• “Misses (Mrs.)” is the title used for all women. A woman is ALWAYS a “Misses” regardless of whether she is married or not. The title of “Miss” does not exist.

• Madam vs Ma’am. In English, “Madam” is used as a title for a woman holding a knighthood, but also in other formal forms of address such as “my good madam” or “dear madam”.
  Ma’am is the shortened version used in more casual conversation, the way you would use “sir” in our world.

•  “Mister (Mr.)” is the title used for a married man.

• “Sir” as a title is used for an unmarried man. However, “Sir” is also a general term of respect for men. For example, you could say “yes, sir” to any man, married or not, but you could NOT address a man as “Sir Lucas” if he is married.

•  “Mosire” is the male version of the English “Madam” in our world. Typically used when addressing a respected older man and is more polite/formal than “sir”.

Hair carries higher cultural significance in the contrary universe. In this world, women still typically wear their hair long and men wear their hair short, but the view of these practices are vastly different, particularly when it comes to women’s hair. Long hair on women is a symbol of their femininity, power, and status, much like the mane of a lion in our world. Just by looking at a woman with her hair tied up you could determine key aspects of her background.

          First of all, I need to mention that the word “ponytail” is not used to describe that style, its too “boyish” and “cutesy”. Instead, they call it a “horsetail”, like a war horse. A horse tail is the most common women’s hairstyle of this world, besides just wearing it down.

If you saw a woman with her hair tied in a horsetail and she had ALL the hair on her head, you can assume that she is a woman of considerable wealth and status, as she clearly has the time and money (or servants) to be able to care for all that hair and does not have to worry so much about fleas and lice like the poorer folk do.

If you see a woman with a long horsetail but she has an “undercut”, as in the back and sides of her head are shaved, she probably works a very labour intensive job. She could be a farmer or labourer of sorts, either way, she does not have the time, money, or convenience to be able to keep all her hair. Since cutting it all short is completely out of the question, the perfect solution is to shave off the back and sides so you have less hair to deal with overall but you still have your long hair.

If you see a woman with her head shaved on the back and sides and a SHORT horsetail, this is called a “military crop”. Its similar to why they trim the tails of war horses short so it doesn’t hinder them in any way. This woman is probably a soldier or a knight. It must be noted that even though the horsetail is cut short, when the woman puts her hair down it will still NOT go above the shoulders.

Then of course there is the material in which a woman ties her hair with. If it is with an expensive elastic or ribbon, then you can tell she has money. If she is tying her hair with her own hair, then she must be dirt poor.

If you DO happen to see a woman with an entirely shaved head or very short hair, depending on the era, she is either a criminal (as it used to be common practice to shave the head of an incarcerated woman as a form of punishment, humiliation, and identification) or in more modern times she’s probably just a hippy.

In the modern day, even though most people do have the means to take care of their hair and don’t have to worry about fleas, lots of women choose to have an undercut as it still makes maintenance easier and gives off a more rugged look.

          The way that men show their status through their hair is mainly through accessories, complicated styles, and braiding. The only hard rule for hair on a man’s head is it must not go passed their shoulders as that would be far too womanly. Now, body hair is another story. Moustaches and beards are basically non-existent in this world unless you’re a very old man that doesn’t care about your looks anymore. This is because many beauty standards placed on men revolve around looking as youthful as possible. It is also common practice for men to shave off much of their body hair, however, it’s important to note that this only gained in popularity around the 1910s and has stuck around as a beauty standard into the modern day.

Of course, women are not expected to shave any of their body hair and any whiskers she grows on her upper lip or anywhere else on her face is perfectly acceptable, though many women do still choose to shave their faces.

Keep in mind that just like in our word, “women wear hair long and men wear hair short” is not a universal rule for every time period, every class, and every culture. However, the majority of Contrary Classics novels take place in the western world during a time when that would be the most popular fashion.

In the contrary universe, men are still on average a bit taller than women and appear to be larger. However, women, despite being smaller on average, are far more dense than the average man, making them weigh much more. Think of a bowling ball next to a beanbag chair; technically the beanbag chair is bigger than the bowling ball, but it would hurt a lot more to be hit with a bowling ball than a beanbag chair. So, on average, women of this universe are heavier, stronger, and faster than the average man. It’s simply a cruel and unfair reality.

To explain all the evolutionary theories of the sexual dimorphism between females and males it would take up an entire textbook, so I will try to summarize them as best as I can from what I could research while I was there going through some museums.

