Loroi Women Versus Human Women... As Wives

[Tamri]

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...

Well, as if in the genital secretions LITERALLY there is nothing but water, some sugars and ... well, sperm. In women, it is more difficult, but in general, the discharge is also neutral.

If you are acutely allergic to all this stuff, then I have bad news for you ...

[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.

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...

I ask because there have been cases where women were allergic to semen, and had to take allergy mitigation treatment before considering marriage or motherhood.  How much worse would it be for a Loroi/Terran mixed couple, since the fluids in question also contain proteins and other organic substances that could trigger anaphylaxis?

Sorry to throw a damper on your fantasies, boys.

[Tamri]

I ask because there have been cases where women were allergic to semen, and had to take allergy mitigation treatment before considering marriage or motherhood.  How much worse would it be for a Loroi/Terran mixed couple, since the fluids in question also contain proteins and other organic substances that could trigger anaphylaxis?

Sorry to throw a damper on your fantasies, boys.

I wanted to ask, "is it really allergic to sperm?" , then got into Google, it turned out that yes, and it happens.

How strange and unexpected the world is...

In any case, since allergy involves any interaction with a protein, I doubt that anything from this side is threatening Loroi, since at the level of proteins, our biochemistry is absolutely incompatible and is hardly purely physically capable of interacting.

These are not even the "mirror proteins" of the quarians, it is just a completely different biochemistry ... and even optimized for a completely different temperature regime.

Allergy to basic chemicals is more really.

[Demarquis]

And yet I'm not completely convinced of the futility of Loroi-Human long term relationships. I should point out a couple of things:

1) That autistic humans fall in love and marry non-autistic people all the time. So, while not the typical case, it clearly isn't that impossible. And I think that, yes, the parallel is pretty close, if not exact.

2) Human males can offer something that Loroi males cannot: accessibility. You don't have to sign up anywhere, nobody is gatekeeping, find one and please yourself. That's quite an advantage, I think.

[Tamri]

Nobody says that this is impossible at all.

It will just be a very rare exception. Much more often (and more likely) there will be short, casual meetings that are comfortable enough and familiar to both.

[Cthulhu]

Especially since telepathy is a major component in the sensual and emotional exchange of an encounter. It should go far beyond an autistic impairment, or an auditory one. Maybe on the level where even the sense of touch is off? On the other hand, some people buy sex dolls...

[Keklas Rekobah]

Sanzai would make it easy for one Loroi to alert all the others nearby about the identities of PUAs, Incels, misogynists, and men who have a fetish for blue-skinned space elves.

Mess with one at night, and you will find them all hostile toward you by morning.

[Bamax]

Sanzai would make it easy for one Loroi to alert all the others nearby about the identities of PUAs, Incels, misogynists, and men who have a fetish for blue-skinned space elves.

Mess with one at night, and you will find them all hostile toward you by morning.

But if one likes you..... a bunch will.

In a way Loroi women are like human women.... just amplied and dialed up to eleven.

What human woman won't tell all her friends about the great guy she likes?

Human guys are not that way, since for women, talking about others just comes naturally. Guys love to talk about problems, solutions. and anything not a person... more than women like to talk about people.

[Keklas Rekobah]

Sanzai would make it easy for one Loroi to alert all the others nearby about the identities of PUAs, Incels, misogynists, and men who have a fetish for blue-skinned space elves.  Mess with one at night, and you will find them all hostile toward you by morning.

But if one likes you..... a bunch will.  In a way Loroi women are like human women.... just amplied and dialed up to eleven.  What human woman won't tell all her friends about the great guy she likes?

Good point.  A man's reputation would get around in a flash among the Loroi, while the same news might take days longer among Terrans.

Human guys are not that way, since for women, talking about others just comes naturally. Guys love to talk about problems, solutions. and anything not a person... more than women like to talk about people.

Is it safe to assume that you have never lived in a fraternity house, a military barracks, on an oil rig, or on board a merchant vessel at sea?  Guys love to brag about their "conquests & exploits" in these environments.

