Deliberate Values Dissonance / Literature

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Authors

• The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (most famous for Things Fall Apart) writes historical novels about the Igbo people, and doesn't fail to include disturbing cultural practices like abandoning newborn twins in the forest to die, a certain caste being forbidden to live with the rest of the people or one protagonist killing his adopted son due to an inscrutable oracular order. The point is that while many aspects of Igbo culture were good and their loss a tragedy, the novels also make it clear why so many Igbo were willing to trade them in for the colonial Anglo-Christian culture, which is also portrayed as neither wholly good nor bad.
• Paolo Bacigalupi seems to be in love in this trope. Be it his short stories or any of his books, the entire premise is based solely on how different, often in a very uncomfortable way, are the in-universe values. And the characters populating his works are perfectly okay with all the horrific and morally-questionable things around them, because this is all they ever know in their lives. Trading in souls captured in digital format? Hey, it's not like they are real people! Servants used as a playthings for the rich? As long as they are fed, no need to complain. Desolating entire regions to steal their water? No big deal, just make sure locals are too thirsty to resist. Sending artificial plagues to kill strains of crops other than those from your MegaCorp? How else then people would buy your product? Killing each and every single newborn? We are already over-populated, stop bringing new people into the society. And so on and forth.
• James Ellroy:
  • LA Quartet, set from 1947 to 1959, features even its more likable characters occasionally indulging in racial epithets, as well as similar attitudes to Jewish people. Ellroy deliberately points out how deeply ingrained into society those feelings were, that even nice people could get caught up in them.
  • In The Black Dahlia Bucky is manipulated into killing two black men by his partner, who is trying to cover up a previous crime. He doesn't seem too bothered by it, as he's too busy obsessing over the eponymous Black Dahlia.
  • In The Big Nowhere Upshaw is hounded into killing himself with the threat of revealing his homosexuality.
  • Ellroy describes the themes of the Underworld USA trilogy thus:
    The essential contention of the Underworld USA trilogy ... is that America was never innocent. Here's the lineage: America was founded on a bedrock of racism, slaughter of the indigenous people, slavery, religious lunacy... and nations are never innocent. Let alone nations as powerful as our beloved fatherland. What you have in The Cold Six Thousand — which covers the years '63 to '68 — is that last gasp of pre-public-accountability America where the anti-communist mandate justified virtually any action. And it wasn't Kennedy's death that engendered mass skepticism. It was the protracted horror of the Vietnamese war.
• The eponymous Tuareg protagonist from the book by Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa has a 15-year-old wife who's the mother of his son. And he isn't very fond of people suggesting that all humans (men and women, free men and slaves, Tuareg and others, smart and dumb ones, rich and poor ones, and so on) are equal. When another guy calls him a fascist for this, he just states, then he has to be a fascist (to his excuse, he doesn't know about fascism). Ironically, he saves the life of the socialist ex-president also thanks to Values Dissonance — the man was his guest, and he'll do anything for hospitality.
• Done by Ephraim Kishon with Saadya Shabatai, the Yemenite Jew. As Kishon wrote, "they are about 2000 years behind western civilization". Used in one story where a guy wants to marry Saadya's daughter, but the father demands a high bride price (i.e. essentially selling his daughter). The funny thing is, although exploiting the rule to make money is frowned upon, this is a more or less Biblically-mandated Jewish tradition, albeit one with a more-or-less universally used loophole.^note Fun fact: This may be why the Jews' neighbors, the Arabs, prefer a dower: the parents get nothing unless the daughter wants them to.
• In Mary Renault's The King Must Die, there is mention of its hero, Theseus, taking sexual advantage of female servants/slaves starting from a young age, and this is completely appropriate behavior.
  • Her book The Persian Boy was blasted by Moral Guardians because one of its main themes is pederasty. In the text the narrator clearly states that his treatment as a child was horribly abusive, and if anything The Persian Boy is a scathing, vicious denunciation of child sexual abuse. Most of the main action of the novel, where the narrator finds love and happiness, takes place after he reaches adulthood. The Moral Guardians were also a bit put-out by the main character finding "love and happiness" in a romance with another man, which may have been all well and good in Ancient Greece, but apparently not so much in 1972 America.
• Neal Stephenson frequently explores Culture Clash and Values Dissonance in his works. Friends or allies from different cultures and sub-cultures sometimes have to pause and step back a moment to understand where their companions are coming from. This also serves as a moment for the reader to be informed on the differences in culture and outlook. Many an antagonist in his works is a thoroughly evil villain from the protagonist's perpective, but is "good" by his own code as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, Knight Templar, or an example of outright Blue-and-Orange Morality.
• Very common in the historical novels of the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte, especially in his saga of Captain Alatriste, located in the 17th century. Pérez-Reverte has said on several occasions that "it is a mistake to judge the actions of the past with the eyes of the present" and points out that historical figures such as the Catholic Monarchs were undoubtedly intolerant from a current perspective (by actions such as the expulsion of the Jews) but that their actions made sense in their time and were not very different from those of other kings European.
• From Ursula K. Le Guin's works:
  • In The Left Hand of Darkness, on the planet Gethen, there is no gender, there has never been a great war, and rape is nonexistent, though there is a kind of one-sided seduction that the other side might be unhappy about. As well, incest is not a crime (at least not the first time around). Theft, however, is regarded as a serious crime — Gethen is in an Ice Age, and if you steal someone's food, you could be damning them to a death by starvation. The only crime which is worse than theft is suicide, because a person committing it gives up all chance at repenting. It's In-Universe because there is a citizen of Earth observing the Gethenians.
  • In Always Coming Home, Kesh attitudes toward sex, property and gender are considerably different from ours (wealth, for example, is determined by generosity instead of property). A warrior from a nation with values close to ours has trouble understanding how come no one can appreciate his heroics - for the Kesh, fighting and hunting are for children and youngsters, not adults.

#

• As most of 11/22/63 takes place in the Southern US when Jim Crow was still in effect, there is much of this to be had. Casual racism, sexism and homophobia is all around every corner — one elderly character is shown reminiscing about minstrel shows, the main character (a man from the 2010s) uses the image of a segregated bathroom as a way to keep himself from romanticizing the past, and women are expected to put up with less-than-savory situations (like an abusive marriage) for the sake of keeping up appearances. And in the case of the latter, Sadie knows nothing of OCD, the disorder that made her abusive ex so abusive towards her.
• Value dissonance is a central theme of the 1632 series. Vastly different values between the "uptimers" (people from 2000 America) and the "downtimers" (people from 1632 Europe) cause no end of confusion, hilarity, and conflict between people from the two time periods.
  • A beautiful example shows up in The Kremlin Games, when a 21st century American and a 17th century Russian noble discuss the abolition of slavery. The American is shocked to hear that the high nobles (whom the American had just assumed would fall under Aristocrats Are Evil), who can afford to pay wages, are generally neutral or slightly opposed to slavery. The big supporters of the institution are Land Poor petty nobility and land-holding yeomen, whose only assets are farmland and the labor needed to get crops harvested. At the same time the runaway slave-girl Anya remarks that she had never even considered that slavery as an institution could be immoral before the Americans pointed out that all humans are descendants of Adam and Eve. Before then, she had never had a bad opinion of the system, only of her place in it, and even dreamed of owning slaves of her own.
  • Liberal schoolteacher Melissa Mailey is fairly shocked to see refugee-matriarch Gretchen Richter hitting anyone who doesn't obey her promptly. Gretchen finds her reaction confusing, until she sees Melissa ordering around her uptimer students, and concludes that Melissa has probably never had to smack anybody to make them listen to her.
  • Also, the "uptimers", whose view of 17th-century people is heavily colored by the image of the prim, uptight Puritan, are quite startled to find out just how frank — and bawdy — "downtimers" can be in discussing sexual topics and using so-called "barnyard" language. On the other hand, the "uptimer" habit of casually taking the Lord's name in vain often causes sticky moments with "downtimers", for which this is a serious no-no.
  • Another stellar example would be the confusion the downtimers have with the uptimers referring to an early altercation as "The Battle of the Crapper" because the uptimers find it shocking and significant that camp followers would have to hide little girls in an excrement and spider filled hole in order to save them from brutal gang rape, while the downtimers are used to such atrocities occurring as a matter of course.
  • In one scene, an Austrian princess meditates on the performance of The Sound of Music she has just seen, and muses on how "realistic" it would be for a Baron in Captain von Trapp's position to enter a morganatic marriage willy-nilly. She comes to the conclusion that the Captain had enough socially acceptable heirs from his first marriage that he could probably get away with it.
• In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Great White Hunter Ned Land asks Captain Nemo's permission to hunt some whales. Nemo denies it and he accuses Ned of being an Egomaniac Hunter. Next they see some cachalots and Nemo destroys them using the Nautilus's spur. When Ned accuses Nemo of being The Butcher, Nemo answers that the cachalots are mischievous creatures and the Nautilus is his weapon. Verne shows us that no matter how mistaken the philosophy of a Great White Hunter is, they will never do the damage that the Ubermensch can do using science.

A

• Accomplishments of the Duke's Daughter:
  • The social hierarchy is rigidly recognized and enforced, even by the protagonist Iris. Marrying for love among the nobility is also considered as something rather foolish, though it's recognized that getting in the way of a Perfectly Arranged Marriage is a terrible idea. When Yuuri and Edward begin going against these norms they bring shame on themselves even if what they're saying sounds reasonable from a modern perspective if you don't pay too much attention to the context. However, in context, it's pretty clear that Edward is only saying this out of self-interest rather than any genuinely altruistic motivations and his hypocrisy becomes obvious as soon as he runs out of good arguments and falls back on being the prince.
  • The protagonist Iris is considered a huge radical for using her own money to fund mandatory primary education, an agricultural college and a university to increase social mobility to simulate the economy and end economically disruptive farming practices. Her company is considered quite revolutionary for having paid paternal leave and allowing women to work even if they got married and had children.
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written several decades after the Civil War. Many modern audiences fail to realize that Mark Twain meant to invoke this trope to show just how bad the South was.
• A few books of the Animorphs series highlight that the Andalites, the nominal "good guy" alien race of the series, are quite sexist to their females and are especially ableist with disabled Andalites being viewed with a mix of disdain and pity, where being shoved out of sight is considered a mercy.
• In Ascendance of a Bookworm the protagonist Myne really struggles to adjust to medieval European culture. Her very polite mannerisms such as doing a dogeza is completely incomprehensible and, implicitly, too self debasing given the context. She also has to be told that she needs to give a firm no when rejecting a deal because to the local culture it sounds like she's haggling, not declining. Eventually, there comes a point where the only character who knows she's from another world, Lutz, suddenly understands why she's so weird: Every instinct of hers and every mannerism she was taught clash with where she is now. She always feels the same as he did when she made him improve his basic hygiene and show some level of ettiquette, none of which is necessary to the son of a carpenter but is if you're trying to become a merchant like Lutz.
• Often used to good effect in the Aubrey-Maturin series. One excellent example is the characters' attitude toward naval discipline and punishment; Jack Aubrey is portrayed as having liberal opinions on the subject for the day, hating indiscriminate flogging (flogging being a standard punishment at the time for offenses not reaching a court-martial level of seriousness) and doing what he can to lessen the severity of punishments issued by court-martials that he sits on. Nonetheless, he will order a set of lashes to be laid on if he deems the reason good and sufficient, e.g., for deliberate insolence toward a superior officer in The Far Side of the World or for shocking incompetence in executing a basic nautical maneuver in The Truelove.
  • Jack is also, in the early parts of the series, casually anti-Irish, anti-Catholic (too many Irish in the starboard battery. Can't walk around down here without tripping on a rosary...) and slightly pro-slavery (more because he is afraid of the effects of abolition on the economy financing the war against Napoleon than anything else; he has nothing personal against people of color, and even makes a black man a bo'sun at one point.) Being friends with half-Irish Catholic Stephen Maturin helps him with the first two (though he occasionally relapses) and the third is effectively cured when he captures a slave ship (it leads to a personal Moment of Awesome when he orders the slaver crew arrested and loudly and angrily presses them into swabbing the lower decks).
  • Aubrey is a staunch Tory and a British patriot, so he is not too fond of Americans or their revolution^{A note for American readers}At the time, the two main political parties of Britain were the Tories, traditionalists who advocated feudal relationships between landowners and workers over the market (very loosely, commoners are separate and subordinate to the local lord of the rural estate, but on the other hand, these nobility are obliged to grant ancient rights and privileges for commoners and basically offer the poor sods something — which is why Aubrey refuses to enclose the land around his manor); and the Liberal Whigs, who advocated something resembling the laissez-faire free-market capitalism of modern conservatives and were generally quite sympathetic to the American Revolution. Not many Americans know this, but the American Revolution in late 1700s Britain was every bit as politically divisive as Vietnam was in America in The '60s.:
    • On one occasion after the War of 1812 ends, Aubrey's Surprise encounters an American frigate and the two ships are friendly. But once the Americans are out of earshot, Aubrey scoffs that they are "little better than democrats!" There were a lot of British people (mainly ones with educated Aristotleian views) back then who thought democracy was a grossly inferior form of government to monarchy.
    • Note that while Aubrey has a low opinion of Americans and their style of government, he does think that the War of 1812 was a terrible tragedy and gross mistake. In Desolation Island, he is placed in command of the Leopard, the ship that famously fired upon the Chesapeake in 1807 to force it to hand over British nationals and nearly started a war; Jack freely acknowledges (albeit privately) that the British were in the wrong in that incident and relates to the Americans for feeling insulted over the treatment.
  • There is also a mention that both Stephen Maturin and another character have innate cruel streaks as a result of their Spanish heritage.
  • Doctor Maturin himself, while incredibly progressive for his time in many ways, is still very much a Catalan nobleman when it comes to matter of honour, and quite ready to kill anyone over a slight, large or petty, real or imagined. He is also quite openly islamophobic, and mere mention of "the Moors" is enough to reduce the normally cold and detached doctor to frothing-at-the-mouth rage (though, given that both Catalonia and Ireland were frequent targets for raids by Barbary corsairs at the time, Stephen's dislike may be justified). Stephen is also a proponent of settling freed African-Americans in Sierra Leone. Today, this opinion comes across as rather racist, but it was considered quite progressive at the turn of the 19th century.

