How humanity can affect the war, by turning the moon into a deathstar.

[Mk_C]

I don't think that Loroi warriors would wear footwear that hinders their physical movement.

Exactly. Thus, it's entirely possible that they are still not aware of this legacy neural rootkit into the basal ganglia, likely common to bipedal mammalian boys of all palettes. Laser arrays can take a hike compared to the power of this technological edge.

Now, the males on the other hand might enjoy feeling a bit taller.

Ooooh, here be a list of anticipated revelations, in the order of escalating hype:
#5. The outcome of the current offensive.
#4. The humble yet decisive role that Jardin will play in the conflict.
#3. Flint's face.
#2. Direction of the emotional contact between Fireblade and Jardin through the most current dreamfuckery.

#1. How the issue of Jardin's only outfit will be addressed in the plot. Surely he can't spend the entire webcomic in an orange jumpsuit and trophy Teidar shoes looking like a powder-monkey. Does he have the cojones to willingly and daringly adopt traditional Loroi men fashion and pull a Full Riker while he's at it?

SpoilerShow

Will it include platforms for extra inches as you suggested, as well as air-thin silks, jewelry and noticeable areas of exposed skin? Will it include skirts, which Loroi boytoys would certainly find convenient for unrestricted freedom and ventilation? Can he achieve a synthesis between millennia of blu boytoy tradition and depraved pinkie culture plus lotai mysteriousness, producing a social weapon to surpass Metal Gear? And does Arioch have what it takes to portray the Guardian of Garden overseeing a devastating open space engagement from a dreadnought's bridge while wearing skirts and silks and still looking absolutely baller in them?

I am literally shaking with anticipation.

[spacewhale]

Didn't we catch Flint's face in passing in some scenes? Unless Reed just suddenly had green hair instead of purple hair?

[RedDwarfIV]

and of course they'd go out of their way to steal every bit of technological shininess they could from any greater power, and make iterative improvements.

Come now, we're not Hiigarans.

[Mr.Tucker]

and of course they'd go out of their way to steal every bit of technological shininess they could from any greater power, and make iterative improvements.

Come now, we're not Hiigarans.

Well... we COULD be... I mean... why not? Worked out for those guys....

[Mk_C]

Didn't we catch Flint's face in passing in some scenes? Unless Reed just suddenly had green hair instead of purple hair?

You're talking about page 102, which doesn't count even in high-res.

[spacewhale]

Well, she's blue for starters. Snappy dresser.

[Krulle]

I don't think that Loroi warriors would wear footwear that hinders their physical movement. Now, the males on the other hand might enjoy feeling a bit taller.

Fun fact: high heels were invented for practical and aesthetic reasons, and in previous times worn by men to improve the way their own calves were shown... Also as a sign of social status. (Venetian "chopine"s,15th-17th century, up to 50cm heel heights! Actually more platform soles, than resembling modern "high heels".)
"Sun king" "l'État, c'est moi!" Louis XIV of France, depicted by Hyacinthe Rigaud, 1701
Practical reasons include walking above the shit that was on the streets.
Or the Persian horse riders, as the high heel was a real help in keeping the feet in the stirrups. (images exist of 9th century with high heels, and they were already rather close to modern high heels)

https://www.ancient-origins.net/history ... men-002329

[Arioch]

Practical reasons include walking above the shit that was on the streets.

Exactly the same amount of shit gets on your shoes whether you have heels or not. That would require platform shoes to be a valid use case. (But if you believe that Louis XIV was actually walking through shit-laden streets...)

Or the Persian horse riders, as the high heel was a real help in keeping the feet in the stirrups. (images exist of 9th century with high heels, and they were already rather close to modern high heels)

I'll buy part of this one, in that American cowboys' boots also have a heel, as do most riding boots. But you don't need said heel to be very "high" for this purpose. Proper cavalrymen's boots have a heel, but it's not even as high as a cowboy's boot. Which suggests to me that the cowboy boot's heel is half practical and half trying to look taller.

Let's be honest -- the main use for high heels was aesthetic. For men: to be taller. For women: because someone told them it looks good, and women will believe anything that regards fashion.

Loroi never had animals to ride, nor is height a significant social advantage (physical strength is not really the social factor among Loroi females as it still is among human males). Standard Loroi warrior boots do have a slightly elevated heel, and one presumes this is aesthetic, as it serves no useful purpose... but actual "high heels" of the kind that make it harder to walk without tripping... this is not likely to be found in the warrior wardrobe.

Civilian styles differ, but they tend to be guided by warrior styles, except for those elements that are socially proscribed (long hair, armor).

Loroi males may also have a different sense of fashion, though I don't imagine being taller having any particular appeal for a Loroi male... but high heeled shoes just seem to familiar a human thing to make for good alien costume. Not to mention being creepy. I think the Loroi males will have plenty of "feminine" attributes without putting them in drag.

[Incinerator]

Just to add to the point about heels on riding boots, they only need to be an inch or two (2-5cm) at most to grab the stirrups. Wearing high heels while riding a horse is a good way to get your feet caught and tangled up in said stirrups when mounting or dismounting. Where I work, enough clients have come in wearing something utterly impractical for riding (like high heels or sandals) that we carry a bunch of pairs of loaner riding boots. Honestly, the half-inch heels found on most work boots are more than enough for the purpose.

[Mk_C]

Let's be honest -- the main use for high heels was aesthetic. For men: to be taller. For women: because someone told them it looks good, and women will believe anything that regards fashion.

Usage of high heels has a determinate effect of altering the wearer's gait to a significant degree in a quite certain and measurable manner:

On average, when walking with HH shoes, young adult women had a significantly different CoM three-dimensional position: their gait exaggerated female walking characteristics with a more anterior (relative to the center of the pelvic plane, consistent with an increased lumbar flexion angle) and lateral CoM position, and a slower velocity with respect to LH walking. Also, CoM vertical position (standardized for standing height after excluding heel height) was highly significantly decreased, but with a larger total excursion. A similar pattern was found for CoM vertical velocity, with a larger excursion.

