Loroi Women Versus Human Women... As Wives

[Bamax]

Correct me if I wrong, since I could be wrong on the facts.


How Loroi Are Not Like Human Women



Menestruation:

They do not have monthly menestruation. I am not sure if they ever even have a period. I think they just get pregnant and that's it. Right?

I think there are many humans who would prefer that. Women because they would no longer have to clean up. Men because they would no longer have to put up with mood swings induced partly because of menestruation (at least my sisters always blamed their foul mood on menestration, whether such was true I do not know).

Definite win for the Loroi here.


Longevity:

This can be a net positive. Yes your Loroi wife could out-live you and you any adopted kids, but the good thing is that she can help ensure anything in your will ACTUALLY is carried out as per your wishes.

Loroi win again. It's hard to see how Loroi longevity could be a negative here.


Superhuman abilities: There are pros and cons to this. Do you really want a woman who is strong as a man for her weight? Do you want an eidetic woman who can remember everything? Meaning all your mistakes and triumps that she is aware of? Or would you be OK with a Loroi who was both telekinetic and able to telepathically control your pet dog or cat?

Here I it's a tie... since it's great if you are willing to accept, adapt to, and tolerate all of that. but if not then human women are right for you.

Culture: Almost a tie but the human women win here. I say almost because I am aware there are men who would be OK with being a mere 'concubine' to a Loroi. Yet if human male has a monogamous traditional marriage as his goal... let's just say that the Loroi female would have to love him more than her own culture and abandon at least some of her warrior 'rights'.

That is no small thing to ask of a Loroi... not to mention the reverse sexism that exists among Loroi males too.

At least human women already understand the concept of marriage.

So a narrow win for human women if you do not want the challenge of explaning to your Loroi wife that she is only yours and no one else can have her.


As for me, I would not mind having an eidetic Loroi as a wife if I could have one. That eidetic memory could come in handy so many ways.


Did I get my information right? What are your thoughts?

[Cthulhu]

On the Loroi side:
1. No children! As I understand it, for the Loroi, the primary reason for "encounters" is to have biological offspring.
2. No telepathy! Again, the Loroi experience intimacy, and not just in the sexual sense, via sanzai.
3. A gigantic cultural gap, the Loroi are quite insular, convinced of their superiority and are distrustful towards outsiders.
4. A single Loroi among the psi-inert Humans would be very lonely, she'd need Loroi friends.
5. Finally, a human male would be quite the mismatch, an oversized, brutish, mute and overall, poorly-made copy, even of the wrong color, too. The number of Loroi women with enough strange fetishes should be very low.

On the Human side:
1. "Normal" wives are already way too good at remembering everything that you did wrong, now imagine someone with an eidetic memory? That would be a nightmare.
2. Cultural gap, the Loroi would not understand many of our conventions, especially monogamy.
3. Again, no offspring, not everyone favors adoption.
4. Few could stomach to be constantly standing out due to such a choice of a partner.

Overall, nope, an "elf harem" shall be reserved for the fanfics

[Bamax]

Well... there is a way to brute force it to where the Loroi in question won't mind.... much.


Loroi babies sent to live and grow up on human worlds. In exchange the Loroi get human children to raise, since they MAY have a bit of thrill to see what it's like raising kids as solo mothers. Especially the civillians who cannot have sex.


Adopted Earth Loroi would not have the cultural barrier, only their super abilities would present any issue.

I honestly think an Earth-born Loroi could appreciate the merits of both cultures and easily adjust to them.


A human adopted by Loroi visiting Earth would feel a lot more free than life among Loroi, just as I suppose an earthborn Loroi would feel more free around other Loroi due to telepathy.... although not as much since Loroi have a taboo about speech that an Earthborn Loroi could care less about. In a way, Earthborn Loroi would be the perfect bridge between the cultures... one that a human raised among Loroi could never rival due to a lack of sanzau.


It's the difference between being on a leash and being unrestricted to live as you were meant to be.

[Cthulhu]

It just won't work without telepathy.

