Teeth

[strange_aeons]

I feel much better now.

I've been having some problems with my appetite lately, i.e., it didn't exist. So I'd go for twenty-four hours — or on one memorable occasion, more like sixty — without eating, and then when I started to feel queasy I would eat something, whereupon I would become ill. If I was lucky I might at least enjoy eating it, but more often no. Anyway, yesterday lilairen pointed out to me that this is fairly standard starvation-response, which I suspected, and that one deals with starvation-response much the same way one deals with flu, which I didn't. Clear liquids, then solids when the stomach agrees to play nice. So I had some chicken soup.

In the last two weeks or so that's the only meal I've had that didn't make me sick.

And eating gave me the fortitude to delete the 879 words I had written day before yesterday, because they were all absolute crap and they didn't get any better when I reread them. The 861 words I wrote yesterday are far superior, and they fixed some problems I was having at the end of chapter three, so it's all good.

---

I ran across M.C.A. Hogarth's site a few years ago, bookmarked it, and forgot about it until shaddragon started building Hogarth's creatures in fabric. Then yesterday I spent a perfectly unseemly quantity of time wandering around her site looking at the pretty pictures — I must have found it longer ago than I think, because I recall the art being a lot cruder then — and got to thinking.

Yeah, I know. Shut up.

Hogarth has a race called the Jokka (see more of them here and here), and they're tri-sexed. She calls the sexes 'male', 'female' and 'neuter', so I assume that they aren't triploid — that when they reproduce the genetic material comes from two sources, not three.

No one ever seems to do triploid. The only such creatures I can recall encountering are those glowy things in that art book, and, somewhat more notably, Vonda McIntyre's dreamsnakes. That's what got me thinking, and now I have a species in my head.

What appears to happen is, there are — for want of a better term — males, who drop their genetic information off with members of the third sex, who juggle this information for a bit, add some of their own, and then pass the result on to — also for want — females, who carry the offspring to term. There's some culture right there: if in the Natural Order of Things, males never bump uglies with females, doing so is bound to be taboo in at least some places, if not physically complicated/nominally impossible.

I'm assuming vaguely human sexual practices here, in the sense that sex is used as social glue as well as for purposes of procreation. Which suggests that these creatures are intelligent, social and slippery (see also: dolphins). That, coupled with how they make babies, is all I know about them with any certainty; at the moment I'm, obviously, working on something else, and I'm too close to Hogarth's Jokka, which I find aesthetically pleasing, and never let it be said that my sense of aesthetics doesn't get totally in the way, so I'm trying to back off from the idea a bit for the time being.

Well, mostly. I have indulged in some vague speculation as to their genders (as distinguished from their sexes). Ordinarily one sees, basically, males and females, and then the third sex is sort of neuter and, well, de-sexed (I can't speak for Hogarth's Jokka, as I know nothing about their culture except that there are dresses and pretty fans in it). In this case I think it makes more sense for them to be regarded as sort of, you know, whores, in much the way bisexuals sometimes are in human culture — of course that's a stereotype and probably has fairly little to do with the actual reality. Looking at my list of gender stereotypes I want to inflict upon these people, I guess that would make them the emotional, artistic types, rather than the physically strong, brutish ones or, as I had initially thought they would be, the intellectuals (geek-gendered). It also raises questions of systematic oppression and Controlling the Third-Sex Sex Drive.

Hmm.

Comments

[tiassa]

I seem to remember reading a book ages ago that had a triploid gender - gender One and gender Two combined seed and produced a blastocyst-thing, which they then passed on to gender Three, the only one equipped to actually bear children. Of course, I can't for the life of me remember where I read this and it's going to bother me a lot until I do.

Or maybe I just invented it once but never did anything with it. That's always possible.

My problem is that I can come up with all kinds of neat situations and places and whatnot, but can't come up with anything to do with them. Well, except create places for my D&D group to visit, but that's not all that thrilling.

[kiya]

Stsho have three sexes (gtst, gtste, and gtsto), I believe gtste and gtsto are considered inherently sexed (and thus impolite to show to foreigners) but the gtst-sex seemed to be enthusiastically sexin' up one of the sexed types in Chanur's Legacy, so gtst isn't neuter. When they flip sexes, one of the words is gtstisi, but I don't know the other word. (I know there are two.)

