No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons

“Homo sapiens vampiris was a short-lived Human subspecies…”

Jukka says you tell yourself whatever story you need to make yourself feel better..

You’re not the only SF author to have, er, ‘proposed’ this, although I think you went into more detail than ever before. Another recent example is Kage Baker’s Company novels, with Homo umbratilis, the origin of all those stories about elves living under hills. Umbratilis is much more obviously drawn from autistics than Homo sapiens vampiris is, right down to the near-total absence of theory of mind and lunatic singlemindedness (in their case, amplified by some form of inherited memory).

But Homo sapiens vampiris is much scarier. I’m sorry, weedy little men with drippy voices are not scary no matter how awful the weapons they can build (and how halfwitted their attempts to use them). A smart predator is always going to be more frightening than a dim species with awesome technical skill that’s spent almost its entire existence hiding from us in case we hurt it.

Here’s another Blindsight nugget off the popsci feed

MAGNETS CAN MANIPULATE MORALITY
Magnetic fields targeting the moral center of the brain could scramble our sense of right and wrong.

http://news.discovery.com/tech/magnet-brain-morality.html

Back to the co-existing hominids:
If two co-located species occupy the same niche in the food chain, does that not set off destructive competition? Is it a stable arrangement, evolutionary speaking? Wouldnt the trend be for an extinction of one of the species or a push towards specialization wrt resources? Would predator-prey coevolution spontaneously set in?

Peter reminded me: “As it happens, those pictures were taken in Hawaii. Albeit several years ago.” 🙂

Why yes, but of course. On that island that has both firey lava and snow. The one with the macadamia nuts, coffee and local belief in some Polynesian Hawaiian Goddess residing there in the active volcano where you can find her golden green hair and obsidian tears all around the Halema’uma’u Pit in Kilauea Volcano…I have…and footprints walking along the lavascape desert… 🙂

@rm3154 ~ I saw that magnetic morality story this morning, which I find rather scary, as it seems a bit too easy to manipulate something I had thought was relatively inherently fixed.

@Nix who pointed out: “…all those stories about elves living under hills…”
Not being familiar with those particular life forms. Would they be Keebler type or LOTR type? Perhaps like Brownies? We have Menehune (the rascally little people).

@01 who is deciding: “Perhaps I should register there and friend him, or something, huh?” Yes, please do. Then report back as to why he believes he is a part of Peter’s book…

I actually thought you handled the vampire thing quite cleverly. I was, at first, turned off by it. Admittedly, mostly in part to Twilight, but I did get past that and end up liking it. In fact, I really liked/was terrified by the whole idea of consciousness in Blindsight.

I’m afraid that the Nature article is not reporting a new hominin species; it has been over-interpreted by the media. They’re reporting a new mitochondrial lineage, which might be a homo sapiens one that has now died out, or a previously unknown Neanderthal one Or it might indeed be a new species, but that’s only one of the possibilities..

Hominins are not the new hominids. I am certainly no expert, but apparently primatologists have added “subfamilies”, “tribes”, etc. to Linnaean taxonomy. A hominid is any member of the biological family Hominidae (the “great apes”), but a hominin is any member of the biological tribe of Homininae (which includes the genera Homo and Pan).

V says: Moral judgments can be altered … by magnets.

Wow! Really interesting! Thanks for the link.

A few thoughts.

1. Moral judgements are so complex that any disruption of thought might effect them. I bet I can get a distinct pattern of moral misjudgements in test subjects merely by administering enough beer. No fancy equipment needed.

2. Can we assume one absolutely correct moral standard. Whom did the researchers consult to standardize, say, this action as absolutely forbidden, and that one as absolutely permissable. Survey? Kohlberg? Did they ask the Pope? Flip a coin?

3. Can we safely assume that because we make a temporary “ablation” and a certain skill disappears that AH HA we found the skill’s CENTER; we know where it lives, hahahahaha!
Consider the old “Jump, froggy, jump” joke. The frogologist progressively cuts off the poor frog’s legs and, after the fourth surgery, concludes that frogs must hear with their legs because the frog no longer moves when the scientist instructs, “Jump, froggy, jump!”

4. The researcher wants to make a name, and it looks more dramatic to have found a “morality center” than to publish with the idea that, hey, we zapped college sophomore brains with big magnets and it interfered with their thinking, whaddaya know?

Lastly, wouldn’t it be cool if conversely you could use magnets to make people more moral? I know, nightmare scenario in Watts fiction, but seriously, if I could hold a magnet to my ear and get better moral clarity? I might buy a gadget like that.

V said: “…remember h. floriensis, which the popular (read cretinous) press leapt all over and christened “the hobbit people”, who turned out just to be a population of folks with dwarfism?”

Those scientists were probably fans of J.R.R. Tolkien ~
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/explorer/2215/Overview#tab-Videos/01686_05

http://www.break.com/tv-shows/explorer/tiny-humans-the-hobbits-of-flores-1781494.html?comments=1

But what kind of “folks” were they, then?

p.s. Please do not click on my name if you are not into satire. 🙂
For openminded eyeballs only!

Another black swan.

What a pleasure it is to read the post and all the comments so far. They reinforce my hopes for the fruitfulness of our literary and scientific curiosity. For combine the two and one gets the potential of fine SF to make us more rational and humane.

@V: “As to “so I probably shouldn’t spend so many pages trying to reconcile my skiffy inventions with the real-world state-of-the-art at time of writing” I agree with others who have commented; having read two of your short stories and being halfway through Blindsight since I found out about you last August, it is one of the reasons I enjoy your writing.”

Agreed!

