Grrl Power #759 - Patreon 2x
Added 2019-08-05 10:05:59 +0000 UTCThanks so much for your support!
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Comments
How do you know you have a sci-fi audience? See thread.
Grimfox
2019-08-09 02:43:09 +0000 UTCI want to contribute another bit of conjecture for the "humanoid is common" argument. Heinlein once said, "Man is an unspecialized animal. His body, except for its enormous brain case, is primitive. He can't dig; he can't run very fast; he can't fly. But he can eat anything and he can stay alive where a goat would starve, a lizard would fry, a bird freeze. Instead of special adaptations he has general adaptability." What if Earth is rare in that it has both intelligent indigenous life and a truly spectacular range of biomes? Most life-bearing planets are dominated by a particular biome, and the life that evolves there — including intelligent life — has extreme difficulty surviving in biomes noticeably different from its origin. If a race from the equivalent of sub-Saharan Africa tried to colonize the Urals, it would be as much of an undertaking as humans colonizing the Antarctic. Ergo, humans are the equivalent of an invasive species. Someone snaps up ten thousand naked apes for unskilled labor - digging up gold on space!Alaska or picking cotton in space!Georgia - and after they supply their demands, they abandon them with blankets, hatchets, maybe a herd. Ten thousand years later, you've got another branch of Humaniti(Marc Miller's Traveller RPG term).
Nicholas Perrett
2019-08-06 03:28:55 +0000 UTCOn that note, one might ask why spiders and flies have so daggon many eyes, then. The answer is, they have a plethora of individually crap eyes which can't move and can't focus. As I understand it, popular media depictions of the world in fly vision seriously miss that point, showing instead how they'd see if they had good vision in each eye. I mean, pretty much everybody knows about their mosaic-effect vision, but most of the depictions I've seen suggest they have great focused vision out of every facet. They don't have great focused vision out of any of the facets. I'd guess their vision is lousy enough we probably wouldn't recognize what they see as the same picture, however. All of that said, though, from an evolutionary perspective, we have to compare that eye to the eye that came before it in that evolutionary path. Those eyes lack the focus, the ability to move the eye within its socket, and the facets. While there were many ways those eyes could have been improved, facets were one of them, and that's what happened. Disclaimer: I've just heard from people who have heard from people who are in the position to know. But it seems to make sense to me, especially from the perspective of wondering why flies can't figure out how to leave the house via the open portion of a partially open window when someone's trying to shoo them out.
Some Ed
2019-08-06 03:01:59 +0000 UTCThranx, anyone?
AlpineBob
2019-08-05 20:06:24 +0000 UTCTentacles are efficient in aquatic or other near neutral buoyancy environments. They don't work very well as legs on land, compared to load bearing skeletal structures, internal or external.
Louis Richards
2019-08-05 18:47:10 +0000 UTCHonestly, good reasoning, though there is a good counterargument: Humanoid forms are optimized for an earthlike climate. For sentient species that live in water (for example) there's no need to be humanoid. And of course, it's possible for sentience in a society without the capability for using tools (so four-legged), though I'm not sure how evolutionary advantageous that would be...? I spend way too much time trying to create alien species, so yeah, there's a lot of problems with trying other forms that humanoid just solves. Wouldn't surprise me if it did turn out to be the most advantageous one for most land-based, non-high gravity species.
Leo Once3333
2019-08-05 15:06:34 +0000 UTCTrue, but I think she's going for the Cliff's notes version and sadly more people understand calories than nutrients.
PSadlon
2019-08-05 14:07:01 +0000 UTCTentacles are also efficient. All tentacles can be feet, arms, or penises. Quite ambidextrous if I do say so myself. Though if you look up how octopi mate... The possibility of losing a limb or being eaten is not sexy to me. Though if you have ever heard of Vore apperently it's popular enough to be a catagory on some cites right alongside more normal categories like big boobs. If you are into Scifi cannibalism then you have your own subculture and now I know what to fear and how to find you Jeffrey Dahmers out there.
maxM@x
2019-08-05 13:58:46 +0000 UTCShould be "requires nutrients to grow" Calories only provide energy, not building blocks.
Nematrec
2019-08-05 11:42:18 +0000 UTCSo I wonder if that means Dabblers extra 2 arms are a post-evolutionary addition? Or just a race that boinks their food out of you wants to make sure you're not getting away>?
Justaguy
2019-08-05 11:01:56 +0000 UTCas i understand it, the ONLY thing that makes you able to judge distance better is WIDER set eyes - that's why battleships in the pre-radar days had huge rangefinders with "eyes" that were 20+ feet apart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence_rangefinder
Sardines are us
2019-08-05 11:00:23 +0000 UTCInteresting take. Nicely reasoned - especially the diminishing returns concept.
Rens
2019-08-05 10:24:26 +0000 UTCAlthough Lord Slaanesh definitely approves of artisanal flairs that are compatible with various orifices.
Rens
2019-08-05 10:22:41 +0000 UTCLord Slaanesh suggests Artisinal Flair, but you don't have to get more pieces, I mean, its up to you, really.
Michael Obert
2019-08-05 10:18:33 +0000 UTC