The article page on pubmed
And the article pdf on Mediafire
Which in turn has a significant effect on how this gait is perceived by observers, and specifically on how attractive they tend to find the wearer:

Participants rated the point-light displays of the walkers in high heels as significantly more attractive than the same walkers in flat shoes (with a large effect size). Females wearing flat shoes were also more likely to be incorrectly identified as males. There were also significant effects of wearing high heels on the pattern of gait, most with large effect sizes. Relative to the flat heels condition the females in the high heeled shoe condition walked in a fashion more characteristic of female gait; the walkers in high heels took smaller more frequent steps, had less knee bend but had greater hip rotation and tilt. Walkers with lower BMI scores were judged to be more attractive. However, there was no consistent pattern to the correlations between attractiveness ratings of individual walkers and their biometric measures. It is also worth noting that our results suggest that high heels are an important part of the contemporary female wardrobe as the minimum number of high heeled shoes owned was four and the maximum 25. The results of the rating study shows that the female walk is perceived as much more attractive when wearing high heels than not. (...) Women are also more likely to be correctly identified as female when walking in high heels. Furthermore, the effect seems highly consistent for each individual walker (i.e. all walkers were judged to be more attractive in the heels condition). (...) There was no sex condition interaction and no sex walker interaction, indicating that both males and females judged the walkers to be more attractive when wearing high heels and that there was no difference between male and female judges in the rank order of the attractiveness of the walkers.

The article page on sciencedirect
The article pdf on Mediafire

To simplify, wearing high heels produces a biomechanichal effect on the wearer's gait that observers of different sex and even culture consistently find more attractive, regardless of them observing the fashion of the high-heeled shoe in question or even the wearer. The effect on the attraction produced by perceiving HH gait is determinate and robust even if the gait is literally the only thing. It would be nearly impossible to fully separate the effects of cultural impression and nurtured preference from inherent attraction, yet it is very likely that the HH gait functions as a basal interpersonal signal for sexual behavior and attraction - that it registers as sexy subconsciously almost universally by triggering to physiologically-inherent recognition, and that stimulus is then processed through nurtured preference. This interpretation could be supported by a recent publication in Current Sexual Health Reports by Gerben B. Ruesink and Janniko R. Georgiadis, who reported a significant connection between ventral striatum and amygdala activity patterns, and the process of original recognition of visual sexual stimuli (them not being singular in the process, but evidently playing a significant role). This would imply that a degree of such inherent signal functionality as performed by HH gait would be preserved in cerebral structures closely mimicking those of typical Homo sapiens, unless this functionality was intentionally removed in the reconstruction. Satisfying these assumptions, we can predict that from a good sample of blu bois, the majority would reliably find a Loroi babewarrior walking in high heels to be quite a view, probably more so than the same warrior without high heels.

Now, we should remember that Loroi sexual behavior by design has very little to do with complex attraction signaling, especially for females, but males are seemingly still capable of recognizing such signaling and appreciating it. From this and what was described above we can predict that if the concept of HH is unfamiliar to Loroi culture, but is introduced into it through external influence (like, say, somebody somehow putting Cloud in high-heels and demonstrating the effect on her gait to a blu boy) it will at the very least spark a degree of interest. Now, Loroi males probably have very limited leverage on most social practices and thus fashion, but it seems entirely possible that they could have leverage on practices directly involving themselves, i.e. mating traditions. Such as what is the "proper outfit" for a warrior rewarded with reproductive privileges to wear on the visit to her assigned boytoy. Potentially making high heels a sensation in ceremonial attire.

All of this of course being pure and earnest speculation on a hard sci-fi topic, and not at all an attempt to persuade you to introduce high-heeled vanilla blueberries into the canon through pseudo-scientific appeals to barely-relevant publications.

Civilian styles differ, but they tend to be guided by warrior styles, except for those elements that are socially proscribed (long hair, armor).

Now, why would they be guided by warrior styles, in the conditions where the separation between civilian and military cultures is adamant, aside from the pure utilitarian pragmatism of military designs? In humans civic fashion frequently followed military fashion as civilian and military elite were one and the same in those periods, nobility veterans bringing the pragmatism and style of their service dresses into their later civic practice, and imitation of military style and it's implication for the wearer having only appropriate connotations (as appearing "somewhat more military" was all and all seen as a commendable thing for men across those periods). While for the civilian Loroi it is seemingly inappropriate to even grow out their hair in imitation of warriors - one could think that other forms of imitation would be looked down upon in a similar way.

Loroi males may also have a different sense of fashion, though I don't imagine being taller having any particular appeal for a Loroi male... but high heeled shoes just seem to familiar a human thing to make for good alien costume. Not to mention being creepy. I think the Loroi males will have plenty of "feminine" attributes without putting them in drag.

But what about them skirts? Why, why oh why would any male culture free from the burdens of physical labor and martial duty consign itself to the tyranny of pants? Especially given the proportional peculiarities in this case. Them blu boys are already quite constrained by their physiological and social positions in so many ways, can't they be free in the comfort of refreshing air drafts at the very least? And it's not drag if it's a masculine skirt, like kilt, shendyt, sarong or lungi.

[Krulle]

Oh, I've been horseriding for a few months.
You definitely don't need "high heels", but you need "heels".

High heels (as we nowadays understand them) are also not break-safe, which is a necessity for horse-riding.

And "high" is also a very relative term.

Also: "walking above the shit" has little todo with keeping the shoes clean.
Shoes in those times were often not water proof enough. Or even just open sandal like with platform soles. So having platform soles to lift you above the shit meant keeping your feet cleaner.