[Bamax]

Sanzai would make it easy for one Loroi to alert all the others nearby about the identities of PUAs, Incels, misogynists, and men who have a fetish for blue-skinned space elves.  Mess with one at night, and you will find them all hostile toward you by morning.

But if one likes you..... a bunch will.  In a way Loroi women are like human women.... just amplied and dialed up to eleven.  What human woman won't tell all her friends about the great guy she likes?

Good point.  A man's reputation would get around in a flash among the Loroi, while the same news might take days longer among Terrans.

Human guys are not that way, since for women, talking about others just comes naturally. Guys love to talk about problems, solutions. and anything not a person... more than women like to talk about people.

Is it safe to assume that you have never lived in a fraternity house, a military barracks, on an oil rig, or on board a merchant vessel at sea?  Guys love to brag about their "conquests & exploits" in these environments.

No... but the difference between men and women is that women tend to talk about people more, at least in my experience. Along with how they feel, which men also tend to do less.

[spacewhale]

If there wasn't a space war and there were suddenly entire worlds and economies opened up for human trade, it'd lead to bidrectional cultural exchange between humans and other aliens. Probably a bunch of nifty things the Loroi never thought they would need made suddenly available via trade worlds near the mutual border of the two territories. I imagine a portion of the space elves would be open to not living in a feudal system, especially if they do not hail from the warrior castes, and likewise some humans might be open to exploration, research, mercenary work and so on. Work in close quarters with one another for a long enough time and relationships would form. I just know there'd be some unfortunate humans with heads stuck on poles.

[Bamax]

When you think about it, the closest analogue to alien mixed marriage with humans is... interacial marriages.


Because:

1. If you marry someone who is not your race then you must be willing to tolerate stares since you or mate or both will stand out, inasmuch mixed race marriages are less common than same race marriages.

2. There is a cultural barrier that will take time to both understand and manage your life and your mate's life around.


Of course, the difference with Loroi is they are literally from elsewhere far away. Yet their culture is nothing all that foreign... since there is and has been a popular view among human women to view men as no more than sperm donors or play-things to use and discard at will. I have seen them say as much, while at the same time wanting a man for marriage who will worship them and cater to their every whim. It's unfortunate that that this kind of view is and has been a popular view of men towards women.

The concept of marriage itself, at least a stable and monogamous one, is less popular than it was in the past

[Gudo]

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

No comment on the fluid itself, but the act of exchanging said fluid is likely to be fatal to the Loroi partner, regardless of gender. Cause of death: uncontrollable necrotizing infections. Summary: Exchanging fluids also means exchanging micro organisms. Low Loroi body temperature means many of the organisms originating in humans would attempt to decompose the still living Loroi body. The Loroi body is unlikely to have an effective immune response.

Consider that microbial infections are frequently transmitted between humans already, and consider what happened when Old World diseases were introduced to New World populations. Then consider that humans and Loroi have their most recent common ancestor even further in the past than the Spanish and the Aztec.

The same logic can be applied in reverse, but high body temperature and an effective fever response probably means that humans are somewhat safer than the Loroi. What follows is a long walk-through of the logic used to reach these conclusions.

SpoilerShow

High body temperatures come at the cost of increased energy needs; they are not "free" and mammals did not evolve them for fun. In exchange for a much higher resting metabolism, mammals gain an increased resistance to various types of disease. High body temperatures limit or in some cases outright destroy pathogenic microorganisms. The fever response to infection is a clear evolutionary response to the value of high body temperatures in fighting off infections.

The human body is a biome, packed full of mico flora, fauna, and fungi. Somewhere between a third and a half of all cells in a human body (by number, not mass) are non-human. These organisms are present throughout the body; and are present in nearly every fluid and orifice. You are not going to exchange fluids via said orifices without also exchanging a large package of the human microbiome. This happens all the time in humans. Naturally, these microorganisms have an evolved tolerance for human body temperatures, and (most) are well regulated and behaved at and slightly above healthy human body temps. However, when the body temperature starts to drop, as in the case of a dead body, many of these organisms transition from a symbiotic mode of life to a more aggressive mode. Lower body temperature means that in the life game of musical chairs, there's only one chair left and the music is winding down. These organisms begin the decomposition process. 