Peter said: “If nothing else, it might make my books more readable.”

Perhaps, but is it not better to remain true to yourself in what and why you
are writing for in the first place?

Is it not the difference between writing hard science and hard science
fiction, rather than hard science fiction and soft science fiction?

If it is a matter of possible bestseller book listing, and you are fine with
what you have written, then perhaps that is indeed one avenue for you to
consider.

I have read all sorts of “science fiction” types of books and some are a bit
fluffy and too fast a read. They are certainly not a challenge and do not
really make me think and use my brain as much as it probably should be.

Perhaps it is the difference between being a popular writer, and being a terrific writer. These do not necessarily go hand in hand, if at all.

Is your aim for your target readership to go for the quickie or the long, slow and more meaningfull read?

Ultimately, it is really what is best for you.

re @Eric

Still not convinced by the AP article. But it gives me new articles on the subject to digest. Thank you!

@Allister01

Perhaps a woman should try, LOL 😀 ?

@Peter Watts

Well, I’m a professional nitpicker, as I confessed above.

Speaking of nitpicking, something strikes me as being a mite odd about the vamp’s protocadherin deficiency being strictly Y-linked (besides the fact that all the “natural” vampires would thus have to be exclusively male and only benefit from eating human males).

But, not having a proper background in biology, I’m not sure what exactly, so perhaps I’d better proceed to read up on this stuff and/or annoy a friend of mine who does have a biomedical background (BTW, he’s responsible for giving me Rifters trilogy for birthday, thus introducing me to your works), and get back to you on this issue if my desire to scrutinize hypothetical vampire chromosomes doesn’t subside by then (and if you don’t mind having such discussions with some “internet person”, of course)

Oh, I see there have been more interesting posts here. Interesting stuff. I’ve seen/read of a few of these, but not the one linked in the article itself.

@02

Greetings fellow number!

I believe that it’s explained in the “Notes and References”, and the presentation which you can find on this very site.

Long story short:
According to my understanding, protocadherins are implicated in CNS development, and are remarkably species-specific.
http://www.wikigenes.org/e/gene/e/245578.html

Peter said: “…we never know as much as we think we do,…”

As well as know more than we actually believe we do.

“…so I probably shouldn’t spend so many pages trying to reconcile my skiffy inventions with the real-world state-of-the-art at time of writing.”

Why not? Is this not part of the reason those who read your books love to
read your books in the first place? Certainly harmonizing your skiffy stuff
makes your speculative hard scifi that much more believable, but is that
not the charm of your particular writing style?

Better to be “raravis” rather than a mass-marketing driven clone, besides
you make hard scifi fun and funny on your blog.

What is meant by the “quickie” versus the “long, slow, harder” read, is the
difference between something enjoyable but fast, over with too soon and
doesn’t make that much of an impact, therefore relatively forgettable,
versus something more meaty, harder work, much more enjoyable and
of a highly memorable impact.

Recent quickie reads for me ~ Stephen King’s “Under the Dome”,
Douglas Preston’s “Impact” and Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas Series…

Harder, slower reads for me (besides your stuffs) ~ Caitlin R.
Kiernan’s “A is for Alien”, anything Neil Gaiman, and anything Elizabeth
Bear.

There is also the possibility of writing along the cross-genre lines:
“Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology”
~James Patrick Kelly (Editor), John Kessel

“Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing”
~Delia Sherman (Editor), Theodora Goss (Editor)

“ParaSpheres: Extending Beyond the Spheres of Literary and Genre
Fiction: Fabulist and New Wave Fabulist Stories”
~Rusty Morrison (Editor), Ken Keegan (Editor)

Expand your horizons so to speak…

Peter said: “H. sapiens vampiris (or whedonum – the specific taxonomy
is still a matter of heated dispute)…”

Speaking of heated, you could always go down a path that enables you
in catching the wave of the female passion genre, as in making your
Blindsight Vampire and Human interbreeding result in something
“dangerously attractive”, such that female readers will want to eat that
stuff right up. No sparkles required! Although it will have to be a bit
moody.

Thereby satisfying your hard scifi readership with one vein of writing and
then you just mine another that would rocket you to the biggie girlie genre
of “romance”.

(I will neither confirm nor deny that I have or do read any of this specific
female stuff whatsoever…although I do know what it’s all about.)

Determining species and cladistics in general is a very touchy subject.
Case in point, everyone and his/her mother finding a lemur
out in the Malaysian jungle with a different color coat and trying to spin it
as a new species.
Finding clear bifurcations among hominids is misleading because there’s a whole lotta inter-tribe humpin’ going on. Let’s be honest.

@ Peter Watts

“don’t try to tell me you two don’t know each other”

We are numbers, Mr. Watts.
We don’t have to know each other 😉

“Yeah, the protocadherin thing is spelled out in the endnotes, but I should have looked at it a lot more critically. I was desperately looking for some reason why vampires needed to feed on humans, why they couldn’t just as easily prey on warthogs or wildebeests (which would have kept them from going extinct after we baselines stumbled on the use of crosses as an antipredator defense). I needed some vital nutrient or compound that could only be found in human prey, and I was so giddy with relief to find that protocadherin paper (hey, it even affected brain development!) that I didn’t look as closely at it as I should have. It was only after the book was out that someone said “Wait a minute, that gene’s on the Y chromosome — so do human females have stunted nervous systems, or what?”

What. I still don’t know whether that was a typo in the paper or if my own ignorance just led me to glean the wrong implications from it, but it was pretty glaring issue in hindsight.”