IN VERY BASIC TERMS organisms evolve to best suit their environment, but evolution does not only revolve around one’s physical surroundings, they are also shaped by “culture”. The social dynamics of a species can have a huge role in shaping physical adaptations between sexes. Do you think male birds-of-paradise in our world evolved to have those long and colourful feathers because it was CONVENIENT?? No. They did it cuz the ladies love it. The female body of this world is very utilitarian. Being smaller actually has some advantages, such as being stealthier, gives you better balance, and it puts less strain on your joints leading to less issues as you age. Because of this, and often being cooperative hunters, female humans opted for strength over size. This lead to developing very dense bones and muscle mass which is what makes them so much heavier than males. All of this culminates to a very efficient body structure. Due to the change of culture, in the Contrary universe, its the females of different sexually dimorphic species that evolved horns and manes and colourful feathers to fight for and attract mates.

Males on the other hand, were often tasked with being the nurturers of the young. This did not require the particular need for excess strength but did require them to protect the offspring and spend longer periods unable to provide food for themselves. In nature, the easiest way to win a fight is to not have to fight at all. It’s common for animals to evolve features they can employ to make themselves look much bigger and stronger than they really are. So, male humans opted for size as a means of looking more intimidating to potential predators but to also give their bodies more to feed on in times of lack. Increased volume does not necessarily equal a significant amount of increased weight, and so, while male humans may appear larger than females, their muscles can not handle the same amount of weight and strain on average and they are not as dense overall, making them lighter.

Imagine a couple of cave children playing with sticks and rocks at the mouth of their cave home. Then a sabretooth cat appears, seeing the little ones as an easy meal. But then SURPRISE! Who should appear from inside the cave but their caveman father, who looks quite a lot more imposing. So, the predator stops and thinks about her next move. Then, along comes the cavewoman and she’s in a bad mood because the hunt didn’t go so well today. She is smaller than her mate, she looks a lot more like manageable prey. The sabretooth cat’s attention is drawn to her and away from her family, it attacks, but is in for a nasty surprise that she is A LOT stronger than she looks. Long story short, the caveman has a new fur pelt.

Some biologists believe that women developed more aggressive tendencies to protect themselves and their offspring during a vulnerable time such as pregnancy. This excess of natural aggression, alertness, and restlessness made females more likely to take the role of hunter and provider. This left men with the role of the caregiver. In this world, the dynamic of “one partner births the offspring and the other takes care of it” is what makes the most sense to them and is what most animals in this world follow. Most female mammals will tolerate their young until they are able to survive without milk. At which point she will leave and then it is the male’s turn to raise them to maturity (unless it is a monogamous species, such as wolves, then they will raise the young together). Because the male takes on most of the child-rearing, the female is free to recoup the energy she spent in pregnancy and nursing, and is ready to produce more offspring again very shortly. The male on the other hand, gets to ensure that his offspring survive to adulthood and his genes carry on. Win/Win. Over time, human breast milk became extremely nutrient dense and thus infants do not require the same amount of round the clock feeding as our babies do.

That was an extremely brief and simplified explanation of a few evolutionary theories of this world.

In the English language in our world, masculine words are typically used as the default, but in the contrary universe, you would not “master” a skill. No no no. you would “mistress” a skill. The movements of a talented swordswoman are not “masterful”, they are “mistressful”. You see how it goes?

In our world; Matrimony means marriage while Patrimony means to inherit stuff from your dad… however, in the contrary universe Matrimony means to inherit stuff from your mom while Patrimony means marriage.

If you decided to skip over this lore bit, you’re gonna be very confused by the language differences. Just remember that the feminine form of words is the default and most of them have roots in Latin.

Helpful Latin guide:

Mater = Mother

Pater = Father

Soror = Sister

Frater = Brother

So, you are a “Matriot” of your country, not a Patriot. You’re not supposed to “Sororinize” with the enemy, instead of “Fraternize”, etc etc.

This is also the same with many other languages. There’s a ton of French, Spanish, German, Russian and other languages in these books with their own set of gendered words and pronouns and rules. You’ll notice that the Contrary version of Les Misérables is titled “Las Misérables“, because the feminine is the default. We simply do not have time to get into a grammar lesson of every language. You get it.
Now, is EVERY WORD in another language changed to its opposite counterpart in these novels? Probably not. Why? I don’t know, I’m not a linguist.

“Bulle“: Bulles are female bovines. The original word for all bovines eventually turned into “cow“ and eventually grew to be more associated with males, but the word for a female cow came later. It started out as “Bula“ in old English and eventually changed to “Bulle“. Pronounced the same as “Bull” in our world.

Emarey: In our world, this is known as an “Abbey” (a church where monks live). Abbey comes from the Aramaic word for father (“Abba“), so naturally, the Contrary equivalent would be from the Aramaic words for mother, like “Ima” (sometimes spelled ”Ema”) and “Em”.

