Elves (adult theme)

Your elves reproduce by "singing" offspring into existance. Therefore no biological means of reproduction takes place. Therefore any mention of the lack of organs necessary for biological reproduction is unnecessary. I assume the female breasts are for nuturing the young, so in that respect your elves are ... mammalian? What if they were completely androgenous?

They don't have recreational nonreproductive sex? Perhaps a historical plague of infertility that they overcame by converting to a purely magical means of reproduction? If they have recreational sex they should have all the bits, including male nipples. If they don't have sex at all, they everything would be vestigial/unnecessary including breasts (unless they still nurse the babies).

Just curious, can any two people sing a child into existence, regardless of gender? What about one person or three people? How about someone whose throat was injured and they can't sing?

I would suggest giving them an original name rather than calling them elves btw.

If this species has been reproducing via singing for several thousand years (or longer) then I'd expect their sexual organs to have either disappeared or to have stopped functioning properly. I'd advise thorough planning here because there are a lot of technicalities that must be sorted out. eg, much of the sexual characteristics of males and females are brought about by hormones, some of which are produced by the gonads.

I suppose there would be some 'blurring' between males and females.

Also, it's waist.

If it requires a male and female to produce a child, there should probably be some magical reason for that, like females have yin magic and males have yang magic and it takes a balance between the two to create a new soul. Makes me feel sorry for the gay people in the race though. At any rate rather than children happening as a semi-accidental magical byproduct, I would expect them to be a result of a specific ritual, probably something focused around an object that would hold the fetus, such as a crystal, a pool of water, a silk cocoon, a tree, or a rune-inscribed egg (large bird's egg or stone replica). Probably the man and woman would have to sing at this focus over many days, perhaps they'd have to dance in circles around it, or perhaps combine a little of each of their blood in/on it...

tailstrike said:

Do you mean on my part if the need arises to explain this to the reader?? I didnt really want to have to explain this issue of the hormones explicitly because like you said it is quite technical...

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You don't need to explain hormones to the reader, but you don't want to make the reader ask questions. The women having breasts raises questions. If it's been long enough to lose nipples and all sexual organs, it's been long enough to lose breasts.

You could consider gendered clothing, if a different appearance is essential.

Seconding SunandShadow's recommendation that you have a reason that you need a male and a female. Though really, if they've lost all reproductive organs then how can you tell male from female? Why not just make them all genderless. It is reproductive hormones that influence the development of genders, so if they don't have reproductive organs then they shouldn't really have gender, unless the people singing the kid into existence had significant amounts of control over how the kid turns out, and chooses gender arbitrarily, keeping only obvious differences between the genders and doing away with the rest. Though I am still wondering why they would choose to keep gender around in that case, unless it wasn't a gender equal society and they could have a pre-made subservient class or something like that. Even that adds in some cultural complications though.

As a reader I would be annoyed that gay couples couldn't have children but I would be less annoyed if there was a logical reason why this was so. But honestly of all the traits humans could pass one, I wouldn't pick clear gender roles as a likely one, because people today don't naturally have clear gender roles; I've heard many people say that if magic existed the first thing they'd want to do with it is try being the other gender for a day. And if I didn't know otherwise I would think the very first people (historically first I mean) that magical reproduction would benefit and would be people who couldn't reproduce biologically, which is infertile people and gays. Those are the two groups that would have done the magical research to figure out how to reproduce that way because they would be the most motivated...

So your elvish beings were once humans?
Did they evolve into this new configuration? <-- takes millions of years.
or
Were they changed by some magical force, such as a spell, eating mushrooms, or the like? <--could happen overnight.

With the first option, it's easy to envision an entirely alien society even though the beings were once humans.

With the second option, you don't need eons of time for the changes to occur, but there would need to be at least several generations (like more than 5 and preferably more than 10--say 200 years) for their "human-ness" to have faded and for them to be comfortable in their new configuration.

And I agree: come up with some name other than "elf" for these beings.

