cooking styles and the prevalence of over-processed canned veggies in the American diet of that period.

One especially interesting issue: What about bugs? Why don't many cultures—ours included—eat insects and similar arthropods (e.g., spiders)? We often pay high prices for the privilege of consuming certain other arthropods, such as lobsters. And we happily eat one kind of insect secretion (honey). Yet we abhor the termites and grubs that form an important part of our ape relatives' diets. The easy answer in American culture is that bugs aren't included among the "permitted" items we're fed in childhood. But why aren't we?

An article from SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN attempting to answer that question:

What's Stopping Us from Eating Insects?

And one from the anthropology website "Sapiens":

Why Don't More Humans Eat Bugs?

Neither of these articles exactly repeats Pinker's hypothesis, which makes a lot of sense to me, although the second essay touches upon it: Gathering enough insects or other small arthropods to provide sufficient protein isn't a very efficient process. It takes a lot of time and energy. Therefore, people incorporated bugs into their diets only if those creatures were abundant (in the tropics, for instance) and nothing better was readily available. Where a society could obtain plenty of protein from more efficient sources, such as raising herd animals, they didn't bother to eat bugs. And since whatever isn't permitted during the early learning period is by definition forbidden, bugs are disgusting to most of us. This cultural phenomenon drives the humorous appeal of the popular children's novel HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS, since at a certain age many kids develop a sort of queasy fascination with yucky things.

One lesson for future interplanetary explorers might be that colonists should conscientiously expose their children from infancy to all sorts of safe native foods in extraterrestrial environments, even if the parents find those items repugnant.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Defining Deviancy

In sociological discourse, we encounter the term "defining deviancy down." This phrase refers to behavior that used to be condemned but now is tolerated. It's an academic way of grumbling, "Society is going to the dogs." Profanity and obscenity in what used to be called "mixed company," for example. Open sale of sexually explicit literature. "Four-letter-words," extreme gore, and onscreen sex in movies. Going to houses of worship or expensive restaurants without wearing a coat and tie or a dress (as appropriate). (In my childhood, it was frowned upon for a girl or woman to shop at an upscale department story without dressing up.) For boys, wearing a T-shirt to school (the crisis in one episode of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER centered around this transgression); for girls, going to school in pants instead of skirts. Individuals of opposite sexes living together outside of marriage. Unmarried women becoming pregnant and having babies openly instead of hiding their condition in shame. Ubiquitous gun violence in the inner cities—in WEST SIDE STORY, the introduction of a gun into the feud between the rival gangs was framed as a shocking escalation of the conflict.

In many respects, however, we've defined "deviancy" upward since what some people nostalgically recall as the good old days of the 1950s. Smoking, for example. In my childhood, most adults smoked cigarettes, and they did it anytime almost everywhere. In grocery stores! At the doctor's office! Air pollution by big-engined, gas-guzzling cars that used to be status symbols is now disapproved of. So are the racial slurs often heard in casual conversation back then. Dogs nowadays don't run loose in our communities like Lassie and Lady (my main sources of information on dogs until my parents acquired one, who didn't act nearly so intelligent as Lady, the Tramp, and their friends). Leash laws didn't become widespread until my teens. Alleged humor based on physical abuse of women by men used to be common in the media. Ralph on THE HONEYMOONERS regularly threatened to hit his wife ("to the moon, Alice!"), though he never did so on screen, and in THE QUIET MAN, John Wayne spanked Maureen O'Hara in the middle of the road. Public intoxication, including drunk driving, was also casually treated as funny, as in many of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories and the novels of Thorne Smith (author of TOPPER). Most adults seemed to regard bullying as a commonplace childhood rite of passage that kids had to learn to cope with, as long as it didn't cause significant injury. As far as safety features such as seat belts in cars were concerned, there was no law requiring passengers to wear them, because they didn't exist.

