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Darth Fluffy

Comic for Monday, November 21, 2022

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Comic for Monday, November 21, 2022

Big reveals, Noah as a seyunolu with evident antennae, and his normally covered up left eye is a uryuom eye. So, why can't he shape shift it to hide it? How has just hair hidden it so effectively? Even when running or playing sports?

In the linked comic where he talks to Raven, he says he never knew his mom, so I'm guessing the flashback is with his dad.

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Show of hands: how many people aren't surprised? *raises hand*

Noah's left eye has been seen before, as a normal human eye, so presumably he learned eventually. Or his emotions are affecting his shapeshifting. Or magic glamour. Or something.

Also, is it just me, or are there some parallels here between Uryuom/Seyunolu antennae sensing stuff and autism? What with the whole 'can't handle crowds and everything is loud' thing. Or am I misinterpreting things?

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4 hours ago, Zorua said:

Also, is it just me, or are there some parallels here between Uryuom/Seyunolu antennae sensing stuff and autism? What with the whole 'can't handle crowds and everything is loud' thing. Or am I misinterpreting things?

Interesting thought. So much reveal here. Has Grace had these problems? Or has she somehow grown out of them?

 

Edited by Amiable Dorsai

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5 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

How has just hair hidden it so effectively? Even when running or playing sports?

Perhaps it just takes some conscious control. Which Noah has a lot of, normally. The hair may be just a second layer of protection, for when he forgets, or his emotions are too raw for him to maintain the necessary concentration.

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It's interesting that neither Elliot nor Justin noticed the similarity between Noah's "hair" and Grace's antenna . I wonder if Ellen would make the connection? Her Second Life memories include a very intimate connection with a seyunolo who looks a lot like Noah.

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40 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Noah might benefit from a TF beam zap.

Given that his 2nd eye has been seen by Elliot and Elliot didn't think it weird, I suspect that Noah has been zapped by a TF gun,

 

1 hour ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

Has Grace had these problems?

Yeah, She's commented on "too many senses" about when her antenna are out before, several times.

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6 hours ago, Zorua said:

Show of hands: how many people aren't surprised? *raises hand*

Yeah, I seem to remember a lot of people speculating on Noah's ponytail being antennae.

 

Quote

Also, is it just me, or are there some parallels here between Uryuom/Seyunolu antennae sensing stuff and autism? What with the whole 'can't handle crowds and everything is loud' thing. Or am I misinterpreting things?

As someone with autism who has experienced degrees of sensory overload, I can see that.

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The information in this page was so little of a surprise to me that for a moment after reading the page I wondered why we needed this page. (Mind you, it was neat to see one of Noah's biological parents*, and that his left eye looks like a Uryuom eye.**) Then I remembered that recently Dan had mentioned he would be revealing something he'd known for years but had forgotten to reveal, which made me realize Dan never actually said before that Noah was a seyunolu or that he had antenna and an unusual eye; I had forgotten that until now that was just speculation that I had assumed to be true.

* I initially assumed it was his mother, until Darth Fluffy pointed out that Noah never knew his mother. (I rarely follow the links under the comics, and I didn't remember that detail.) The fact that Noah's father also looked rather feminine certainly makes his comments about human assumptions about gender presentation hit harder...

** I had forgotten until Zorua pointed it out that we've seen Noah's left eye before and it looked human. And yet, Noah continues to hide it. I wonder if that's just habit, or if the method of disguise is unreliable? (My guess: it's an illusion spell cast by Raven, and it sometimes wears off.)

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2 hours ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

It's interesting that neither Elliot nor Justin noticed the similarity between Noah's "hair" and Grace's antenna . I wonder if Ellen would make the connection? Her Second Life memories include a very intimate connection with a seyunolo who looks a lot like Noah.

It is interesting that Grace did not notice, that time that Noah (in his superhero form) dropped into Greg's dojo.

 

7 hours ago, Zorua said:

Show of hands: how many people aren't surprised? *raises hand*

Noah's left eye has been seen before, as a normal human eye, so presumably he learned eventually. Or his emotions are affecting his shapeshifting. Or magic glamour. Or something.

Also, is it just me, or are there some parallels here between Uryuom/Seyunolu antennae sensing stuff and autism? What with the whole 'can't handle crowds and everything is loud' thing. Or am I misinterpreting things?

