#meta answer

At its most fundamental level, HDG is an allegory for social disability. It began as a deeply personal work of science fiction smut by GlitchyRobo that asked the question, "What if the people responsible for your care always, unconditionally meant it when they said they wanted what was best for you?" and sought to answer that question through the lens of a story that kinks off the nature of agency and consent in a world where you will never be seen as able-bodied, or as capable or powerful or competent as those around you.

This allegory is the guiding principle for what HDG is. Everything we do with the setting is based on the core concept of the Affini as Ideal Caregivers. Even when they're doing crazy fucked up hot shit to you, (remember, it IS a kink setting) they're doing it for your own good.

Things in the original story like nonconsensual drugging, enforced bedtimes, having your personal hygiene managed for you, being forced to sign away your legal rights and personhood to someone with the power to up and change the rules on you however they please once your agency has been stripped away? Those are very real things that happen to very real people in Conservatorships, assisted living facilities, and psychiatric institutions.

Human Domesticaiton Guide, the story, sought to kink off the trauma of the real life version by imagining a world where it was done instead by giant hypnokink mommy domme plant aliens that want to treat you like a beloved pet.

Human Domestication Guide, the setting, when it was opened up for additional authors to play in, needed a set of guidelines that the world operated on. So as it grew into the collaborative, cooperative creative writing project that we know today, a set of founding principles were put together to outline the boundaries of what is and is not HDG.

These are the Axioms, which are as follows:

The Affini are Inevitable

The Affini are Benevolent

The Affini are Imperialist

The Affini are Post-Scarcity

Each of these axioms plays a role in informing the identity of the Affini and ensuring that any depiction of them aligns with their purpose as idealized caregivers.

The ULTIMATE wish fulfilment of HDG, beyond whatever horny bad-end science fiction kink we enjoy creating or consuming here, is that of someone who will love you and give you the highest quality of care you can possibly receive, for the entire duration of your life, without ever getting bored or tired or impatient, or failing in their duty to care for you, or abandoning you.

It is a world where the people who would slip through the cracks of the real world (especially poor, queer, disabled, autistic trans women) instead have a place where they are cared for by someone who means it.

The Affini Compact is not a normal scifi faction like The Borg or the Bene Geserit or the Jedi or the Necrons. The Affini Compact exists to be an allegory for an absolute promise of absolute care.

The Affini Are Inevitable because HDG imagines a world where that promise will ALWAYS be lived up to. You can't defeat the Affini because they're not fighting you. You can't escape from the Affini because there is no distance they will not cross for you. You can't hide from the Affini because there is no rock they won't overturn, no resource they won't expend in order to find you and live up to their promise. The promise of care is inescapable.

The Affini are Benevolent because HDG imagines a world where the one irrefutable truth, the one future you can never fight or run from or escape, the one absolute in this world, is a future where that promise of care is one hundred percent sincere. The Affini Compact is the promise that You Deserve Care, and You Will Be Given Care.

A cat will scream and hiss in its carry crate because it doesn't want to go to the vet to get its shots, because the cat is not a person, and it cannot understand that what you're doing to it is for its own good. Similarly, a feralist may not understand what the Affini are doing to them, but it is ALWAYS for their own good. The Affini ALWAYS mean it when they say they want what's best for you.

The Affini Are Imperialist because the Affini Compact is a de facto empire. They are expansionist conquerors who have spread out from their home in the Triangulum Galaxy, and Domesticated every sophont species they've found along the way, and will continue to do so. When it is necessary to do so, they will even usurp, overthrow, or erase aspects of the cultures they come across.

This is the easiest Axiom to misunderstand, because it sounds completely and utterly incompatible with Benevolence. But consider the subject of the most-explored era of the setting: the Domestication of the Terran Accord in the 2550s. The Terran Accord was a fascist, hypercapitalist, dystopian empire built on mass exploitation and subjugation through wage labor and other cruelties. What the Affini Compact did was completely dismantle the existing government, end capitalism and exploitation, and ensure the highest possible standard of living and quality of life for all in a world without labor, money, debt, etc.

Yes, the Affini Compact is an empire that can and will dismantle governments and cultures that are deemed harmful to the well-being of sophonts. They have done it to all of Triangulum and Andromeda, much of the Milky Way at the time of the Human Domestication Treaty, and they will continue to do it throughout the Local Group and beyond as they expand further out into the stars.

THEY DO THIS BECAUSE THEIR PROMISE OF CARE APPLIES TO EVERYONE.

No one is an exception. Everyone deserves care, and the Affini are the only species capable of providing that care at a standard the Affini themselves deem acceptable. Yes, they are Imperialist. Yes, they are still Benevolent. That is where the wish fulfilment comes in. HDG never claims to be realistic, nor is it a setting focused on highly detailed worldbuilding or plausible science or politics. The setting exists in service to the allegory it is based on. And that allegory is one where everyone is cared for by someone who means it. You will be given the highest possible quality of care, whether you like it or not.

The kink and the allegory are inseparable.

The noncon is the point.

The Affini Are Post-Scarcity because there is no end to the degree of care the Affini can and will provide. They have an unlimited potential to live up to their promise. The Compact will never get tired of you, or run out of money for you, or cut the research grants for some rare disease out of their budgets. They will never tell you your medication is out of stock or that you can't afford it. They will never run out of your comfort food. There will never be not enough hours in the day to provide the highest possible standard of care you can receive. The Affini are post scarcity because it allows them to live up to every other aspect of their promise. They are the ideal caregivers, and their ability to provide that care, to every single sophont everywhere, will never run out.

Everything we've built the Human Domestication Guide setting on comes back to its core identity as a collaborative writing project in a shared setting about social power and disability, and agency, and an absolute promise of absolute care.

The Axioms exist to define the core identity of that project for all who join our little game in the sandbox together, by setting a clear boundary for what is and isn't HDG. If you like our game, we're happy to share the sand with you. If you feel inspired by aspects of the setting, but don't like the rules of our game, then be inspired! Make up a new game of your own to enjoy!

But HDG is at its heart a setting with a deeply personal idea in mind, and we do ask people who want to play in our sandbox to be respectful of that idea.