Where some societal changes are concerned, factions differ on whether they constitute improvement or deterioration. Some contemporary parents wouldn't think of letting their children visit friends, roam around the neighborhood, or ride a bus on their own at ages that were considered perfectly normal until recent decades. Conversely, if adults from the 1950s could witness today's trends, most of them would probably consider "helicopter parenting" harmful as well as ridiculous. Are the emergence of same-sex marriage, dual-career households, and legal access to abortion good or bad changes? The answer to that question depends on one's political philosophy. Does a decline in church and synagogue membership mean we've become a society of secularists and atheists, or does it simply mean that, because we no longer have so much social pressure to look "religious," for the most part only sincere believers join religious organizations? (C. S. Lewis noted that an alleged "decline" in chapel attendance among university students in fact reflected a sudden drop as soon as attendance became optional instead of compulsory.)

Whether you think current trends in behavior, customs, and morals are mainly positive or negative probably influences whether you believe Steven Pinker, for instance, is right or wrong when he claims in ENLIGHTENMENT NOW that we're living in the best of times rather than the worst.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 35 - Depicting Marriage by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction

Part 35

Depicting Marriage 

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

This Depiction series is about finding ways to show-don't-tell the nuances of intangibles -- like Love or Romance or Heritage or Family -- without blasting the reader with "on the nose" description, exposition or even narrative.

The previous parts of the Depiction Series are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

In the Depiction study we have discussed Proverbs and Psalms

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/depiction-part-13-depicting-wisdom-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/depiction-part-12-depicting-rational.html

And recently, Prophecy, and other components of culture used in Worldbuilding.

To depict a Human-Alien Romance, you must depict the "human" culture (is there even such a thing as "the" culture of Earth?) and the Alien culture.

If there is no single "Earth Culture" then why would any of your readers think there is a single "alien culture?"

Star Trek fanfic writers often handle Vulcan, Romulan, or Klingon culture as if there is and always has been only one such culture -- monoliths.

As Americans have discovered in recent decades, there is no single, monolithic Moslem culture, religion or belief.  Islam comes in as many shades, gradations, and stark contrasts as does Christianity or Judaism (and most other 'isms).

Complexity is the hallmark of old civilization -- at least on this Earth.

For decades, science fiction has assumed the direction of human cultural development is toward the monolithc -- so that in the future, Earth will have one single culture every human belongs to and is comfortable with.

However, today's trend has reversed.  While, in the early 20th Century, the trend was toward plain vanilla washout of cultures, the melting pot, with the publication and TV Series "Roots" we hit an inflection point toward "multi-culturalism."

That may not last, but today's readers grew up in an environment that values multiculturalism, diversity, and respect for the values and customs of others.

If you use a monolithic society -- a whole world with billions of individuals and only one culture now and throughout all history, you must convince this new reader that such a thing can exist, be viable, and interact with Earth plausibly.

This is a tall order, and may take over your plot, oblitterating all the space you want to devote to a hot Romance.

So depicting your Aliens as having a vast, varied, and confusing past, perhaps irrational and persistent into modern times, could make them seem more human.

Since we are looking at Alien Romance, we should focus on "marriage" or whatever passes for the stable partnership that tends to ensure the survival of the young, the training (acculturation) and education of the young, and perhaps most of all the transmission of Values to the young.

Yes, Romance is actually all about "the young" -- because Romance usually happens to the Young.  Of course, there are "autumn romance" stories, touching beyond words, but the forward looking hope, optimism, and goal directed drive to establish a safe, happy, stable home is for the Young who have not done it yet.

Such youngsters set out to establish themselves mostly because they have been raised in a stable home and understand what makes it a base for "family."

Setting out to write a human/Alien romance immediately raises the question of where do you do the research?  If you want to write a Regency, you know where to find history books.  If you want to write a tale set in Ancient Rome, you know where to find factual material.  But where do you find out about Alien Marriage?

Where do you find out about Alien History, Alien Religion, Alien Customs?

What do Aliens do for "something borrowed, something blue" -- and why?