B

• Bas-Lag Cycle: Subverted in Perdido Street Station: Isaac immediately assumes that Yagharek's crime of "choice theft" is some inscrutable offense based on Blue-and-Orange Morality. For this reason he's willing to help Yagharek counteract his punishment. It turns out that Yagharek's crime is what humans would simply call rape, albeit viewed in a slightly different light from how a not insignificant number of readers might, and so he revokes his help.
• Beautiful Losers: While 17th century priests start to worry once Katherine Tekawitha's mortification rituals start to endanger her life, they're very casual about it in general, and seem perfectly ok with acts of self-violence (such as whipping her back until it bleeds, every single day) that the 20th century narrator finds horrifying.
• Seen somewhat in the Belisarius Series. Although many of the characters have somewhat more tolerant views than were common at the time, they're rather nonchalant about the existence of slavery. Ousanos also makes a comment about it being too bad that democracy, as the classic Greeks demonstrated, never works.
• Being Able to Edit Skills in Another World, I Gained OP Waifus has Nagi try to free a slave, Cecil Pharot, that he purchased solely for her knowledge of the New World he was dragged into, after carefully questioning her. On modern Earth, such an act would be considered a mercy. In this New World, she was insulted, and dismayed, thinking he was treating her like trash, trying to throw her away. It took a lot of apologizing and head patting for him to convince her she was wrong.
• The Bible: Used sometimes. For example, kings were highly respected in ancient Judea, but had an extremely bad reputation in ancient Rome. So when Jesus was arrested, there was some dispute between the Romans and the Judeans as to whether to call him "King of the Jews" (a huge insult according to the Romans, but a huge honorific according to the Judeans) or merely a man who claimed to be the King of the Jews (John 19:21). Pontius Pilate, the Roman magistrate responsible for making the decision, chose the former.
• Used and partially crossed over with Fair for Its Day in Mary Grant Bruce's stories about the fictional Australian cattle-station (USA: ranch), Billabong (The Billabong Books). All of the characters, including the main ones, view the Australian Aboriginals as inferior and having child-like minds. Also, the Chinese occasionally depicted in the books are viewed by most of the characters as degenerate and reprehensible tramps by default. The Billabong family, the Lintons, are very progressive in that they are willing to accept some Chinese as being decent and respectable (most notably, their Chinese kitchen gardener, Lee Wing). The last story in the series is notable for putting forth the progressive (for when it was written) view that Australia once belonged to the Aborigines and they deserve some respect.
• In Book of the New Sun, the hero Severian is a torturer and executioner, who even at one point delivers a two-page speech about why penal torture is the best punishment and preferable on all counts to prison/hard labour, exile, or indiscriminate death penalty. He apparently changes his mind later, as when he becomes Autarch, he announces his intention to abolish his former guild, but clearly intends executions to continue. And given that he has previously spoken against prisons and forced labour...
  Severian: By our mercy we will grant even the foulest a quick death. Not because we pity them, but because it is intolerable that good men should spend a lifetime dispensing pain.
• The Brightest Shadow: A major feature of the story, as many characters readily adopt the horrifying morality of the Hero, in contrast to the reader's expected reaction. To a lesser degree, mansthein culture varies from human culture in various ways.
• Ellis Peters' characters from the Brother Cadfael books adhere to medieval feudal values without losing her or the reader's sympathy. Especially Oliver's My Master, Right or Wrong attitude in a civil war doesn't one bit change the fact that she seems a little in love with him.
• This trope is a strong element in A Brother's Price. It's a Romance Novel set during an age of rifles, steamboats, and horses, and so few men are born that gender roles are largely reversed. The often horrifying implications are spelled out but regarded dispassionately — Princess Ren, who's consulting holy books, concludes that the values they espouse don't include treating men like property, but that doesn't mean they're as hardy, ambitious, and constructive as women. Family structures in this world are also different, so if a sister commits treason and there isn't reasonable evidence that she acted alone, the entire family is executed down to the infants. This is regarded as unpleasant and sad, but practical for preventing You Killed My Mothers and cycles of revenge.

C

• The Century Trilogy: In Fall of Giants, which is dealing with the changes in society during the time of World War I, this trope is inevitable. The most obvious example among the main protagonists would be Earl Fitzherbert, an English aristocrat who is against the very principle of women's suffrage, and (although even he disapproves of the brutal way the Russian nobility treats its subjects) also against the emancipation of the lower classes.
• Chaos Fighters: An example occurs with the various continents having different administration systems, and in particular Lefrad. The Yedrei-Phlaq confrontation happened at an unspecified time prior to the start of the entire main series, which is partly due to their leader trying to force their administration systems on the others (Yedrei uses monarchy while Phlaq uses democracy. As a result, in Chaos Fighters-Route of Peaks, the government of Tziac sent only one person to join the main characters' party to eliminate the mountain bandits, fearing of bringing significant casualties to the soldiers, which happened during the confrontation. Even other countries merely used long range weaponry to eliminate them, despite sending slightly more (read: two) people to aid the main characters' party. This also leads to another dissonance where in Chaos Fighters-Route of Land, almost every country in Yedrei continent gave military support of various degree to help the Estau rebel pact, which is a military force to capture Lestreb from the demons' reign.
• Chronicles of the Kencyrath: The Kencyrath aren't human, and Kencyr values are appropriately alien. Incest is ok, but lying is awful enough that suicide is the only way to regain your honor. (Calling someone a liar is the worst possible insult.) Highborn women always wear masks, and not wearing one is like going nude. Highborn women also have a long tradition of being each other's girlfriends — although it's strictly secret from men. Highborn women are cloistered, and arranged marriage to strangers is the norm for them, but Kendar women get decent gender equality, and serve as soldiers alongside their male counterparts.
• Common in David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series, taking place in a future ruled by the Han (Chinese) with much more acceptance of casual cruelty. Holding up a frozen human head to your business associates to reminisce? They will only be bothered that you are stalling the meeting.
• "The Ass's Head" by Phyllis Ann Karr, collected in Classical Whodunnits is supposedly based on a 2nd century manuscript. It portrays Christianity as an insane anarchist death cult, with a "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer explaining that, while this isn't true, it really was how pre-Constantinian Romans saw it.
• In Tris's book of The Circle Opens, she comments unfavorably on the representative government of Tharios because she's spent most of her life living in Emelan, a hereditary dukedom which is fortunate enough to have a responsible incumbant. Compared to a system where a person is trained up from birth to lead, she's skeptical of being governed by a body of people chosen from the population. (The Assembly in Tharios doesn't do a lot to change her opinion; their reaction to a spate of murders is to do a lot of buck-passing.)
• Codex Alera
  • The human civilization of Alera came from a Roman legion that fell through an opening in time and space and landed in this alternative world. After a thousand years of fighting, they came together in one solid society and that has lasted for another thousand years. In all that time, old Roman ideals and practices stayed in favor - and per Word of God, being so isolated in a Death World meant that proto-Aleran society turned into one based on Total War, where women were reduced to baby-makers, leaving a legacy of Alera as a No Woman's Land. So slavery and women being a second-class unless they prove themselves by pretending to be men and serve in the army are common, and while there is an increasingly powerful abolition movement, many of the protagonists are at least neutral to slavery. The nobility will fight for perceived slights against their honor and dignity. These views, as well as seeing the other races of the world as subhuman, tend to make relationships with the other races tricky and bloody.
  • The Marat, neolithic elf-like people, who form a deep bond with an animal creature, are savage barbarian fighters. They will eat the dead of their enemies, believing it will give them their enemy's strength by consuming it. They worship the One, believing in some all powerful, all-encompassing entity and will make challenges in the One's name. Such challenges can even stop a war between one tribe and some Alerans if another tribe intercedes on the Aleran's side. Those watching the fight also regularly make bets on the outcome. They also have no word for 'lie', with the closest being 'intentionally mistaken', and to claim it is to invite a duel to the death.
  • The Cane, 7ft-9ft tall wolf-persons, have a strict honor base society. They don't believe in being friends and allies with other races or even necessarily with each other. They have many words for the term "enemy". Gadara is considered an enemy who one respects and will treat with respect, and who is a friend in the majority of senses that humans recognise, but never forgetting this person is an enemy who will seek some advantage over the person. Even parents and children can call each other Gadara.
  • The apparently brutal Icemen of the north bring two leaders to a negotiation, one who looks for peace and one who looks for war. These supposedly hulking beasts are also powerful empaths and regularly communicate by simple emotional will. One Aleran saw the Peace Leader give an emotional slap to the War Leader when the War Leader acted foolishly. The first Alerans who met them centuries ago were likely using internal fire magic to keep them warm, not anticipating the fear and intimidation the magic can bring about is sensed by the Icemen, who get agitated, which unnerves the Alerans even more, and it all escalated to a centuries-long war stemming from poor communications.
• The alien Tendu of The Color of Distance expect anyone who can't recover from some sort of injury within a year, with the help of their powers, to "honorably" kill themselves. Suicide in general is seen as the inevitable end to anyone not unlucky enough to be killed by accidents or wildlife — adult Tendu don't age like humans do, and their populations are carefully self-limited. At various points in this book and the next they find out how differently humans do things and are appalled. They also spawn in great numbers, consume their own tadpoles, and both work their semi-intelligent older offspring like slaves and allow them to die left and right. The human observer reminds herself often that they aren't human, that she can't pass judgement.
• The Conqueror books present killing and stealing from neighbouring clans and raping girls from allied clans as positive and heroic. Granted, life in the steppes was tough, but wow.
• Occurs in-universe with "Consider Her Ways", a novella by John Wyndham where the narrator, a doctor from the mid-20th century, finds herself in a post-Gendercide society. When she asks where the men are, the other people around her react with disgust and horror at the idea - animals, not humans, have males and reproduce through sex. The narrator later speaks to a historian about the subject and they engage in a fierce debate about whether things are better now. The historian maintains that while the plague that wiped out all men was unfortunate, it freed women from patriarchal oppression; the narrator claims that life in such a society would be barely worth living. ^note  Unfortunately, while Wyndham tries to present the dilemma seriously, to the modern reader, he ends up committing unintentional actual Values Dissonance. The narrator, whom he presumably intended to be sympathetic, seems more concerned by the absence of romantic love in this society than its rigid caste system or its intolerance of dissent.
• In Donald Kingsbury's Courtship Rite, this is almost the entire point of the book. Cannibalism is accepted and normal, bound with ritual, and the heretic who argues against it comes off as a bit crazy. Without cannibalism, there would be no people on Geta, or at best, only a desperate handful.
• Cup of Clay by Carole Nelson Douglas contains a brief scene in which a traveler from our world thinks a woman from a pseudo-European society is bisexual. A man who knows the woman is appalled at the concept, denying any such "abominations" exist in their world. He is also later shocked to learn she's a woman, having thought she was a boy due to her short hair and (presumably concealing) clothing. He is also appalled later when she, a woman, beats him and gets the title Cup, along with his father. Women in their country live largely secluded from men, in elaborate dresses with rigid gender roles. Prior to all this, she had been horrified herself to learn that children with "birth banes" (things such as a stutter or lazy eye) are cast out by their parents as they believe they're cursed, with everyone thinking of them as criminal parasites when they later steal simply for survival (worse, others are enslaved).