[Werra]

[...]Gerben B. Ruesink and Janniko R. Georgiadis, who reported a significant connection between ventral striatum activity patterns and the process of original recognition of sexual stimuli (it not being singular in the process, but evidently playing a significant role). This would imply that a degree of such inherent signal functionality as performed by HH gait would be preserved in cerebral structures closely mimicking those of typical Homo sapiens, unless this functionality was intentionally removed in the reconstruction. Satisfying these assumptions, we can predict that from a good sample of blu bois, the majority would reliably find a Loroi babewarrior walking in high heels to be quite a view, probably more so than the same warrior without high heels.

For your prediction to have any validity, you need to assume quite a lot more. Whatever hominid the Loroi were inspired by would need to have shared modern mans attraction to high heels. That attraction would also have had to survive the Soia design process, including whatever deep changes were necessary to equip the Loroi with telepathy and telekinesis. The hormonal response to high heels -if it were the same as in humans- would also need to produce similar results as in humans, but in a completely different biochemistry. We can be very certain that the Loroi don't use the same hormones and messengers we use. Also, there's a gulf of around 300.000 years of evolution between us. In which Loroi sexuality evolved under extremely different selectors than ours. The stronger the selector, the quicker it works. I'm sure there are more factors to consider, too.
Even if we were talking about a direct relative to modern man, your methodology is invalid. But we're talking about a species that has no genetic relation to man at all. The only similarity we know of so far is the overall, outward shape being close. On the level of tissue or internal bodily functions, the Loroi could be absolutely alien. Which, since their bodies operate at 27°C, is practically guaranteed.

What's up with "Derailing in progress"? Is that some Admin setting?

[Mk_C]

For your prediction to have any validity, you need to assume quite a lot more.

Of course.

Whatever hominid the Loroi were inspired by would need to have shared modern mans attraction to high heels.

So far it seems to be Homo sapiens - they don't quite resemble our reconstructions of Neanderthals, Heidelbergian, Denisovians or antecessor. IIRC, the other subvariants were already extinct by around 300k BC, when Loroi happened. And why would Soia template their muscle thralls on anything but the most competitively-successful and intelligent subvariant, which happens to be the AMH? Which Loroi most closely resemble and from whom we ourselves have inherited the, erm, lets call it "the high heel gait reaction", or HHGR for short. And which they in turn probably inherited all the way from the earliest forms capable of efficient bipedal movement.

That attraction would also have had to survive the Soia design process, including whatever deep changes were necessary to equip the Loroi with telepathy and telekinesis.

True. But every part of template neurophysiology would be at this kind of risk. Said deep changes could similarly lead to them losing sight, hearing, taste, sense of balance, smell, humor, empathy, deductive reasoning, long-term memory, imagination, introspective or regret. Yet they seem to possess the full range of human cognitive capabilities, and more. Seeing as they didn't lose any basic Human cognitive quirk so far, it's entirely possible that they've kept this particular one. In fact, seeing as telepathic abilities don't seem to manifest in animals, and are themselves appear to bee controlled largely through higher cognition (and thus the neocortex), the signal and response elements that involve more basal brain structures - such as basal visual sexual stimuli recognition, including HHGR - are the ones most likely to be left mostly undisturbed. For another argument, I've once learned from Arioch that Loroi prenatal development is mostly unchanged compared to the human one, being a slightly accelarated repetition of prenatal phylogenesis forms as it is for humans, and implying conservation of most ancestral traits present in humans. Which would include HHGR. I hypothesised a streamlined development that would leave newborn Loroi without most redundant and rudimentary traits, but Arioch shot that one down. If you take my word for it, of course.

The bigger issue would be that Loroi possess possibly neurologically tweaked sexual behaviour - it was said that their male sexual drive is much more powerful, to the point where it can damage their psyche, while the female one is more subdued. Such tweaks would risk removing or altering the HHGR much more substantially, but we don't even know if these behavioural effects are indeed deeply neurophysiological or, rather cultural or stemming from the existence and nature of sanzai communication.

The hormonal response to high heels -if it were the same as in humans- would also need to produce similar results as in humans, but in a completely different biochemistry. We can be very certain that the Loroi don't use the same hormones and messengers we use.

Oh that one's easy - the cognitive processes involving HHGR would not be humoral - they precede humoral reaction. So the biochemically-related quirks of Loroi behaviour would not matter, we're working with a deeper layer.

Also, there's a gulf of around 300.000 years of evolution between us.

That's as good as an eye-blink, in evolution terms. And an eye-blink for humans - Loroi have spent a good deal of those 300k years with significantly longer generation periods, and the divergence time period is further cut down at the end point of genetic selection being shafted further by social one outside of breeding of rare valuable traits and other warfare-centered eugenics.

In which Loroi sexuality evolved under extremely different selectors than ours.

We don't know their genetic divergence rate, for all we know their replication systems could be engineered to limit mutation rates. In fact - the longevity they display would require such a tweak almost necessarily. Plus half the haplotypes being bottlenecked at much rarer males would limit variability further.

The stronger the selector, the quicker it works. I'm sure there are more factors to consider, too.

Good thing we don't know of any population bottleneck events dictating selection of males towards not finding high heels attractive. The trait would be entirely neutral in the population. And we know those to very likely be conserved in the population. They could still be lost to genetic drift, but the chances are slight even in a singular population. In at least three of those, and pretty much simultaneously - the chances of random loss would be astronomically low.

Even if we were talking about a direct relative to modern man, your methodology is invalid.

Invalid? Not so true! It would be most unethical not to admit that it is biased to hell and back. But that does not make it inherently invalid!

But we're talking about a species that has no genetic relation to man at all.

