Arioch wrote:How would you expect a Loroi skull to look different from a Human skull?
Personally, I would expect the Loroi to have significantly larger brains than humans have, given
the rapidity with which human brains have shrunk over the past 20-30 thousand years.
Human females have historically had a tendency to die in childbirth, limiting the number of times they can pass on their genes; the size of a baby's head is related to the likelihood of death in premodern childbirth. I believe that this is a significant cause of the rapid decrease in brain size for humans; simple reproductive selection in favor of smaller heads with less cumbersome brains at birth. I believe this is also why skull and brain size are on the rise again with the advent of modern medicine; we can afford bigger skulls now, so there's no selective bias against them, and probably some positive selective bias in favor of the advantages of larger brains. I do not mean "intelligence" when I say that, because "intelligence" is a nebulous, poorly-defined word with no concrete relationship to brain size on an individual level. But there are other advantages to be had, discounting intelligence; for instance, a bigger structure in general has more space for redundancy and better ability to take damage, and the Loroi supposedly have quite a history of violence. Unless I miss my guess, Loroi have been giving birth largely through c-sections for far longer than humans had the ability to safely perform one; therefore the modern regrowth of the brain would have been in play for longer with them. Loroi have a racial bonus to health according to their GURPS sheets and several posts here, so I would think they are less likely to die in childbirth from a larger baby skull, so there would have been less selective bias against them.
However, that's just my personal opinion. I'm sure you could find many intelligent and well educated people who would disagree. Opinions on premodern vs. modern and human vs. protohuman brains are matters of significant controversy at this time.
...as long as we're talking about the skull pile...
Suederwind wrote:They seem to be a bit more gracile than an ordinary female human to me.
I'd say the opposite, really.
I think Beryl has relatively heavy facial features compared with the human females we see in the comic, Sculley and Ensign Kirkland.
I'd hate to generalize based just on her, but I really don't have to; I have drawn beards on every single jaw in this comic except the humans, and as a result I'd say I've come to know the contours of the Loroi faces pretty well. One of the things I don't think can be properly appreciated by someone who hasn't tried drawing beards on these girls is the diversity of facial structures among the Loroi, with Beryl and Arclight at the more robustly-boned masculine side of the scale and Ashrain and Talon at the very feminine end. Moonglow's face (to me) suggests that she's an unusually tall girl,
Forest looks like she might be a different Loroi ethnicity from
most others though I personally can't really place her in terms of human ethnicities, etc.
But on average, I'd say they're a bit more heavy-featured than the human females. Thicker skull structure, slightly closer to the male side of things than our females are. And that's in-comic, which should account for art style.
This is still most likely just a product of Arioch's art style; he doesn't really seem to go for the hyperfeminine features most male comic artists would, and if anything seems to err on the masculine side, particularly regarding the size and shape of the jawbone. Also, there is a very, very small set of human female faces to draw from, whereas there is a considerable range of Loroi female faces running the gamut from rugged and square-jawed to gracile and girlish.
But I really wouldn't say they seem more gracile and feminine than human women's skulls.
Perhaps they'd be more gracile and feminine than
the Loroi skulls we see on page 50, which have a combination of masculine and feminine traits.
The eye sockets of a male skull are more squared than those of a female skull, except at the upper inner margins, where the female opening is sometimes sharper.
Loroi skulls appear to have quite a range of variation in that regard, but the majority of the eye orbits are very masculine (I suspect Arioch drew the page from male skull references). Rounded areas along the upper inner edge, and squared outward sides.
Those Loroi skulls lack the typical male brow ridge, as would human females.
However, they have male skulls above the brow line; from the front view they are very squared, and from the side they slope from the brow to the end, whereas a female forehead is more vertical, giving the female skull a more squared look from the side, while the female skull is very rounded from the front view. Loroi skulls appear rounded when viewed from the side and squared from the front, typically male traits.
It's hard to see how many of the skulls have or lack male pronounced ridges at the neck anchoring point, because few of them are shown from the side with that portion visible. I can't really guess either way.