Ah, that’s the bit that was giving me the headache!
Normal human females have no PCDHY gene ( they have twice the PCDHX instead)

The problem seems to be that PCDHX is not human specific, right?

But, according to the very article you linked in the “notes and references” ( “A comparative analysis of the pig, mouse, and human PCDHX genes” ), human PCDHX is verily species-specific:

1)
It is different in sequence (animal PCDHX is 84-86% identical, thus about 15% of the gene’s structure is different, which could affect “performance” )
2)
Human PCDHX has the highest degree of “alternative splicing” (okay, I dunno what that means, just picking up meaningful bits from the article, so don’t beat me if I get something wrong) among any PCDHX genes known.
3)
In fact, the article says that both human PCDHX and human PCDHY are likely good candidates to account for human-specific features of the CNS.

Thus, due to the three points above, animal PCDHX products are apparently incapable of acting as human PCDHX products. And thus, if, say, vampires had PCDHX gene broken (and not PCDHY), they would still have to pick the juicy protocadherins from humans, as “zebra/boar/mouse/whatever protocadherin X” can not act in the same manner human protocadherin X does. (according to that very article)

Thus, a hotfix is hereby proposed:

You didn’t say that vampires have only PCDHY broken, IIRC.
Thus, break the PCDHX too! (they will still have no choice but to pick up the product from humans, due to reasons outlined above).

Bonuses of this hotfix:
a) Male vampires subsisting on a diet of human females might develop unusual behaviors due to lacking Y protocadherins

b) Female vampires that eat too many human males might get some behavioral changes from consuming way too much of them Y protocadherins

c) And yes! Now we have “natural” female vampires.
Which is hot.
In a very creepy 7-foot-tall-rapist-monster-cannibal-woman way, but hot nonetheless.
(confused)
I can’t help it, I don’t know why

…

Oooooofff… my nitpicking sense no longer bothers me. Sweet release 😀

P.S.:
Mr. Watts, if you like the “hotfix”, feel free to use it as you see fit on whatever conditions you deem appropriate.

I do not claim any rights in regards to the content of this comment.

“Assuming I maintain my current level of anal-retentativeness, State of Grace will probably lose two or three chapters to resolving that issue alone. It will stop the plot deader than the Public Option”

Relax, you’re nowhere near the Stephenson Expository Threshold. 🙂

(Though it’s the little gems that stick with me longest, like Sarasti’s custom data display based on tortured hominid faces… :delighted shiver:)

@01
You know too much….

Remember: Descent *is* the highest form of Patriotic

@Watts and @01

This assumes that consumption of PCHDX results in its integration into vampires right? Otherwise, nutrient-wise, PCDHX is amino acids like all other proteins. Nothing particularly special about it once “digested”. Might as well have proposed “Alu sequences” right? Anyways, if you’re looking for scientific rigor, you’ll probably have to explain vampire digestion/nutrient-uptake at some point (though this does not necessarily make for good fiction).

What if Alus behaved like vampire telomeres? Now, I’m just trying to show how clever I can be. Keep up the good works!

One other thing to note: Protocadherins make up a large family of proteins that are found on somatic chromosomes as well. Protocadherins are closely related to cadherins, which also make up a large family of adhesion proteins. Many of these adhesion molecules are involved in brain development. Though this doesn’t exactly solve your problem.

@various including Peter Watts
It does appear the floriensis thing hasn’t been resolved yet. But I am very dubious. See PhD Comics on the Science News Cycle and you’ll see why. I need to go read new articles still, as I said.

@ Peter Watts
“And all you people who encouraged me to stay true to my rigor will have no one but yourselves to blame”

When we talk about rigor I don’t think we mean just the crunchy, specific, there-a-paper-this-year-talking-about-it way (others comment too). To some extent this is interesting, but what gets me with “Blindsight”, for example, are your explorations of bigger questions, like “what’s the evolutionary benefit of sentience” and “are human relationships still driven by ancient mammal dominance strategies” will always be interesting. Answers for that stuff are far off. And they’re topics that appeal to folks across the board, not just sf fans, if you’re thinking on the crass marketability side, *snerk*. I was raised by two professors — one in anthropology and one in philosophy — and I intend to encourage them both to read it.

In an abstract way, it does appear that you apply your science as well when you explore alien ways of looking at the world, either with the Scramblers or the entity in your most recent Clarkesworld story, and that’s part of its literary strength. I recently finished reading Lem’s “Solaris” (as flawed as I can tell the widely-available translation via French is) and some of what he is trying to explore I see you trying to explore, although from different angles.

I’ll try to post my response to fellow number 02 again.

Hope I’m not upsetting a spam filter, or something

@02

Hello fellow number!

I kindly suggest that you start using the same email for your posts. Seems to prevent one’s posts from getting caught in the moderation limbo.

this assumes that consumption of PCHDX results in its integration into vampires right? Otherwise, nutrient-wise, PCDHX is amino acids like all other proteins. Nothing particularly special about it once “digested”.

Well, yes, that assumption is critical for the whole “kindly borrow protocadherins from humans” thing.

My limited understanding of issues of biology, combined with my google-fu, suggests that while direct absorption of intact proteins is somewhat uncommon, it is not unheard of:

http://tinyurl.com/ykzrylf

http://ajplegacy.physiology.org/cgi/reprint/73/3/539

http://ajplegacy.physiology.org/cgi/reprint/78/1/136

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1032454

http://www.springerlink.com/content/h743130428073347/

There is even a “simple” immunological test for detecting this phenomenon in humans: http://www.jimmunol.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/3/143

Thus, the assumption regarding the capacity of vampires to directly absorb intact human protocadherins from the GI tract is relatively plausible.