Just because the self-perpetuating genetic information was repackaged into a somewhat different storage medium and tweaked to erect a somewhat different set of low-level effectors to interface it with the environment (said set being the Soia-Liron biochemistry) does not mean that this information is no longer related to the original. It makes as much sense as Mycoplasma laboratorium having no genetic relation to Mycoplasma mycoides because the former did not come from any naturally budding line of the latter. As far as the information content is concerned, and as long as the template origin assumption is correct, Loroi are human descendants, if through an artificial and drastic process. Especially if we consider that the most significant part of information content to the concept of closeness and relatedness - the one concerning cognition - was reconstructed with minimal changes aside from telepathic and psychokinetic ones. And for all we know even those could very well be already present in humans, in a somewhat less tuned state. The fact of Alex roaming across certain someone's dreams implies a lot of things.

The only similarity we know of so far is the overall, outward shape being close. On the level of tissue or internal bodily functions, the Loroi could be absolutely alien. Which, since their bodies operate at 27°C, is practically guaranteed.

The molecular level is easily the least important one for the question. We don't identify our kind by the color of our blood. So far, I'm more often asked to type-in CAPTCHA rather than show what oxygen-transportation metalloprotein my blood contains.

Consider: if you had a digital, simulated copy of yourself, possessing every facet of your physical and mental being, but virtual and running on software simulation of molecular interactions, physiology and cognitive processes rather than the real physics, chemistry and wetwere - could this copy be considered completely unrelated to you? Would this Werra be alien to you? He would have zero physical continuity with you, your cells and you molecules. But he would retain all your information, from (simulated) scars, to memories, to your choice of best girl in the webcomic. Which one of those would really determine relation and alienation - continuity and medium, or information content? How much it matter if said information is ultimately stored in DNA, RNA, TNA or binary, and whether it's content is expressed through enzymatic reactions powered by Terran metabolism, Soia-Liron metabolism, non-carbon-based metabolism, or electrical current and a Turing-complete set of algorithms?

What's up with "Derailing in progress"? Is that some Admin setting?

There is a "subject" field at the top of the posting form. You can write whatever the hell you want there, and it will be retained with a "Re:" in the posts of those who open the form by clicking the "Reply with a quote" button, unless they edit it. It's not really important outside of staring new topics. Like, see way up above.

[spacewhale]

#1. How the issue of Jardin's only outfit will be addressed in the plot. Surely he can't spend the entire webcomic in an orange jumpsuit and trophy Teidar shoes looking like a powder-monkey.

So he's walking in Fireblade's shoes, protected by an emergency pressure suit flying Tenoin colors, is he going to look like some mix and match Voltron with other caste color items as well?

Also someone should just start a Loroi outfit thread.

[Mk_C]

So he's walking in Fireblade's shoes, protected by an emergency pressure suit flying Tenoin colors, is he going to look like some mix and match Voltron with other caste color items as well?

Already got a Soroin comb in his pocket. Next on the list - pilfering Beryl's hair-circlet thingy. She looks better with her hair down anyway, and we're definitely not prepared to see Tempo unravelling it free.

[Werra]

But every part of template neurophysiology would be at this kind of risk. Said deep changes could similarly lead to them losing sight, hearing, taste, sense of balance, smell, humor, empathy, deductive reasoning, long-term memory, imagination, introspective or regret.

Here's the thing, the Soia had to construct the Loroi genetic template from the grounds up. They had to, for the simple reason that Soia-Liron species use their own biochemistry. So every bit of the Lorois genetic performance had to be planned and implemented by the Soia. None of it can have been from humans as our bodies don't work at their temperature. A bodies processes are fine tuned to each other and changes such as would be necessary to reach the Loroi form are fundamental. Even if the Soia directly took human DNA or living humans and changed them into Loroi, that process would still have needed to change everything about the way a human body works, effectively treating the human used in the process as living clay. So the Soia did not take a human brain and added telepathy, they built a brain from scratch that included those abilities.

Yet they seem to possess the full range of human cognitive capabilities, and more. Seeing as they didn't lose any basic Human cognitive quirk so far, it's entirely possible that they've kept this particular one.

That tells us nothing. Every sapient species in Outsider seems to have "the full range of human cognitive capabilities", Lotai excluded.

In fact, seeing as telepathic abilities don't seem to manifest in animals, and are themselves appear to bee controlled largely through higher cognition (and thus the neocortex), the signal and response elements that involve more basal brain structures - such as basal visual sexual stimuli recognition, including HHGR - are the ones most likely to be left mostly undisturbed.

Their telepathy is definitely instinctual, as that's how senses work. What is directed by higher functions however is active sending. I'm not sure how instinctual that is, but Loroi seem to send some stuff at all times, even as newborn. So it seems to be more like language in that regard. Also, Fireblade and her berserk state seem to hint that telekinetics is also to a degree instinctual. Which all doesn't really matter, as dude, wtf, telepathy is a direct example for how a Lorois brain is different to a humans. You can not claim similarity from skull shape alone.

For another argument, I've once learned from Arioch that Loroi prenatal development is mostly unchanged compared to the human one, being a slightly accelarated repetition of prenatal phylogenesis forms as it is for humans, and implying conservation of most ancestral traits present in humans. Which would include HHGR. I hypothesised a streamlined development that would leave newborn Loroi without most redundant and rudimentary traits, but Arioch shot that one down. If you take my word for it, of course.

That's a lot of ifs and assumptions that would need to be shown in studies.

Oh that one's easy - the cognitive processes involving HHGR would not be humoral - they precede humoral reaction. So the biochemically-related quirks of Loroi behaviour would not matter, we're working with a deeper layer.