Elves. Little bastuds. Hate 'em. Oughta be banned. Along with wizzuds and dragguns. Sooner the better.

caw

blacbird said:

Elves. Little bastuds. Hate 'em. Oughta be banned. Along with wizzuds and dragguns. Sooner the better.

caw

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I've got an Elf allergy......I have to wear a medi-alert bracelet and everything!
Its Jenhetik.... Jen-hectic gene-te-hic.......runs in my family.

Um, as an evolution stickler, what you describe is not evolution. Evolution, or decent with modification, is something caused by the combination of two factors. First, genetics are passed down from mother/father to their offspring. Second, there has to be natural selection.

In a very basic example, let us say dragons only eat tall humans with big ears. If dragons eat every human that is over a specific hight, over multiple generations, humans will get shorter. Why? Well, becuase if a dragon eats all the tall people, some of those tall people will not have actually had babies. The babies that were made will be likely to grow up taller, and they'll be eaten by the next wave of dragons. Again, some of those grown ups won't have had babies, so the number of taller people would, on average, be smaller!

Over thousands of years, the dragons will have caused the human population, on the whole, to become shorter.

Now, replace "dragons" with a massively complex ecosystem, and "Shorter/taller" with every single factor about a critter.

So...if they are changed, through magic, this is not evolution. Evolution would be affected quite a lot by magic in ways I can't figure. But...well, don't call it evolution if its some kind of magical mutation. That's something completely different.

The more you know!


Also, in the real world, the instant people could do something that made farming EASIER, they used it almost instantly. Cause farming without machinery or magic is haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard and takes forever and leaves you tired and weary.

If a society gets magic, its going to use it. Like...almost immediately. Unless there is a very good reason for it to not use magic for everything. Like, say, magic is addictive and if you use it to much, you die of a magic overdose or something. Or, if you use magic for frivolous things, your head explodes and splatters all the walls around you with your gooey, juicy brains.

Mmm...

Brains...

So, another thing that magic and technology do, is they level the gender playing field. We've already seen this happen over the last century. With less dependence on pure brawn and more on mental agility and fine dexterity and other less "hit them with sword" skills.

I'd suggest you research the Industrial Revolution. See what that did to society, and think about how the rise of technology can be equated to the sudden discovery of magic.

A...Magical Revolution.


hmm...

Actually, don't write about that, I'm grabbing that idea.

tailstrike,

I don't think it is necessary to toss your idea or set it aside, just think a bit more about how to pull it off. I personally would not have the magic take away their reproductive organs, though. I frankly think that sex is the last thing on the planet a human would give up. Unless you can come up with a way for your changed humans to experience a greater euphoria than copulating, I wouldn't worry about removing the necessary equipment. Just make the race sterile.

Btw, this is your world. If you want gays in it fine. If you don't want gays in it fine. It is a construct, not your views about things in this life. You don't have to defend your beliefs, likes, dislikes over what you put in the world you are creating. Separate realities. It's ok.

Darzian said:

If this species has been reproducing via singing for several thousand years (or longer) then I'd expect their sexual organs to have either disappeared or to have stopped functioning properly. I'd advise thorough planning here because there are a lot of technicalities that must be sorted out. eg, much of the sexual characteristics of males and females are brought about by hormones, some of which are produced by the gonads.

I suppose there would be some 'blurring' between males and females.

Also, it's waist.

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What a waist

Well, if magic takes the same effort to do the same thing with brute force, then most things won't change, cause I'm going to assume that magic is complicated and hard to use. So, why use magic to farm when you can just use the old method?

However! Magic would be useful to do things you couldn't before, such as sending long distance messages, transporting really fast, creating metallic alloys (such as steel, titanium...whatever). Changing gender and race and so on would also be possible.

The trick with creating a world is DIG DEEPER. If something would change society, try and think about ALL the ways that it would affect the world. The more ways you think up, the more logical your world is, the cooler it gets!

I'd suggest bringing up everything you can think of in the sandbox place, where people can toss around ideas and suggestions and you can steal them with impunity.