Anyways, if you’re looking for scientific rigor, you’ll probably have to explain vampire digestion/nutrient-uptake at some point (though this does not necessarily make for good fiction)

Of course, it would be quite interesting to have Mr. Watts cover the issue in somewhat greater detail, though I agree with your doubts regarding the possible plot relevance of describing minutiae of a monster’s intestinal biochemistry.

Methinks that integrating a small infodump into some dialog should suffice and satisfy all parties involved.

@01

Your post on echolocation reminded me of the scariest woman I’ve even met.

My paternal great-grandmother went mad and we knew it. We didn’t know she was blind until much later… She was mostly sedentary, by the end, and so familiar with the creaks and groans of the house (felt through her feet, she claimed) that she could track you through the house like a spider.

Everyone of my parent’s generation and younger breathed a sigh when she finally died. Wicked accurate with a cane, she was.

@Leona

It is mentioned in the domestication talk that H. sapiens vampiris has an unusually powerful resistance to prionic disease.

As for cannibalism among vampires – it’s quite plausible, IMHO (though a “fellow” vampire is relatively poor source of precious protocadherins, I suppose)

@Jason Stackhouse

Man, that’s creepy…

@keanani:
Regarding the whole “Twilight vampires as subject of female attraction”, that thing is far weirder than it sounds.
I did read Twilight (don’t ask. Just. Don’t.), and good’ol Edward had everything from my personal “beware the repeat sex offender” checklist. The guy behaves pretty much how I would imagine a stereotypical, pathetic date rapist to behave like (okay, being male I might have limited understanding of how habitual date rapists look like and what makes them tick, but to the extend I can understand that kind of person, Mr. Cullen qualifies as one)
The fact that so many women find that behavior attractive is disturbing (much more disturbing than the fact that at least one woman finds Jukka Sarasti hot)

I think this Youtube video does a nice job of bringing my point across:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-HQhRlfiak

Oh, and I do change my footwear between street and home, meticulously so. Having a microbiologist as a childhood friend does that to you…

@Peter Watts:
To which I gotta say: Mammals, thank you. I have not yet had a chance to go through that sequence of comments, but man, I can pretty much guarantee you that some of it is gonna show up in the finished product. And you may not claim any rights, but at the very least you’re going to get acknowledged in the endnotes and a couple of free copies.

Mr. Watts, I’ll be honored to get a mention in the endnotes (I believe you have my email, now that I use a real one for posting here).

@Everyone:
My trawl for Blindsight-related funnies brought back this:

http://brontopixel.com/upload_image/4c2775fccefaf02db968d79888de4e3a.jpg
(It’s uncanny how the color of his velvet pout is consistent with BVamp “flushing”…My childhood memories…will never be the same…)

A) Mystery (don’t we all love a mystery?)
B) Danger (but in public she’s “safe”)
C) Damaged goods (AKA, “I can fix him”, AKA “Tortured soul”)
D) It’s not permanent (he’s not the take home type so no worry about commitment)
E) He’s full of passion (AKA, “He wants me so bad, he can’t control himself, but I’m special so I can tame the savage beast”)

I would note it’s not only women who fall for this pattern. Seen it in gay bars too.

@Jason Stackhouse –
Relax, you’re nowhere near the Stephenson Expository Threshold.

I feel that it’s not the size of the exposition, it’s the quality.

What I miss here is an edit function. Embarrassing typos are embarrassing.

My “favorite” line from the film:

EDWARD
You’re like my own personal heroin stash.

And let’s not forget vampire baseball.

BTW, anyone else think Marmite must be what True Blood tastes like? All veggie, but tastes like gore.

@01

Seems to me most of the date rape cases I recall were stock brokers or other professionals who got tired of paying for it. But I see your point about demeanor. George Carlin notwithstanding, sometimes it IS the quiet ones you have to watch out for.

Also, again re: Hljóðlegur this on the h. floriensis stuff . . .

You’re right, it doesn’t seem like anyone has made a decisive argument either way. There is inconclusive evidence that the individuals in question might have had a metabolic disorder or some form of microencephaly; the scholars involved seem to have split into several camps on the subject and I imagine there will be rather more volleys in the war before anything gets decided. But what bothered me was how quick people were to trumpet it as a new species rather than to cautiously and professionally proceed in comparisons with skeletons of people with various congenital abnormalities. Hindsight is 20/20, but remember how long folks thought Neandertals were all stooped and twisted because the first skeletons found were those of individuals suffering from severe arthritis?

I really wonder how much scholarship nowadays is affected by the struggle for scarce tenure, where whoever can make what they’ve done sound coolest in the popular press (see PhD Comics on this) and slice their salami I mean research into the most LPUs (least publishable units) per square inch of grant funding winning out, not the folks who are the most conscientious or rigorous.

But maybe that’s not really new . . . evolutionary forces and political ones affect academia like everything else, directly or indirectly.

@Kanys L:
“Seems to me most of the date rape cases I recall were stock brokers or other professionals who got tired of paying for it. “

It’s kinda complicated.
A good chunk of drug-assisted date rapes are not investigated and happen in various “college-related” environments, AFAIK.

Though I agree that my “expected profile” of a rohypnotist is likely imperfect.

@V:
Thinking about circuitry and mate selection here, I find myself seeing another potential dimension of some h. sapiens (of all orientations) being wired for receptivity to mates with h. vampiris/whedonum traits. Somebody else in this thread said something about the implications posed by h. vampiris not being reproductively isolated from humans. I presume the implication of h. vampiris genes being present in Donny Maas’ “junk DNA” is that the result of such matings wouldn’t have been sterile, as the offspring of horses and donkeys (mules) are, or the offspring of early modern humans and Neandertals in Kurtén’s “Dance of the Tiger”.

