WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

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Michael
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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Michael »

my first wall-o-text, hope it goes well:
junk wrote:
Michael wrote:the Queen of England's husband is the Price Consort, i assume that Gray Wind, as the Emperor would have the Emperor's Consort, or something along those lines as a Queen can't put her husband over herself (King being higher than Queen)

as an interesting side note Emperor, supersedes King, supersedes President on the diplomatic theatre, a Loroi Emperor may have had it made policy that all loroi Empresses be called Emperor, that way the Loroi Empire will never be put at an immediate disadvantage when dealing with another Empire lead by a male
Keep in mind that Emperor supremacy only plays a role with societies where males historically held power. Even among humans there are societies where this wasn't (or in some areas still isn't) the case.

So being called emperor because some societies may be male dominant is a bit foolhardy.

good point, but im looking at very early on in their history around the 835-842 CE period, when the first Deinar World War was, and the First Deinar Emperor, Zaral Siilad came into power, she might have used the title to throw off any potential male rulers (i doubt they've always been protected)

Solemn wrote:I don't think a Loroi ruler would have to resort to lexical games like that to supersede other political leaders.

Nor do I think such wordplay-based rules lawyering seems like their style.

at such early point in Loroi history "wordplay-based rules lawyering" may have been the only way to legitimize Zaral Siilad's power and right to rule,

and again in the 1323-1402 period, during the Splinter Wars, a series of civil conflicts between the 3 sister worlds, The Axis Assembly was dissolved, which was the governing body of the three planets since 1199.

The factions are then reunited under the First Loroi Emperor, Laiedas under a centralized Imperial system (i guess this happend at some point in the 15th or late 14th century), again calling (i assume) herself Emperor, as a way of putting herself over any other power or faction leaders which might still exist in the three Loroi systems.

As we don't have any info on Insider (unless i'v missed something, in which case every thing stated here might be a bit pointless, right? :) ) into how the government or civil population was like, we don't know what their sociological mind set at that time was, so again legitimizing one's claim to leadership with "wordplay-based lawyering" might have been the best way to go, might have made her seem more like Emperors of old, during the golden age on Deinar.


of course all this is mostly what iv put together in the last 20-30 mins so there are probably (ha!) holes in my theories,
so i have an even better argument should the bottom of this one fall out,
is it not possible that the Emperors title is not actually emperor in Loroi? Could it just be the closest translation in trade language? (or english for that matter)

bunnyboy wrote:
icekatze wrote:It'd be like calling a female president a presidentina or something.
Presidentina sounds nice. :D
If it's can't be used for female president, then what would be it?
Obviously something to do with Presidential telepanties. Fact.
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Arioch
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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Arioch »

Greywind's title is Azerein. Like most Loroi military titles, it's archaic and specific to the Loroi dialect, and not a generic Trade term (in same way that Loroi dialect torret and the generic Trade word for "captain" are different). A literal translation of the word is not likely to be meaningful to us (Teidar: "Unsheathed" makes sense, but Mizol: "Left-hand" less so), so how we choose to translate azerein into English is going to be somewhat arbitrary.

Azerein is not a hereditary monarch, nor an elected civilian official, but rather a military dictator appointed by an oligarchy. We do have a number of titles for something like that in Earth languages, but most of them are either too culture-specific to be desirable for use in describing an alien culture (shōgun or führer, for example), or have very negative connotations for us. Consider generalissimo; in addition to just sounding silly, that title has 20th Century connotations of a leader of questionable legitimacy (of the likes of Franco, Chiang Kai-shek, or Kim Il-Sung). Other possibilities include "autocrat" or "dictator," but again the connotations are very negative.

The term "Emperor" has a lot going for it: in addition to having connotations of supremacy (a "king of kings"), it's also somewhat generic as "the leader of an empire" and not necessarily a hereditary monarch. It derives from the Roman Imperator which was originally a military title and means simply "one who exercises power" (imperium meaning sovereignty, but distinct from regnum, royal power). The term has been applied to a variety of different leaders, from European monarchs to Mongol Khans and Ottoman Sultans, including many who had no royal lineage (see: Napoleon, Caesar). It also sounds cool.

I've discussed why I'm not using "Empress" instead of "Emperor" at length, but here's a quick recap: the feminine suffix is diminutive, misleading and culturally inappropriate as regards the Loroi.