For the Loroi it is their primary means of communication, but also much more. Bonding, intimacy, social contacts, friendship, all that is experienced through sanzai, and with an intensity that speech could never hope to achieve. A human placed in a Loroi society would be excluded from it, and the reversal should lead to loneliness.

An Earth-born Loroi, raised without sanzai, that sounds like plain cruelty, and if it's raised by Loroi, then it won't be that much different from other Loroi that live in Loroi enclaves on alien worlds.

On the other hand, a Human that is raised by Loroi? That's not a child, it's a pet.

[Bamax]

Earthborn Loroi would go to school with human and other Earthborn Loroi, so that issue of sanzai is solved..


Same goes for Loroi raised humans, they would go to class with a mix of Loroi and other Loroi raised humans.

Which would result in a bit of definite friendships early on and a lot of cultural evolution.

If this goes on long enough the Loroi may just give up their taboo on speech... instead putting the fault where it lies for dishonesty... the individual.

One thing about humans is as children they start out honest... it's only later that they learn to lie.

I think a Trade speaking human raised by Loroi would likely be honest, inasmuch even without sanzai, Loroi with eidetic memory could likely detect if a human was lying purely by replaying events in her mind.

That kind of thing, and the fact that Loroi need no search warrants to search or seize your stuff, would make a human rather honest.

[Cthulhu]

There is a reason why the Loroi are highly insular, their telepathy is simply regarded as being superior to speech. The Mizol need special training to be comfortable with spoken communication.

As for a common classroom, imagine a situation where one half of the children can speak a language that the other half cannot learn or even perceive? The Loroi will simply form their own sanzai clique, and exclude the Human children from it.

Honestly, what you are proposing sounds too similar to the "Indian reeducation" approach to be a good idea. Why would you try to reshape cultures?
Or maybe the "affirmative action" approach, where you'd try to mix students from different neighborhoods to have them attend the same school? But even then, while Humans may be equal in their abilities, trying to equalize them with the telepathic Loroi would make absolutely no sense. Especially since the Loroi mature twice as fast.

[Keklas Rekobah]

Is someone planning on laying claim to a Loroi waifu in this thread?

[Cthulhu]

Is someone planning on laying claim to a Loroi waifu in this thread?

I think that Mr. Bamax just might. On the other hand, there is quite the number of fanfics where Alex gets his "elf harem". There was even a particularly vile fanfic of him making out with Stillstorm, but I won't provide the link.

SpoilerShow

My own fanfic will feature a completely different approach

[Keklas Rekobah]

← Not a fan of fanfic.  I submitted a few of my own to Star Trek fanzines for several years back in the 1980s, and kept losing out to soft-core pronz featuring the two male leads and the writers' "Mary Sue" and "Larry Stu" characters.

[Bamax]

Is someone planning on laying claim to a Loroi waifu in this thread?

I think that Mr. Bamax just might. On the other hand, there is quite the number of fanfics where Alex gets his "elf harem". There was even a particularly vile fanfic of him making out with Stillstorm, but I won't provide the link.

SpoilerShow

My own fanfic will feature a completely different approach

If they were real sure... but since they are not, it is still interesting to see the various ways Loroi/human contact could evolve.

I am not into vile things though. If Stillstorm of all people could be charmed into a monogamous relationship, it would be amusing to say the least.

It would be a supreme feat though to somehow charm Stillstorm enough that she would marry a human guy and forfeit her warrior mating rights as well as prestige.

The ONLY way a human male could pull that off and not destroy Stillstorm's career would be if he played a large role in saving the Loroi from the Umiak. Since if there is one thing Loroi respect, it's defeating their enemies.

[Tamri]

Personally, I do not see how any close relationship between humans and loroi can develop without at least partial overcoming of the anti-telepathic barrier.

On the one hand, for Loroi sanzai, this is everything, the alpha and omega of any relationship, and above all social. Of course, they are not a truly telepathic species, but even so there are too many obstacles, especially in light of the fact that humans are at least one-sided immune to all forms of the Loroi telepathy. Considering that almost all of Loroi social interaction goes through sanzai, in this the immunity of humans plays against us.