So I can see mate selection wiring which functions in favor of sociopathic individuals potentially being used as evidence in favor of prehistoric herd breeding programs intended to control for traits like docility. Yes, Sarasti has to wear a visor so the crew aren’t transfixed by him, but in a society which coded that terror differently . . . Of course, there are always arranged marriages/virgin sacrifies and forced matings to account for, but doesn’t it make sense that predators would prefer to deal with docile subjects just as h. sapiens in our universe breed livestock and pets for docility and master bonding characteristics? Consider Stockholm Syndrome and how some individuals support social rules or political movements that may actually affect them negatively.

Makes perfect sense.

Though it doesn’t even require a coordinated “herd breeding” effort on part of Blampires (that’s the accepted portmanteau, right?).

Let’s put it like that… It appears reasonable that from a strictly evolutionary perspective, being perceived as sex object is vastly better than being perceived as a walking pile of protocadherins as far as encounters with Blampires are concerned.

Resisting a Blampire’s “advances” either gets one eaten, or crippled and then raped. Both options tend to reduce fitness.

Thus, by their very existence, Blampires provide a selective pressure that is likely to give advantage to traits such as docility when faced with overwhelming force, “captive bonding” behaviors, and tendency to perceive “blampirelike” entities (that includes vanilla sociopaths and everything that might pass as Jukka’s kin, even if it sorta sparkles ;)) as a valid and even desirable type of sexual partners.

And thus, Blindsight explains Twilight fandom 😀 heeheeheehee…

It also explains why I consider the “idea” of a female Blampire to be attractive (as I confessed in my “hotfix” post)…
…OK, now this is becoming way too creepy…

“One of the things I appreciate about the society we live in is when it gives us opportunities to build masculinities and femininities that are more than that, and to build social structures that are about more than that as well.”

~click~
You tell yourself whatever story you need to make yourself feel better 😉

One important point about Edward… He cannot have sex, so he’s “safe” in that regard too for a teenage girl (perhaps not so for older ladies who want the wolf/tiger in bed too).

@Kanys L.:
One important point about Edward… He cannot have sex

My reading of the material (cue shudder) suggests otherwise.
The second brain agrees: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080201201857AAxPqY2

@V:
I hit send too fast. there was supposed to be a ( : at the end of my last posted reply to you.

You mean the “…build social structures that are about more than that as well…” bit?

I can’t find good statistics for the incidence of clinical sociopathy (antisocial personality disorder) but I suspect it is overwhelmingly male, based on the statistics for those who engage in serial violent crime.

Well, the second brain says that prevalence is 3% in males, 1% in females

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder#Prevalence_.28epidemiology.29

@01

LOL. Well, maybe he could get erect, just not with Bella (he’s either way too emo or gay).

But I haven’t read the books, merely going off the film, and I’ve forgotten his beard… er, excuse that he gave her in her bedroom. Something to do with something awful happening to her or him going berserk. Anyone know?

Alas, my friend, I’ll have to take TVTropes over Ask Yahoo.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Twilight

Breaks down the whole series, includes an entry “Can’t Have Sex Ever”, but it’s apparently only for the first three books. Also explains this whole thread (see “Acceptable Target”).

@Kanys L:

But I haven’t read the books, merely going off the film, and I’ve forgotten his beard… er, excuse that he gave her in her bedroom. Something to do with something awful happening to her or him going berserk. Anyone know?
Well, his reasons were both him hurting her, going berserk, and horrible stuff happening.

Well, their later ordeals demonstrate that everything he told Bella is true – especially the “horrible stuff” bit. Twampire pregnancy and subsequent jaw-mediated cesarean aren’t pretty. Like, at all

P.S.: The “childbirth” almost made reading this stuff worthwhile, BTW 😉

Alas, my friend, I’ll have to take TVTropes over Ask Yahoo.

But technically, he can, so he’s hardly “safe” in the full sense of the word. In fact, the sheer number of times he declares that they must not have sex makes him pass off as…not so safe. 😉

Correction: off his/her offspring.
Damn, I lack the proofreading discipline needed to survive without “edit” button 🙁

@V:

IMHO, their “peer-hate” response should arise only when physical vicinity to another Blampire is confirmed via visual, olfactory or some other savanna-compatible means (makes perfect sense in terms of evolved rival response).

A high-tech society into which they were introduced during events of Blindsight offers ways to socialize without physical vicinity, or visual contact (just like you and me now)

A bit of further speculation:

Blampires figured this out and used various IM/email/whatever-they-have-in-future to negotiate a cunning takeover plan which likely included near-total subversion of human technological infrastructure.

They didn’t take over in the “biological” or “reproductive” sense, but they effectively run everything….politics, law enforcement, science, economics, healthcare, mass media…
And they coordinate their actions extremely well as long as they don’t have to actually see each other “in the flesh”, so, humanity’s pretty much boned.

…

I wonder how close my humble speculation is to what we’ll see in “State of Grace”…

@Peter Watts

Great!
Peter, the degree to which your works tend to…um…intersect with reality is uncanny and awesome at the same time. I mean, there already were several articles proposing use of artificially organized neuron cultures for piloting airplanes and managing industrial automation (I could find them,if anyone is curious). And now, this peculiar hominins… 😉
I guess congratulations are in order.