You will never be more aware of our mixed up, blended and re-separated human cultural heritage and all the customs surrounding marriage as when you set out to create some Aliens.

Science Fiction has always drawn on the strange corners of human history, other parts of this globe, far back to the dawn of time, to generate odd but believable Alien customs.

Most human customs have arisen from biology combined with available technology.

For example, once cloth was woven, it became feasible for people to wear "veils" -- shrouding the head and face.  In certain parts, such as desert where dust blows, face coverings made of cloth became standard wear.

Leather doesn't work so well for face veils because you can't breathe through it.  Cloth woven tightly enough to keep out most sand is perfect.

So growing plants, extracting the fiber, spinning thread, weaving it -- very complex technology with weavers and textile dye experts harboring many trade secrets as dynastic wealth of a family.

You can look up how that developed among humans -- keeping in mind by the time of the Pharoahs of Egypt, textiles were a well developed industry.

Part 21 - Depicting Alien History (Testosterone revisited)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-21-depicting-alien.html

Part 22 - Depicting Alien Nostalgia With Symbolism (Dean Martin song Memories Are Made Of This used in a Video of nostalgic images, perfectly composed and compiled)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/12/depiction-part-22-depicting-alien.html

So in Worldbuilding your Aliens, research the roots of our current civilization -- from Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, onwards.  The more you know, the better long-range perspective you can envision from human history.

Then you can derive an Alien marriage custom which will not resemble any human custom, but will seem comprehensible and plausible to your readers because it evolved along a path similar to the path of human custom evolution.

Religion is always a cultural wild card, and an easy way to slip in twists that can become potent Character motivations.  Religion can prompt behaviors that are otherwise implausibly Good -- or insanely Bad.  So any Alien world you build is not complete without a Cosmology and Cosmogany -- and the accompanying epistemologies.

Most people who think with, use, and live by these intellectual abstractions do not know the academic terms for them.  Most people call it their gut.

What do your Aliens use for a gut?

For example, most people today do not know why Brides wear veils -- and modern ceremonies often do away with the tradition of the bridal veil.

See Why Do We Cry At Weddings - Part 2 has a link to Part 1.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html

Here is the historical reason for the Bridal Veil from

http://www.torahfax.net

---------quote-----------
Many of the wedding traditions are rooted in the Biblical stories found in the Torah.

Q.  Why according to Jewish tradition, is the bride's face covered with the veil before the Chupah.

A. ...  The Torah tells us that when Rivkah met her future husband, Yitzchak, for the first time, "She took the veil and she covered herself" (Gen. 24:65).

------------end quote-----------

This was long before Egypt became a Superpower of that world, and cloth was commonly worn even then.

Also, from the same source:

-----------quote-----
Q.  Why is it customary that the bride's family presents the groom with a Talit?

A. The Talit has four corners, with eight strings on each corner. In total, the Talit has 32 strings (4X8=32). "Heart" in Hebrew is "Lev," which has the numerical value of 32. The Talit expresses the blessing that the couple's life be filled with love for each other.

-----------end quote----------

Here is a video on the Tallit:
http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1749430/jewish/Do-It-Yourself-Tallit.htm

The Veil custom promulgated through thousands of years in a lot of cultures that have no obvious connection to the Biblical figures of Rebecca and Isaac.

The Talit -- the fringed prayer shawl worn today by Jewish men (in some traditions, only married men), is also a custom many simply execute routinely and have no idea where it came from, why they do it (except their parents did) or what any of the (many) symbols incorporated into it mean, why they mean that, or how they came to mean that -- thus what the symbols might be evolved into and what they must not be evolved into.

People know their customs, but not the thousands of years of history behind them.

Customs lose meaning through generations, but they don't lose power and impact.

Failing to execute a "good luck" custom (like something borrowed; something blue) may be cited as the reason a marriage failed.

It might actually be the reason.  People subconsciously nagged by a sense of failure to do the right thing will often subconsciously arrange for their own punishment.