Sexual attraction is based on hormonal reactions. The brain produces a lot of our hormones. Biochemistry most definitely matters. We don't even know if a Lorois brain tissue is comparable to a humans.
But let's say that a Loroi brain does have an inherited reaction to high heels and thus produces hormones at their sight. That still doesn't mean that these hormones will then affect the body in a similar way to a human.

That's as good as an eye-blink, in evolution terms. And an eye-blink for humans

It really is not. It depends on the selectors. If they don't change, 300.000 years will see little evolution. If they change suddenly, one will see rapid genetic shifts, too. The Ice Age, the black plaque, the Mongols, the Bantu expansion across Sub Saharan Africa, which took only two thousand years and saw the male Bantu genes displace most other black African Y-Chromosomes. Just look at the Americas, within a few centuries, the genetic landscape completely shifted.
Now imagine the new selectors the early Loroi must have been under with their changed rate of reproduction, their superior immune system, the fact that their gender roles were reversed and their telepathy.

Loroi have spent a good deal of those 300k years with significantly longer generation periods, and the divergence time period is further cut down at the end point of genetic selection being shafted further by social one outside of breeding of rare valuable traits and other warfare-centered eugenics.

Social selection is also selection. Makes no difference.

We don't know their genetic divergence rate, for all we know their replication systems could be engineered to limit mutation rates. In fact - the longevity they display would require such a tweak almost necessarily. Plus half the haplotypes being bottlenecked at much rarer males would limit variability further.

Nothing says that half their haplotypes need to be in males. That claim makes no sense with the sex ratio of the Loroi. Terrestrial species rarely have the same mutation rates between sexes. In humans males were stronger selected against than women, for example and thus a lower number of males have bred in the past.

Good thing we don't know of any population bottleneck events dictating selection of males towards not finding high heels attractive. The trait would be entirely neutral in the population. And we know those to very likely be conserved in the population. They could still be lost to genetic drift, but the chances are slight even in a singular population. In at least three of those, and pretty much simultaneously - the chances of random loss would be astronomically low.

We don't even know whether Loroi have a genetic attraction to high heels. Of course we don't know of bottlenecks selecting against that trait. We do know of bottlenecks, though. Also, don't underestimate the chances of loss. If the Loroi females don't make use of high heels because they have no riding animals or because high heels are simply not in use, then such a trait would not come into play positively. The tradeoffs for that gene however could very well affect the carrying males and females.

Invalid? Not so true! It would be most unethical not to admit that it is biased to hell and back. But that does not make it inherently invalid!

You're postulating a congruent trait in two species that don't even share the same genetic tree, man. You do this based on little more than similar skull shapes and your self admitted paraphilia for f**t.

Just because the self-perpetuating genetic information was repackaged into a somewhat different storage medium and tweaked to erect a somewhat different set of low-level effectors to interface it with the environment (said set being the Soia-Liron biochemistry) does not mean that this information is no longer related to the original.

It wasn't repackaged. It was rewritten. Besides, even if the genetic information is completely identical, a different biochemistry means a different effect of the information.
It isn't identical though, as human DNA is coded for proteins that work optimal at our body temperature. So at a minimum all the proteins and enzymes in a Lorois body need to be different, which has to be coded into whatever they use for DNA. Since changes in the DNA can have effects elsewhere in the organism, such drastic changes will by their nature require massive genetic rewrites.

As far as the information content is concerned, and as long as the template origin assumption is correct, Loroi are human descendants, if through an artificial and drastic process.

No. Let's say you are a programmer and see a clever program. You then write a program like that, just in a more efficient language and improve upon the original idea as well. You don't need to look at the original script to do any of that. The end result could be two completely different programs, script wise.
The Soia likely did look at the genetics of humans, yet how much of that they used is questionable. The only relation we currently know for certain between man and Loroi is in the design of the outward appearance. A similarity that so far seems to be limited to Caucasians, whose looks evolved after man left Africa, a comfortable ~100.000 years after the fall of the Soia.

Especially if we consider that the most significant part of information content to the concept of closeness and relatedness - the one concerning cognition - was reconstructed with minimal changes aside from telepathic and psychokinetic ones. And for all we know even those could very well be already present in humans, in a somewhat less tuned state. The fact of Alex roaming across certain someone's dreams implies a lot of things.

How do we know this? We simply don't.
Also, it's extremely common for aliens to be able to receive Loroi sending. Alex getting a dose of Fireblades dreams only shows that the human Lotai isn't as perfect as we were made to believe. We'll know more in a few pages, but so far we can't be sure yet.
Have you considered that Fireblade succesfully sending to Alex without touching him can also hint at a unique weakness of humans to resist Loroi sending and not at a human talent for telepathy?

The molecular level is easily the least important one for the question. We don't identify our kind by the color of our blood. So far, I'm more often asked to type-in CAPTCHA rather than show what oxygen-transportation metalloprotein my blood contains.

A different biochemistry means that hormones and messengers in the brain must also be different. It's a given that different chemicals in the body change the processes significantly. So something simple as a visual stimulus that causes a sexual response in humans, can affect a Loroi very differently.

Consider: if you had a digital, simulated copy of yourself, possessing every facet of your physical and mental being, but virtual and running on software simulation of molecular interactions, physiology and cognitive processes rather than the real physics, chemistry and wetwere - could this copy be considered completely unrelated to you? Would this Werra be alien to you? He would have zero physical continuity with you, your cells and you molecules. But he would retain all your information. Which one of those would really determine relation and alienation? Does it matter if said information is ultimately stored in DNA, RNA, TNA or binary, and whether it's content is expressed through enzymatic reactions powered by Terran metabolism, Soia-Liron metabolism, non-carbon-based metabolism, or electrical current and a Turing-complete set of algorithms?

Perfect copy? Trick question, as the copy would cease to be perfect the moment it doesn't react like me. Me, just simulated or equipped with different biochemistry? Different person as hormones and brain chemistry shape our thoughts and behaviour. The degree of separation will increase with each passed moment. You wouldn't call newborn monozygotic twins one and the same person, would you?