I was particularly surprised by his uryuom eye. It's is an interesting plot device in a fictional setting; tossing aside all of the other potential objections, I see issues with this in any real setting. The eye is complex and responds to a few extremely narrow bands of EM radiation. Ours happen to operate in the few narrow 'windows' in our atmospheric mix that have nearly 100%  transmission; the rest of the spectrum varies between perpetual fog to fully opaque. We have a good sample of terrestrial eye at our disposal, and even with  the transmissibility windows, critters eyes vary.

Given that uryuoms can breathe our air, we might expect the bands their eyes operate in to be similar. (That they can breathe our atmosphere with no ill effect is also an issue, but seems necessary for the tone of the comic. Again, you don't even have to leave the earth to find counterexamples; most fish do not do well out of water. A few are amphibious.) Clearly, in the comic, uryuom eyes are different. To expect them to function the same does not make sense. So, exactly what signals is Noah's seyunolu brain combining to form images? You might expect that one of the things he wouldn't do is combine the information from two eyes to have a good depth perception; there are people with nominally normal vision that have issues with this; yet he plays basket ball.

Which his antennae might facilitate, but I'm under the impression that tied in a pony tail, they do not function 'normally'. Normal for seyunolu.

The uryuom eyes are weird in other ways. The relatively huge size implies gather in much light, which in turn implies either they are nocturnal or they come from a relatively dark world. Either should mean a different mix of wavelengths. Smaller, redder stars are more common than larger stars that are further from red, so there is a fair chance they are from a world orbiting a red dwarf, and see in a lower set of bands.

Or, perhaps their eyes are just that different. Maybe they started as a segmented composite eye, such as insects have, that merged over time, or may not have merged under the surface. They seem to lack a pupil, that also being problematic; regulating incoming light is a generally necessary function, although not all critters seem to do that (sea life and small invertebrates).  They could just have a dark sclera and the pupil is hard to see. Their eye could be something bizarre from our perspective, like an interferometer eye.

Yes, definitely was not expecting two different kinds of eyes.

FWIW, many snakes have what are essentially two sets of eyes, normal ones and IR ones. Pit vipers can strike using the IR ones alone. Spiders have two main eyes and several auxiliary eyes. I have never seen an explanation of how the extras benefit them, but you can be sure if they are there, there is a reason. Perhaps spotting transitions of shadows warns of overflight of birds, and the spider might take a defensive action, freeze or run to a corner?

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1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

The eye is complex and responds to a few extremely narrow bands of EM radiation. Ours happen to operate in the few narrow 'windows' in our atmospheric mix that have nearly 100%  transmission; the rest of the spectrum varies between perpetual fog to fully opaque. We have a good sample of terrestrial eye at our disposal, and even with  the transmissibility windows, critters eyes vary.

Also including the peak of a G2 type star's emission curve, so there's plenty of signal (too much, sometimes, hence the need for an iris). Your point about alien eye perhaps having wildly different structures is a good one. Thinking too hard about human-alien hybrids hurts my brain.

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23 minutes ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

Thinking too hard about human-alien hybrids hurts my brain.

Copious quantities of various alcoholic beverages can alleviate this condition. This is know as 'The Power of Positive Drinking'.

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1 hour ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

Thinking too hard about human-alien hybrids hurts my brain.

Earth Men can not produce offspring with Macaques, Mastodons, Mynah Birds, Mosquitoes, Mantas, Mosses, Measles, or Maple Trees.  Although some have tried.

If, as expected, Earth Men and all these other life forms are descended from a single evolutionary ancestor, then the Men would be far more genetically compatible with these than with any life form that developed from an ancient ancestor on another planet.

Therefore, without god level magic and / or technology (or an almost infinitely improbable intermediate ancestor) there should be no way for Men to reproduce with a life form not native to Earth.

Thus, we need to invoke the Alienthropic Principle.  An Alien-Human hybrid can only exist on a world where an Alien-Human hybrid can exist.

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Regarding humans being dependent on a visual dichotomy to ascertain sex, there are at least two driving factors that do not apply to Uryuoms (besides Uryuoms themselves lacking fixed sexual anatomy). On the surface level, we deliberately conceal our sexual anatomy because of the stigma against out-of-wedlock mating, thus we depend on non-anatomical differences to clue us in. More deeply, humans are extremely dependent on vision to identify anything, since so many things do not emit sounds or scents that we are capable of detecting, and it is foolish to try to touch something without knowing beforehand whether it is dangerous. Lacking Uryuoms’ radar-like antennae-based sensing, we only know what we can see.

 

3 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Spiders have two main eyes and several auxiliary eyes. I have never seen an explanation of how the extras benefit them, but you can be sure if they are there, there is a reason. Perhaps spotting transitions of shadows warns of overflight of birds, and the spider might take a defensive action, freeze or run to a corner?