While I'm on the subject, the Loroi wouldn't have an equivalent title to "prince consort," because they don't have an institution of marriage. A very high-ranking Loroi female may have one or more males permanently assigned to her, but such a male would be less of a concubine and more of a courtesan; though the high-ranking female to whom the male has been assigned has the right to choose who he mates with, she rarely allocates him exclusively for herself (as that would be a sign of unhealthy attachment, not to mention a distinct lack of consideration towards her female subordinates). Anyhow, such a position for a male doesn't come with a title; the male will have a title appropriate to his profession (usually the Philosopher class, for a high-ranking male).

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Ktrain
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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Ktrain »

Arioch, were there occasions in Loroi history where a male happened to find himself in a position of political power such a leading a small state or fomenting a revolt?

And on revolts, how common were peasant revolts in Loroi history?
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Sanguinius
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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Sanguinius »

Well not much point flogging a dead horse, so I'll just wrap up with two points:-

1. By this logic:-
Arioch wrote:I've discussed why I'm not using "Empress" instead of "Emperor" at length, but here's a quick recap: the feminine suffix is diminutive, misleading and culturally inappropriate as regards the Loroi.

If the terms "man" or "woman" were to be used to describe Lori, then Lori females would be men and Lori males would be women. If feminine terms are diminutive and male terms augmentative and this is their sole meaning, then with Lori females being dominant and Lori males recessive, Lori females must be men and their males women.

2. Previously you said it's not as a result of political correctness that you're using these terms as you do use them, this is false, it is. Just because it's not being imposed upon you and it is your own will to use these terms in this fashion. Your rational for this is that your perception of the cultural meanings of these terms convey a certain power relationship and thereby stigmatise the subject. This meaning does not exist in the English language as my repeated showings of dictionary definitions which literally state the opposite of what you've said in relation to these terms. So it is as a result of your political correctness that you're using this term, just to clarify here's another dictionary quote:-

po·lit·i·cal cor·rect·ness
Noun:
The avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult certain groups of people.
Arioch wrote:I've discussed why I'm not using "Empress" instead of "Emperor" at length, but here's a quick recap: the feminine suffix is diminutive, misleading and culturally inappropriate as regards the Loroi.
My emboldening.

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Arioch
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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Arioch »

Ktrain wrote:Arioch, were there occasions in Loroi history where a male happened to find himself in a position of political power such a leading a small state or fomenting a revolt?
In Loroi pre-history, when they were still nomadic hunter-gatherers, it's quite possibly that males had a lot more say in society, and a male who was an especially powerful telepath and/or psychokinetic (or maybe just a clever and charismatic leader) might have been able to take charge of a tribe. But this was a pretty savage time when settlements were constantly being created and destroyed -- it's hard to keep the barbarians at bay when they can reproduce as quickly as the Loroi can.

The way out of this never-ending cycle of chaos was the establishment of the caste system and strict societal controls on reproduction and just about everything else. With a full-time worker class, agriculture and iron weapons, the city-states became powerful enough to defend themselves and become more permanent, but the new settlement culture put everyone is his or her social cubbyhole, and they pretty much stayed there. Males are considered to be outside of the normal hierarchy of government, so a male relative of a Loroi warlord or monarch is not considered to be in the line of succession, no matter how many relatives died. Many Loroi nations were run by oligarchies, some with appointed Consuls, some with hereditary monarchs, but often more than one of each (as in the Spartan model of a dual monarchy). The Loroi never really developed the concept of Divine Right, so they were not as bound to a particular bloodline; if a blood relative of a ruler was not available, or a hereditary successor turned out to be unfit or incompetent, there was not much hesitance by rivals to eliminate the dynasty and replace it.

However, males are not entirely without influence, especially when they grouped together in organizations like the Philosopher orders, some of which had male leaderships. There would surely have been situations in which such orders tried to increase their power at the expense of the female military nation-state that resulted in friction or even outright conflict, not unlike the uneasy relationship that Earth governments have often had with various religious orders. I think most fighting on behalf of the males would still have been done by proxy by female forces of some or other allied nation-state, but I can imagine a male Joan of Arc as an inspirational leader of the pro-Philosopher side on the battlefield, or a male Cardinal Richelieu pulling strings from behind the scenes. It was probably on Perrein that the male philosopher/religious orders became the most powerful.
Ktrain wrote:And on revolts, how common were peasant revolts in Loroi history?
Probably about as common as on Earth; most nations on Earth during the pre-industrial period were also ruled by the warrior classes. Peasant uprisings occurred often (during famine or hard times) but were usually swiftly crushed by the much better equipped and trained warrior elite. If the warrior class of a particular nation declined to the point where they could no longer effectively defend themselves, then the civilians might successfully overthow the warriors... but then the civilians would have to essentially form a new warrior class, because they would still have warmongering neighbors to keep at bay.