@01
First and foremost, I envy your attentiveness. I totally missed the whole “Y-linked” bit and its implications (both for Blampires and baseline women)…

Second, I must applaud your hotfix – I have a bioscience background, and I can’t come up with a better idea (so far…)

Third, I suspect we have met before… 01, which color is the best?🙂

P.S.:
And yes, before somebody asks, I’m that guy who made that crazy “Blampire lover” thread on SB. A kind soul informed me that it has been mentioned in the comments on Peter Watts’s blog and suggested that I check out… so here I am 🙂

heh heh, I meant Brothers Karamazov. Speaking of heedless. *eye roll*

@Peter

“OTOH, there’s something kinda cool about the idea of a lone vampire, waking up every few decades to cull his personal herd to desired specs and then going back to bed. Wouldn’t it be nifty if that was the strain that ended up giving rise to the rest of us…”

Invoking the Toba catastrophe would be convenient. Managing a herd of 1-5k h.sap breeding pairs during an upper paleolithic apocalypse is fertile ground, itself, even without a vampiric Moses. 🙂

“judging by tales of your great-grandmother, you have way creepier relationships than your True Blood namesake ever did.”

Yeah… We don’t do family reunions, really. The tendency is to grow up and -run like hell-. Settle down a few hundred miles away, raise a family, and watch your children very, very carefully. (My daughter either lucked out, genetically, or is far too clever. Time will tell, eh?)

Ok, I’m going to take free license to be a little stupid here because even if, as Peter Watts said, he’s way ahead of us in some way, we may get some mushrooms out of this.

@Peter Watts
The warchalking . . . Ted Chiang had a very early story, which appears in his first collection, about two completely unique supergenuises who end up fighting each other because their goals are so different. They communicate through the stock market, at one point. And by handwaving telepathy later on. I assume you mean something like this (minus the handwaving telepathy). Still, I keep getting hung up on
Still, such collaborations will tend to be self-limiting, since vampires are monomaniacally selfish and will weigh the benefits of collaboration against the disadvantages of sharing valuable intel with competitors.
So maybe they cooperate like bees — not consciously, but because they’re all driving society the same way. I can’t see how one wouldn’t rise above the others in the end though, one who was really good at predicting its opponents’ moves and perhaps even passing as human, at least for a while (everything is only for a while).

—

Anyway. . .

I know modern architecture is death on vampires, but for some reason I picture one getting up once every few centuries, protected by a clan of human servants, helping along the Enlightenment, encouraging Mies Van Der Rohe (for example), causing the resurrection of the rest of its species in a world where they would be chemically dependent for a time…working from the shadows.

I just find myself thinking of old 1990s World of Darkness LARPS and tabletops where it always took a big pile of ghouls (human servants) to get things done. This is totally sideways, but there was a a whole vampire clan in those who were fleshcrafters (with handwaving magic, of course, sadly) called the Tzimisce. Sometimes they turned several combined ghouls into war machines.

Ok, so there’s your pile of fertilizer. I’ll come back to see if anything grows. *snerk*

@V:

Can something without self-awareness have self control?

I think that is a crucial question, and it’s not an either/or. The vital thing is how much self-awareness must a human cousin have to have in order to have self-control?

the more I wonder what role vampire females would have, since the costs of reproduction are not on their side.

Well, this is a human variant, a mammal, one of the great apes, so there is probably an extended period of post-natal brain development and parental care. Let’s say the lady vampire can raise the babies pretty much alone – that makes them look more like cats, doesn’t it?

I think cooperation amongst male Blampires is dodgy at best. But related female cats work cooperatively to some extent for baby-care, as do female primates, so I would assume that if any Blampires would bridge the non-cooperation gap imposed by their physiology, it would be sets of related females, sets of sisters, especially.

This has market appeal, too. More men read scifi, and some fancy female vampires….

link reposted for everyone’s convenience:
http://www.washjeff.edu/users/jgottschall/Papers,%20etc/rape_pregnancy.pdf

@everyone
is there a decent quote tag here?

@everyone:
01’s random musings on the subject of rape as reproductive strategy (because why not?)…

One has to wonder, why exactly is “rape-like” (because seriously claiming “rape” in bugs or ducks is a bit problematic, methinks, and thus a distinction should probably be made) common in some species to the point of rape-related selection pressures define major features of the phenotype (those hapless ducks), while relatively less prominent in others?
While I don’t think I can find a paper to back it up, I think an interesting, and testable, hypothesis to entertain would be that it depends, to a significant degree, upon how likely is a “rapist” male is to notably injure the “victim”.

Humans are more or less capable of restraining a victim without causing major injuries, and rape is a fairly well-known behavior with them.

Blampires would have approximately same capacity for overpowering cospecifics without major injury.
But…But the…ahem….punchline…is that they would be far better at coercing baselines – and assuming that Blampire/human sex works as advertised, and that Blampires don’t have good communication skills (and thus have problems with the consensual route with humans), rape would be a very common reproductive strategy for Blampire/human reproduction (perhaps even non gender specific – after all a female vampire is supposed to be strong enough to subdue a human male and smart enough to figure out how to force erection on his part)…

And, like I said, resisting a Blampire is sheer suicide for a normal human in a one-on-one encounter with no force multipliers.

This is a notably disturbing line of thought.

@Hljóðlegur:
“”I would assume that if any Blampires would bridge the non-cooperation gap imposed by their physiology, it would be sets of related females, sets of sisters, especially.

This has market appeal, too. More men read scifi, and some fancy female vampires….””

a market interested groups of female Blindsight vampires? hell yes!
…~ahem~…

@RandomJ:
Best color is black. Yes, I think I know ya 🙂 funny that we meet here of all places…
long time no see… where did you vanish for so long?

