Is the question of where we sleep an appropriate topic to speak about? Why or why not? Is it intimate? Is it shameful?
In Doctor Who, the Twelfth Doctor once encountered a room which was only made of bed, and struggled to understand it.
We acknowledged that where one has sex is a relevant question, but not a question we wanted to delve into in this hour. Paul could imagine that it would be possible for a culture to think it was inappropriate to have sex in the same place where you sleep.
In Babylon 5, the Minbari don't believe in sleeping on your back because they think it would invite death, so they sleep on angled platforms that humans find precarious.
We don't all sleep lying flat! Some people have slept in bed closets that create a closed wooden space to help keep people warm while sleeping. Good for cold climates, but they might not allow you to lie full length. Some people sleep in recliners.
Ventilation preferences vary widely for sleepers. Is it considered acceptable to have air blowing on you? Is it considered dangerous?
Cultural rules can be very complex.
Do babies co-sleep with their parents? This is an enormous, hotly debated topic that differs greatly across the world, and people are often eager to argue for their view.
What happens if you don't have "your own side of the bed"? Some people don't feel attached to the side of the bed they sleep on. For some, they do feel attached to their location relative to the bed. For others, it's less the position on the bed that's important and more their position relative to surroundings, like a window, or a bathroom. Some people want to sleep with their head facing in a cardinal direction, like north. People who use CPAP machines to help them breathe need to be near an electrical outlet!
Do you sleep with your pets? This question is another one that can rouse strong emotions in people. Would characters in a fictional society sleep with pets? Why or why not?
How hard is the bed? Is it preferable to sleep on a plush mattress or a board, or something in between? Why?
What if you had bat people? What if you walked into their home and they had a rail intended for sleeping?
Kat has a multi-species café that she writes about that asks a lot of questions about how to accommodate different species' needs. She says it's much easier to do visual storytelling, i.e. to imagine a movie or something, than to describe all its features verbally. Who is there? What do they need? What does the café provide?
How long do you expect to sleep at an uninterrupted stretch? Three hours? Eight or ten or twelve? Can the sleep come in multiple sessions? Is there a distinction between a night's sleep and a nap? A siesta?
What happens to our beds when we are not using them? Do they get put away for the day in a closet, like Japanese futons? Do they get used by someone else who is sleeping in shifts?
How much privacy do we expect while sleeping? Do we expect our sleeping activities to be segregated by age or gender, or by other factors?
Kat asked, what if you had sentries who slept because during sleep they were more sensitive to ambient sounds, and while they were awake, they were expected to be focused on a particular thing/activity?
Think about what it's like adjusting to an unfamiliar sleeping place. Why would it be like that? Would it be like that for your fictional people?
Do you need sentries at home? Why?
Do you prefer to sleep in light or darkness? What happens if your sleep cycle doesn't match with that of the planet you're on? What if you're in the Arctic during summer?
People in NASA or JPL who work with the Mars mission have to work on Mars day length, which is an interesting challenge.
We tend to believe that the day is divided into segments of a particular type, but if all parameters are open for consideration, it would be possible to change the nature of those segments a lot!
Kat compared life on the space station to life on a boat, which she's very familiar with. It has some very interesting similarities.
The International Space Station experiences about 20 sunrises and sunsets per day.
Is the species you are working with diurnal, nocturnal, or crepuscular?
How uniform is the cultural expectation of daytime? Are there people who prefer to be awake at night? Kat mentioned that she was reading that some Pacific peoples began their day at moonrise because that was the best time to fish.
Babies have weird sleep schedules and can be very unpredictable. A being with a small stomach will wake up hungry quite often!
Kate mentioned that some medieval people would go to sleep at 5pm in the winter when it got dark, then spend some time awake in the night, and then sleep again before morning.
Any population must be diverse and variable. If we didn't have people who preferred different times of day and different kinds of activity, society would not function as it does.
Morgan mentioned that people who prefer to be awake at night may be trying to avoid the overwhelm of daytime stimuli.
Can you sleep with a lot of noise? What kind of noise?
Can you sleep without weight on you? With a sheet? A blanket? Can you do without? Would you struggle if you had to sleep without weight because of heat?
The adaptations that people make to sleep in particular climates, such as loose-weave cotton blankets or bed styles or even sleeping times, can be lost when people move into a diaspora. Korea has something called a mink blanket designed specifically for very cold winter nights. Quilts are also regional, though they have become something of an international art form at this point.
Do we sleep with clothes on? What kind - socks? Hats? How different are our sleeping and waking clothes? Do you have money for different sets of sleeping and waking clothes? Are you allowed to be seen in clothes you have worn to bed? How old are children allowed to go out in public in their sleeping clothes?
Are people culturally permitted to sleep in public places? What kind? Can they sleep in restaurants if their parents are nearby? Do sleeping children require a sentry?
What kind of pillows are there? There are lots of different kinds in our world: buckwheat, foam, feather, synthetic fiber, etc. What is the shape of the pillow? Do other species want to have their heads supported when they sleep? What about other body parts?
What do you do with your tail, your hair, your beard when you are sleeping?
Do we sleep in nests? Pillow forts? Hammocks?
What do you do when there are a lot of people in a very small space? Do you have a capsule hotel or sleep in a drawer? Do you bunk? Do you have scheduled bed-sharing with others? Is your bed your private castle, or do you just have a pillow and blanket that belong to you, which you keep in a locker? How would high-density sleeping arrangements change family structures?
Do you have to re-form or reconstitute your bed every night?
Do you sleep wedged in a crack like an octopus? Do you velcro your body or your sleeping bag to a wall in microgravity?
Kate talked about a book called "All Yesterdays," which talked about what dinosaurs did when they were not hunting. How did they sleep, and where? How do ostriches sleep? Some birds have feet that reflexively grasp the branch when they sleep.
If you were on a multi-species space station, could your workplace be the kind of environment another resident might want to sleep in?
Many species are territorial about sleep. It's a vulnerable time, so we tend to go to ground, or want to sleep in a locked place.
What would happen if you felt you were in privacy for sleeping but another species was able to perceive your activity because they had enhanced or alternate senses? What is private to humans may not be to animals or aliens.
Do you want to sleep in an elevated place? How elevated? How much overhead space do you want? What is claustrophobic to you?
Is there a particular smell you need to sleep comfortably? If you were a hamster, you might appreciate the leaf litter smell or the cedar shavings of your people...
Odo from DS9 would sleep in a bucket.
Do your people have any legends, superstitions, or traditional narratives about where sleeping should happen and how? Do they "hit the hay" literally to even out the bed surface and get rid of bugs?
#SFWApro
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