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junk
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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by junk »

I actually find it relatively funny that loroi society seems to be more human warrior than based on mammalian societies which have similar differences in gender count.

Lions come to mind fairly well actually.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by javcs »

junk wrote:I actually find it relatively funny that loroi society seems to be more human warrior than based on mammalian societies which have similar differences in gender count.

Lions come to mind fairly well actually.
Well, with lions, per your example, in prides lionesses do basically all the work, while the males don't do a whole lot, except when rival male(s) show up.

Of course, if a male looses his pride, all his cubs get killed by his replacement.

In ancient (I mean really ancient) times, way back when the largest grouping of Loroi was the family grouping, I could maybe see something more along the lines of lions working. Of course ... this strikes me as something you'd encounter in proto-Loroi, if they were naturally evolved. Since they were naturally evolved, and in fact were, at one point, a developed culture prior to the collapse, I don't know about that ... they may have skipped over that stage, and gone straight to the hunter-gatherer clan/tribal stage.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Trantor »

On a side note:
Sanguinius wrote:...
po·lit·i·cal cor·rect·ness
...
Is there such thing in Loroi world?


Oh, and BTW: I´m fine with "Emperor" because
a.) this is Ariochs Outsiderverse
b.) one way or another, there´s no "nobility" in Germany any more. Cheers!

:mrgreen:
sapere aude.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by fredgiblet »

Trantor wrote:Is there such thing in Loroi world?:
"Speaking" plainly is the default mode of operation for Loroi, so I would guess not. I would also guess that they would find the idea somewhat offputting.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Solemn »

Well, perhaps it's not quite what you'd mean by "political correctness," but the use of the word "seems" as a polite form for "is" actually makes a certain amount of sense for taking some of the offensive edge off of speech, to me at least.

It looks like a way of putting things so you're always saying "in my opinion, things are this way" so as to ameliorate any disagreement.

"Your plan looks dumb and wrong from my point of view." Doesn't that seem a lot less antagonistic than "Your plan is objectively stupid and we are all diminished by having listened to it," which may be much closer to what the Loroi in question is actually thinking?

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Trantor »

Solemn wrote:Well, perhaps it's not quite what you'd mean by "political correctness," but the use of the word "seems" as a polite form for "is" actually makes a certain amount of sense for taking some of the offensive edge off of speech, to me at least.
Um, please tell me that you not just confused "PC" and "politeness"?

PC is anything else than that, moreover it is the most perfidious venom ever trickled into human society IMHO.
Follow the path "Language determines Thinking, Thinking determines Action" and you get the picture.
:ugeek: ;)
sapere aude.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Solemn »

Trantor wrote:Um, please tell me that you not just confused "PC" and "politeness"?

PC is anything else than that, moreover it is the most perfidious venom ever trickled into human society IMHO.
Follow the path "Language determines Thinking, Thinking determines Action" and you get the picture.
:ugeek: ;)
Fun fact; "polite" and "political" share lexical roots.

It's un-PC to insult, say, someone's gender. It's also very impolite.

What I meant was mostly that, even though it's been demonstrated that the Loroi are openly antagonistic towards the concept of politeness, they still have polite forms.

Which in turn might, to extrapolate further, mean they have some polite way of saying "worthless CIVILIAN scum," and might require warriors to adhere to those polite forms when dealing with civilians (though that would in turn require warriors to speak to civilians, and speech is inherently antagonistic in their culture, so I dunno), which would be about as close a parallel as I can imagine to having politically-enforced, corrected speech patterns when dealing with a historically oppressed group.

The fact that they have polite forms at all to me says that they have polite forms for conversing with other Loroi, instead of for conversing with other species, though. Tempo didn't really say "seems" too often when talking to the Historian, for instance.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Trantor »

Solemn wrote:
Trantor wrote:...
Follow the path "Language determines Thinking, Thinking determines Action" and you get the picture.
:ugeek: ;)
Fun fact; "polite" and "political" share lexical roots.
Yes, but "PC" is just perverted. By design. Guess why. ;)
sapere aude.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by junk »

Isn't the difference between PC and politeness the target. PC essentially tries to erode away certain negative connotations to other social groups but your own whereas politeness tends to be masking how you directly thing about a person as opposed to their social group.