Also, cloning. Although you maybe can’t reproduce indefinitely this way perhaps, although what I heard about that might be bogus.

There are several (insect and avian) species in which rape is just how it’s done. (Bed bugs, bean weevils, water striders, ducks…) Is our discussion being warped by an anthropic concept of consent among female vampires?

Oh, it’s me who should apologize for all the missing and misspelled words, those don’t help to bring a point across.
As an excuse, I’m posting from mobile…

@Hljóðlegur ~ Thanks for the video link of “Jesus -Terminator”. 🙂

However, I will posit a naked statement that perhaps there is a difference between the hunger-eat human drive and the sex-drive such that these cold superpredators may behave differently according to the biological drive.

Well, I suspect that one major difference is that when acting upon the reproductive drive, vampire wouldn’t maim or kill the victim, unless victim resists beyond vampire’s ability to subdue.

And, given that, according to the paper my friend posted above, there are no reasons to believe rape decreases fertility in humans, and given that Blampires aren’t exactly very good at building relationships, Blampire->human sexual relationships are likely to range between “not nice” and “outright rape”,with inclination towards the latter.
In fact, only severe outside environmental pressures (people. with guns. a lot of) or a long term plan (need to “appear” nice and “civilized” until time is right) could discourage a Blampire from taking an apparent, violent shortcut.

Alright, 01, so your sweetie has found Jukka “hot”. I am supposing it has to do with him being badass and superintelligent? Can’t exactly be his “looks” per se, although for women, the visual is not as important as a myriad of other favorable factors.

According to her, it has to do with Jukka being intelligent, “primal” and “also for handing Keaton’s ass to him” (actual quote. Yes, she has little sympathy for poor zombie…). Being tall is likely a bonus too…
Wonder if I should send her a link to this thread…

@01 ~ Hee hee, did you not catch that I said “Blampire vs. Blindsight Vampire”? Those are the same thing. My bad, it should have been “Twivamps vs. Blampires”.

@01 who said, regarding his sweetie who said Jukka is “hot”: “According to her, it has to do with Jukka being intelligent, “primal” and “also for handing Keaton’s ass to him” (actual quote. Yes, she has little sympathy for poor zombie…). Being tall is likely a bonus too…”

Ok, ok, my being a human female I can weigh in on this from that point of view ~ qualities “some” females may find “attractive” in a Blampire such as Jukka that would cause such females to rate Mr. Sarasti as “hot” on that “sexual attraction scale”:

(Despite the rational mind screaming danger, get a grip, what are you thinking girl?)

Intelligent? Check. Primal? Hmm, is this to do with “animal magnetism”? Uh…check. Handing someone their ass (poor Siri) who may need to have it done? Check. Gifted vertically (height)? Check.

Womanly tendency to have warm and fuzzy feeling for the poor sods out there who can’t help being all badassy, dangerous, different, misunderstood and ice-pick cold, but still are just lonely life forms really in need of a warm bear hug, understanding and life-changing love? Check. 🙂

Poor zombie? Hmm, that would be Edward Cullen, for he is a form of the living dead, unless you mean because Jukka is a “zombie” for lack of “emotions” and “connection to others”. But then did not Jukka Sarasti show a hell of a lot of angry passion lashing out at somewhat more zombie-like Siri?

And then 01 said: “Wonder if I should send her a link to this thread…” 🙂

Jason Stackhouse said “There are several (insect and avian) species in which rape is just how it’s done. (Bed bugs, bean weevils, water striders, ducks…)”

Hi Jason 🙂

Rape? Well, even that term is “human”. Perhaps one should ask the question what constitutes “forcible copulation” amongst non-humans? As we can see, a female praying mantis mates and eats the little guy mantis at the same time. I saw this in my own backyard when I was a wee one.

I will go so far to posit that even some female dogs are not exactly receptive even when the are in heat, as I myself have witnessed with my own family canines by accident, and the “mating” was a boo boo on my part. Shooting them with cold water from a backyard hose did not help though. I even tried to pry them apart, and that resulted in yelps. I guess being a kid and all, I did not realize they were kinda stuck for a reason. I was in deep kimchi cause months later 10 little dobringers were born, two died at birth, but they were conceived and born.

And then darn, it happened again.

Also, anyone who has ever had a male dog knows that they may go after some part of humans. Is this canine behavior thusly “rape-like”? The dog is attempting forcible canine copulation on a human. Sure, the poor dog misses the mark cause humans are not dogs, but going after a human leg like it was something to hump, I really don’t know why the doggy mind would compel him to do such a thing.

But then I remember when a group of us little kids had to avoid certain neighborhood dogs because something made them misdirect their doggy feelings, and they would manage to grab some kid from behind, apparently mistaking a little human kid for a female dog. Man, the things you learn about them facts of life as a kid, that no one warns you about.

@keanani –
Perhaps one should ask the question what constitutes “forcible copulation” amongst non-humans?

I wanted to weigh in here, sorry if I am getting in between.

I just think it’s a very good question. The words “rape” or even “forcible” become very problematic when the participants are unable to form intent, can’t conceptualize personal responsibilty, and do not have the level of learned components to their sexuality that primates do. A dog cannot rape.

This is because of the ideas underpinning the words: forcible implies intent to thwart the will of another, and we have no direct evidence of the will of bean weevils, and definitely no direct evidence that dogs have all the component ideas needed to understand the word “rape” – ideas of sin, sexual guilt, personal autonomy, individual rights, and other really complex stuff. The dog humps my leg because it is a good enough approximation of another dog to trigger his/her desire to mount something.