Neuter is gtsta, sort of post-menopausal.

[brooksmoses]

Some random thoughts and questions, which may or may not be thought-provoking in useful ways:

Do the females care which males the bits of genetic information come from, since they never interact with them directly? For that matter, do they even know? (How long does the interim step with the third-sex take?)

This raises bits of thoughts regarding family structure -- do they form stable three-part relationships, or do things tend more towards two-being relationships (with the third-sex normally having to have at least two)? If the latter, is it normal that the third-sex form two stable relationships, or do they tend towards, for lack of a better word, promiscuous? If the former, how much do their respective partners usually know each other?

And there are all sorts of asymmetric possibilities as well; one could imagine a society in which the third-sex tend to form solid monogamous relationships with the females, but have what amount to one-night-stands with the males. Or vice-versa.

Yet another thought is the possibility that the males and females tend to have close platonic relationships, and find a third-sex member when they want to have children. And that, even when they're not trying to have children, they're expected to share rather than finding one on their own.

Tangential to that: what happens if the pregnancy process is interrupted? If the third-sex has genetically successful intercourse with a male, do they then biologically need to have genetically successful intercourse with a female in order not (for example) to get wacked-up hormones? If they intentionally "fake" it (in the sense of making their body think it's had genetically-successful intercourse), does society consider it on par with abortion, or is it simply masturbation? Is the passing of genetic material to the females a one-time thing, such that they have to go back to the male again if that one time fails, or is it something that can be repeated? If it can be repeated, is there any way to tell which male provided the genetic material for the child, short of genetic testing?

What's the window in which they have to have intercourse with the female to result in a child, after having had intercourse with a male? (Do they bear singly, or in litters? Of three, perhaps?) Is this long-term, with the effect that (if it's not a one-time thing) almost any male they've had unprotected intercourse with could be the donor of the genetic material that they give a female? Or short-term, with the effect that things virtually have to be coordinated between all three parties for success? Given that humans, with only one coupling, sometimes require many tries to have successful fertilization, if this is a one-time thing (or multiple but short-term), how does this work when two couplings in succession have to work?

Do the third-sex know if they've been successfully impregnated? How? In times before modern testing proceedures, if a triad seemed to be sterile, who was usually blamed?

For that matter, what constitutes "safe sex" with regards to male / third-sex pairings, aside from issues of stds? Do the third-sex care if they pick up genetic material from a male? Do the females care if the third-sexes that they're consorting with have picked up genetic material from random males? If they do care, what can they do about it?

Beyond this, of course, is the observation that human cultures are not all the same with regards to relationship practices, and so one wouldn't necessarily expect this group of beings to be either; they might have cultures that do things completely differently from the others (and, quite likely, are mutually regarded as immoral as a result).

And, where can I get a new supply of question marks? My computer seems to have almost exhausted its supply!

- Brooks

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

gender One and gender Two combined seed and produced a blastocyst-thing, which they then passed on to gender Three, the only one equipped to actually bear children.

I recall reading an Anne McCaffrey novel with some kind of sentient alien squirrel sort of creatures that did that -- and I blame McCaffrey for perpetuating that horrible sie/hir thing in the book in question. Woman can't seem to do anything right. I think I've run across it elsewhere too, but I can't give citations.

I realize belatedly that I was ambiguous: in my scenario when the female recieves the genetic information of the male and the ... middlesex, she doesn't just gestate the offspring, she adds her own information as well, which is why she gets it in the form of bits of DNA with some incidental cytoplasm and stuff rather than as a zygote.

create places for my D&D group to visit

Oh, don't tempt me. I still have the Lost City and that steampunk setting clamoring for my attention.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

Aha. I'm not sure if you hadn't told me this or if, more likely, you had and I forgot, but thanks.

[tiassa]

I'm fairly certain it wasn't from a McCaffrey novel...which doesn't really do much to narrow it down, but there you have it.