[Arioch]

Usage of high heels has a determinate effect of altering the wearer's gait to a significant degree in a quite certain and measurable manner:

Attractiveness is an issue of aesthetics (and it's highly subjective); it's not what I would call a practical use. Loroi mating is pre-arranged; attractiveness doesn't factor into it.

Now, why would they be guided by warrior styles, in the conditions where the separation between civilian and military cultures is adamant, aside from the pure utilitarian pragmatism of military designs?

For the same reason that European commoners aped fashions worn by royals; the elites usually set the fashion mode. Loroi civilians are not really a separate culture; the majority of them were born into warrior families and educated as children in warrior culture.

Loroi males may also have a different sense of fashion, though I don't imagine being taller having any particular appeal for a Loroi male... but high heeled shoes just seem to familiar a human thing to make for good alien costume. Not to mention being creepy. I think the Loroi males will have plenty of "feminine" attributes without putting them in drag.

But what about them skirts? Why, why oh why would any male culture free from the burdens of physical labor and martial duty consign itself to the tyranny of pants? Especially given the proportional peculiarities in this case. Them blu boys are already quite constrained by their physiological and social positions in so many ways, can't they be free in the comfort of refreshing air drafts at the very least? And it's not drag if it's a masculine skirt, like kilt, shendyt, sarong or lungi.

As I just said, putting Loroi males in recognizably human female attire is a little too on the nose.

What's up with "Derailing in progress"? Is that some Admin setting?

No, the poster can edit the topic of a post even within a thread.

[spacewhale]

A different biochemistry means that hormones and messengers in the brain must also be different. It's a given that different chemicals in the body change the processes significantly. So something simple as a visual stimulus that causes a sexual response in humans, can affect a Loroi very differently.

*feelings of desire to hold hands intensify*

I heard through the grape vine that just the smallest whiff of beef stroganoff is an intense aphrodisiac to the Loroi.

[Mk_C]

Here's the thing, the Soia had to construct the Loroi genetic template from the grounds up. They had to, for the simple reason that Soia-Liron species use their own biochemistry. So every bit of the Lorois genetic performance had to be planned and implemented by the Soia. None of it can have been from humans as our bodies don't work at their temperature. A bodies processes are fine tuned to each other and changes such as would be necessary to reach the Loroi form are fundamental. Even if the Soia directly took human DNA or living humans and changed them into Loroi, that process would still have needed to change everything about the way a human body works, effectively treating the human used in the process as living clay. So the Soia did not take a human brain and added telepathy, they built a brain from scratch that included those abilities.

Indeed. But this does not contradict my point in any way.

So the Soia did not take a human brain and added telepathy, they built a brain from scratch that included those abilities.

In human image and likeness!

That tells us nothing. Every sapient species in Outsider seems to have "the full range of human cognitive capabilities", Lotai excluded.

Forum Digest: Barsam

Barsam are famous for lacking a sense of humor, and are earnestly serious at all times.

Contrast:

SpoilerShow

Their telepathy is definitely instinctual, as that's how senses work. What is directed by higher functions however is active sending. I'm not sure how instinctual that is, but Loroi seem to send some stuff at all times, even as newborn.So it seems to be more like language in that regard.

Exactly.

Also, Fireblade and her berserk state seem to hint that telekinetics is also to a degree instinctual.

That's emotional trauma, my man.

Which all doesn't really matter, as dude, wtf, telepathy is a direct example for how a Lorois brain is different to a humans.

Of course - just as I outlined.

You can not claim similarity from skull shape alone.

But I can from the way they smile.

That's a lot of ifs and assumptions that would need to be shown in studies.

Have mercy, I don't want to spend all weekend on sci-hub.

Sexual attraction is based on hormonal reactions. The brain produces a lot of our hormones. Biochemistry most definitely matters. We don't even know if a Lorois brain tissue is comparable to a humans.

Sexual attraction in humans is not based on hormonal reactions. It is based on cerebral processes, which in turn trigger, among other things, hormonal responses - many of which can affect cerebral processes in turn. But what we're working with here is the original trigger - we don't care much about what and how happens down the line as long as it works, and judging by blu boytoy performance hell yeah it works. Picture it this way - I'm pointing out how the spark plugs on an M4A1 Sherman's Continental R975-C4 engine are virtually the same as those on a Wright R-975-E3 engine mounted on a Curtis F9C biplane. You're pointing out that they have completely different cooling systems and throttle control, and FFS one's a tank the other's a biplane - I'm in turn pointing out that "yeah, but the spark plugs are probably the same, it's the same engine tuned for two different vehicles and, while they got different cooling and cylinder heads and shit, there was no need to change the spark plugs".

But let's say that a Loroi brain does have an inherited reaction to high heels and thus produces hormones at their sight. That still doesn't mean that these hormones will then affect the body in a similar way to a human.

Their hormones are Loroi hormones and seem to work fine once the ball is rolling, we're figuring out what gets the ball rolling.

It really is not. It depends on the selectors. If they don't change, 300.000 years will see little evolution. If they change suddenly, one will see rapid genetic shifts, too.