In fiction, that is called Poetic Justice, discussed under depicting random luck.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/07/depiction-part-31-depicting-random-luck.html

So, Romance focuses on the period of initial encounter - the Love At First Sight between Soul Mates -- well, it can be Hate At First Sight in a deep psychological study of the true nature of Love.

Romance is the beginning of the beginning.

But it has its root in the blending of dynasties -- each living human (and presumably most Aliens) has an ancestry that stretches back into the mists of pre-history.  We all come from somewhere, but have been cross-influenced by many strands of culture.

Throughout Time, humans have lived mostly in mono-cultural environments since travel was so difficult.  War, famine, draught could cause mass migration, and later the Americas were colonized due largely to religious incompatibilities, but the migrants would then settle in and absorb or be absorbed into the local culture.  Archeology shows how this pattern repeated through the evolution of human kind, now genetics revealing how Cro-Magnon cross bred with Neanderthal as populations overlapped.

So the trend seemed to be toward blending into a mono-cultural association creating tribe, village, city, kingdom.

A trader, bard, fugitive from justice, wanderer, exile, soldier of fortune, shipwreck survivor might wash up on the shores of a community -- but would be always the "stranger" (maybe for several generations of his children).  But the community would be mono-cultural, harboring the stranger and absorbing him.

Today, we are reversing that trend, accepting strangers among us who view right/wrong/life/purpose in wholly different ways.

Today, in the world of mobility, and mass migrations is producing communities in ferment, but multi-cultural marriages abound, just as between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon.  Imagine what those partnerships might have been like - rape and abandonment?  Or the male protecting the offspring of the female?

As far as we know, these original humans did not have "marriage" as we know it today - (Credit Cards, Bank Accounts with Joint Tennants, house in the title of a Living Trust, Pre-Nup Agreement).  But their children survived, which says something.

So what is marriage?  How do you depict marriage without pointing to a set of rules laid out in a book so old people can't agree on who wrote it?  How do you depict human/Alien marriage to a reader who is convinced the rules in that old book should be discarded as archaic and inapplicable?

For humans, you can't say marriage biological -- because human males have been known to abandon their own children.  Human mothers have been known to discard newborns, espcially from men they disliked.

Yet even without a legal document, men and women (or two men, or two women) live together, settle in, raise children together, create a domestic arrangement that suits them.  Perhaps it is just inertia, but such arrangements can last longer than some document-supported "marriages."

Does going the documented route spoil a Relationship? (the answer to that is a Theme, you know).

Our modern TV shows are fraught with depictions of dysfunctional families, failed marriages, second marriages, men who skip from woman to woman, and twenty-and-thirty-somethings who dread even calling their parents on holidays.  The trend is to depict the broken family dynamic.

There are many depictions of the heartwrenching sorrow at the death of a parent (aunt or uncle) with whom the survivor did not reconcile.  The assumption is always that there had (just absolutely had) to be something to be reconciled.

The idea of a family with nothing outstanding needing reconciliation is simply absurd.

This could be why the HEA, the Happily Ever After, ending is considered insanely ridiculous - beyond contempt the way science fiction had always been regarded up until Star Trek was revived as a result of fan activity.

Today's TV would never broadcast The Brady Bunch or Leave It To Beaver -- which did depict family life in their respective eras.

Today, there are no depictions on mass-fiction-markets of tight-knit, solid, stable multi-generation families.

So it is up to novelists to lure, lull, entice readers into believing in the solid, tight-knit multigeneration family, and to depict marriage that is not dysfunctional.

Only, neither the reader nor the writer today has a model for a functional family in common with one another.

Depict a functional family, and the reader is held spellbound waiting for the Big Reveal of the Big Secret -- the grand lie -- the deception at the core of the matter.  Everyone secretly harbors hate, --- or so an Alien watching modern TV would assume.

So we must look to human history for a model for a futuristic Marriage - a Couple who might be from different cultures, but comfortably raise sane children who can go out and fall in love and form another (sane) generation that does not hate their parents.