Regarding my D&D group - the game I DM was originally set up to be a once-in-a-while thing, where we could just show up, play for a couple hours, and be done. So, I had them skipping from world to world to "fix things", sort of like Quantum Leap. This meant that, every time we played, I had to make a new world. It wasn't that big of a deal when we only played once every two months, but now it's twice a month and I'm getting tired of having to craft a brand-new world every time we play.

It would be easier if I were lazy and just created a world - no, I have to have the backstory and future story and personal history of every significant NPC and...everything. It's exhausting to do on a regular basis.

[kiya]

Some terrestrial reptiles can (and do) store sperm for up to several years, until they feel like generating eggs.

Seems like it might be relevant to some levels of this.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

Ponderponder, in no particular order, and with this comment broken up because it was so long LiveJournal choked on it.

I've had vague thoughts of the males and females, back before civilization came into vogue, tending to live in different regions, and the third sex....

Oh, fuck it.

And the janitors¹ migrating back and forth, picking up genetic information in the fall and depositing it in the spring. Which would strongly suggest that they can hold on to either the combined information or to a male's sperm for extended periods of time. If it's the former, there's no reason why they wouldn't be able to fertilize a female right away if given sufficient incentive; if the latter, it's possible there's something that prevents them from combining the DNA they've gotten with the DNA they already have for six months, possibly because it ... goes bad otherwise? Because the resulting wossname will develop wrong if it sits around in the janitor for very long? Neither of those makes much sense. Maybe the DNA-juggling causes a release of hormones that in turn cause an overwhelming compulsion to deposit the DNA in question in a female, in which case they'd know, unless they experience false 'pregnancies' (as has been known to happen in certain mammals, except without the quote marks).

I haven't the faintest idea why the males and females would live so far apart, though; I may have to scrap the idea, much though I like the notion of the something-preventing them (though I could hold on to the release-of-hormones/overwhelming-compulsion idea, which is a sufficient booby prize because I like it just as well).

Actually, it could be interesting if, rather than designed (perhaps literally) for the eventuality of a long wait between successful intercourse with a male and a female, janitors were designed for the possibility of it -- and I say 'interesting' because I'm a sadist: imagine the consternation of a modern-day-ish janitor working eighty-hour weeks in preparation for the whole baby thing, only to have zir body decide that a few minutes a day with the female in the equation did not constitute there being a suitable female around and that it would be prudent to wait until conditions became more favorable.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

I haven't a clue as to safe sex or how many offspring they have at a go: I don't know anything about their morphology. Masturbation is bound to exist if given long enough to develop, however, even if arousal is one of those tricky things -- if, to even consider doing anything sexual, they need particular stimuli that can in theory be provided only by another of their kind, someone will figure out how to convincingly fake the stimuli in question. Whether it's considered abortion for a fertilized janitor to masturbate is going to vary wildly by culture, and I get the feeling that these people have a lot of them. Oh dear.

Ditto relationship practices, like you mentioned. And the matter of whether they've been influenced culturally by diploid sophonts (such as humans) is significant: it opens up a whole new world of 'sexes A and B contribute to the offspring, but sex C is just a vessel/intermediary/stimulator' stuff.

There's (random thought) no particular reason why janitors wouldn't be able to engage in recreational sex just like everyone else: presuming their method of fertilizing females is a lot like the human male method, what they actually put into the female contains a lot of glandular secretions and relatively few actual sex cells, and it's possible that they make sex cells even when not properly fertilized but the cells in question aren't good for much.

I think that Back in the Day before that civilization thing I mentioned earlier, presuming they had a Back in the Day, if there was offspring-related bonding at all, it was probably female-janitor pair-bonding -- since the female doesn't even need to meet the male, and 'Okay, I have sex with you, and you have sex with her, and then she has a baby' seems a little complicated for the average paleolithic intelligence; males may have a (probably undeserved) reputation for being unable to commit.

I don't think I've answered all of your questions, but I'm running low on colons, myself. I knew I should have stocked up.

¹

[kiya]

Hum. Let me think about.