From what I recall, human males have higher and thicker cheekbones than females, but I can't recall well enough to be sure, and I also don't know if the cheekbones on the skulls in the skullpile would stand on the smaller or larger end of the scale. However, to the extent that I trust my memory, I would say the cheekbones on those skulls suggest a male skull to me.
If I had to guess I would say "give me their jawbones and I can make a much, much better guess," and then, once denied jawbones, I would say a very significant number were probably males from some gene line with very subdued brows. The reason I would ask for jawbones is because female jawbones are more curved at the back and come closer to a triangle in the middle, whereas male jawbones have a sort of flat, square end. Most of the characters in this comic have square-ended jaws; Loroi females less so than human males, but, again, on average I would say more so than human females. There's a lot of variation.
However, I doubt that Tempest is supposed to be standing on a pile of dead males. From the descriptions I've read of how males are treated and regarded, such an image would probably be disturbing rather than inspirational to modern Loroi warriors, though it might perhaps have some historical accuracy.
Given that Tempest and her Sea Furies were depicted with strongly sloping foreheads rather than vertical ones, I assume that that trait is less strongly associated with masculinity vs. femininity among the Loroi. Since Beryl has a vertical forehead and no apparent brow ridge on that page (
and others), it is possible to assume the sloped skull depicted is an ethnic trait strongly associated with Tempest's people. Since Alex on page 50 also has a vertical forehead with no apparent brow ridge, but Alex on page 100 panel 2 has an apparent brow ridge, I can probably actually chalk these things up to art quirks rather than skull morphology, and might assume that the strongly sloping foreheads on Tempest, the Furies, and the skulls in the tapestry are the result of the tapestry artist's art style rather than how their skulls were shaped.
Much of this is probably because they were drawn to be details in a comic rather than diagrams in an anatomy textbook or anything like that. And on the tapestry, there are two different styles at work; it's easy to get the impression that there was an artist behind the tapestry who would draw this comic very differently than Arioch has, even though you know that Arioch drew the tapestry. So it's not Arioch drawing Loroi skulls, but Arioch drawing a Loroi artist's drawing of Loroi skulls, all of which are highly stylized and may or may not reflect literal skull shape.
I don't think any of us would be happier if Arioch were to spend more time being more meticulous about precise skull structures. That would drastically cut into production time, and would not improve the comic in any significant way.
I think being petty about the exact form of Loroi skulls and facial structures is pointless for that reason and others.
And, honestly, what could you want him to do? Redraw every single skull on the tapestry? That's quite a lot of work for very nearly no result.
Arioch wrote:But would such extrapolation be necessary? If humans have changed in 200,000+ years, would not the Loroi have done so also? And is it unreasonable to assume that given similar environment, such evolutionary paths might be similar?
I would assume that the designers of the Loroi would have placed more and better safeguards in place against mutation than exist in natural biological systems. They were, after all, able to create a system which has held off natural selective pressure towards Fisher's Ratio for a quarter of a million years and counting. Has the Loroi population moved closer to Fisher's Ratio since their creation?
Personally, the biggest issue I have with the physical form of the Loroi is that they have breasts and human female hip-waist-chest ratios. In humans, these traits are the product of the estrogens which periodically flood the system after puberty because human females have to deal with certain biochemical cycles for which the Loroi have no analogue. From what I remember, the Loroi do not menstruate, and only enter estrus when they are carrying viable sperm in some sort of internal spermatheca-type organ (this is presumably because the Loroi are actually cleverly disguised spiders). So the Loroi body would not similarly be flooded with the ovulation-related hormones that promote female secondary sex traits.
The development of secondary sex traits consumes energy, and the reason this energy consumption pays off is because it gives you a reproductive advantage. From the descriptions I've read of Loroi males and Loroi mating practices, I do not think so great an advantage stands to be gained here. I also do not see what the genetic engineers responsible for the Loroi could think they stood to gain from giving the Loroi those human secondary sex traits.
However, the Loroi wouldn't really fit the space amazon archetype if they didn't look like human women...
This might be one of those things best left unexplained.
but it's interesting that you would mention accident as it's the conclusion i've been getting to regarding the similarities between our species.
.
.