Historically, there are such ideals, and a handful of principles of behavior that you can depict the parents of your Couple modeling.

If the parents of the Couple whirling through the Romance in you novel behave in the following fashion, you will show-don't-tell your readers that your Couple has a fine chance at an HEA, a Happily Ever After that will not end in a divorce.

Here is a quote from chabad.org  

---------quote----------
Marriage is not a power struggle, and the home is not a battlefield. To give in does not mean to relinquish power, and talking things over does not mean you are entering negotiations.

The two of you comprise a single entity—a couple. What is good for one is good for the other. When you come to a decision, it is the decision of both of you as one being. Do it not as a sacrifice but as a gift, not as a defeat but as a triumph of love.

------end quote -------------

So try writing the scene in your novel where the parents of your Couple meet to resolve the issue of "My Kid Is Going To Marry An Alien!"

Here's a series I've recommended:

Lay out the scene using that set of principles.  Depict each set of Parents approaching the problem, modeling that problem-solving methodology.

This is an essential show-don't-tell of why it is likely your Couple will indeed arriive at an HEA (not that it will be easy, mind you).

"The Apple Does Not Fall Far From the Tree" and "Like Father; Like Son" and so on, is all true.  These are descriptions of family.  Culture propagates through solid, tight-knit Family.

Of course, humans have had trouble with our relatives since Caine and Able.  Even Abraham had to send one of his sons away.

Esaw and Jacob didn't get along too well, either.

These stories are preserved because they are a repeating pattern built into our makeup.

It is part of the human condition that families spawn aliens within our midst, and spit them out with considerable force.

Genetics does not guarantee acceptance.

Every large family has a "Black Sheep."  (grand source of drama)

But to have a "Black Sheep" -- a family must be a family.  The solidity of the family is a pre-condition for the drama of the "exception" -- the different one.

Two such "different ones" may end up in a human/Alien Romance, and a grand marriage where both functional families have to come around (far-around) to accepting this new, utterly strange, Couple.

The reader will expect there to be no chance for such a couple, two rejects of their cultures, to reach a Happily Ever After.

You can convince your skeptical readers by depicting the parents, maybe grandparents mixing in, settling their disputes over the Couple by using those principles of marriage.  You might even invoke some good-luck-charm custom, like the Talit, depicting it has having worked.

The HEA demands too much suspension of disbelief for today's reader.  So today's writer has to work harder at convincing the reader.

Get your readers to Cry At The Wedding of your Characters.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Death of a Life-Saver

Weird-bearded men, some with black-banded battle braided hair and thick chains hanging from their waists and pockets, stood silently in a semi-circle on the beach with their mates, their heavy "bovver" boots planted firmly on the sifted white sand, facing into the stiff onshore breeze and the wind-whipped rising tide.

A ceremony was about to begin. Curious, I joined the back of the crowd.

A man in tartan played a familar hymn on the mournful bagpipes. An all-male team of rescue-swimmers, bare footed, wearing dark boardies and sash patterned tops stood with their hands folded like soccer goalies stood at a tangent to the sea. With them stood double ranks of men in dark uniform tracksuits.

There was one easel holding red and white flowers in the lozenge shape of a red cross. At the water's edge was a pure white surf boat, broad, shallow, with the prow pointing inland and the blade of one oar resting on the side.  Midway between the rising tide and the assembly was a lone, freshly painted, orange baywatcher's high chair flanked on each side by two rescue floats. A furled flag lay across the seat.

A man read the words of the seaman's hymn "For Those In Peril On The Sea" as a prayer. Several people spoke into a hand held microphone and into the wind. The wind carried many of the words away, but it became clear that this was a funeral service for a lifeguard who had died too soon. When all who wished to share memories had done so, the bagpiper played "Amazing Grace".

