Which category should I choose?

[Nezhul]

Hello, I'm really at a loss here about which category should I choose for one of my stories.

It's a short story (15,500 words, 84k signs with spaces).
The setting is about a world where women are rare - for each 20 children only one girl would be born. That's why women are strictly controlled and distributed, used mainly for, well, breeding. Ensuring that humanity does not die out
However a small part of girls would be sold to wealthy people to be their wives. The relationship in such a family is similar to ancient china: where a wife would be very obedient to her husband and basically does whatever he tells. He's the center of her world and yada-yada.
Anyway the book is mostly very loving and vanilla, but has one corporal punishment scene too.

Which category would that be? Too awkward for loving wives or erotic couplings, not really BDSM, not at all Romance... Others are mainly fetish categories.

 

[oggbashan]

I suggest SciFi/Fantasy.

 

[LadyVer]

I suggest SciFi/Fantasy.

Ditto.

 

[sr71plt]

Sounds like a fantasy category story to me too.

 

[Hypoxia]

Fantasy -- but you need a mechanism explaining WHY females are only 5% of humanoid births. It's certainly not an evolutionarily-successful development. How long has this been going on? Did some evil/mad scientist engineer a devastating virus? Did a vile wizard cast a spell? Is the world's deity a sardonic jokester? What's the backstory?

 

[Nezhul]

There's backstory.
Although scientific explanation is not given, it is said that some time ago the ratio was roughly 1:1 (like in a real world).
But then something happened and the ratio changed, resulting in decline and wars and whatnot. Humanity managed to survive, however, and even steadily growing in numbers.
It is hinted that it has something to do with genetics, male genetics in particular, but other than that I provide no further information.

It's a really short story, so I didn't focus on explaining the mechanics too much. For one thing, the story mainly follows one of the girls and her perspective, and in such a setting females are simply not taught sciences. She herself simply doesn't know the reason, and doesn't think about it much. She can read and write and count numbers, and that's pretty much the extent of her education, because (quite logically) she is never expected to work or do anything meaningful other than giving birth to children.
Now, just in case this rubs someone the wrong way - just think about it, it's a very natural outcome that the society would take. The same thing would happen if males were rare - they would be used like a precious resource, barely viewed as individuals. Why would you even teach them stuff, if they will never EVER going to use it?
From early age they are taught in a certain way, and they are quite happy in their ignorance. They view their role in life with anticipation and look forward to it.

 

[LadyVer]

There's backstory.
Although scientific explanation is not given, it is said that some time ago the ratio was roughly 1:1 (like in a real world).
But then something happened and the ratio changed, resulting in decline and wars and whatnot. Humanity managed to survive, however, and even steadily growing in numbers.
It is hinted that it has something to do with genetics, male genetics in particular, but other than that I provide no further information.

It's a really short story, so I didn't focus on explaining the mechanics too much. For one thing, the story mainly follows one of the girls and her perspective, and in such a setting females are simply not taught sciences. She herself simply doesn't know the reason, and doesn't think about it much. She can read and write and count numbers, and that's pretty much the extent of her education, because (quite logically) she is never expected to work or do anything meaningful other than giving birth to children.
Now, just in case this rubs someone the wrong way - just think about it, it's a very natural outcome that the society would take. The same thing would happen if males were rare - they would be used like a precious resource, barely viewed as individuals. Why would you even teach them stuff, if they will never EVER going to use it?
From early age they are taught in a certain way, and they are quite happy in their ignorance. They view their role in life with anticipation and look forward to it.

Out of curiosity, what is the goal for your story? What are you wanting readers to understand?

 

[Nezhul]

Nothing. It's purely stroke. I had inspiration and I wrote it. Maybe someone will find something in it, something about love or care or I don't know. Me? I just enjoyed the idea.

Not every story should have large meaningful things behind it. This one has small inconsequential ones.