D

• In The Daevabad Trilogy, All Myths Are True. That includes certain ancient gods, like Sobek, the crocodilian god of the Nile in Ancient Egypt. In the third book, he remnisces to Nahri and Ali how his followers used to practice Human Sacrifice to him and what great days they were. Ali reflects how grateful he is that his own ancestors turned to Islam, which does not make such demands.
• In Kylie Chan's Dark Heavens series:
  • In White Tiger, the Australian-born Emma tries to teach her pre-kindergarten pupils English by talking to them, and is reprimanded by her employer, Kitty Kwok. Talking to her students will help them learn to speak English, but that's not what they're there for. They're there to learn their rote ABCs, because they need to pass competitive examinations to get into the best kindergarten.
  • In Hell to Heaven, a boy drugs and attempts to rape Simone. Simone, the daughter of Xuan Wu, uses her powers to kill him on impulse, and is convinced she is guilty of murder, or at least manslaughter. The Jade Emperor calls her to the Celestial Plane over the incident, where he commends her for her actions — in his eyes, she was protecting her virtue, and exercising her right as a princess to pass judgment on a criminal. This just makes Simone feel even worse about the act.
• In Destroyermen:
  • The initial main characters are US Navy sailors transported to an alternate Earth in early 1943. So they have typical 1940s attitudes, such as thinking women are only good as nurses, schoolteachers, and housewives, looking down on Filipinos and Chinese, and especially hating the Japanese. One of their early priorities is also finding a replacement for tobacco once their cigarettes run out.
  • A group of Japanese characters is later introduced, who see their loyalty to the emperor as more important than their own lives and who disdain anyone who is not Japanese.
  • On the other hand, the native people of the alternate earth, nicknamed "monkey-cats", have equally different morals. Their society is clan-based and their biggest political entities are city-states, but they also have complete gender equality beyond what even the modern west possesses, most of them dislike violence, but those who do fight wage wars not for territory but for fun and honor.
  • The series main enemy, on the other hand, are a group of lizard-people called the Grik, who believe that all other species are prey for their consumption and that their own young are expendable and tasty, and have no problem with selectively breeding and culling their own species for desirable traits.
  • Later more human societies are introduced. The people of New Britain never gave up slavery, but instead of practicing it against a particular race, they practice it exclusively against women, and consider that the moral option in light of what the Dominion that they buy their slaves from would do with those women otherwise.
  • The Dominion, on the other hand, is a theocracy with a mixture of Spanish Catholic and Aztec religion and culture, who believe that the only moral way to die is to suffer extensively at the hands of other people. And their god apparently loves the sacrifice of virgin women the best.
• In The Dinosaur Lords, people of Nuevaropa see being nude in public not as funny or humiliating, but empowering. If a person appears in court or in front of a crowd naked, they show that they are honest in their beliefs and that it's their opponent who should feel ashamed.
• Discworld:
  • Racism is mostly replaced - but as it turns out in Jingo, not entirely - with Fantastic Racism (dwarfs and trolls), but some old-fashioned sexism is on display, despite female heroes being common. Equal Rites features the Disc's first female wizard (as opposed to witch) getting looked down upon by other wizards, who believe a female wizard is impossible. Curiously, Granny Weatherwax shares this belief, saying that "if men were witches they'd be wizards", because there are inherent psychological differences between the genders. Esk ends up proving this false, as she can effectively be both.
  • Dwarfs typically don't advertise their genders (females are also bearded and dwarf courtship is essentially a very tactful process of trying to find out what gender the other dwarf actually is), and when one starts to do so it is treated as scandalous. Carrot, himself raised by dwarfs, also finds it a little disturbing, despite being a true Nice Guy. He also assumes that Angua was hired purely because she is a woman (she wasn't. It's because she's a werewolf).
  • Speaking of Dwarfs, William de Worde, the human protagonist of The Truth, (who spends most of the book struggling with the prejudices and arrogance ingrained in him by his bigoted aristocratic father) is shocked at the Dwarf custom of buying oneself from one's parents before getting married. To Dwarfs, this is a sensible way of letting a couple start a life together unencumbered by the past, and makes it possible for the couple's families to give the bride and groom lavish gifts without anyone's honor being insulted. To humans it is an unacceptable way of involving money in something which should be a purely emotional affair. This leads to the dwarf explaining this dryly remarking on the difference with the wonderful and heartwarming way humans conduct their relationships. (Of course, human wedding customs also often involve money, but it's not calculated, which makes it better somehow, and doesn't always lead to a huge row.) Interestingly, later William embraces the custom to cut his ties with his hated father and finally escape his shadow after unearthing his scheme and dismantling it. His father tells him to keep the money, because he has proven that he is "most certainly a de Worde."
  • On the other hand, Snuff features a rather extreme case of Deliberate Values Dissonance within the series. Does eating babies make a race Always Chaotic Evil? Maybe not if you see it from their point of view, which involves 'the dreadful algebra of necessity' (a starving mother who eats a baby can have more babies in the future, rather than both starving), and a magical pot that traps the soul of the infant goblin so they can be reborn in richer times.
• The Dispossessed features the double planet system of Urras and Anarres, which have very different cultures. The women of Urras are shocked that the women of Anarres "don't shave". This refers not to legs-and-armpits but rather to heads.
• Dragaera
  • The books often highlight the callous attitudes of Jhereg gangsters and the alienness of Dragaeran society.
  • Used ironically at times, as when the business Vlad sets up to conceal his office and illegal (untaxed) gambling den is a legal narcotics dealer.
  • When Vlad is relaxing in his house, he hears a sudden racket at his front door and realizes someone is smashing their fist into it. Alarmed, he scrambles for his weapons and prepares for an home invasion, only to eventually discover that it's simply a visiting Easterner who is knocking politely. Vlad, who was raised primarily in Dragaeran customs, expects visitors to clap.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Concepts like good and bad are foreign ideals to the Fair Folk Harry regularly interacts with. They honor the deal and the words of the deal. So long as that is followed and no breach occurs, the methods of achieving those promised words are not relevant. This is why even powerful wizards refuse to make open-ended deals with the fae, or use vague wording. There is too much room for the fae to give as little as they need to, while only giving the wizard exactly what he asked for. Harry eventually realizes this all can be boiled down to a respect for balance. The fae believe to their core what one is given one must be returned to in measure. If both sides agree to it, then it is a fair measure.
  • In Turn Coat, Harry sees some old journals McCoy, his 300-and-something-year-old mentor, keeps in his study. McCoy mentions the ones preceding his are McCoy's mentor's journals. When he speaks of his now dead mentor McCoy calls the wizard his "master". He notes there was a time when that word wasn't as narrow meaning as it is now with that inherent negativity, and it used to encompass things like teacher and mentor.
• Frank Herbert's Dune novels:
  • None of the characters bat an eyelash at practices such as slavery, concubinage, gladiatorial games, arranged marriage, or forced marriage.
  • Fremen customs allow men to settle disputes with duels to the death, after which the victor inherits the wives and children of his dead opponent. Also the water distilled from his opponent's body. (The Fremen always distill out the body's water as part of the funeral rites, as it is far too valuable to let it go to waste. Usually, it goes into a pool held in common by the sietch, but in the case of duels it goes to the victor, to replace the water he lost to the necessity of fighting without a stillsuit)
  • Fremen customs also condones underage marriage. In Dune Messiah, Stilgar urges Paul to marry off Alia so that she will have a legitimate outlet for her budding sexuality. Alia is in her early teens at the time.
  • The Bene Geserit test the willpower of would-be initiates through the Gom Jabbar ordeal. None of them see anything morally wrong with torturing and killing children this way.
  • Using drugs and poisons as weapons are not considered dishonorable, but are a perfectly acceptable part of even the most formalised parts of armed conflict, and a skilled poisoner is a respected professional. Poisons are so commonly used that Galactic Standard has separate words for ingested poisons, depending on whether they are delivered through food or beverages.
  • The name Muad'Dib. Most non-Fremen are perplexed as to why the Fremen messiah figure took a name that means "kangaroo mouse", instead of something more impressive. To the Fremen, the kangaroo mouse, which can make its own water and survive and thrive in the deep desert, is a role model and a symbol of wisdom and perseverance.

E

• Earth's Children:
  • It's the most recent Ice Age, 30,000 years ago — Older Than Dirt, in other words. It's fucking cold out. Flint knapping is the pre-eminent means of creating tools; merely cutting down a tree is a time-consuming business. Animals have yet to be domesticated — to anyone's knowledge, Ayla's tame lion, wolf and horses are the only ones ever. Textiles are in their infancy, and agriculture has yet to be invented. The characters live in a Death World, often in groups about the size of a school classroom (200 people is said to be an enormous community). The difficulty of survival, relatively low manpower and incredibly low position on the Tech Tree influences everything about how these have tried to shape themselves.
  • Most Cro-Magnon cultures are very liberal about sex, to the point where having full blown orgies is considered a sacred tradition and promiscuity is practically encouraged. Sex is talked about openly with children and no one minds if they witness sexual acts — some kids are even known to mimic sexual acts during play in imitation of their parents. Girls are expected to go through First Rites, where they are ritually deflowered by an experienced older man, as soon as they hit menarche, meaning most girls having First Rites are between 12 and 16. Boys are assigned to a donii-woman to teach them about sex when they hit puberty, so they are generally around the same age as girls. It's also not considered that strange for people to be married with kids by their late teens. This is partly Truth in Television, as real hunter-gatherer cultures where people live in close proximity are often more open about sex.
  • The Clan also have no taboos about public sex. Girls can be regarded as women as soon as they menstruate and married off as young as eight, though in this case, Clan girls actually reach physical maturity earlier than Cro-Magnon, so it's not quite as Squicky. Of course, the Clan also raise girls to be submissive to men and always do as they say. This includes 'presenting' themselves for sexual intercourse whenever a man gives them the signal and men being allowed to physically punish women for being disobedient, though the Clan draw the line at using excessive violence or beating women for no reason. Women can also be executed for using weapons and must isolate themselves when they get their periods and for a time after they give birth.
• Used deliberately in Orson Scott Card's Enchantment. The modern-day hero finds himself in medieval Russia and unable to understand the cultural norms. No one blinks when he finds himself naked in public, but they are scandalized when he tries to used a woman's cloak to cover himself. His reluctance to enter an arranged marriage is the highest sort of insult, and when he does get married, his wife is perplexed at his reluctance to consummate it, since her body is now his property.
• Raymond Briggs' Ethel & Ernest, being set between the 20s and 70s, is of course filled with this. For just one example, when Raymond is telling his mother Ethel about his worries about his wife and that she's been diagnosed with schizophrenia, Ethel's response is "You mean... she's a nutter?"
• Egil's Saga: On a raid in Courland, Egil and his companions are captured by the Courlanders, but manage to break out of their prison in the night. After robbing an armory and a treasury, they make their way back to the ships with the Courlanders still unaware of their escape. When they are already halfway to safety, Egil suddenly gets second thoughts on their course of action, because the fact that the Courlanders are not aware they have been robbed means that they have committed dishonorable theft, and are thus disgracing themselves. Egil asks his companions to go back to the farm they robbed and fight with the Courlanders; although they all refuse, Egil puts down his loot, goes back to the farm alone, sets fire to the main hall, kills some of the occupants who want to rush out by the door, and locks the others up in the burning building by blocking the door with logs. Having thus restored his honor, he returns to his companions.
• Eleanor & Park is full of this, being set in 1986-1987:
  • Park (who is half Korean in a city with almost no Asians) faces a lot of casual racism from both bullies and friends. Even Eleanor is guilty of this at times, even once referring to Asians as “Orientals” until a Chinese American friend called her out on it.
  • Verbal and emotional abuse of children isn’t talked about, which is why Richie gets away with his behavior towards his stepchildren. In addition, Domestic Abuse is still seen as a “private” matter and there’s little or no access to resources to help Sabrina leave Richie.

F

• Inverted in The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, a research paper by Nick Bostrom providing a scathing critique of our modern prejudices against every Immortality Seeker, denouncing the idea that death is natural and beautiful. The protagonists are scientists with futuristic ethics while the antagonists are politicians with modern ethics.
• The Factory Witches of Lowell takes place in the early 1800s and incorporates a magic system centered on the idea of "ownership" or "dominion" — even if one has the gift for witchcraft, they must hold sway over the subject of their spell in order to affect it. This law of magic is bound up manmade property law, and it's taken for granted that enslaved people can't perform magic since they're legally considered property . Novice witch Hannah even compares slaves to animal chattel, noting that her powers allow her to see "demons" or "succubae" that feed on the souls of the subjugated; she was traumatized by a slave auction she witnessed as a young girl where one such demon manifested to torment a man sold into slavery, and later by seeing the same creatures feeding on the farm animals her parents kept. It makes perfect sense to Hannah that slaves can't cast magic, but in the same breath she'll wax poetic about the "genius" (i.e. soul or magic) of inanimate objects like spinning wheels or looms. Those same inanimate objects are textually given more agency than human slaves — Judith and Hannah are able to "convince" the looms in their factory to remain faithful to the workers who operate them rather than the men who legally own them specifically because the looms were made with stolen intellectual property. The notion that slaves are stolen people is not addressed.
• Fever 1793 uses this in a more humorous manner. The main character is supposedly foulmouthed, and everyone reacts in a horrified manner whenever she uses her favorite profane exclamation: "Dash it all!"
• Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin takes places in the south around the time of the American Civil War. As a result, most characters are racist. Although protagonist Abner Marsh is presented as more enlightened (he disapproves of slavery, for instance) he still liberally uses the n-word.
• Very much the case in the Flashman series: The hero makes Gene Hunt look like Mr. PC in comparison.
• In The Four Feathers, (a novel set during 1870s Britain) the hero's resignation from the army is treated as borderline treason, and his friends and fiancée immediately cut ties with him because of it. The latter, notably, made this judgement despite never having been in combat herself.
• Friday's reaction to being gang-raped as an interrogation technique is simple annoyance at the idea that she could be traumatized. As an artificial human she's been raised not to have any sexual hang-ups, and has even been trained to pretend to enjoy it in order to manipulate her captors.
• Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe has majority of the characters refer to black people as n-words over and over, with nobody batting an eye. These days, people would be horrified at how rude mentioning that word would be, even in the south. Most of the story takes place in the 1930s, where it was quite common to refer to black people like that, even with people who were friends with them.
• The Full Matilda by David Haynes, with the eponymous Matilda's family being African-American servants to a white senator in Washington, D.C. during The Roaring '20s. This is discussed when Matilda talks about how later on many people quit having live-in servants and started hiring day maids and limo services (as opposed to having a driver and a live-in maid). The Reveal in the book is that Matilda at the age of 16 slept with the senator (who had been showing an... interest in her since she was 13) she and her family worked for in order to secure her father a house of his own, and nobody else knew but her and the senator. That scenario could probably happen now, but if it came out the senator would probably be arrested, whereas back then nobody would care because she was just a poor black girl. Truth in Television, of course.

G

• The books that begin The General Series have the good guy characters accepting slavery as a simple part of life and don't fuss over it (except if the threat is that it happens to them.) Similarly, Raj Whitehall over time gained a reputation as a strict commander who did not allow men to run wild when they defeated an enemy...raping women in the field was only allowed when it didn't cause operational problems, and the mass rapes which followed the conquest of an enemy town or city (if they didn't capitulate when first offered the opportunity) were organized so that they would be over within a day and then the troops could get back to soldiering. A form of punishment for units that have disgraced themselves or otherwise performed notably poorly was to not be allowed to participate.
• Discussed in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Saturday explains the strange way ocean djinn such as himself get married and have children (they see their future children wandering around and begin looking for would-be spouses that share physical features with that child). September thinks that it sounds like a very confusing way to go about things, but Saturday assures her that it makes perfect sense for his kind.
• Guardians of the Flame: The Other Side is a Medieval-like world, and thus it has many aspects that are very different from modern (well, 1980s) US culture. Karl finds that his character's personality views Doria badly for her past promiscuity early on for instance. The biggest is likely that slavery doesn't simply exist, but also forms the foundation of the regional economy, with no before the protagonists actively opposing it at first. Even a number of former slaves find the idea it's an inherently evil thing odd, even if naturally they didn't like experiencing slavery themselves. Later, a man objects to the protagonists stopping him from beating his son, because he was just "disciplining" him, as he feels is his right to do.
• The Guns of the South has a two-fer, since the story is about time-traveling Afrikaners trying to help the Confederacy win the Civil War. The book generally portrays the South's conservative, paternalist racism^note the belief that blacks were inferior by nature and that slavery lifted them out of savagery and was the only practical way the races could co-exist as misguided but not evil per se; this is contrasted with the Afrikaners' outright hatred of blacks, which serves to gradually drive a wedge between the two groups. Later on, the Confederate leaders learning that they will not be Vindicated by History is the straw that breaks the camel's back, and leads to the Afrikaners all but declaring war on them themselves.

H

• The Hangman's Daughter is a murder mystery taking place in rural, late 1600s Germany. As such, torture is considered an ordinary and even integral part of the judicial process; a symbol in a foreign language is enough to whip the townsfolk into a frenzy over supposed witchcraft; medicine is at a standstill because nobody trusts literature written by Jewish doctors; nobody bats an eye at an orphan being beaten nearly to death in the street, since (with one exception) orphans are viewed as parasites leeching off the 'proper' families ordered to care for them; red hair is considered a sign of the devil; and there's no hesitation to put children to death for witchcraft. At the end of the book, it's revealed that the town's chief legal authority knew who was behind the conspiracy almost from the beginning, but he still insists that it would have been better to frame and execute an innocent midwife due to the 'sinfulness' of her profession. The book's protagonist is easily one of the most tolerant people in the town, but even he constantly tells his wide-eyed young physician deuteragonist that women are too troublesome for their own good, and only backs down from forcing his daughter into an arranged marriage when the physician proves himself a worthier choice.
• Harry Harrison and Tom Shippey's alternate history trilogy The Hammer and the Cross is set in 9th century Europe. The values of the historical peoples of the time are accurately represented, including their attitude toward rape, enslavement, trial-by-combat, and the social status of women and conquered peoples.
• When Alex comes out of the closet in Heart In Hand, Canadian and American reactions are mixed, but positive overall. The Ice Hockey Federation of Russia, on the other hand, threatens to ban him from ever playing in or for Russia. Darryl, the main character, reflects on (and feels somewhat guilty about) how he would never have to face the same ordeal just because he is Canadian.
• Occurs in The Heroic Legend of Arslan as one of the main themes in the story.
  • Lusitania's religious war against other nations is the main conflict. Arslan struggles against his own country's tradition of slavery. Etoile, despite his religious bigotry, is a good person. Gieve hates mindless servitude while Elam actually wants to work for Narsus.
  • After being rescued, Jimsa is reluctant to join Arslan's group because in Turan, the king must never be overshadowed by his retainers in order to rule. Arslan is the crowned prince but he is not as strong as Daryun and he relies heavily on Narsus as a tactician. Arslan's kindness towards his retainers and civilians also makes Jimsa feel the boy is too "weak" to rule.
• Used heavily in the Hexslinger series, set in the Wild West with all its bigotry and casual violence and featuring an awful lot of Aztec mythology in all its bloody glory. It doesn't help that it's a very Black-and-Grey Morality series, either. For the most part, the more sympathetic a character is the less racist/sexist/gay-bashing they tend to be, but this is definitely not a hard and fast rule.
• Holmes on the Range: People’s awkwardness about swearing in front of women and the severe amount of racism and sexism in the Wild West are frequently at play, although the Amlingmeyer brothers themselves and many of their friends are above these attitudes. In both The Double-A Western Detective Agency and Hunters of the Dead, Apache detective Eskaminzim has to hide his involvement in shootouts with outlaws because a Native American killing a white man under any circumstances might get him lynched, with his black associate Hoop also showing such concern, albeit to a lesser degree.
• The novel Hometown (2014) was published in The New '10s but set in the early 1990s, and doesn't shy away from showing how much society had changed in even that relatively short amount of time. Open anti-LGBTQ bigotry , some of it from otherwise sympathetic characters, and a general attitude toward sexual assault and Questionable Consent that demonstrate why #metoo had to happen are just the most obvious differences.
• The novel Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi follows two women involved in the slave trade, as well as their respective descendants, one who stayed in Africa and whose tribe traded slaves and one who was a slave herself. The book includes a lot of values dissonance, like "negro" and "n-gger" to refer to black people, the African characters having little moral qualms about selling enemies into slavery, and some slaves considering their master "kind" because he lets them have a five-minute break every three hours.
• Horatio Hornblower, being about England in the early 1800s, is chock-a-block full of racism, sexism, classism, and other words ending in -ism. Catholic emancipation is noted in one book as being quite recent. Horatio orders his crew to press only white men in one book a few pages away from using the n-word, but he's kind of progressive by expressing antislavery views in Lieutenant. And, naturally, everyone hates the French.
• Household Gods: Almost the entire point of the book is to show case how the late Romans really lived, and just how alien the ideas they held were to modern people (in this case the American protagonist). Nicole is very shocked by how much filth there is, casual cruelty, disdain toward Christians, violence and of course rampant slavery as well.
• Discussed in How NOT to Write a Novel, which advises using this trope rather than Politically Correct History.
• To the citizens of The Capitol in The Hunger Games, sending twenty-four children between the ages of 12 and 18 into an arena to fight to the death is fine entertainment and the appropriate punishment for the districts that rebelled. Even some of the districts approve of the games, with young citizens training and hoping for their chance to play as if it were some kind of national tournament.

I

• I Am Mordred: Mordred thinks any bloody act a king commits to defend his throne is justified. Most people, he notes, wouldn't believe a woman can justly use deadly force to defend herself from rape, meaning Nyneve would be a murderer for doing this. Mordred is deemed a coward for not aiding his brothers to murder a helpless man in vengeance for killing their father. The idea of women being at an equal level with men is ludicrous to Mordred. Later when he reflects on his brothers killing their mother and her lover after they catch them together, Mordred thinks it's right as well.
• In Alan Dean Foster's Icerigger, after the stranded human heroes help their Tran friends essentially slaughter all the warriors belonging to a rampaging nomadic "Horde", the good guy natives send a team to the Horde's base camp to kill off the non-combatants, including their cubs, that were travelling with them. Skua, one of the humans, points out that the locals have been suffering from Horde attacks for years, but his friend Ethan calls him out on it.
• The Indian in the Cupboard:
  • Omri is horrified to learn that the Iroquois warrior Little Bear has scalped thirty men, but Little Bear either boasts about it or considers it unremarkable (since it was a common practice among many Native American peoples). Omri's eventual rationalization of this, which allows him to call Little Bear his friend and realize he's not a bad person (or at least no worse than any of his time) puts things in clear perspective for the reader.
  • Boone, meanwhile, is shown to have some rather prejudiced views regarding Native Americans, which would have been typical for a 19th century cowboy. A major part of his character growth is him realizing his views are wrong and becoming friends with Little Bear.
• Imperial Radch: The Radchaai of Ancillary Justice consider their own empire to be synonymous with civilization and hold very little value for the lives of non-citizens. They therefore consider it perfectly acceptable to invade and annex neighboring countries to bring them civilization. In a more minor example, the Radchaai have a nudity taboo about not wearing gloves.
• Inheritance Cycle:
  • The punishment of Sloan drew from this. When Eragon wonders whether he was justified in his punishment, Orrin and Nasuada –- who have a concept of divine right to rule, and who Eragon reports to directly –- tell Eragon that he was correct: he can punish people, but lacks the authority to sentence them to death. That right is reserved for Orrin and Nasuada themselves, in being the King of Surda and Leader of the Varden respectively.
  • Nasuada, being female, has to go to great lengths to prove herself capable of leading the Varden.
• The title story of Interpreter of Maladies has a married Indian-American tourist revealing to her Indian tour guide that one of her children was not her husband's. This highlights the cultural rift between the two: the tour guide is offended by this revelation and it changes his perception of her, while the tourist rebuffs the guide when he doesn't sympathize with her infidelity.
• The Irregular at Magic High School is actually set in the future, but focuses on the very hidebound culture of magicians. Arranged Marriages are the norm, aristocrats are expected to keep their bloodlines 'pure' by not marrying into 'lesser' families, and genetically engineering one's slaves is perfectly acceptable.
• In Otherworldly Izakaya Nobu, since the country Aitheria is similar to medieval Europe, this occurs. No one bats an eye that the 12-year-old Hildegarde is already married. Shinobu, who is from modern times, is shocked but Eva, who is even younger than Hildegarde, points out that it's common for some girls Eva's age to get married as well. In another situation, an innkeeper wanted Shinobu to marry her 8-year-old grandson, thinking she was fourteen or fifteen, and only backed off when realizing Shinobu was actually in her mid-twenties.
• In Isekaid Shoggoth, Alyssa Gillespie, even if she wasn't an eldritch entity only pretending to be human, also has the soul of a woman who was raised in post-soviet Russia of modern Earth, and the new world runs on the social mores of a history medieval society. This often leaves her confused when her normal behavior (relatively speaking) weirds out or offends others, and that's just with the two countries she's closest to, her home nation of Champagne and the neighboring country of Kraut. When she's dealing with the Sultanate, which emulates pre-islamic Arabia, it's all out Culture Clash.

J

• Jackie and Craig intentionally utilizes 90s homophobia to illustrate the thoughts and attitudes of that time.
• Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell features such lovely aspects of Regency England as wildly different ages in marriage, casual racism, and class elitism, but also nicer aspects, such as a gentleman's code of honor. Faeries on the other hand are Ax-Crazy sociopaths who at times seem barely aware other people have differing opinions. Also note on the author's website, she wrote reviews of herself "written" by both Strange and Norrell, in which both come across as pretty sexist. Strange has never read the book and spends the review criticizing the author's looks and unladylike behavior. Norrel comes right out and states that women have no business writing books of this sort.
• In Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell Trilogy, when the gang travels back in time to the Blitz, they are shocked to hear a nice old lady call the black Yo-less "Sambo", and cook up a story about him being an African prince.
• In the Judge Dee stories the hero has people beaten and tortured to give information. In Imperial China, there could be no conviction without a confession, regardless of evidence, and torture was often used after evidence was gathered to gain that conviction. At least theoretically, everybody involved in a prosecution would be severely punished at best if it was later proven that a conviction was erroneous, and it's often a plot point — even the superhuman Judge Dee hesitates to act until he is absolutely certain, both for his sense of justice and for preserving his hide. And in mirroring the original Dee stories and other Confucian literature, Taoists, Buddhists, and Tartars/"barbarians" are generally Always Chaotic Evil.
• Julie of the Wolves: Certain foods and smells are described as being delicious or wonderful, but given that these items tend to be things like raw owl entrails and wolf piss, it's more Squick than anything. The former is an actual Eskimo delicacy, and the latter is due to Miyax's experience with wolves.

K

• The novel Killer by David Drake and Karl Edward Wagner, set in the Roman Empire, says: "That the strange Egyptian was wealthy enough to occupy an entire suite of rooms by himself did not excite half as much curiosity as did the scandal that N'Sumu lived there without a single slave to serve him."
• In Octavia Butler's sci-fi/historical fiction novel Kindred, the first sign that Dana has traveled into the Antebellum South is Rufus' casual use of the N-word and his innocent confusion when Dana gets offended by it. It's explored at length through how the plantation slaves cope with their enslavement, how Rufus comes to see Dana as another one of his slaves as he grows up and internalizes the South's morality, and how Dana is increasingly forced to set aside her 20^th-century identity and act the part of a black slave to survive.
• This is a major theme in many storylines of Kino's Journey, as most of the lands (in this fictional world) Kino visits have morals or laws that seem outright appalling. It's stated by several characters that they'll come across places that will seem shocking to Kino, but normal to the residents of the country (usually). Kino has a rule to try not to judge or interfere, part of why she leaves a country after three days, regardless of its state.
• Knowledge Of Angels: The values of Renaissance Christians are ably demonstrated for the reader, such as the far more powerful role of religion in people's lives — to the point of harsh persecution toward dissidents. Additionally, the Christian characters find Palinor's view hard to fathom (as indeed real Christians would have at the time). The Inquisitor finds the idea of religious tolerance, as Palinor describes in his homeland, utterly appalling.

L

• There's several complaints about Mercedes Lackey's Elizabethan novels, specifically the sexual relationship between the 15-year-old Elizabeth and the much older Denoriel, and the attempted seduction of Elizabeth by her stepfather Thomas Seymour. Never mind that in the 1500s a 15-year-old girl is old enough to already be a mother (per Shakespeare), and that Seymour did try to seduce Elizabeth.
• Due to being set in the late 1500s, this trope shows up quite a lot in The Lady Grace Mysteries, though Grace herself tends to be more progressive by the era's standards.
  • Grace doesn't think it's weird that she's getting betrothed at thirteen and is expected to marry at sixteen.
  • Lots of people think it's odd that Queen Elizabeth is still unwed and childless by her thirties.
  • Grace has to hang out with Masou and Ellie in secret and can't be seen to be too familiar with them in public, because ladies aren't supposed to be friends with laundry maids and tumblers (especially Masou, given he's a teenage boy).
  • This is Played for Drama in Betrayal; when Grace believes that Lady Sarah has been kidnapped by Sir Francis Drake, she has to go rescue her in secret because even though Sarah was taken away against her will, her reputation would still be sullied if it got out, ruining her marriage prospects.
• The Lady, or the Tiger? is set in a "semi-barbaric" kingdom with a highly unusual justice system. Criminals are sent into an arena, and forced to choose one of two doors — one has a tiger that will kill them, and the other has a woman they must marry (regardless of whether they were previously married). The narration makes it clear that this is odd compared to neighboring kingdoms, let alone a modern day society.
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff features a more or less authentic representation of first century life in the region that Jesus would have grown up in. Slavery is referenced regularly, it's made clear that Mary Magdalene could be stoned to death for leaving her husband, and 13-year-olds having sex is normal.
• Land Games: The player's society is extremely imperialistic, regularly invading and conquering foreign worlds. Jayle is the only one who has a problem with this.
• Joanne Bertin's The Last Dragonlord has a nearly immortal weredragon having an affair with a human noblewoman, then seeing a commonborn sailor who is another weredragon, though unaware of it yet, on the side. The noble finds out and whips the sailor across the face, nearly blinding her; the weredragon is furious when he finds out, but local law doesn't condemn nobles who injure or even cripple commoners. In fact, the weredragon is aware that if he's seen to be too angry about it people will wonder why. This is despite the fact that weredragons are explicitly from every class of people, most of them born as very common humans, and that same angry weredragon states his belief that the reason why so many of his kind are born common is so that they'll be more considerate of the commonfolk than noble pride. The only reason he and the other weredragons are so upset about it is because the sailor is a weredragon, which is considered a class above nobility — the angry weredragon talks the talk about consideration for all people, but he's very much in line with the culture.
  • Some clarification is necessary: Linden the weredragon isn't only upset because it's one of his kind. Much ado is made in the early chapters that he was the last known weredragon for six hundred years. This new fledgling weredragon was the literal other half of both his souls. The reason he couldn't be seen as too upset is less due to the cultural values dissonance between his own easygoing sensibilities and that of the rank-proud nobility in Casna (although it does play a role), but because if a Dragonlord suspects what they are, they might try to force their first shapeshift (which has great cultural significance and is treated as a coming-of-age for the weredragons, and thus taken very seriously, but also because...) which could kill them. So while this trope is in full effect, it's less targeted at Linden, Kief, and Tarlna, who are instead used as audience surrogates to explain to the reader who Linden's hands are tied despite his (justified) rage at seeing the other half of his soul laid into with a whip while the person responsible gets off scot-free due to the apparent differences in the noble's rank and his soultwin's (in favor of the noblewoman).
• Occurs quite a bit in James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and other historical novels. This is most noticeable in the rather different set of values held by the white and Native American societies side by side and at the same time. In The Deerslayer Natty Bumppo tries to dissuade Tom Hutter and Harry March from raiding a Huron camp to cash in on the bounties offered by the governor for Huron scalps. For him taking the scalps of enemies is okay for Indians because it is part of their culture (or, in his terminology, part of the gifts of their nature), but it is entirely wrong for white Christians to do the same thing because it violates their values or "gifts".
• In Let's Start An Inn On The Dungeon Island, the new world runs off the moral compass of the Victorian Era, more or less, but with the gender roles reversed. As someone from modern Earth, Japan to be precise, Sanada Shirou has a lot of trouble adapting. Fortunately, he can claim he was shipwrecked on a deserted island as a child, and precisely because of the superstition that bringing a man aboard ship is bad luck, unless he's cargo, most women presume he simply had no way of knowing how to act, being a child without parents spending his childhood on an island, alone.
• Letters Back to Ancient China has Kao-tai, a time-travelling mandarin from 1000 years ago, who doesn't understand why he shouldn't have an affair with two women at the same time, as long as he can satisfy them both. Also, when he compliments one of them on her breasts, she is miffed. And he misses cooked dog. And so on.
• The Lie Tree explores the misogyny of the Victorian setting. Women are dismissed as delicate, overemotional, and unintelligent. Suicide is also treated as a crime.
• The Long Ships is set in the Viking era. Rape, abduction, slavery, robbery, trial by combat, casual violence, blood feuding and financially motivated religious conversion are all seen as acceptable things to do and (with the possible exception of the first two, depending on how you read certain passages) indulged in by the protagonists.
  • Olof Summerbird's Norse values clashed hard with the Decadent Court of Byzantium. Above all, he considers the Byzantine belief that it is less evil to mutilate than kill proof that all Christians are irredeemably evil and should be killed on sight (though he considers both Orm and Father Willibald honourable and "as good men as if they had never been in contact with Christianity").
• The eponymous Lords of the Underworld — immortal warriors created by Ancient Greek gods — have more or less adjusted to modern norms, but mention occasionally how many of their past actions were motivated by sexism (e.g. killing Pandora because they hated that she was a female warrior). Even in the present day, they have no compunctions about torturing and/or killing their enemies.
• The Lost Years of Merlin: Merlin is bullied over being a supposed bastard, Jews are viewed as inhuman by many while fair game for being stoned, and Branwen's labeled a witch because of her skill with herbs which people view as magic. This all sets the tone for life in Merlin's early medieval Welsh village.
• Happens a little in The Lovely Bones, about a girl named Susie who is raped and murdered by a neighbor. In the book, which takes place in The '70s, people weren't as suspicious about strangers, but now a kid would probably know not to go into the house of a male neighbor. In fact, people would probably be very suspicious of their single male neighbor who likes to sit in his car and stare at girls.

M

• The Machineries of Empire:
  • The Kel culture considers brainwashing to be par for the course and values martyrdom and total obedience above all else. On a more positive side, the Hexarchate considers polygamy, as well as alternate sexualities and gender identities, nothing out of the ordinary.
  • When Jedao asks Khiruev if she has any children, she points out there are not mentioned in her files and is astonished when he specifies he means genetic offspring, as in contrast to his days, in Hexarchate a "child" is a minor you have custody over, not a blood relation, as no-one is born naturally these days. In fact, the high language doesn't even have a word for a biological child, and Khiruev has to use the phrase "genetic spawn" to clarify Jedao's question.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen:
  • Karsa Orlong is deliberately written as a Deconstruction of the "barbarian fantasy". This entails a great amount of esoteric morals that almost one and all clash with "current" Western culture. Killing those weaker than you is seen as a good thing by the Teblor, Karsa's people, and rape is used as a social reward. This is particularly prevalent in the first quarter of House of Chains, which depicts Karsa's origins.
  • Less specifically, the authors of the Verse — who are anthropologists — go to great lengths to ensure that all peoples are depicted neutrally and non-judgementally. This often causes some sort of dissonance to crop up.
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick is set in an Alternate History where Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won World War II and divided the world between them much like how the United States and the Soviet Union did in real life, with the result that dominant cultural attitudes are shifted dramatically. A good way in which this is shown is The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, an Alternate History book written within the attitudes of the Nazi-dominated world — the Allies win World War II in 1947 and the world is split between the United States and the British Empire — the USSR is a non-entity because, as harrowingly demonstrated in this universe, the Slavs are a bunch of inferior subhumans who could never amount to anything — and the British eventually win the ensuing alt-Cold War and destroy the United States because they are a more racially pure Anglo-Saxon race, while the Americans are ethnic mongrels and therefore are racially inferior.
• A Master of Djinn: The book does not shy from showing naked racism by not only Western visitors but also many Egyptians toward people with darker skin (especially Nubians, a black African group who make up a minority there).
• Masters of Rome:
  • Dead girl babies are thrown out the window, which may be historically inaccurate, as Tacitus wrote that infanticide, even of daughters, was a capital offense among the Germans.
  • In one of the most emotionally fraught chapters, Livia Drusa's brother Drusus not only imprisons her inside their home her entire life, but he also forces her to marry his friend Servilius, a man she despises. Later Drusus has a change of heart when he realizes what a weasel Servilius is.
  • Pompey telling his first wife that he has no intention of fathering a son with her, because he only married her for political reasons and she's not good enough to be the mother of his son and heir.
  • Gaius Marius' negotiation with Gaius Julius Caesar (grandfather of Caesar the Dictator) to marry his daughter Julia (that is, whichever of two Julias he prefers). This is a straightforward business transaction: Marius is a rich, rising New Man who needs a wellborn wife for status. The Julii Caesares are an impoverished patrician clan and need money for their sons' political careers, and their daughters need rich husbands. At the end, Caesar asks Marius, "Oh, and it won't cause you any distress to divorce your current wife, will it?" Marius says, "Not at all!" And goes straight home and tells his wife (without any prior hints), "I am divorcing you." It's all right because he offers her a generous settlement. He also apologizes, not being entirely indifferent to the pain he's causing her.
• In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Luna cultural mores are wildly different from those of Earth. Gambling is a way of life and "double or nothing" dice rolling with the shopkeeper is common when purchasing sundry items. Due to the massive imbalance between women and men, the latter outnumbering the former on a two-to-one ratio, women are completely in-charge when it comes to sex politics and chivalry is very much Serious Business: a woman could, if she were so inclined, beat a man until she draws blood with no social repercussion, but a man who so much as lays a finger on a woman without her permission would soon find himself being Thrown Out the Airlock. However, cat-calling a woman is considered a polite compliment, which actually makes sense when you remember women's social power is linked to their sexuality.
• Murder for the Modern Girl: Even with independent, bold Flappers running around, women in 1928 Chicago don't have it easy. They're often targeted by heinous men who abuse them, and it's stated that women aren't able to get justice from the legal system as it's all run by men who won't believe them. When one woman is interrogated about a series of murders committed by Ruby Newhouse, she knows that the killer is female due to the fact that men don't care about the suffering of women.
• Used to great (and disturbing) effect in Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red. For instance, nearly all the male characters express their love for "handsome boys", including the elderly Master Osman, who casually mentions regularly sleeping with his pretty students.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! has a more light-hearted and positive spin on this, with the "Monkey Girl" reincarnated as Catarina not making the slightest effort to act like a Duke's daughter in "Fortune Lover"'s pseudo-medeval European setting. This is mostly Played for Laughs, as most people find her her Tomboyish tree-climbing and vegetable garden-planting antics to be strange and charming (except for her long-suffering mother), but it's also earned her the nickname "Saint Claes" because she doesn't care about class or social standing and will befriend royalty and commoners alike.

O

• Claire's side of the story in The Obituary Writer greatly emphasizes how she was impressed upon by her mother to never question her husband, even if he's an ass. She also notes the societal expectation for women, even adulterous ones, to remain in their marriages, even if the men might just walk off.
• Okuyyuki: The ancient Japanese spirit nicknamed "Audrey" is sometimes at odds with modern American culture. Among other things, her samurai values about honorable combat don't always translate well to modern battlefields. She is awed by the trench warfare of World War I when told of it — but by the honorable heroism of the millions who perished in no man's land rather than the sad waste of it. Protagonist Reilly points out that most of them probably didn't share that perspective, but she replies that the heroic deed itself is what counts.
• The story of Our Lady of the Nile takes place mostly in a traditionally western setting (a Catholic School), but it's still set in 1980s Rwanda, so most of the characters have a very contrasting set of values to that reality.

P

• From the introduction to Paperbacks from Hell:
  "In these books from the '70s and '80s, doctors swap smokes with patients, African Americans are sometimes called 'negroes', and parents swoon in terror at the suggestion that they have a 'test tube baby'."
• Due to being a Queer Romance story taking place in mid-1810s Connecticut, Patience and Sarah consists of a lot of this. Sarah is scandalous because she dresses like a boy, same-gender romances are strictly taboo, and no one tries to get police involved when Sarah's father beats her up black-and-blue every day for over a week. There's also smaller things like how it's acceptable to adopt an orphan just to work for you, how Sarah refuses to eat "unboiled salad", and how Sarah doesn't think much about her father drowning kittens.
• A Pearl for My Mistress:
  • No one would expect Lucy, a Nazi sympathizer, to be comfortable with the notion of interracial romance; however, even "good" characters, like Hester and Sophie, are at least disturbed by it.
  • Likewise, Lucy having a Nazi lover, who is significantly older than her, is (supposedly) forgiven much easier, than her lesbian affair with a sweet girl her age. Also, being an open Nazi sympathizer in the British society doesn't affect her career or social life at all (the fact, that she is also a titled lady probably helps though).
• Deconstructed in The Pillars of the Earth, as Ken Follet repeatedly illustrates a moral norm alien to modern values and then shows that plenty of contemporaries also rejected those norms and sought ways around them, reminding the audience that past societies are not monocultures.
  • Prior Philip, although a benevolent figure for his community, and more compassionate than most of his peers, still has the views of a 12th-century monk on subjects like extra-marital sex or the respect due to his own authority. Other people think it's absurd that he insists that Aliena and Jack not cohabit due to Aliena being technically married to someone else, even though Aliena and Jack have a child together. When they finally get married Aliena is suprised the village is making such a big deal of it, as the townspeople generally considered Jack and Aliena to be more or less married already.
  • Philip is nearly hoist with his own petard as a false accusation of fornication against him gets him put on trial and nearly ruins his career. People think it absurd that such a good man could be ruined by such a frivolous accusation and even one of his enemies, Ellen, speaks up in his defense.
  • Aliena ends up on the horrific side of this several times, but the crowning moment has to be when her brother actually tries to defend her from what modern-day readers would rightfully call Domestic Abuse; Richard killing Alfred (to stop his rape of Aliena) is considered murder, since Aliena is Alfred's wife, making her consent a non-issue. A protracted debate ensues, at high legal levels, as to whether Aliena really counted as married at the time.
  • William indulges in his rights as husband and lord, raping his teenaged wife regularly and doing violence to his serfs when they violate his prerogatives and fail to pay what they owe him. Even his own steward is dismayed by his behavior, even the legally justified parts, and his wife is eventually rescued and returned to her family. When William insists on exercising Droit du Seigneur his steward points out that that isn't even a real thing.
  • William's first attack on the quarry fails because while murdering laypeople is tolerable, murdering the monks present at the quarry would be crossing a Moral Event Horizon in the cultural norms of the time.
• Played for Black Comedy in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Regency England is far more brutal than it was in real life, likely a result of the plague. Duels to the death are common, and servants are often savagely beaten.
• Conclave law in The Psychology of Time Travel is based on the legal system of 23rd-century Britain, which has no problem with blood tithes and trial by ordeal.

Q

• Queen of Zazzau is a Historical Fantasy retelling of the legends of Amina, a real-life 16th century queen of Hausaland in what is now northern Nigeria. Accordingly, slavery and polygamy are little remarked-upon: Amina herself has an enslaved maidservant, Fatima, for much of the book, and initially refuses to marry her first love Suleyman because she doesn't want to just be another of his several wives to him.
• In the third The Queen's Thief book, Sophos relates an illustrative story about how Kindhearted Simpleton Berrone once persuaded her otherwise-ruthless father to ban the drowning of kittens. The modern reader would agree that such a practice is horrifying. Unfortunately, in their medieval Greek world, this resulted in the city's population of strays becoming so out-of-control that some citizens snapped and began slaughtering cats en masse, which was far more upsetting to the general populace than private Shoot the Dog moments. This ties into the story's Central Themes about naivite, The Chains of Commanding, and Necessarily Evil.
• Quest for Fire focuses on the Oulhamr, a horde of neanderthals living 100,000 years ago. It goes without saying, they have a very different set of values from the reader. They are a warlike patriarchal society who think nothing of killing men of other hordes and taking their women. They don't treat their own women much better either with beating and even killing disobedient wives being an encouraged social norm. Fortunately the hero Naoh is somewhat more compassionate than most of them.

R

• Ragnar Lodbrok and His Sons: When the teenager Rognvald is killed on his very first Viking expedition, his mother Aslaug does not mourn him, because she considers his death honorable, and (she thinks) he could not have expected more from life.
• The Realm of Albion is set in Iron Age Britain. There's quibbling about the maltreatment of slaves, and about the way one character "cheats" in sacred combats, but the legitimacy of slavery and Human Sacrifice is never questioned (though the Celts themselves are shocked when they hear about Greeks' disparagement of women's intelligence).
• Redeeming Love: The book was written in 1991, but the story is set in 1850 and portrays period-appropriate attitudes towards various characters' sexual activity. Angel, a rape victim, is perceived as a "soiled dove" by most characters, including Angel herself. On the other hand, Miriam is sixteen, and no one bats an eye at her marrying Paul who's well into his twenties.
• Redwall: Even discounting all the species-related stuff, in Mossflower, small children can drink alcohol and get involved in battle, and 13-year-olds can marry. In real world Medieval England (similar to the world of the books) this would have been perfectly acceptable. Cider, beer and wine were drunk by young children, girls as young as 13 were often married to older men and army drummer boys or navy powder monkeys might be as young as 10. Although Word of God stated in a Q&A that Redwall drinks aren't alcoholic, he's been known to contradict himself on occasion. In any case, alcoholic drinks in the medieval era were far less intoxicating than currently, as fermentation at the time wasn't as sophisticated.
• Reflection: Just like in the movie, the book doesn't even try to hide the sexist worldview of Ancient China. Not only is it mentioned that women are only expected to marry someone, Shang also believes that only men should be soldiers. He later changes his mind after he learns the truth about Ping.
• The Reynard Cycle: The priestesses of Sphinx, the Lioness, are the greatest healers in the land, and highly respected. They're also prostitutes, some of whom are as young as fourteen. One of them is given as a gift to a 9-year-old King Defender of the Crown. It's implied that she'll become his personal mistress as soon as he hits puberty. His mother finds this a little odd, but quickly reflects that racking up some experience in bed might make his future Queen happy.
• In The Roman Mysteries all the characters freak out over free Romans being kidnapped and enslaved, but most of them give little thought to the enslavement of non-Romans or those born into slavery. Also, no one has a problem with 13- or 14-year-old girls getting married to men in their 20s or 30s.