The rescue-swim team received something... two somethings... and proceeded to the surfboat and launched it with difficulty into the high and heaving surf. One man did not make it into the boat. Perhaps he was not supposed to.  The oars were raised vertically in a formal salute, and then they rowed up into the roaring breakers, over the foaming tops, now hidden from the shore on the windward side, now thrashing up the rising face of a near Macker.

Past the surf line, past the impact zone, and into choppy but waveless water, the surf boat turned parallel to the shore and again raised their oars like a forest of masts in a vertical salute. Something bobbed and floated. After a while, they rowed parallel to the shore, then turned and came surfing in, riding the churning waves.

When the surf boat was beached and the crew had tumbled out and rejoined the funeral afterglow, one lone strong swimmer swam like a champion back out to sea, heading for whatever it was that was still floating. I watched him and worried. Was this supposed to happen?  With quiet competence, he retrieved a life-saver's float, and also a washed-ashore lost oar.

This interesting ceremony made me wonder, what might an alien funeral be like?  For inspiration, I googled "strange funerals" from different parts of our own world.

Some traditions are widely known. Anyone who has watched the James Bond movies has seen the Jazz funerals of New Orleans, and the Zoroastrian "tower of silence". The Neanderthal "flower funerals" might have inspired the burial of Rue under flowers in the first "Hunger Games" movie. Possibly the Arthurian myths of Merlin trapped in the bole of a tree by Morgan Le Fay might share something in common with a Manilan culture that buries its dead inside hollowed tree trunks. Not dissimilar is the culture that pulps the remains of the dead, and inters what is left inside totem poles.

Another woodland culture suspends the dead in containers from ancient trees. Yet another people hang occupied coffins from cliff sides so that the spirits may be conveniently close to the sky.

Other "sky" burials in arid or mountainous countries such as Tibet involve the willing participation of vultures. Allegedly, even recently, there are communities where the dead are a valued source of protein and there is a strict pecking order about which relative may consume specific body parts. (Apparently, a sister-in-law may enjoy a deceased female relation's buttocks.)

While some of us seafaring folk, or small islanders who cannot spare meager farming or rainwater catchment areas for cemetaries may cremate and scatter ashes at sea, and sailors on the high seas sink weighted bodies reverently into the depths of the ocean, other communities compress the dead into reef balls to enhance the reef habitat for fish.

Other cultures compress corpses of loved ones into colorful beads that can be kept as ornaments. Yet another business turns ashes into carbon, and then crushes the carbon to create diamonds so that loved ones can become precious rings for their survivors' fingers.

Banned now is the practice of female survivors being forced to hack off parts of their fingers whenever a close family member died. Apparently, the ancient Hindu requirement (suttee or Sati) that widows throw themselves (often not willingly) into their deceased spouse's pyre  may not have been quite extinguished. Many misogynistic customs that kill off widows have implausible rationales, but most boil down to the physical and financial security of the males.

Arguably more tender are the societies that mummify their dead, and treat them as if they are still alive. Most mummification requires the dearth of moisture and the absence of bugs.  The most remarkable process might be the 3,000 self-mummification exercise carried out by priests who would eat a 1,000-day fat-reducing diet of nuts and seeds, succeeded by another 1,000 days of eating bark and perhaps pine needles and poisonous tea to make their flesh unattractive to bugs.  This would also make the monk or priest violently ill, which would further dehydrate him. After that, he would be walled up with only an air tube and a small bell to ring once a day until he died of starvation. Finally, his air hole would be sealed and his remains would be left for another 1,000 for mummification to be completed. This process was recently described in DISCOVER magazine, and also in one of the online sources mentioned below.

Sources:
http://cloudmind.info/25-unusual-death-rituals-from-around-the-world/

And
http://mentalfloss.com/article/58362/12-strange-funerals-and-funeral-traditions

And
https://www.scoopwhoop.com/inothernews/strange-funeral-customs/#.c0c8u3n03

I've omitted mention of many practices, but, perhaps this inspires some ideas for alien romance fiction funerary customs.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry