Are Loroi Women Better Than Human Women?

[Arioch]

You can tweak the parameters of a setting any way to want to get a situation you prefer, but I think some concepts just make basic sense.

Automated small craft that are either expendable or can frequently return to a mothership for resupply and repair can work fine, but a large ship that needs to stay away from base for months at a time is going to need regular maintenance, especially if it is going to be in combat. There's a reason why today we have drone aircraft and drone torpedoes and "suicide boats," but not drone frigates or cruisers. Even an ultra-tech "living" ship with self-repair capability will be more survivable if it has workers on board to maintain, repair and optimize it. Imagine if each human soldier had a crew of tiny doctors inside patching things up and tuning your heart rate and hormone levels to fit the situation... that would be a significant advantage.

You can say "put a crew of robots on board" but that's still a crew. And it presupposes that you have autonomous robots that are as capable and flexible as a human crew would be.

[Bamax]

You can tweak the parameters of a setting any way to want to get a situation you prefer, but I think some concepts just make basic sense.

Automated small craft that are either expendable or can frequently return to a mothership for resupply and repair can work fine, but a large ship that needs to stay away from base for months at a time is going to need regular maintenance, especially if it is going to be in combat. There's a reason why today we have drone aircraft and drone torpedoes and "suicide boats," but not drone frigates or cruisers. Even an ultra-tech "living" ship with self-repair capability will be more survivable if it has workers on board to maintain, repair and optimize it. Imagine if each human soldier had a crew of tiny doctors inside patching things up and tuning your heart rate and hormone levels to fit the situation... that would be a significant advantage.

You can say "put a crew of robots on board" but that's still a crew. And it presupposes that you have autonomous robots that are as capable and flexible as a human crew would be.

I actually don't encourage smart robot crews in a setting. If you got smart sentient robot crew you may as well have flesh and blood since the loss is the same... almost anyway.

But you are correct in assuming tjat my drone battleships would not be really focused on self repair or maintenance nearly as much as a crewed ship.

As for the human body having a crew... it kind of already does (immune system cells and body parts)... only they get more incompetent with age and are destined to fail at some point if not totally replacex.

[Arent]

Artificial gestation is a lot more difficult than artificial conception. The reproductive system of a sophisticated creature that gives live birth like a human is a very complex machine... the easiest way to replicate it is with another biological system, and that introduces all kinds of additional potential problems (not the least of which are ethical). I'm not sure that a mechanical womb would be a practical thing even at TL10.

One of the reasons that the Umiak can monkey around with their reproductive systems so freely is that they're egg layers; they don't give live birth and so don't need surrogate mothers or womb alternatives.

The reason I wrote that was because someone mentioned Loroi have to compete for limited males. And it would be obvious that two females could just take their skin cells and create a child from them. The same is true for men.

There will be a point where competition for spouses will still be there for cultural & fun reason, but not truly necessary.

Concerning gestation, we're slowly getting the hang of it, this will definitely be possible in the future. Including growing teeth, simple organs like liver or addressing certain aspects of aging.

[QuakeIV]

Well, 'just use skin cells lmao' implies that all that is needed is DNA, which is not the case. The egg cell has a whole lot of work to do to set conditions and properly kick off the process so that you get an actual human instead of a teratoma or whatever. Not that it would necessarily be impossible, but it would be a ton of work to figure that out.

[Urist]

The reason I wrote that was because someone mentioned Loroi have to compete for limited males.

Loroi females don't compete for 'limited' males. Females are granted the privilege of an 'encounter' every now and then, as a reward for her accomplishment. They don't pair-bond and take the male in question 'out of the pool.'

This means that the small number of loroi males is in no way a limiting factor on population growth (without the artificial restrictions on access, done specifically to *reduce* population growth rates). A single loroi male can keep a *very* large number of females 'satisfied' at the same time.

IIRC Arioch has said that most 'encounters' take the form of several meetings spread out over ~1 month, so let's assume 4 days worth of contact. That's ~365/4 = ~90 females per year per male. Since their actual population ratio is 1:7 male:female, that's literally an order of magnitude greater male 'capacity' than would actually be required to utterly maximize population growth rate.

Of course, a growth rate of ~90%/year is... uh... "impractical" to say the least, so the actual limiting factor to loroi population expansion is going to be childcare resources (nurses, teachers, schools, nurseries, etc.).

Essentially, I'm not saying that the Loroi don't *have* the technological capacity to induce this sort of artificial gestation, but rather that it would be completely superfluous to the goals you listed. It may see use for the occasional loroi warrior who suffers some *major* injury that prevents her from conceiving naturally, but who still has earned enough status that she is *expected* to produce a child.

[SaintofM]

My two cents,

Despite all Loroi have going for them human ladies beat them in one clear respect. They can reproduce a baby, whereas a man cannot ever make a baby with a Loroi woman.

Beyond all that and the telepathy aspect, everything else is cultural.

All Loroi females unless I am mistaken do what amounts to being a girl scout mixed with Survivor as basic pre-adult education.

What that means is that in general your average Loroi female is far more scrappy and more likely to be able to not only compete with but even win against human males (also as strong as males for their weight).

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8FwNpkQrsX4

So ultimately if you want a woman who is just as capable and strong as a guy but STILL a woman, get a Loroi. And accept the fact you will have to adopt if you want kids.

Alot of what women do in our species is also "Cultural." There are some theories the Scythians were the inspiration for the Amazons in Greek Legend, and Mongol women were often as good with bows as their male counter parts. Women samurai were expected to learn the men's work of their class like all the other classes, with the Long Bow and the Naginata considered perfect for womanly to use (one is a long bow that took longbow pulling arm to use, and the other is a big ol' blade on a stick that cuts men like were made of butter). There is even some evidence for Viking Sheild Maidens with some bones of a warrior that are adult but are so small compared to a man's of the era, that some historians believe they came from a woman.

Even when they took more traditional roles, they still had to have alot of strength of will and body. Women in ancient Holy Land were the ones responsible for getting the water, which lets face it, is several gallons/liters to care for the animals and family. Quite a bit of weight to hoist up from the well. Women in several cultures around the world were in charge of the household business, and did the same work as their husbands. In War, a medieval woman's skill in stitching a tapestry could be used to stitch up a knight that got hit by the business end of a spear.

Then you have women throughout history that broke the molds of their time. Just Look up Molley Hatchet and tell me why someone hasn't done enough movies about her. And Anny Get Your Gun was based on someone.

Yes, men are bigger, stronger, and have better focus once they entered the zone, but women also multi task better, have a broader spectrum of colors they can see and probably could use to their advantage, and have a higher pain tolerance (Period Pains are on par with having a heart attack or kidney stones and still told to suck it up once a month while men going through the same are given tender care).

I also have to wonder what else is different from the blues than us pinks. They have a lower body temperature for one. But can they see in other light spectrums say like a bird can see ultra violet? Do they have a rottweiler's bite force so hard shelled foods are not a problem for them?

They mate largely for reproduction, so are they Asexual, meaning they don't get anything out of sex like the heterosexual, and the various letters in the Alphabet Mafia that do get something out of it?

Or is this going to be like hooking up with a Klingon and a Broken Colar bone on the wedding night is both expected and considered a sign of good luck?


On Artificial Gestation:
Some thought to go on. I figure it would have to be more complicated. Alot goes into forming a human as is, with cells forming, chemicals deciding if your stay the slate it starts with of if you develop a different kind of fun bits, your ability to develop a sense of self including sexual identity long after that. And this is assuming your DNA doesn't have any quirks in it that say make you have an extra digit on your hand. So test tube babies would have to be something with lots of trial and error, and usually for a good reason. One of the Gundam Wing prequel manga has there's done because starting families for a long time in the space colonies (city sized space stations built to elevate overpopulation on Earth). Same thing with Ergo Proxy, most humans are artificially made in this setting.

Or the culture largely produces their offspring for the purposes of a goal or cast in mind say like the current DC films with Kryptonians, or the League of Votann in 40k.

You could maybe argue that they have the tech, but choose not to use it. But in the emergency of a war for pure survival such considerations simply pale.

The thing is that this sort of genetic manipulation *isn't* useful to the Loroi war effort. They're not losing the war because they lack soldiers; they're lacking *warships*. Massively increasing population growth just leads to either a bunch of extra civilians (minimal help) or a bunch of Soroin sitting around with nothing to do. And if Loroi are anything like Humans, having a bunch of soldiers with nothing but time on their hands is a recipe for trouble...

I can see genetic tampering, only because we do it all the time with our animals and tried and failed multiple times with our species. Most genetic Engineering in plants and animals by us has been selective breeding for traits we like (hence the varieties of dogs we have for instance), or accident (I forget the name of it, but there is a species of Japanese crab that sometimes has a pattern that looks like an angry samurai war mask on their helmets. Superstition says this is the reincarnation of a samurai that lost its life in an epic sea battle in the area, so the crabbers throw the crab back. Thus you have lots of crabs that have shells that look like angry samurai). Today we can be a little more precise thanks to gene mapping, and we can add or subtract traits as we see fit (such as splicing jellyfish DNA to make those glow in the dark fish you see in the pet store). Corporations getting all Cyberpunk dystopia fears aside, we are trying to find ways to treat this without needing to use a retrovirus later in life to say stop hemophial or other genetic disorders that have plauged people. We might also be able to cure food allergies.

Loroi do this already with their cast system. It sounds very much like the Eugenics done by Warhammer 40k's Tau. Outside of the Farsight Enclave, you do not see a mixing of the classes and thus they have their own unique builds and features that goes far beyond normal (Air Cast have hollow bones, Water Cast have different facial muscle to help make different facial expressions in communication). Add the fact they are potentially an artificial species, or one so heavily modified they might as well be, its probably normal for them.

[Arent]

Well, 'just use skin cells lmao' implies that all that is needed is DNA, which is not the case. The egg cell has a whole lot of work to do to set conditions and properly kick off the process so that you get an actual human instead of a teratoma or whatever. Not that it would necessarily be impossible, but it would be a ton of work to figure that out.

This is a science fiction webcomic & relationships/love are interesting, so it doesn't have to be completely realistic & is completely fine as it is.

However, I want to point out that this technology exists already, I can even link you the paper.

[Arent]

The reason I wrote that was because someone mentioned Loroi have to compete for limited males.

Loroi females don't compete for 'limited' males. Females are granted the privilege of an 'encounter' every now and then, as a reward for her accomplishment.

If this "privilege" is purely for fun & cultural reasons, it might make sense. But if this privilege is meant to hinder Loroi females of lesser status to have children, they would have to be actively punished if they just use artificial means.

[Urist]

I would advise one to be cautious not to conflate "technology" with "practice." There are a great many things that can be performed in a laboratory environment or on paper, but have yet to be done in practical cases or scales. A great deal of genetic-alteration technology falls into this category, and there is genuinely no way of knowing how much closer to 'practical' these technologies may become in the next few centuries.

As for how the Loroi handle things, in peacetime it was pretty much restricted to loroi of high social status or great accomplishment. Since the Umiak war kicked off, they've broadened that category to pretty much "any warrior who passes her diral test gets a roll in the hay," and are sitting right at the practical limit for population growth (child-rearing/educating, as noted above). So under those circumstances, artificial reproduction would end up being quite heavily regulated.

[QuakeIV]

Well, 'just use skin cells lmao' implies that all that is needed is DNA, which is not the case. The egg cell has a whole lot of work to do to set conditions and properly kick off the process so that you get an actual human instead of a teratoma or whatever. Not that it would necessarily be impossible, but it would be a ton of work to figure that out.

This is a science fiction webcomic & relationships/love are interesting, so it doesn't have to be completely realistic & is completely fine as it is.

However, I want to point out that this technology exists already, I can even link you the paper.

False, they injected a nucleus into a normal sheep egg by literally jabbjng a tiny needle into a cell and sucking it out, and then injecting it into an egg in an attempt to fertilize it (may have entailed removing the nucleus from the egg first as well I dont remember). There are other cloned animals but I shall focus on dolly the sheep. Anyways, this process actually had a very high failure rate and aside from proving it’s technically possible to produce a sheep from the nucleus of a already-differentiated cell there isn’t much of a point because it’s a waste of eggs compared to just using sperm (due to said high failure rate). There is also some reason to think the dna missed out on some intermediate processing stage that would have made it fully suitable for use in a new born sheep (telomeres were short for instance). There was also no combination of dna from two partners, it was just a straight clone. There is furthermore no capability to synthetically form an egg from skin cells nor are we anywhere close to being able to do that.

Therefore my statement basically stands that we are nowhere near to accomplishing that at this time. It would in fact be total sci fi to reproduce from just skin cells. It is (as I said) probably not impossible but it would for sure be very complicated.

[Arent]

It would in fact be total sci fi to reproduce from just skin cells. It is (as I said) probably not impossible but it would for sure be very complicated.

I'm happy that you are just as much in awe of mankind's ingenuity as I am

This was done in japan a few years ago, they reprogrammed skin cells of male mice to eggs and produced healthy, fertile offspring. This is in fact an astonishing and very important breakthrough.

As I said, if you don't believe me, I can link you the paper.

[QuakeIV]

That’s interesting, you can signal a stem cell to turn into an egg and it will just do it. Egg cells are pretty complicated (amongst other things they are massive compared to normal cells, and filled with a bunch of additional machinery, at least in humans) so I mistakenly assumed the cells needed some kind of help to do that. Maybe they do in humans, I dunno. Meh fair enough, sometimes I’m mistaken.

[Arent]

That’s interesting, you can signal a stem cell to turn into an egg and it will just do it. Egg cells are pretty complicated (amongst other things they are massive compared to normal cells, and filled with a bunch of additional machinery, at least in humans) so I mistakenly assumed the cells needed some kind of help to do that. Maybe they do in humans, I dunno. Meh fair enough, sometimes I’m mistaken.

I couldn't believe it when I first heard it as well. They had a very clever step when they sorted cells for loss of the y chromosome. This rarely happens & is crucial.

[MBehave]

Loroi are to a human view point, cold blooded.
27c, would feel cold and slimely to kiss/touch/penetrate.
Base thermal conductivity of human flesh is 0.5-1W(m-K), but areas with high blood flow, such as sexual organs act just like "heat pipes" in a computer, and you can see effective conduction above that of say stainless steel.
Imagine touching stainless steel at 27c that never warms up because the Loroi blood flow is constantly transferring the heat away.
Sex would be a rather horrible experience for the human.
On the other hand, the extra heat from the human may or may not be uncomfortable for the Loroi.

Of course, the lore could always state that when a Loroi is sexually excited their body temp rises to say 38c or some such... but Outsiders isn't a porno so no need

[Arioch]

While cooler than human body temperature, Loroi body temperature is well above room temperature, and so it would not feel "cold" to the human touch. I think the difference would be noticeable; other humans are noticeably warm when we touch them, since we are used to touching room temperature objects all the time. Loroi would be slightly less warm.

Humans use a variety of sex toys... quite a variety for both genders... none of which I'm aware of are heated. Their being at a lower temperature than our body temperature does not seem to present a problem.

[Snoofman]

…

Humans use a variety of sex toys... quite a variety for both genders... none of which I'm aware of are heated. Their being at a lower temperature than our body temperature does not seem to present a problem.

Bow chicka honk honk

[MBehave]

Some sex toys are made out of metal... they are not popular, for a reason.

The average human does not find 27c flesh enjoyable.
This isn't my opinion, its a fact, with studies, look up sexual turn offs studies have found to be common.

Cold hands is common turn off for both men and women.
Coldest a humans hands or feet should ever get unless sick or just come inside from subzero temps/wet is 28c.
Loroi entire body is colder then the average person who has cold hands which a majority of humans find a turn off.

The average human does not like it when its just 28c hands, while the Loroi entire body is colder then 28c.

While cooler than human body temperature, Loroi body temperature is well above room temperature, and so it would not feel "cold" to the human touch. I think the difference would be noticeable; other humans are noticeably warm when we touch them, since we are used to touching room temperature objects all the time. Loroi would be slightly less warm.

Humans use a variety of sex toys... quite a variety for both genders... none of which I'm aware of are heated. Their being at a lower temperature than our body temperature does not seem to present a problem.

[Demarquis]

"Humans use a variety of sex toys... quite a variety for both genders... none of which I'm aware of are heated."

Actually some of them are, though texture seems to matter more than temperature.

[Urist]

Honestly, I suspect that the sort of person (either human or loroi) who'd be interested in literally sleeping with an alien would be the sort of person who wouldn't be turned off by something like a body temperature difference.

[Said2k]

Honestly, I suspect that the sort of person (either human or loroi) who'd be interested in literally sleeping with an alien would be the sort of person who wouldn't be turned off by something like a body temperature difference.

they're not aliens, they're short humans with pointy ears and blue skin. Basically the same as far as the human brain is concerned except for the body temperature.