S

• The Saga of the Borderlands: In this trilogy by the Argentine writer Liliana Bodoc, the Husihuilkes are a noble and warrior people, but they execute implacably the traitors and liars, and Dulkancellin, one of the most heroic characters, almost murdered an innocent for believing him a liar. On the other side are the Lords of the Sun, who practice human sacrifice and slavery, which is seen with disgust by the other peoples of the Fertile Lands.
• Salammbô: Slavery is a reality accepted by all, that a slave commits suicide is a tragedy because it deprives its owner of a valuable asset, the treatment of prisoners of war is brutal, the Carthaginians, out of desperation,revive the sacrifice of their own children, and Matho, the closest thing there is to a hero in this story with Grey-and-Gray Morality, acknowledges having raped women from enemy cities who had been captured.
• Schooled in Magic: Emily finds it very hard to deal with the society of the Nameless World, whose ways (ranging from treating commoners and women as second-class citizens to brutal punishments of criminals) baffle or horrify her at times. Many of the inhabitants find her opinions very odd as well.
• Second Apocalypse takes this and runs with it, being set in a world blending Biblical and Dark Ages culture, albeit with magic and Eldritch Abominations. Women are considered less than men, peasants are less than nobles, prostitutes should be stoned, heretics are the enemy and homosexuals are the lowest of the low.
• Sharpe:
  • Captain Leroy objects to Simmerson's insistence on having one of his soldiers flogged. Not because he is opposed to corporeal punishment, or because he thinks the man is innocent, but because he is the scion of Virginian plantation owners and in his world flogging is how you punish enslaved black people. Treating a free white man the same way is undignified and degrading to both parties, as far as he is concerned. This is quite jarring, since until then Leroy has been generally presented as a Reasonable Authority Figure who has gone out of his way to help the protagonist.
  • Sharpe is generally pretty progressive for his time, much more genuinely respectful to women than most of his fellow officers, and has a distinct hatred of rapists. However, he uses anti-Irish slurs fairly casually early on (later, he has a degree of N-Word Privileges with Harper, who gives it back in turn), he's a casual thief save from those who cannot afford it, tends to recklessly get in duels and personal feuds (much to the exasperation of the Duke of Wellington, who growls that Sharpe has a lamentable tendency to "wage private wars behind my back!"), and reckons that Murder Is the Best Solution even when it simply comes to people who annoy him.
• Shiloh takes place in the mid-1900s in rural America. The main conflict revolves a young boy taking in a battered hunting dog puppy that he calls "Shiloh". He's repeatedly chastised for trying to save Shiloh, with his dad even saying that plenty of dogs are beaten and starved but you can't go around saving every one of them. In his town, everyone keeps their private business to themselves, fighting with neighbors provokes scandal, and dogs are to be treated however their legal owner wants.
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a historical fiction story set in 19th century China, and features the main female character making remarks about how she (and her daughters) are worthless to her family and going through foot-binding to improve their lives. The author has Shown Her Work by going to China and talking to real women who went through foot-binding, and the deliberate values dissonance is commonly viewed as the best part of this book. At least one book on the role of feet and shoes in sexuality, in its extensive discussion of foot-binding, reveals that, for many centuries, foot-binding was actively sought out by every single Chinese family that could afford the procedure because small, dainty feet were considered the foremost mark of beauty and sexual attractiveness in classical Chinese culture, so girls as young as 5 were sent through it at the risk of infection and even death. Foot-binding was universally viewed in classical Chinese culture as improving the shape of the foot to give it beauty and sexual allure. Class issues also enter into the question; bound feet were associated with wealth in general and the upper classes, and unbound feet were considered uncouth and a mark of a woman's peasant status, and several references are made in the book to how "big footed girls" are looked down upon and relegated to servant status (The association comes from the fact that's it's physically difficult to do any sort of hard labor if your feet have been forcibly maimed by foot-binding. Thus, by foot-binding your daughter, you're displaying confidence that she'll never need to work. Only rich people could afford to be so confident.).
• A Song of Ice and Fire has this in spades.
  • Slavery, racism, sexism, prejudice against dwarves. A brutal massacre committed by a treacherous House causes them to be ostracized by everyone... not because of the massacre itself but because the massacred were their guests.
  • Oathbreaking is treated as a high offense, regardless of what the oath was, who it was made to, or the circumstances of the oathbreaking. Jaime Lannister, one of the sworn Kingsguard, is a pariah in-universe for killing the Mad King, who was set to burn all of King's Landing alive. Even the rebels who wanted the king dead think Jaime crossed the line. Meanwhile, Jaime's dead comrades are remembered as tragic heroes for pointlessly fighting and dying in service to a mass murderer.
  • As in medieval Europe, (first) cousin marriage is acceptable in Westeros, and quite common (Tywin and Joanna Lannister, for instance). However, outright incestuous brother-sister marriage is taboo, at least outside the Targaryens, and even then they had to fight a literal war before they were given an exception by the Faith of the Seven to continue the practice.
  • Having children out of wedlock is treated differently by the various ethnic groups. The Northmen (to an extent), the Wildlings and the Dornish think nothing of it and even claim that women should be lucky to give birth to a nobleman's child, whether they wanted to or not. The Andals consider bastardry to be a sin and illegitimates are treated as ethically compromised (Evil).
• In the bronze age novel The Sons of the Wolf by Tanja Kinkel, the bard Ulsna is firmly opposed to the skill of reading and writing, as he regards it as a crutch for the weak-minded and something that kills the free flow of poetry. While the attitude is not shared by the other protagonists, it is not condemned either.
• Star Trek: Rihannsu: The Romulans aren't human, and their values can be quite different from human ones.
  • They're based in part on the society of Ancient Rome, and like the Romans think nothing of conquest and slavery, and saving face is very important (a concept the Romans called gravitas).
  • And then you get to the point where they lack the concept of doing anything for someone else's good — you do things for the good of your own honor. If you're competent about it, the action ought to benefit everybody's honor, but you're supposed to be thinking of your own. A spoilerriffic example from the first book: Ael t'Rllaillieu's adult son Tafv betrays her in order to capture the Enterprise and deliver it to the Romulan government to gain leverage so they'll lift the banishment and Unpersonhood of his cousin (the nameless Romulan commander from "The Enterprise Incident"), whom Ael tried to help but failed. After he's foiled, Ael kills him for betraying her. Even though he was already dying from his wounds, it's not a Mercy Kill.
  • There's also a fair amount of casual racism by the Romulans directed at everyone else, including by the inhabitants of Romulus against their own kin on Remus (this series predates Star Trek: Nemesis by almost twenty years; the idea of Remans being a different species hadn't been thought of yet).
  • Also, the Star Trek: Academy novels show Worf having trouble fitting in. His classmates were aghast that he wouldn't help his opponent up in sparring practice. Offering to help someone up is an insult, an implication of weakness in Klingon culture.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Jedi see absolutely nothing wrong with their recruiters showing up and all but demanding parents hand over their Force-sensitive children, then cutting them off from all family ties after that. The one parent who did raise an objection (the Baby Lundi case) was blown off and treated as tabloid fodder. While there are a variety of at least somewhat understandable reasons for this (Force-sensitive children are challenging to raise, and popular targets for slavers). Their infant recruitment and isolation from most sectors of society may explain, partly, why few were sympathetic enough to help them after Order 66.
  • Mandalorians don't necessarily want to fight for the strongest side, they want to test their strength against it, and the Mandos typically think the Jedi and Republic are the best there is, so they'll often be siding with the Sith - though in turn, they will also be loyal to a former enemy who defeated them, because the title of Mandalore operates on a system of Klingon Promotion. In other words, unless their leaders has been beaten, it tends to be a Stealth Insult to the Sith and Empire, who either don't know or don't care that the Mandos consider them unworthy of fighting. The other factor in why Mandalorians and Jedi do not typically get along? Mandalorians are fanatically family-oriented, to the point where marrying and raising children in the culture is a sacred tenet (the second worst thing you could call a Mando translates to "unfit parent"). Separating a child from their parents and culture (like the Jedi do with their infant recruits) is more horrifying to them than killing the kid outright.
  • Even after Palpatine's defeat and the repeal of the worst Imperial speciesist laws by the New Republic, Human High Culture has still been internalized by many of the galaxy's humans (including even former members of the Rebel Alliance, who were primarily appalled at how Palpatine abused human rights), who are disgusted at having to live amongst and work with non-human sentients. (One otherwise liberal-minded member of an X-wing squadron is very touchy about his speciesism, and justifies not bunking with an alien squadmate by simply saying "He smells.") Of course, this being a huge galaxy (twice the diameter of our own Milky Way), there are plenty of exceptions and nuances. Han Solo, for one (among many others), uses anti-Hutt slurs even as he considers Wookiees to be his equals (though of course, considering his personal history and what happened to him with Jabba, he might believe he has N-Word Privileges and/or that Hutts are Asshole Victims - and, you know, no one likes Hutts. Not even other Hutts). Then of course there are the Yevethans, who not only view all non-Yevethans (including humans) as inferior, but have a very brutal caste system among their own kind and see nothing wrong with a ranking individual picking a Yevethan commoner out of a crowd, slitting his throat, and drinking his blood; even more dissonant is the expectation that the commoners see these "blood-killings" as an honor.
  • Exploited by Jabba the Hutt. He got the Max Reebo Band to be his house band in a contract that would be astonishingly unfair by any other standard (essentially they get room, board, and all you can eat meals, but no actual salary). However, Max is an Ortolan, a species that comes from a planet with a freezing climate and very scarce food resources. A warm, relatively safe roof over one's head and an all you can eat buffet is something his culture would reserve as the highest honor possible.
  • At one point in the X-Wing Series there's a brief reference to an Imperial-made holofilm about daredevils who tightrope walk between Coruscant's giant skyscrapers, whose tragic ending is supposed to be An Aesop against nonconformism and rebellion, and is understood as such by the Imperial watching it.
  • Kenobi: The Tusken Raiders of Tatooine maintain a culture that has no tolerance for weakness and no concept of charity because their lifestyle is lived so close to the brink that anyone who needs help might be a liability the clan can't afford. A'Yark initially believes local shopkeeper Annileen has Force powers because she instinctively dismisses the idea that Ben Kenobi would use that power for her sake, after witnessing a runaway bantha miraculously fail to crush Annileen's daughter when it trips and falls.
• In The Stormlight Archive:
  • Eastern Roshar (known as the Vorin Kingdoms) have a Fantastic Caste System wherein light-eyed people are believed to be intended to rule over dark-eyed ones. Their language even lacks words to describe the concept of rulers or nobility that don't indicate light-eyes. Foreigners who are talking about their own rulers or nobility (who don't necessarily have light eyes) usually say something to the effect of "Light-eyes who don't have light eyes", something Vorin people often have a hard time accepting.
  • Vorinism also strictly divides masculine and feminine arts, meaning that women are responsible for mathematics, engineering, writing, and all forms of art, while men never learn to read beyond simple glyphs which are essentially pictograms (relying on women to read actual text aloud to them; scribes even have codes that indicate some sections are not to be read to men, meaning they have no access at all to some information), and are responsible for more "confrontational" roles, like being merchants, soldiers, or politicians. Married couples are expected to work in teams, with the man technically in charge, but with the wife being responsible for coordinating important logistics like all communications and most planning. One foreign character notes the odd "coincidence" that the social mores were all set down by a woman, including declaring all the dangerous professions to be men's work. Another who grew up in the culture notes that while men got Shardblades and Shardplate, women getting writing meant that they almost certainly got the better end of the deal.
  • This also carries with it the belief that feminine tasks are those that can be accomplished with one hand, so females' left hands are expected to be concealed in public, things like touching someone or holding hands with their left hand are considered highly intimate, and exposing the hand is normally only done in private. A visitor to the culture goes to a tavern where he's puzzled to find that the local men are very excited by the fact that the serving wenches don't wear gloves, in a clear parallel to a topless bar.
  • Additionally some public spaces are segregated into male and female ones, and even cuisine is different for men and women — male food should be spicy, while female is sweet. Somewhat similarly to how many modern Western societies look on cross-dressing, women eating men's food is seen as improper, but acceptable if necessary, while men eating women's food is considered a perversion.
• Alternate universe example: in Neil Gaiman's short story, "A Study in Emerald", the protagonists watch a historical play about Eldritch Abominations conquering the Earth to barely any resistance from humanity. And applaud the "happy ending" in which the only dissenter is beaten to death.