No matter the selectors - a rapid shift in the environment (aka "a bottleneck event") will not introduce new forms. Those require divergence, and that takes time. What it can do is cut-off a great deal of forms that do not fit the new environment and leave only those that do. We have a psychrophile petunia, a thermophile petunia and a mesophile petunia - Ice Age hits and we're left with with the psychrophile one. It shifts the genepool to the psychrophile form being the only one prevalent, but it requires that first this psychrophile form emerged from an ancestral one. The components of evolution:
1. Variance, the material.
2. Natural selection, the mechanism.
You need both for evolution to happen. No matter how strong are your selectors, the evolution cannot happen faster than genetic divergence processes generate variance.
So if we assume that HHGR (or any other human-like trait) was present in the prototype Loroi, it would first require that a form lacking that trait diverges from the prototype, and then you need:
A. A strong selector that eliminates the forms possessing the trait of interest, this being a case of directional selection.
B. A strong selector that eliminates the forms possessing or lacking some other trait, and those that survive just so happen to lack the trait of interest, this being a case of a founder effect, itself a kind of genetic drift.
C. A host of selectors that eliminate these or those and all kinds of forms possessing all kinds of traits, and as they do the dice land in a way that the trait in question just randomly happens to frequently coincide with traits that are getting eliminated. That would be regular genetic drift.
As far as we know Loroi did not have A, B, or C. So, your point about evolution kinda doesn't stick.

The Ice Age, the black plaque, the Mongols, the Bantu expansion across Sub Saharan Africa, which took only two thousand years and saw the male Bantu genes displace most other black African Y-Chromosomes. Just look at the Americas, within a few centuries, the genetic landscape completely shifted.

Not really, in fact it didn't change for shit aside from some drift - and really, really, really minor drift compared to what early human populations experienced. We're not gaining any traits and we're not losing any - we're having some frequency of occurrence for some of them change a bit. Genetic evolution kinda hits a tarpit once civilization starts to really happen. The mechanism of evolution pretyy much shifts into the neutral of genetic drift. Even if/when, say, ginger hair or blue eyes hit a critical of occurrence - the trait will not be lost, it will be widely spread across the population in recessive state, and will be inherited further with typical frequency, and with some minor chance will keep emerging from among fitting parents, and can only be really eliminated from the population with random drift with extremely low chance.

Now imagine the new selectors the early Loroi must have been under with their changed rate of reproduction, their superior immune system, the fact that their gender roles were reversed and their telepathy.

As far as it seems, they were not under a significant pressure of any selection through their history aside from usual the stabilizing selection - considering that Teidar traits are quite hereditary and stupendously advantageous, and yet they are still nowhere near dominant in the pool.

Social selection is also selection. Makes no difference.

Makes all the difference, as social selection in a civilization context gives very little shit about pretty much all genetic traits. Nurtured and circumstantial, largely non-hereditary traits start to run the show.

Nothing says that half their haplotypes need to be in males.

The definition of haplotype does.
Haplotype is an alleles set that is inherited from a single parent. Loroi are diploid organisms with a single cycle sexual reproduction limiting haplophase to gametes. Every Loroi got a half of her genotype from his or her mommy, and the other half from his or her daddy. One haplotype from the left, one from the right.
Every conceived Loroi child gets a pick of half the genotype from one part of the population, and a pick of the other half from a different part of the population. It can't pick both halves from the more numerous and varied part.
Consider:
A hypothetical stable population of 1000 Loroi. 900 are females, 100 are males. Every new child will get half of her genotype from one of 900 females, and the other half from one of 100 males.
At any moment in time, a full half of the variance that the next generation will inherit exists only in those 100 males. Whether they have 9000 females instead, or 90000, or 900000 - every newborn in the next generation will still be half somebody from the Lucky Hundred. Half the variance is hard bottlenecked by the number of males which can contain it. However varied is the mums half, the dads half will remain lower in variance. Now, someone who missed their biology classes might say:

But comrade Emm Kay See, we have to look at the further generations! Most of the genotype is autosomal anyhow, so the new boys will inherit a shitton of variance from their moms, and variance will be restored!

At which point we say - sure, the g2 100 boys will be half their moms. But it will only be 100 of those 900 moms. And the other half is still only 100 dads. While the new generation of girls to match these g2 will also be half the 100 of g1 boys, and however much crossingover their autosomes get gets, there is only 50% normal chance for every piece of autosomal material that g3 inherits g1♀ material from g2 females, the other 50% chance is that it will be the same g1♂ material, while g1♀ material goes into the void. And this process repeats itself in every generation. The variance present in more numerous female part of the population is continuously lost to the drift with every generation, until it stabilizes at values somewhat higher than what 100 contains - it is soft bottlenecked by the number of male ancestors. A stable population with this kind of generation process and sex ratio inevitably possesses lower variance than a stable population of the same numbers with the same generation process and a 1:1 ratio. And variance is the material of evolution.

That claim makes no sense with the sex ratio of the Loroi. Terrestrial species rarely have the same mutation rates between sexes. In humans males were stronger selected against than women, for example and thus a lower number of males have bred in the past.

And that does not concern the point made at all.

We don't even know whether Loroi have a genetic attraction to high heels.

Yeah, we assume that from the possibility provided by earlier points - that's how a hypothesis works.

We do know of bottlenecks, though. Also, don't underestimate the chances of loss. If the Loroi females don't make use of high heels because they have no riding animals or because high heels are simply not in use, then such a trait would not come into play positively.

Good thing that neutral traits are more likely to be preserved in the populace than lost. And in case you get confused and bring up what I explained earlier about the allelic loss caused by the sex ratio 'capping the haplotypes - this process leads to the loss of variance, not immediate loss of traits. If the presence of the trait is a part of the diversity, along with it's presence, it might be lost in the process. But the whole point is howe this set-up limits the likelihood of emergent diversity in which both presence and absence of the trait are observed.

The tradeoffs for that gene however could very well affect the carrying males and females.

Why would it have tradeoffs? Does it have any tradeoffs now, in us, who happen to possess it?

And thus we end the section on Genetics 101, and their lessons that were never learned.

You're postulating

*proposing from a reasonable basis.

a congruent

*convergent

trait in two species that don't even share the same genetic tree, man.

Loroi don't have a conventional phylogenetic tree.