My personal opinion is that for a species whose main form of interaction is telepathy, the loss of the ability to do it is one of the subconscious phobias, and even more so for the "successful" class, which is the military stratum of Loroi. Telepathically, absolutely "black", but at the same time outwardly very similar humans will surely touch this subconscious fear in one way or another, if not all (after all, there is always Beryl ) then a large number of loroi, especially if relatively loroi is the same the general rule applies "80% of the population are idiots, and half of them are even more stupid." And this is only when it comes to the basic mechanisms, but there are also cultural...

Humans and loroi just have a completely different view of society and the role of the individual in it. The most basic - our main class is civil, the military is just a separate institution, while the main class of Loroi is just a military (but not an army!) warriors.

That being said, I disagree with Dragungfa that the civil lore in this belief is different. This mode of operandi is the same for the entire culture of the loroi, regardless of which stratum a particular loroi belongs to. Yes, on the ground, particulars may differ, sometimes significantly, but in general it is so.


In general, so as not to spread further, I do not believe in the possibility of any close individual contacts between us more widespread than an exception to the rule. Xenophiles and marginal aesthetes make up a tiny fraction of the population, and although with a total population of billions, or even tens and hundreds of billions of the population, even one hundred thousandths of a percent are thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of sentient ones, in the total mass it is a drop in the ocean.

P.S. Fuck this "too many connection" error...

[boldilocks]

I'm not sure I'd like to be married to someone if we wouldn't get to grow old together.

[Demarquis]

I think that there might be one possible loophole around the lack of telepathy, which isn't canon but isn't excluded either, so far as I know. To wit: humans might be much better than Loroi are at reading body language and facial expression. Humans evolved our ability to "tune in" to one another as a survival trait, one that allows us to coordinate, communicate and trust each other in ways that are faster and more efficient than verbal communication could provide. This trait is so strong in us that a special class of people, those on the autism spectrum, one very common symptom of which is difficulty processing interpersonal emotional signals, often report difficulty in establishing and maintaining satisfactory relationships with people not on the spectrum. There is even video evidence that people commonly and sub-consciously engage in synchronized "micro-gestures" during conversations which neither party is aware of, but if absent results in a a dis-satisfied emotional response. Our closest primate relatives display facial and other gestures which resemble those of humans as well. All of which is to say that we humans have a millions years of evolution that probably made us pretty good at interpreting non-verbal body language.

The Loroi, by contrast, probably don't have that, because they never needed it. With Sanzai, you know quickly and accurately how someone else feels, so I would have to imagine that gestures and even vocal tone are more or less ignored. BUT--and here is the kicker--they apparently display them. We can see it in the art, every character so far displays what appears to be the full range of non-verbal emotional responses that a human does (and I don't know if this is a deliberate decision on the part of the work's creator, but may I say that I find Alex to be rather less expressive than I would expect? He kind of walks around with the same expression all the time. Or maybe that's just me). For example, Tempo's typical "hands crossed over chest" gesture and her reflective posture during moments of emotional tension is just one case that comes to my mind.

Anyway, the point is that humans may not be at quite the disadvantage we would otherwise assume. If we are relatively skilled at reading Loroi non-verbal communication (and since we are biologically related, that isn't necessarily unreasonable), we may have an insight into Loroi emotions that they don't even have into us, making this an interesting case of contrasting forms of emotional insight and expression, instead of one side having an ability that the other one lacks.

So how would that play out in a marriage? Presuming a mixed community of human and Loroi (so that no one has to feel entirely isolated), I think it might possibly work, if both partners put enough time and effort into it.

Personally, I think the lack of monogamy is a much greater barrier.

[Tamri]

The problem is not that humans do not "hear" Loroi, but that Loroi does not "hear" humans. From the point of view of humans with loroi, everything is ok, because loroi are so similar to us that we read their body language without any preparation and correctly, which is the most important thing.

But Loroi has these mechanisms, if there are, they are much less developed, since in communication they always rely on telepathy, even in communication with other species. Humans are completely impenetrable for them, which creates problems with the perception of the interlocutor (there is no "signature") and with understanding him (there is no "echo" of emotions and thoughts, it is difficult to interpret correctly).