T

• Talion: Revenant:
  • Daari have a harsh, violent culture strongly based on fighting demons (whether real or not is unrevealed). They ritually scar their faces to ward these off, made war on the Talions in the past (believing them to be demonically possessed) and slaughter anyone with physical disabilities over a belief they've been touched by demons.
  • Temuri culture teaches that a second identical twin is a demon, and has to be left for dead. This was what happened to Marana. It's mentioned that there female infants in general are often exposed too however.
• Temeraire:
  • There's an amusing moment in the first book where Laurence reacts with shock and horror at the revelation that Captain Roland's daughter is "natural born", i.e. the product of premarital sex.
  • Laurence is for the time a bleeding heart progressive in many ways (chief of which is being a staunch abolitionist from childhood in the late 18th century, and not even of the "send them back to Africa, they'll be happier there and we won't have to live with them" sort), but sexuality seemed to be his limit. Aside from his dismay at the liberal sexual mores of the Corps (which he adapts to enough that he's quite willing to carry on a semi-casual relationship with a female officer), it's made clearest when Granby confesses that he's "an invert" (i.e. gay). Laurence has a hard time reconciling the man he know with what he "knows" "those deviants" are and realizes that, were he still the man he were at the start of the series and were they in the Navy, he'd have reluctantly reported Granby who would most likely have been flogged and imprisoned for such a thing, (Even here he is somewhat progressive — in the Navy, as long as he didn't know, it having not been confessed to him or him not witnessing it personally, he'd have cheerfully denied even the most well-sourced accusation. It's the knowing that would made it his duty. In addition, it's not him being in the Navy that would have made him do it — it's that his experiences since becoming an aviator have changed his feelings on the topic of duty.)
  • Slavery is one thing Laurence clashes with Horatio Nelson, one of his personal heroes, on. Nelson is (in contrast to Napoleon) a Glory Seeker who puts his gifts to the service of his country, rather than seeking personal power, something Laurence greatly admires of him. He is also staunchly pro-slavery, though it seems to be from a sort of ruthless pragmatism. (This pragmatism is also what allows Nelson to support biological warfare that would likely kill every dragon outside of England, France, and the Americas, which Laurence actually finds to be a greater Moral Event Horizon than slavery.) In the books, Nelson opposes abolition entirely on economic and strategic grounds: Britain's survival against Napoleon depends on trade; as an island, their trade depends on the merchant marine (which will also train the bulk of Britain's sailors for naval duty); and the merchant marine depends on slavery. As presented in the book he doesn't really oppose the idea of abolition, but definitely thinks that wartime is not the right time for social experiments.
    • While it does eventually strain their friendship past the breaking point, his former first officer in the Navy Tom Riley is not opposed to slavery at all, with his father being a wealthy slave owner, at a contrast to Laurence's staunchly abolitionist father, who had named and shamed Riley's father in Parliament. Further complicating the issue is that Riley's father is described as a man "of much greater personal warmth" than Lord Allendale, who is a chilly career politician who disapproves of practically everything his youngest son does. They made do in the past by avoiding the topic and it's not a problem until Laurence invites a freedman and his family onto a ship Riley commands as his guests.
  • Most characters outside of the British Aerial Corps don't like the idea of woman joining the military. Existence of female aviators is kept secret from the general public to avoid a scandal.
    • It's implied that the British wouldn't permit female flyers at all, if it weren't for the fact that their most powerful dragon breed (the acid-spitting Longwings) will only accept female captains for some unknown reason.
    • In-universe, China is shown to mostly have female aviators, because daughters were less desirable than sons so sending a daughter into the dragon corps was considered an easy way to fulfil a family's military service requirement.
  • In Tongues of Serpents, Laurence believes that the now teenage Emily should be given a chaperone (eventually hiring one for her in Crucible of Gold) and carefully monitors her contact with boys and men in the meantime. Other aviators laugh this idea off as ridiculous. In their eyes the worst that can happen is Emily (who is, after all, the daughter of the Admiral of the Air, whose punishment for anyone who got handsy in unwelcome fashion with her daughter might start with hanging and get worse from there) getting pregnant — which would be expected of her anyway in order to produce a next captain for Excidium. Emily, for her part, finds the chaperone idea deeply exasperating, is as extraordinarily practical about sex and contraception as her mother with absolutely no intention of getting pregnant until she wishes to, and treats Laurence as a Boyfriend-Blocking Dad.
  • All the major powers use Child Soldiers, albeit usually not in a direct combat role. On dragons, they serve as messengers and lookouts, and they serve the same purpose on sea vessels like they did historically. Despite this, they die like flies in the musket and cannonball crossfire. Laurence shows some more remorse for a child dying under his command than an adult and he's more unsettled that the Child Soldiers in the Corps (as young as seven; in the case in question it's a boy of ten) are even younger than those in the Navy (no younger than twelve), but he more or less takes it as read.
  • In Blood of Tyrants Laurence is imprisoned by a Japanese daimyo who is simultaneously honor bound to take good care of him and to have him put to death for trespassing on Japanese soil. The Lord tries to meet both these requirements by offering Laurence the opportunity to commit sepuku, an honorable death normally reserved for Samurai. Of course, Laurence doesn't care at all for this honor, and as a devout Christian finds suicide a far worse death than being murdered by his captors.
    • Shortly after, when a young man in the daimyo's service helps Laurence escape to protect his Lord from this particular bind, the samurai he is loyal to hunts Laurence down to kill him, because it is his duty. Recognising this, and having a similarly deep reverence for duty, Laurence does not take it personally and protects the man from reprisal by rescuing British forces as he's just another gentleman doing right by his nation, and they part on civil terms.
• The Terra Ignota series is a science fiction quartet written by Ada Palmer, Renaissance historian and author of the quote on the main page. The series is set in a future which also contains very different values: gendered clothing and pronouns are taboo, religion is illegal to discuss except under certain specific circumstances, not wearing a tracker is primitive, censorship is a sign of a more enlightened time, and life as a slave is more humane than a prison sentence. This reflects her belief that the future will be as different from us as we are from the past.
• In C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, when Merlin shows up in 20th century England, the heroes (except Ransom) are shocked by his attitudes and behavior. For starters, he treats Ransom's company as if they were servants, is surprised to find out that there are no slaves to help him bathe and dress, and suggests beheading Jane because she used contraception and hence failed to bear a prophesied child. (On the positive side, he claims to give a third of his income to the poor, which is far more charity than most moderns show.)
  • This trope actually turns out to be the main reason why Merlin is there in the first place. In order to destroy the demonic powers at Belbury, the Powers That Be have to work through the medium of a mortal magician. But for any Christian to open his mind to that kind of possession, even by angels, is forbidden in the present day, and obviously the holy angels cannot work through a black magician. Thus God arranged for Merlin, who had practiced magic in the days when it was still permissible for a Christian to practice it, to be preserved undying to act as His vessel.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky's Three Worlds Collide, set in the twenty-fifth century, tells of humanity's first contact with two alien species, both of which possess ethical systems that seem utterly insane both to each other and to the present. 25th century Humans think that rape is an enjoyable activity for both parties. The Super Happies think that anyone who doesn't abolish all pain and spend all their time having sex must be mentally deficient, and should be forcibly placed under the stewardship of a more advanced species. And The Baby Eaters... well, just look at their name.
• Omnipresent in Till We Have Faces, also by C. S. Lewis. The main character is queen of a barbarian kingdom just within the influence of ancient Greek civilisation, and, though rational and merciful compared to many around her, has cultural attitudes appropriate to her society. Subverted when various strange events cause her, among more dramatic changes, to come to see that being as rational and civilised as her beloved Greek mentor is not enough.
• In How Few Remain, an alternative history novel based on the premise of the South winning the American civil war, the word "n-gger" is tossed around casually. This is also seen throughout the entirety of Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series, of which How Few Remain is the first installment.
• To Kill a Mockingbird: Set in 1930s Alabama, the book does not shy away from depiciting the brutal racism of time, with some other references to the sexism of the time, even held by the female characters.
• Quite common in the Tortall Universe, though just as often there are characters that disagree with the current social norms and want to change them. One of the most obvious cases is when a character from an England analogue visits Carthak, a country that's very much inspired by the Ottoman Empire. The prince Kaddar is overall a Nice Guy... except he sees nothing at all wrong with slavery, and genuinely believes that the poor are too stupid to manage themselves in anyway. He genuinely doesn't understand why these views upset the protagonist. Even when Carthak and the Copper Isles get Reasonable Authority Figure rulers, Word of God says that they don't intend to dismantle slavery. There's also the fact of teenage marriage and childrearing, along with marriages being arranged to benefit the family (whether it's the king's children making political matches or less-exalted families keeping business and land in mind), with most brides and grooms hoping to grow into love with a friendly partner rather than to outright Marry for Love. Children learn how to fight and kill from age ten and up, and there is much emphasis on the very brutal methods of medieval legal punishment (such as boiling in oil and being drawn and quartered) and torture, just in case you thought it was a cool time to live. Mercifully, magic spares us from having to read about medieval European medicine.
• It's all over the place in Trail of Glory by Eric Flint. Slavery and attitudes toward race is front and center. Then add in the views on women, individual lives, religion...
• The Traitor Son Cycle:
  • The people of this world see nothing wrong with 12-year-olds fighting in battles alongside fully-trained knights.
  • The creatures of the Wild consider it natural to eat (or, in the case of mages, absorb) their fallen enemies, even if they're of the same species.
  • Among the Sossag, if you beat someone in a duel, you inherit his possessions and any spouses (and, presumably, children) they might have.

U

• In Korean Web Serial Novel Under the Oak Tree, wives are legally the property of their husbands. While Rifton does treat Maxi relatively respectfully, he has the right to beat her if he wishes. When Maxi's father Duke Croix kidnaps and beats Maxi, it's officially treated as theft and damage of property and Rifton's response to almost kill Duke Croix is judged as too harsh for the crime.
• Joseph Conrad's novel Under Western Eyes is set in (and written during) Russia around the time of the pogroms. There's one scene where the protagonist, who is a fairly good guy, is angered by someone and mutters to himself to the effect that the person was a "dirty Jew". The British First-Person Peripheral Narrator makes a comment about how the offender wasn't Jewish and the protagonist knew that, but Russians were such extreme anti-Semites that this kind of expression was the norm.

V

• Vatta's War: Cascadia is a world obsessed with courtesy. You can easily get a permit to plant a listening device in a public space, but planting one among someone's private possessions without permission is punished harshly, because that is rude. Contempt of court is a capital offence. Killing someone is a serious crime, but is nothing compared to the hot water you are in if you don't make the proper apologies to the victim's family. What makes Cascadia special is that it's never presented as dystopian; it seems weird both to the readers and protagonists, and the Cascadians themselves cheerfully admit that, by most standards, their way of doing things is pretty weird, but it works for them and they like things that way. The Cascadians are also very well aware of how strange their values are to outsiders, and give them a lot of slack.
• Victoria: In the coming decades the US fractures into several successor states. Each insane in their own special way. Each serving as a Take That! to a particular group. Except the titular Victoria, who are depicted as heroic.
  • The New Confederacy is the closest to Old America, but has deep racial divides. And the respect for personal liberty and industrial might are not considered virtues by the narrative.
  • Those Wacky Nazis take over Wisconsin. The one state treated as something like a worthy foe, repugnant mostly for their aesthetics and love of industrial efficiency.
  • Cascadia, or the Pacific Northwest, becomes deeply environmental, starving people rather than profit from the deaths of plants and animals and smothering dissenters with plastic bags.
  • Azania, once California, becomes a matriarchy where men are enslaved, castrated, and eventually outlawed.
  • Much of the unmentioned countryside is overrun by 'orcs', or Black/Hispanic gangs.
  • The heroes themselves are an aversion as they're just plain Values Dissonance. The New England state of Victoria is made up of Christian fundmamentalists. They burn heretics, massacre liberal college teachers, have automatic hanging for drug possession/use while Black (the punishment for White drug dealers/users is never mentioned), mass deportation of Puerto Ricans and an unofficial but very strong ban on any technology invented after the 1930s save medicine. All of this is depicted as righteous by the narrative.
• As Violet Evergarden is set in a world somewhere around the early 20th century, this is inevitable. Child soldiers are prevalent during the war, with the titular Violet being one of them. Arranged marriages are common and one seen is with a 14-year-old princess about to marry a man who is ten years her senior. In fact, the princess told Violet as royalty, on her tenth birthday, she was considered old enough to start receiving marriage proposals.
• The Vorkosigan Saga mixes a lot of this with Culture Clash. Barrayar heads a neo-feudalist interstellar empire which everyone else considers something between quaintly backwards to dangerously barbaric. They're also incredibly sexist, vicious to homosexuals and disabled people, and militaristic; infanticide is still practiced in the back country because of the risk of mutation from the half-terraformed Barrayaran biosphere. Some within Barrayar are trying to pull the empire up to more progressive, modern standards, but it's still slow going. Beta Colony, meanwhile, shares a lot of values with modern Western culture (democracy, social safety nets, intellectualism, multiculturalism) until you hit on their sexual mores — they're a Free-Love Future that defines sexuality as current practice rather than an orientation, carefully controls reproduction via implant (because of limited living space), and about the only rules are "informed consent, no permanent harm, don't cheat if you're exclusive." And exclusivity is not necessarily the order of the day. And they firmly believe in Heel–Face Brainwashing...

W

• The Ciaphas Cain series is a much Lighter and Softer depiction of Warhammer 40,000 than other media, but still presents The Imperium as, well, The Empire. In For the Emperor, Cain himself is repeatedly alienated and disturbed by the Tau and their human sympathizers, making comments about how he cannot see "xenos" as people, being horrified to hear a separatist tell him to go back to "[his] Emperor", and being cheerful of the prospect of the separatists getting pummeled by the loyalists. Cain also mentions "[organizing] the occasional firing squad" in the same breath as routine clerical work while describing his job at Brigade Headquarters. In the same book, Inquisitor Vail cheerfully reminisces of one of her favorite childhood songs... which is a disturbingly cheerful ditty about heretics being crushed under the tracks of a Land Raider. In Caves of Ice, she likewise quips fondly of her favorite children's book, which depicts people being gruesomely burned alive for being heretics (i.e. humans who don't follow the Imperium). Cain's Last Stand casually mentions vans with convicts heading to a military orphanage "for live ammo exercises".
• A lot of things in Warrior Cats are excused by saying "Well, they're cats". Cats have different morals than humans. Spottedleaf and Firepaw's age gap, and even Barley and Ravenpaw's age gap, would be squicky if they were humans but are okay in-series. Non-immediate incest involving cousins and uncle/nieces aren't given any special treatment. Even Brother–Sister Incest is ignored according to Graystripe's parents (who were accidentally named as two siblings, but when the authors learned of the flub they just shrugged because sometimes cats mate with their siblings).
• Watership Down:
  • Adams openly states that his protagonists feel no guilt whatsoever about using force to compel weaker rabbits to yield to them. Which is probably Truth in Television for real rabbits, but needed to be pointed out as also true for his Lapine-speaking, story-telling versions.
  • The story also points out that the all-male group only realizing they need to get some females after they have already established a new burrow may seem unusual to humans but was in keeping with rabbit mentality.
• The Eleventh Year Rite (aka female circumcision) is this both in and out of canon in Who Fears Death: Onyesonwu's mother is horrified when she discovers what her daughter has done (the practice having been banned in her home village), for instance, whereas it's common practice in Jwahir. Indeed, Onyesonwu subjected herself to it in order to fit in, and by doing so she gains a set of True Companions in Binta, Diti and Luyu.
• Neither of the future societies in Who Needs Men? has the same values as real life "Western" culture. The Republic of Anglia is a Lady Land with socially normative lesbianism and Fantastic Racism against men, as well as a vaguely 1984-like militaristic totalitarian dictatorship, while Northerner society is rugged, primitive and sexist in much the same manner as a warrior band or full-time military unit. Characters from both sides generally consider their own way to live the only reasonable one, though the more thoughtful of them are also able to reflect on and criticize faults they perceive among themselves. Even then, though, they rarely sound like 21st-century Europeans.
• In the novella Winter Moon, it's noted that male werewolves take a sort of primal satisfaction in eating less so their mates can have more — even when there's enough food to satisfy everyone.
• Also present in Bujold's World of the Five Gods series, which has a culture loosely based on 15th century Spain. In the first novel, the best solution to a political problem is believed to be getting a 16-year-old princess married as soon as possible to a neighboring prince who she's never met.

Y

• This makes up quite a lot of The Year Of The Boar And Jackie Robinson, since the story's about a Chinese girl who moves to America with her parents at a time when Jackie Robinson was at the height of his career. When she first arrives, she begins mentally comparing life in America to life in China.
• The Young Ancients: The nobility of Noram revile one sin above all others, breaking a heart or being cruel in love. As such, there are a number of socially acceptable dodges, like offering up a friend, but a sufficiently tenacious suitor can usually have his way, because it is more acceptable to have sex with someone you despise, or marry someone three times your age, then give a flat "no". Of course, to escape an unwanted marriage there is a simple answer: marry someone else first! But as there is no expectation of sexual exclusivity between spouses, putting off sex is much harder.

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