I suspect sexual reproduction involving twos developed through simple exchange of nucleic material and such (there's some protist or other that reproduces through fission, but occasionally gets together with another protist of the same species and swaps subsidiary nuclei -- they have two).

So under what circumstances would it be straightforward to evolve as threes? I can see a parasitic thing, where you and me plant our eggs in him, which could go oddly, except if the two are sufficiently related species to interbreed or something. Or you could start with single-celled things which have two subsidiary nuclei, and an urge to swap the other one if you've already swapped the first. I would presume, for a three-parter, a genetic structure that's trilaterally symmetrical.

As to different ranges for the sexes, in some terrestrial species there are different territory-establishing protocols; suppose in this species that's gone to the extreme of having different sexes adapted to slightly different environmental conditions? That way, when the males hit adulthood or whatever, they'll find it too hot, too wet, or whatever, and follow the next janitor migration to Happy Man-Land.

You could develop some neat mythologies with that.

I should keep chewing on the biology and see if I can come up with a good evolutionary path. Perhaps the females started out as neuter-incubators, and their contribution of material influence is belated or mostly environmental?

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

Hee. Happy Man-Land.

I've been leaving the possibility that this species is not naturally-occuring open precisely because ... triploidism? -ity? -occus? ... is so impractical, not just because it's hard to come up with a reasonable way for it to develop in the first place, but because it makes the whole act of conception ludicrously complicated. I could get behind the idea of things with two subsidiary nuclei, though. Hmm.

I have some vague notions about a creation myth involving the feminine earth and the masculine sky, who want each other desperately but cannot consummate their relationship until someone or other creates the rain, a janitor, and the earth gives birth to all sorts of life forms, except that doesn't make sense: males and females don't ordinarily have any particular interest in each other sexually. Maybe they just want some more people around to talk to, but can't make any without help.

[kiya]

Oh! How about having DNA-like-normal, the ladder thing, and a subsidiary nucleus? If you want to do artificially created thingies, the nucleus could be the extra stuff they added. Perhaps DNA from the male and the janitor and the female provides the junior nucleus?

[kiya]

Like mitochondria. Female-line. Only a more significant organelle.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

That is a fucking good idea.

This is why I posted the idea to my livejournal; I don't know what I'd do without you guys.

That would mean that the janitor takes the male's DNA and creates from it a sex cell which implants itself in the female's main-nucleus-free 'egg', and I spell all this out for the purpose of noting that it's interestingly like cloning, actually. Hmm.

I've been pondering what these creatures mate-select for. I think it's the females who are Big And Strong. If the males and females select for pretty (attractively-colored and -plumed, whatever) janitors, it would enforce the painted-jezebel cultural stereotype I'm fiddling with. That means my leftover cultural stereotype is intellectuality; how does one select for a clever male? By his ability to build a pleasing bower in which to boink?

I think I need to know more about their morphology before I start chewing too hard on these questions, actually. Hmm. I wonder if it's safe to do that while I'm still infatuated with the Jokka.

[tiassa]

Just a random thought, but I've heard so many people complaining about how easy it is for people to have children when they really shouldn't or don't want to - thus leading to a lot of unwanted, abused children.

Now, with three different genders and a lot of hoopla to have the children made in the first place, you wouldn't have the problems that come with having it be so easy to conceive children.

So, a society with three genders might have evolved, or been created, in order to make sure that those who procreate are only those who really want and/or deserve to. Of course, I don't know how likely it would be that one could evolve along those lines, so it might involve creation (though with the intervention of an appropriate deity/alien/mystical force it would work).

I really, really like that bit of mythology you came up with, though.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

Hmm. From an evolutionary standpoint, humans don't really make too many offspring, in part because without modern-day technology we have a fairly high infant mortality rate for a species whose females generally deliver only one child at a time -- because we're singularly altricial. Nowadays we not only have modern-day technology, we have a culture in which it can be a burden to have a child and in which people capable of having children are increasingly neotenic, but in which sex is still the most popular recreational activity -- and people are just as stupid now as they've ever been, so there is irresponsible unprotected sex and then there are unwanted children.

(I imagine there's a direct corrolation between irresponsible unprotected sex and irresponsible parenting, in fact.)