Arachnids have no neck, and thus must reposition their entire bodies in order to reorient their eyes. This puts selective pressure on them to be able to see in as many directions as possible without having to move their eyes. If you had to move your feet in order to see behind yourself at all, then you would need eyes in the back of your head as well.

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1 hour ago, ijuin said:

Regarding humans being dependent on a visual dichotomy to ascertain sex, there are at least two driving factors that do not apply to Uryuoms (besides Uryuoms themselves lacking fixed sexual anatomy). On the surface level, we deliberately conceal our sexual anatomy because of the stigma against out-of-wedlock mating, thus we depend on non-anatomical differences to clue us in. More deeply, humans are extremely dependent on vision to identify anything, since so many things do not emit sounds or scents that we are capable of detecting, and it is foolish to try to touch something without knowing beforehand whether it is dangerous. Lacking Uryuoms’ radar-like antennae-based sensing, we only know what we can see.

Presumably, we conceal our sexual anatomy due to deep rooted biological stigmas based on females optimizing mate selection for the healthiest offspring. I don't know how that specifically works in our case, but it is overwhelmingly evident that much evolutionary effort goes into the mate selection process; in fact ours looks relatively simpler. Subconscious smell detection appears to have a lot to do with our mating as well, and sound is not excluded; have you never been turned off by someone's voice?

Uryuom antennae are presumably based on magic. If they were actual EM antennae, their resolution would be poor, inverse of wavelength and few receptors. If they were like insect antennae, they would have other senses. Cupped ears that can be rotated are the best analog. Given that uryuoms have intrinsic magic, it is not unlikely that detecting the presence of magic would evolve. 

 

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Earth Men can not produce offspring with Macaques, Mastodons, Mynah Birds, Mosquitoes, Mantas, Mosses, Measles, or Maple Trees.  Although some have tried.

I was out walking in a state park this past weekend, crossed paths with a furry gathering. Not what you mean ...

 

2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Thus, we need to invoke the Alienthropic Principle.  An Alien-Human hybrid can only exist on a world where an Alien-Human hybrid can exist.

Yet that is the go-to for sci-fi aliens in film and broadcast media. Until recently, there weren't very good alternatives. There were humans in masks and suits, overly stiff props, animation, stop motion, and puppets.

CGI brings better aliens to the table, but it isn't cheap.

 

2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

If, as expected, Earth Men and all these other life forms are descended from a single evolutionary ancestor, then the Men would be far more genetically compatible with these than with any life form that developed from an ancient ancestor on another planet.

Therefore, without god level magic and / or technology (or an almost infinitely improbable intermediate ancestor) there should be no way for Men to reproduce with a life form not native to Earth.

Star Trek attempted to justify why everyone looked vaguely human with that, but is still comes off as bogus; having bacteria in common with Tau Ceti does not suggest we can mate with their pseudo-lizards.

And don't get me started on "Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away". If you are "Long, long ago, and far, far away" on an intergalactic scale, we will never meet. You may as well be in another universe.

 

Mel Brooks got it right, though. "Use the farce!"

 

Superduperman got it very wrong, being born under a red sun, then moving to a yellow sun would likely be lethal.

Mild super strength from being born on a high g world would make sense. but it shouldn't allow you to fly.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Therefore, without god level magic and / or technology (or an almost infinitely improbable intermediate ancestor) there should be no way for Men to reproduce with a life form not native to Earth.

Not really god level magic, assuming you have "magic" that allows you to tweak DNA sources like Uryuom seem to have. 

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2 hours ago, mlooney said:

Not really god level magic, assuming you have "magic" that allows you to tweak DNA sources like Uryuom seem to have. 

Even if you literally change your DNA, or replaced it wholesale, you would not instantly change form. You would begin producing different proteins and such. I suspect the most likely result is you would lack the ones your present form needs, you would have some strange new ones, and the net effect would be toxic.

 

One thing you would not do is repeat the development phase of your existence, your time in the womb, so you should never acquire a new form from your new DNA. Any changes should start as minor changes then develop over time, and should be well integrated with your previous form. I suppose a new genetic code could kick off a transformation of the sort many insects do, forming a pupa and dissolving as larvae then reforming as adults. It takes a while, and we are much larger than insects.

 

Uryuoms do something else. Since there is a default form, they probably retain the base genetics. Maybe they allow for specifically needed new materials, but they'd need an awfully smart device to sort that out.

 

Talk to you later, I'm going to go weave a cocoon.

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