Orsteria, Orsterical, Orsteric: This is the equivalent of “hysteria“ in our world. Basically, the ancient Greeks of the contrary universe were like “wow, men be moody!” and they thought the reason was their testicles were moving around too much and making them act up. So they came up with the word “Orchistarachē“ (Orchis = testicles + tarachē = disturbance/ turmoil/ agitation). Eventually, as language does, this turned into “Orchisteria” and then it was further changed and simplified to Orsteria. And medical professionals have been writing off mens legitimate health concerns and mental health struggles with “Orsteria“ ever since.

Napaw: a derogatory term for indigenous men.

Dotty: the feminine equivalent of “sonny”

“-man”
Now, you may ask, why are words like “German”, “Roman”, and “Human” still used? That is because the word “woman” is the default and the original word for all people. It’s “womankind”. The word “man” came later out of the word “woman”, just like Adam being taken out of Eve. “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; he shall be called ‘man,’ for he was taken out of woman”. You can think of those words as more of a morphed version of woman. For example, “Roman” comes from the Latin Rōmānus, meaning "of Rome" (or of Roma), literally referring to people who come from the empire of Rome; so, a woman from Roma, smash it together and you’ve got “Roman”.

Many names have masculine and feminine equivalents, some have multiple and others have none. What determines whether a “George” is renamed “Georgette” or “Georgiana”, or “Richard” into a “Rachel” or ”Ricarda”, is pure vibes (the personality of the character), or whatever makes more sense for the setting and time period. Sometimes a “Ben” will be turned into a “Beth” even though Ben is technically short for Benjamin and Beth is technically short for Elizabeth. Characters that are named after things or personality traits are almost always left the same, because of course in this world you would name your delicate and beautiful son after something like a “Daisy” or a “Rose”. Of course you would name your bold and rambunctious daughter something like “Challenger” or “Archer”. Just like in our world, the rules for what makes a name masculine and feminine are kind of all over the place. It’s common for a feminine name to end with an “a”, but then you have names like “Quinn” or “Hester”, perfectly acceptable “girl names” in our world that end in a masculine sound yet don’t cause any confusion. Usually a masculine name ends in an “o” or “er” or a simple consonant, but “Sasha” is a perfectly acceptable Slavic boy name and “Béla”, as in “Béla Lugosi”, as in the man that made vampires sexy in our world, is also a classic boys name. Elijah and Abdullah are boy names even though they end with an “a” sound, and Artemis and Calypso are Greek goddesses. I could go on.

Then of course, there are many names that are Unisex, and therefore remain unchanged. There are many unisex names that may surprise you as they have gone out of fashion in our modern age, but Vivien was originally a boy name, and Carroll was a popular boy name in recent history.

Plus, names ending in y or ie are common for both male and female names/nicknames. Example: Lizzy is seen as a feminine name while Larry is seen as a masculine name even though they both end the same.

So you may encounter names in these books that throw you off at first, but they’re all perfectly normal in this world.

Surnames:
In our English language, many surnames end with the suffix “son”, literally indicating who you are the son of. Williamson = Son of William. Some languages will differentiate last names based on gender. For example, Russian last names can end in “-ovitch” for a son and “-ovna” for a daughter. Icelandic uses “-son” for sons and “-dóttir” for daughters. In Gaelic “Mac” (plus “Mic” and “Mc”) is what indicates “son”, while “Nic” is the daughter equivalent. The English language doesn’t do that. So, similarly to the previous example of woman to roman, “daughter” is a whole mouthful. So the suffix they went with in this world to indicate daughter was the shortened version “-ter” or “-ster”. Instead of “Johnson” = Son of John, it would be “Janester” = Daughter of Jane, whether you are a daughter or not. The often added “S” is used as a linking element for easier pronunciation and flow.

As discussed in previous sections, there are a few things in this world that are the same as our world, such as hair still being grown longer on women than men, and men still being on average taller than women. However, when it comes to descriptions, all this is relative to the gender of the character. For an example we’ll use hair. Shoulder length hair on a woman would be considered “short” FOR A WOMAN, but on a man, the same shoulder length hair would be considered “long” FOR A MAN. So in these stories, if a man is described with “long hair” you can imagine it would not go passed his shoulders (unless stated otherwise), longer than that would be far too “feminine”. Similarly for a woman, if she is described with “short hair” you can bet it wouldn’t be any shorter than her shoulders as that would be far too masculine and boyish. Just like with height or other physical features, its such common knowledge among the people of this world that it is unnecessary to be any more descriptive. Like in our world, if a woman is described simply as just “tall”, most people wouldn’t immediately imagine her as 6 foot 5 unless that was specifically stated; the same is true for this world.

Okay… so……… when a woman and a man love each other very much…

an “intimate encounter” commonly results in a baby happening. Right?