I couldn't imagine a species like that evolving -- it would take some extraordinarily precognizant protists, and protists are not known for their ability to see the future -- but I could definitely see some misguided utopian creating a species like this so that they will form the Perfect Society, with no unwanted or abandoned children. Kind of raises questions about the misguided utopian in question.

As for the mythology, what happens, now that I've had a few hours to think, is this:

Creator deity-or-deities make(s) the earth and sky, and the earth and sky are friends, but they have only one another to talk to and after a while this begins to wear thin; one day they get to arguing and the sky, fed up, pulls across its face a veil of clouds and refuses to speak to the earth. The creator(s), noticing this, make(s) a janitor in the form of rain, who improves both parties' moods by knocking boots with each in turn, and as a result the earth gives birth to all her bounty and, possibly, a multitude of assorted gods.

Which is why when the sky wears its veil, one must be careful when going outside because he's grumpy and may strike one with lightning.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

Belatedly, that does indeed sound exhausting. Could you stick them in one world for several sequential sessions, or bring them back to the same one repeatedly to right multiple wrongs? Or would they kill and eat you?

[kiya]

I had a tremendous shout at someone who asserted that humans are biologically driven to have lots of kids; I think she's crackpot. (Especially given the large number of humans who, now that there's technology for it to be possible, fully intend to not reproduce.)

What I do figure humans have is a selected-for tendency to protect children, with some variability as to whether that ranges from 'all children and baby bunnies too' to 'just my biological offspring'. I think this is why parents suddenly go through protectiveness shifts (I know some people who have commented that stuff they scoffed at pre-breeding sent them noticeably irrational after, and they had to catch themselves), and why "For the cheeeeeeeldrun!" is such a cry. People who Do Bad Things to children are more often seen as complete monsters than people who Do Bad Things to adults.

Aside from that, managing reproduction happening in a pre-technological civilization is easy; one doesn't need to have a drive to have kids. (Which I have.) One just needs a deep urge to fuck. (Which I don't, overmuch.)

I wouldn't be surprised by an irresponsible sex/irresponsible parenting connection myself, but in the cases I've met personally it's been irresponsible sex => grows an unexpected clue PDQ when childness happens.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

What I do figure humans have is a selected-for tendency to protect children

One just needs a deep urge to fuck.

This I agree with. The mere urge to have children is not actually biologically useful: look at the vast swathes of our history during which we didn't know where babies came from. If we just wanted to have children, we'd have spent a lot of time pining uselessly for them. Having the urge to fuck is much more effective.

in the cases I've met personally it's been irresponsible sex => grows an unexpected clue PDQ when childness happens.

That's rather heartening.

[kiya]

In ways having to do with the child, hellyeah.

In ways feeling . . . sad that these people have lost their own opportunity to be kids . . . it's really sad.

I need to find that poem. . . .

[tiassa]

in the cases I've met personally it's been irresponsible sex => grows an unexpected clue PDQ when childness happens.

In the cases I've met, it's split half-and-half between growing a clue and losing what little mind they had left. I like your way better, I'd probably have retained more faith in humanity afterwards.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

when the males hit adulthood or whatever, they'll find it too hot, too wet, or whatever, and follow the next janitor migration to Happy Man-Land.

Oh, duh: janitors select for big, tough females and clever, spry males (which must make for some complicated mating rituals, since it isn't, as with some birds, a case of females selecting for pretty males who in turn are happy with pretty much any female who's breathing), so females are tolerant of harsher climates than males are; eventually harsh-climate-tolerance becomes a desirable trait in females and they move ... into the Frigid Northern Wastes or whatever, leaving the sissypants males behind in milder climes. Either young males have some way of resisting weather the adults can't take, or their mothers go somewhere more temperate to raise them.

[kiya]

Or they store their offspring in pouches or something.

[tiassa]

Maybe young males have some kind of protective...something, like fur or fat or armor or heavy down coats, which they shed at puberty, and that's when they head to the Happy Man-Land? Or maybe they're infertile in cold climates and can't reproduce until they're in warmer weather.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed the site. :)