From my understand a loroi would say You are a lazy bastard to someone they perceived as lazy. Hence not having the same politeness buffer. But at the same time they might be hesitant to say All loroi from world XYZ are lazy bastards. Letting PC actually have an impact as well.

Trantor wrote:
Solemn wrote:
Trantor wrote:...
Follow the path "Language determines Thinking, Thinking determines Action" and you get the picture.
:ugeek: ;)
Fun fact; "polite" and "political" share lexical roots.
Yes, but "PC" is just perverted. By design. Guess why. ;)
There's nothing bad or perverted about the concept of PC. It's actually very good. The issue is that in some nations the concept is taken too far where it beguns to become a massive issue.

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Trantor
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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Trantor »

junk wrote:
Trantor wrote:Yes, but "PC" is just perverted. By design. Guess why. ;)
There's nothing bad or perverted about the concept of PC. It's actually very good.
That´s how they sold it.
junk wrote:The issue is that in some nations the concept is taken too far where it beguns to become a massive issue.
Given the origins, and the "haters" who initially invented this brainglue, it is hard to imagine that this didn´t happened by intention.

8-)
sapere aude.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

It is generally considered a good thing to be nice and considerate to other people. Some people take it too far by insisting that you must be polite or else, which isn't right either. But seriously, you ought not to go out of your way to be a jerk to people.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Arioch »

junk wrote:I actually find it relatively funny that loroi society seems to be more human warrior than based on mammalian societies which have similar differences in gender count. Lions come to mind fairly well actually.
The mammal species in which males collect harems of females are very different from the Loroi. First, the males are larger and stronger than the females, and are expected to fight and bully each other for the right to mate with females. Second, the male-to-female birth ratios among most such mammals are still very close to 1:1 (the birth ratio of male lions is actually higher than female lions). The difference is that once males reach adulthood, they must leave the group and fend for themselves, until such time as they are prepared to challenge the current alpha male(s). The proportion of males gradually declines as they increase in age, presumably because of higher casualty rates caused by their solo hunting lifestyle when not leading a group and due to fatalities from fighting each other.

In some regions, the leader of a lion pride is seldom a single male, but more often a coalition of up to seven cooperating males that act as a unit in competition against other coalitions. This system supports a larger number of males (with female prides usually being around 3-18 individuals).

In contrast, the Loroi males do not have to compete with each other for mates, and far from suffering higher casualty rates, instead they are carefully protected by the females.

For a good example of an alien culture based on lions, see C.J. Cherryh's Hani.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by junk »

Another fairly decent example I'd say of a semi idealised lion based society would be the Tarka from Sword of the stars. Admittedly the gender plays out a strongly differently that what we'd consider normal but overal makes sense from an alien standpoint.

Actual all of the species there are very well designed as far as it comes to society and how gender plays there. To the level of one of the species (alien insect hive based) having certain issues in combat operations against human crews. As their standard instinct is to kill any and all females as that would usually eliminate the longterm survival of the enemy hive.

Now imagine dealing with a crew that can have as much as 50% or even more females in it.


Out of curiosity, Arioch is there actually any species that would come close to the Loroi on earth as far as you know. I actually can't think of any since it does create fairly big issues with the gene distribution, unless loroi units tended to either directly exchange men or women.

I guess the exchange of men could make some sense.


@Trantor
Considering that the overextension of PC is only an issue in some nations I'd strongly argue with it. On top of that at least some basic level PC was required in order to actually create at least relatively balanced situations.

The bigger issue is when PC is abused into a such a way that it actually creates unbalanced situations. Brits tend to go down that road far too often lately.

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by Karst45 »

In link with the Politically correct:

Why is it when someone says "with all due respect" they really mean, "kiss my ass"? (mass effect)

I had to do it! i really like that quote!

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Re: WIP - concept characters page (spoilers ??)

Post by javcs »

Karst45 wrote:In link with the Politically correct:

Why is it when someone says "with all due respect" they really mean, "kiss my ass"? (mass effect)

I had to do it! i really like that quote!
So true.
No one can blame you for using it.

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