In our world, it is an almost universal belief that “nothing compares to a mother’s love”. In the contrary universe, this sentiment would get you laughed at, because of course to them the saying goes “nothing compares to a FATHER’S love”. First of all, pregnancy in this world is pretty smooth sailing with none of the usual negative symptoms and side effects that plague our world. What is known as a “retroverted uterus” to us (When the uterus is pointed back towards the spine instead of the bellybutton) is the normal direction for it to face for them. Because of this, you cannot tell when a woman is pregnant. She could be 9 months along and there would be absolutely no bump that we are used to seeing in our world. And while birth is not exactly comfortable, it’s more like running a couple miles. You’re tired after, sure, but drink some water and take 5 and you’ll be back on your feet and ready to get back to work in no time.

When it comes to baby-making, a man has to literally give a part of himself away to a woman in order to create a child. This very act is considered much more significant in this world than in ours. It’s a huge deal. Of course a father’s love is so much stronger than a mother’s, a mother does not have to give a part of herself to anyone, she has it all within her. Yet another reason why the term to “TAKE” a man’s virginity is used. They see it as literally TAKING something from him. This is also why male promiscuity is so much more frowned upon, because it’s seen as a man literally giving parts of himself away to every Tommie, Dixie, and Harriet in town to the point where you’re metaphorically empty. Many sexist women find the very idea disgusting.

In the case of an unwanted pregnancy, when termination is impossible for whatever reason, it is a common practice for an unmarried woman who does not want to be a mother to simply leave the baby on the father’s doorstep. If she does not know where the father lives then an orphanage will do just fine. As you can imagine, orphanages are a bigger thing in this world than in ours. This practice can also lead to men being falsely branded as the father (say, if the woman dropped the baby off at the wrong house by mistake) and this can then lead to the ruin of this boy’s reputation, since the majority of society will put the blame mostly on him for being a harlot rather than on the woman who abandoned her baby. It’s incredibly rare for a woman to choose to raise a child on her own.

Means of collecting, storing, and preserving a mother’s milk were invented thousands of years earlier than they were in our world. Milk substitutes and formula were also invented hundreds of years earlier. This made it easier for women with small babies to leave their families to work or go off to war and gave fathers (in many cases, single fathers) more ways to feed their children.

Gestational Patrodynia: In our world there exists a phenomenon called Couvade Syndrome or “sympathetic pregnancy”. Basically, it’s when a man with a pregnant partner experiences pregnancy symptoms himself. I’m talking painful cramps, weight gain, mood swings, weird cravings, morning sickness, the whole nine yards. It’s a lot more common than you think! In the Contrary world, this is a very normal and well-studied part of pregnancy for a couple. Since women in the Contrary universe don’t really experience any of the pregnancy symptoms we are used to seeing in our world, they came up with their own name for it, since it wouldn’t make sense to base the name off of pregnancy symptoms when pregnancy doesn’t have symptoms. It is uniquely experienced by expecting fathers, particularly those who spend a lot of time with their partner. Just like individuals in our world, experiences vary. One man could have a pretty smooth experience while his wife is pregnant and another could have a terrible time all the way through. Just keep in mind that in these stories, if a man falls ill while his partner is pregnant or if he has an inexplicable FEELING that his partner is pregnant despite her not knowing herself, that his body is responding to hers and he is experiencing Gestational Patrodynia.

This is also where they get the term “men’s intuition”.

The vast majority of characters in the contrary universe simply have their names/ pronouns swapped to the opposite gendered version but there are a few instances in which entire characters are swapped with another, not just their names and pronouns. Some of those characters are:

• Lucifer and Lilith. Their stories are shockingly similar. Lilith was cast out of heaven for rebelling against Goddess, and Lucifer was cast out of Eden for not wanting to bottom for Eve, AND rebelling against Goddess. The reason that Lilith is known as “the light bringer” despite her name carrying meanings associated with night, darkness and monsters, is because you cannot have light without darkness. Darkness is what allows the stars in the sky to shine.

• Eve & Adam. The story goes that Eve was sad because her first marriage went terribly and now she was all alone again. So Goddess put her to sleep, ripped out one of her ribs, and formed it into the (second) first man. Eve named him Adam and they lived happily in the garden of Eden where everything is great and awesome and they can do whatever they want except eat the fruit of knowledge from one specific tree. Things were going pretty well until Lilith, in the form of a serpent, tempted Adam to eat the fruit of knowledge, and so he did. In doing so he began the fall of womankind. Then Adam went to Eve and tempted her as well to eat of the fruit, so sealing their fate. When Goddess saw what they had done, she cast them out of Eden and then they had to face starvation and suffering and ageing and death.

• Juliet and Romeo. The classic Shakespearian tale. You may read them referenced in many stories of Contrary Classics, just know that when referencing the couple they are referring to the play’s dashing young heroine Juliet Capulet, who falls madly in love with the sweet and gentle Romeo Montague.