You do this based on little more than similar skull shapes

And, you know, similar everything else.

and your self admitted paraphilia for f**t.

I beg your pardon! That would be self admitted paraphilia for most things about Loroi girls the way Arioch draws them. It's just one minor detail tragically absent from the rich vein we enjoy. Be live me - if not for the Talon pinup, I would go for zettai ryouiki and G-d be my witness I would dig up the publications to make that insertion look kinda-sorta-plausible. If not, I would fucking write and publish them myself.

It wasn't repackaged. It was rewritten.

Irrelevant as far as content goes.

Besides, even if the genetic information is completely identical, a different biochemistry means a different effect of the information.

Not effect - pathway of effects.

It wasn't repackaged.
It isn't identical though, as human DNA is coded for proteins that work optimal at our body temperature. So at a minimum all the proteins and enzymes in a Lorois body need to be different, which has to be coded into whatever they use for DNA. Since changes in the DNA can have effects elsewhere in the organism, such drastic changes will by their nature require massive genetic rewrites.

Indeed, and in the end result there is no chance that they can still have lactating tiddies after all these extensive rewrites /s. Think, Werra, think!

No. Let's say you are a programmer and see a clever program. You then write a program like that, just in a more efficient language and improve upon the original idea as well. You don't need to look at the original script to do any of that. The end result could be two completely different programs, script wise.

They would be very similar programs algorithms-wise, information content-wise. You do notice that you literally said that saying the same thing in another language is to fundamentally say a completely unrelated thing?
This kinda makes me remember how programmers who contractually receive access to certain proprietary closed-source code are contractually forbidden from writing any code for similar products and purposes for any different employer for a number of years, regardless of language and the environment used. Because Microsoft considers the algorithmic structure of their code that is recognized and learned by their programmers, and might be utilized consciously or subconsciously in the competitor products, as their intellectual property.

The Soia likely did look at the genetics of humans, yet how much of that they used is questionable.

They used what mattered of what was written regardless of how it was written.

The only relation we currently know for certain between man and Loroi is in the design of the outward appearance.

And cognition. And behaviour. Parts that actually matter to the subject.

A similarity that so far seems to be limited to Caucasians

Wah?

How do we know this? We simply don't. Also, it's extremely common for aliens to be able to receive Loroi sending. Alex getting a dose of Fireblades dreams only shows that the human Lotai isn't as perfect as we were made to believe. We'll know more in a few pages, but so far we can't be sure yet

What we do know is that this is most likely not how sending normally works.

Have you considered that Fireblade succesfully sending to Alex without touching him can also hint at a unique weakness of humans to resist Loroi sending and not at a human talent for telepathy?

Yes, and it doesn't make any sense.

A different biochemistry means that hormones and messengers in the brain must also be different. It's a given that different chemicals in the body change the processes significantly.

Different in makeup, not in function. "Their legs are blue - therefore they are probably not for walking".

Perfect copy? Trick question, as the copy would cease to be perfect the moment it doesn't react like me. Me, just simulated or equipped with different biochemistry? Different person as hormones and brain chemistry shape our thoughts and behaviour. The degree of separation will increase with each passed moment. You wouldn't call newborn monozygotic twins one and the same person, would you?

Not a trick question at all, considering that I never asked if the copy would be the same person as you are. I asked, if it would be related to you, or would it be alien, as you claimed different biochemistry makes Loroi entirely alien to humans. And as far as newborn monozygotic twins go, I would certainly never claim for them to be unrelated.

Now that's what I call a fat post that nobody will ever read. God, it's enjoyable. I truly and honestly appreciate your involvement, Werra.

[Mk_C]

Attractiveness is an issue of aesthetics (and it's highly subjective); it's not what I would call a practical use. Loroi mating is pre-arranged; attractiveness doesn't factor into it.

As I just said, putting Loroi males in recognizably human female attire is a little too on the nose.

B-but I just explained how those aesthetics possess a quality that is seemingly objective with quotes on research and everything, and how we consider the minimal role that visual attractiveness plays in matchmaking, and how skirt-like attire is not inherently feminine in human cul~
Eeeh never mind I'm being obnoxious about inconsequential things again.

For the same reason that European commoners aped fashions worn by royals;

We did? The merchant and urban wealth (the nearly-elite) certainly tried to ape nobility (proper elite) regardless of their pedigree, but traditional peasant dress remained largely unchanged across most regions of Europe through over a thousand years and hundreds of different noble fashions. Kaftan, fur shapka and high furred boots for boyars - belted kosovorotka, nogovitsy, lapti and a straw hat for peasants. European camisole, powdered wig, coat and leather boots later for counts - belted kosovorotka, nogovitsy, lapti and a straw hat for peasants. A Prussian-style leather-belted metal-buttoned kitel, riding pants, decorated forage cap and military boots even later for princes - still belted kosovorotka, nogovitsy, lapti and a straw hat for peasants. I don't imagine bayerische Tracht with Lederhose ever being popular among Bavarian nobility, and "sans-culottes" means what it literally means.

Loroi civilians are not really a separate culture; the majority of them were born into warrior families and educated as children in warrior culture.

And then they are told: "No, you're not that. You will never be that. There are two kinds of blues around here - those who decide and kill and die, and those who dig. You dig. Don't pretend that you'll ever not dig. Hair must be at least this short". And it's not just civilians possibly being unwelcome in their imitation of warriors - it would also be warriors trying to look less like civilians. In strongly stratified societies, it is typically unseemly, at times even criminal for one strata to intentionally imitate a different strata in appearance. For example, in the Russian Empire, the Table of Ranks denoted strong regulations on the type, material and accessories of the dress for each rank, with breaking of the regulation being a punishable offence - and that was supposed to be a mobile meritocratic system of social lifts in it's original design. More segregationist systems tend to only highlight all thee differences between strata even further.