So we know that any exchange of fluid would be accompanied by an exchange of microbiomes, and we can guess that the human microbiome would attempt to decompose the Loroi body despite the Loroi still being alive. After all, it is mentioned several times that the Loroi have a noticeably lower resting body temperature, and we know how these organisms behave in the presence of a noticeably cooler body.

Being a vertebrate, the Loroi body has two general types of defense against this sort of infection. They are the innate or nonspecific response, and the adaptive, or specific response. Neither would prove nearly as effective for the Loroi as they would for the human. The most obvious innate response is the fever response. However, as Loroi are either adapted or engineered for a lower body temperature you can not expect them to tolerate or be able to generate as high a fever response as the human body. Remember, high body temperatures aren't free! While Loroi temperature tolerance might have initially been high, natural selection's ruthless knife would still selectively cull Loroi bodies that maintained needless investments in high temperature tolerance over bodies that invested elsewhere. Which is a shame, as the fever response really is an effective response to terrestrial pathogens. It's stuck around mammals for millions of years afterall.

The other portion of the innate response is largely similar to the adaptive response, just less tailored to a specific infection. That is specific immune cells doing specific things to disrupt or destroy invading cells. Here, we can also expect the Loroi's defenses to be ineffective. Loroi and humans clearly have a common ancestor, probably about 300,000 years ago and can therefore be expected to have similar body chemistry. Microorganisms on earth routinely exploit similar chemistries to make a living inside different species, so many microorganisms present in humans will be able to make a home in a wide variety of vertebrates, to include Loroi. 

The Loroi have not been engineered since before the Soia Cataclysm, and have been evolving and adapting under the rules of natural selection ever since. I can't guess the number of generations that have passed since the last common ancestor, but it should be more Loroi generations than human generations due to the short time to maturity and rapid breeding traits. This means Loroi are likely to lose immunological adaptations quickly (for vertebrates), and can safely be considered to be immunologically naïve when it comes to terrestrial microorganisms. Why would we believe that Loroi have lost immunological adaptations to terrestrial organisms? For the simple reason that the Soia would have no reason to transplant the wide variety of terrestrial microorganisms along with their Loroi subjects. They would've transplanted only those organisms as were required for the healthy functioning of the Loroi body. There would've been no need to transplant non-symbiotic bacteria, fungi, and protozoa as well.
This puts the Loroi in an extremely dangerous position when it comes to human borne pathogens. To see how dangerous, just consider what happened when native American populations were introduced to old world diseases. In this case though, the rampaging microorganisms would be fungi, bacteria, and protozoa. 

Availability of effective therapeutics would be a prerequisite for humans and Loroi to "exchange fluids."  Even if developed, frequent administration of broad spectrum antimicrobials would certainly be accompanied by a decreased quality of life. Anybody who's been on antibiotics long term can tell you a jacked up microbiome makes for a miserable life. Humans may be available, but the price of admission is high. 

[Demarquis]

"It should go far beyond an autistic impairment, or an auditory one."

Heh, I have personal experience with this sort of thing, and believe me when I say that Alex is having an easier time of it.

BTW--I don't think one can generalize human male and female behavior or personality that much. Both genders display a very wide range of variation on every personality trait, and the overlap is much greater than the average difference. Otherwise we would have gone extinct long ago.

[gaerzi]

Loroi and humans clearly have a common ancestor, probably about 300,000 years ago and can therefore be expected to have similar body chemistry.

No, the implication is that the mysterious Soia have replicated various creatures including humans, but using their own biochemistry. They're not humans who've been genetically tailored into becoming Soia-Liron organisms; they're Soia-Liron organisms that have been genetically tailored into looking just like humans. (Or just like nibirens, in the case of the Barsam.)

[Gudo]

They're not humans who've been genetically tailored into becoming Soia-Liron organisms; they're Soia-Liron organisms that have been genetically tailored into looking just like humans.

Is there Word of God on that somewhere? Not saying it isn't so, I just took the opposite implication. I mean, if you're going to engineer a new species from scratch, why then would you also go through the effort of making it physically suspiciously similar to an existing species? You should also note that the human body isn't particularly efficient, and it would be very poor design indeed to simply copy over some of the designs we see in anatomically modern humans. Your spine and hips are much better suited for a species that lives on all fours, not one that stands erect. And putting the waste processing organs and reproductive organs basically right on top of each other should've gotten the designer fired. An intelligent designer setting out to make an intelligent tool using warrior species could well wind up creating a humanoid-ish bipedal creature. But they should not look nearly so human. Again, I'm not saying you're not right. I'm just saying there's some explaining to do if the Loroi really were built from the ground up instead of modified from an existing design.

...but using their own biochemistry.

Not saying Loroi biochemistry is identical, but that it is sufficiently similar to be subject to fungal, bacterial, or protozoan attack. Re-reading the Insider on Loroi, and I guess my big take away is that phrases like "different biochemistry" is not actually that helpful. Blue blood is pointed out as a difference, but we know blue blood is a possibility in terrestrial biology. And being genetically incompatible is not evidence of being immune to microbiological dangers. I'm not genetically compatible with swine, but I can still get trichinosis. There's also the similar nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere to consider, even if it is largely a plot convenience device.

A few other tidbits from the Insider:

Loroi and Humans have essentially the same concept of male and female, and essentially identical sexual apparatus. The Loroi females carry the zygotes that are fertilized by gametes from the males, and the females carry fetuses to term and deliver them in live birth.

We know also that Loroi lactate (even if what they produce isn't strictly speaking milk.) Why on Deinar would the Soia opt for the placental mammal model of reproduction over something like eggs?

Seeded DNA might account for similar genetic structures or biochemistry,...

Yeah, the problem with "different" and "similar" is that they're relative terms.

As for naughty Loroi microbes, I must assume that the Loroi had sufficient medical technology and concern for Alex's health to have considered these issues before they cracked him out of his suit.

As discussed above, Alex probably has a little less to worry about than the Loroi. But the existence of effective therapeutics doesn't mean you'd want to take them frequently.

[Tamri]

All this is interesting and correct, but there are several BUTs.

Firstly, Loroi are not terrestrial organisms.

Secondly, they are not a naturally developed species, but appeared as a result of a bioengineering project.

This leads to a few tweaks to your bed sheet above:

1) The fact that Loroi blood is based on copper does not equate them with earthly organisms with a similar property. Terrestrial molluscs exist in the terrestrial biosphere, eat terrestrial life and shit with the corresponding secretions.

He is terrestrial organisms, it's just that oxygen in their bloodstream is carried by a cell based on copper, not iron.

Loroi, in turn, live in the biosphere, in the overwhelming majority built on a different biochemistry. There are no terrestrial bacteria there. There are no earthly protozoa. There are no terrestrial plants and certainly no terrestrial animals.

Yes, humans are obviously able (to a limited extent) to eat food based on the biochemistry native to Loroi, but this is the essence of digestion - to disassemble what has entered the gastrointestinal tract into the simplest and most assimilable compounds, release them into the bloodstream, and then remove waste from the body.

Most of the microflora that the human body carries will have similar problems.

First of all, terrestrial viruses are absolutely safe for loroi. Because viruses can only interact with certain types of cell membranes and intracellular mechanisms ... which, for obvious reasons, you can hardly find in Loroi.

It will be more difficult with bacteria and other things that perceive the environment primarily as a source of food, but in general they will have problems similar to Alex's problems when trying to eat loroi products - they simply cannot eat everything and will be able to digest even less.