For example, Loroi is clearly poor at understanding ambiguity, sarcasm and complex humor, even Tempo, which seems to be due for work. Whereas if people were "read" by the loroi, such problems would probably not exist - even if they did not understand the context, they would know for sure that it is and react appropriately, which is not.

And it was by this that I meant the problem with the anti-telepathic barrier. If we manage to lower it at least to the extent that the loroi can feel the mood of humans and the subtext of their words, then there will be an opportunity to establish a two-way equal dialogue (and at the same time noticeably dampen the paranoia of the loroi in relation to “unreadable” humans), during which it will be possible to explain at a level understandable to loroi all other concepts.

Without this, the dialogue will be like a correspondence between a binary for person who is fluent in it, and a second person who understands it so-so. The meaning can be understood, but no more.

[Krulle]

No matter the psychology of humans ready body language.
The lack of telepathy is much, much worse.
No way of knowing if the Human partner is lying or not.

Furthermore, culturally, we are too far apart.
We Human males are the hunters.
The Loroi females are the hunters.

nope. I don't think it'll work for more than the enjoyable occasional fling.
No long-term relationships.

Yes, the Loroi hunters may specialise on Human males and find that enjoyable.
Yes, Loroi men may be very attracted to Loroi females, and may prefer that.
But all without "strings attached", and no relationship.

[Cthulhu]

snippity-snip

While I agree that the average Human might be better at understanding body language, it won't help much.
1. Loroi might register body language as well, even not to the same degree as we do.
2. Even if not, then it's only a minor advantage, not to mention a one-sided one. It won't help the Loroi to understand us.

We'd still need to unlock our telepathy first. Maybe not the same way that Alex did, though.

Personally, I think the lack of monogamy is a much greater barrier.

Not for the Loroi, some particularly extravagant Loroi magnate might assemble a "reverse" harem and boast about it in certain circles.

Yes, the Loroi hunters may specialise on Human males and find that enjoyable.

What?!Show

[Keklas Rekobah]

I have a question that only Arioch may be able to answer.

It has been established that some Loroi foods -- not just Perrein cuisine -- may be toxic to Terrans.  Someone also claimed that capsaicin may be fatal to Loroi.  This implies incompatible biochemistries between Loroi and Terrans.

So, my question is: "Would the coital fluids of one species be irritating, toxic, or even fatal to the other?"

I would hate to be the first one to find out.

[jterlecki]

The way I see it, I believe that while some long lasting monogamous relationships may be possible between specific human/loroi individuals, they would remain fringe cases and from very far the norm. The lack of telepathy may or may not be an obstacle - there might be some Loroi 'introverts' that actually prefer the 'silence'.

Also, one needs to remember that culture is not static and evolves - what is the norm today may change overtime - including when exposed to different events or new cultures.

Assuming enough time passes for humanity and loroi to interact with each other, such relationships will be inevitable if not odd.

[Tamri]

I have a question that only Arioch may be able to answer.

It has been established that some Loroi foods -- not just Perrein cuisine -- may be toxic to Terrans.  Someone also claimed that capsaicin may be fatal to Loroi.  This implies incompatible biochemistries between Loroi and Terrans.

So, my question is: "Would the coital fluids of one species be irritating, toxic, or even fatal to the other?"

I would hate to be the first one to find out.

I assume they will generally be neutral unless you are severely allergic to glucose or fructose or an inert lubricant...

[Bamax]

I have a question that only Arioch may be able to answer.

It has been established that some Loroi foods -- not just Perrein cuisine -- may be toxic to Terrans.  Someone also claimed that capsaicin may be fatal to Loroi.  This implies incompatible biochemistries between Loroi and Terrans.

So, my question is: "Would the coital fluids of one species be irritating, toxic, or even fatal to the other?"

I would hate to be the first one to find out.

I assume they will generally be neutral unless you are severely allergic to glucose or fructose or an inert lubricant...

So if you are allergic to vanilla it's game over man... no space elf wife for you.

I joke.. but if they smell like smoky vanilla...