LC:
> Curious. What do you mean here? I understand the
> idea of "we wake up, the
> world is supposed to be X, and now we find out it is
> Y" - but it almost
> sounds like they might still *see* X somehow.
The easiest example I can think of (because it's one I was reading up on a few years ago) is the problems people had in the Victorian/ACW period in spotting what gender someone was. If they saw trousers, they saw a man: shape, pitch of voice, and lack of beard irrelevant. Apparently one artillery sergeant was discovered to be female when she gave birth: not when she was say eight months pregnant, when she actually gave birth. Their expectations made it impossible for them to see reality. A follow-on from that was the women soldiers who, once discovered, were sent home with the reasoning including the idea that they were obviously too weak to do the job of a soldier, because everyone *knew* that: ignoring the reality that they'd been doing it, and doing it well. Never mind reality, feel the belief. Self-inflicted stupidity is a very powerful force.
Quite how this would manifest with the Rathori I have no idea, but if their expectations of the world differ markedly from reality, they may well see what they expect to see, not what is. The world has changed, they have not.
A rational response would be "oh, look, things have changed", but since when have people been rational? And this, IIRC, is the people who produce Harrek...
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