Well, the most controversial situation with fungi. For them, the environment is primarily a substrate, they develop on it, but their cycle is more autonomous. And the products of their vital activity can easily turn out to be very unpleasant for the loroi organisms.

However, as a space civilization that has successfully populated many planets and successfully contacts with other intelligent species, both with Liron's biochemistry, and with a different one, the loroi probably have an idea about these problems and know how to deal with them ... otherwise all of the above would simply be did not have.

2) The fact that loroi is a product of bioengineering, and not evolution, also has a number of nuances.

First, there is no "common ancestor".
300k years ago, humans in their modern form did not yet exist as a species. And the hominids who lived in those days were very remotely similar to modern humans, to say that the loroi was "copied" from humans.

By the way, there may well be a similar story with the "prototypes" of Barsam and Neridi - at the time of their creation, the modern species simply did not exist in, well, the modern form.

Which raises the next question, how did Liron so accurately guess the appearance of the species that appeared, in the case of people, 150k years after the creation of the "heirs", but we are not talking about that now.

Secondly, since loroi and other types of Soya-Liron groups were created artificially, their creators probably knew about all the "pitfalls", some of which you raised in your thread. And it is likely that they have introduced mechanisms and algorithms into their creations that allow them to effectively deal with these problems.

Which?

We do not know. And if I were Jim, I wouldn't go into such questions. Trying to explain the structure of a hyperdrive in conventionally "hard" fiction has never been a good idea, even if you are fluent in the topic, which is unlikely.

There should be a hyperdrive, but let the reader figure out the subtleties of its device.

[CrimsonFALKE]

Wiafu question time took longer than expected. I guess if you don't want kids a lorori wife is for you. In all it would be nice to have a psychic connection to a woman while penetrating her at the same time.

[Keklas Rekobah]

• Speculation: Terrans and the Soya-Loroi group may be able to trace their ancestry back to the same template, much like humans and apes have a common ancestor without having descended/evolved one from the other.

• Imagine meeting a woman who knows exactly what you are thinking at all times, possibly even before you become aware of your own thoughts.  No more of those little white lies men learn to tell just to keep the peace.  That would drive you nuts, right?  Now image that woman being bikini-model attractive and knowing the thoughts of every man within a 100-meter radius.  That would drive her nuts!  No wonder male Loroi and female Loroi live separately.

[gaerzi]

Is there Word of God on that somewhere? Not saying it isn't so, I just took the opposite implication.

Despite their outward similarity, Loroi and humans are very different biochemically and genetically.

What does "very different genetically" means, exactly? Knowing that if you take just about any multicellular organism on Earth, chances are that we share more than half of our genetic code with it. The stats I've seen are: human and chimpanzee: 99%; human and cat: 90%, human and banana: 60%. Keep in mind that the last example is not even an animal, that means that to go back to the common ancestor of humans and bananas, you need to go through the phylogenetic tree aaaaaall the way back to the first eukaryotes -- and we still have more genetic similarities than differences!

If the Loroi were derived from humans, they would not be described as being "very different genetically".

I mean, if you're going to engineer a new species from scratch, why then would you also go through the effort of making it physically suspiciously similar to an existing species?

We do not know their motives. It's not just humans, we know they went and imitated other species, as we have the Barsam and the Nibiren. We can only extrapolate that the Neridi are also the imitation of another native species, one that might be extinct now, or that remains undiscovered. But for all we know, it could have been art.


The human shape is really not appropriate for a sculpture. Just look at this: the arms broke off. Surely, an intelligent sculptor would choose better designs to carve from stone, right?

Ultimately, the motivation of the Soia-Liron doesn't matter. They're gone. And we know the real reason is an out-of-universe one since it's a work of fiction and it explores the scenario of humanity encountering an extraterrestrial species that is both very alien and very similar to us. (Plus the whole deal of the galactic war and getting stuck between the two enemy empires that both largely outmatch us.)