If one mantis eats the head of another during sex, that is non-moral, intent-less, simply an act. If I bite off your head during sex, that is a moral and legal crime. There is no confusion on that, I assume?

Yr welcome re Jesus/Terminator. I guffawed.

@01:
there are no reasons to believe rape decreases fertility in humans

May I suggest that this is by no means the definitive study, and it makes an unwise leap between estimating conception rates in modern conditions to assuming this translated directly into rates of rape children in the evolutionary history of people.

Evolution only really acts when your offspring successfully reproduce, and a child who increasingly looks like someone who harmed you might get less parental care, for one thing. For another, there is an assumption that “rape” (or even “sex”) had the same meaning to a tribe of hunter-gatherers umpty thousands of years ago, before sin and courts and language with which to discuss where it was impolite to put ones penis without asking.

Ask yourself, how many more children conceived via rape were terminated starting in the 1970’s?

@Hljóðlegur ~ Excellent response! That was what I was alluding to in my indirect way.

By no means am I lessening what we humans know or define as “rape”.

I certainly did not intend for my goofy musings on books that appeal to females by making some descendant or hybrid of a Jukka Sarasti and human or hybrid more so attractive in order to go down a vein of writing (that is not really what Peter should be doing, but I presented it as a possibility in order to make bucks on the side…) that has morphed yet again into troubling tangents of sex and gender conflicts.

Holy pineapple, this to quite an extent, I recall, was already blathered about in huge wordy postings by myself in that other newscrawl thread about the battle of the book vampires. So I won’t subject anyone to that again, here or anywhere. 🙂

@Tommaso Zillio who said and coined: ““neurosteampunk”. Cool!

“Peter ‘Neurosteampunk’ Watts” ~ has a futuristic-dude ring to it.

and in response to Peter’s statement: “And all you people who encouraged me to stay true to my rigor will have no one but yourselves to blame”, Tommaso said: “All hail the mighty infodump! it’s one of the reasons we are reading you. Don’t you love to write for a masochistic audience?”

Exactly! 🙂 See Peter, there is a reason why you gotta suffer for your art of writing hard brain-workout stuff…

Yay, I read through this whole newscrawl. (I actually printed it off in hardcopy so I could make red pencil marks near things I wanted to respond to) (Yeah, and that is why my postings are one after another as if I am spamming Peter’s blog! Since I am fitting in responding to some of the many issues, points and potential discussions that I am finding stimulating).

I must say that there is such a level of brain power on here that it is a bit intimidating, but terribly exhilarating.

I don’t mind confessing that my level of brain power and knowledge on some stuff is not up to par, but at least I can understand and follow along, but still there are a few words, concepts or nerdy-hard scifi insider stuff I will not find in my lousy dictionary. I’m intelligent, but dumber than some on here. 🙂

I suppose the test, the bar to get over, to post on Peter’s blog may be at the bare minimum, the ability to read, understand, enjoy and like his books, stories and writings.

Kanys L. said: “sometimes it IS the quiet ones you have to watch out for.”

Yeah. This is exactly what I tell some people regarding me.

V said: One of the things I appreciate about the society we live in is when it gives us opportunities to build masculinities and femininities that are more than that…”

I am interpreting this to mean that which is beyond the socially constrained “norms” of he-man and she-woman, but something other as in along an everchanging scale in flux whereupon someone who is “shemale” or transgendered, or someone who is hermaphroditic, would not have to choose between two rigid and strict concepts of human gender and sex-based categories…as in Lola, L-O-L-A, boys will be girls and girls will be boys it’s a mixed up crazy world…

@Hljóðlegur ~ Sheep should only be scared if they are ewes…

Re: Genetic Perfection and the pursuit of it, I would hope most people would not find this appealing. Certainly there are some people who want to pick for traits, as in females going to sperm banks filled with the sperm of men with selective traits for intelligence, tall height, racial/ethnic ancestry, a clean medical history, not a criminal, not a sociopath, etc. This is allowed.

What I find interesting is that several unrelated females end up with the sperm of the same man, and therefore their children are all half-siblings. Then there was a doctor who was giving his own sperm to every woman he was helping with infertility problems, so he effectively preempted his patient’s rights and choices by assuming his sperm would create superior and viable progeny.

If one were to say compare the issues that inbreeding amongst humans has caused by attempting to maximize the favored genetic material, as many royals of the past had done, then you see all sorts of problems, mutations or problematic recessive genes cropping up and manifesting themselves in the phenotype or in some traceable defects all along the family history tree.

The husbandry of domesticated dogs is a good other species example of this where the pure breeds have more problems due to the inbreeding for superior traits that would hopefully win a dog show, but the poor dog suffers from congential defects or compounded problems that are inherent in a specific breed. Mixed breed and mutt dogs fair much better.

Another example would be thoroughbred horses bred for their speed, beauty and body type, but what has resulted are the tragedies like Barbaro, and that lovely filly, where the weight of these horses on such long spindly legs with weakened leg bones/ankles results in horrible leg, ankle and hoof breaks that you really cannot save the horse.

All sorts of ethical questions are raised as to what constitutes the balancing of breeding for favorable traits against the potential suffering of the bred life form.

Certainly in the plant world, especially amongst flowers, all sort of types and hybrids are produced driven by the beauty loving humans and the pleasure given by the appearance and scent of flowers. The difference between flora and fauna is that we humans ascribe suffering only amongst animals, therefore the ethical issues only apply to animals.

As to introvert/extrovert and judgers/perceivers ~ I am so superduper glad I am INPF (Briggs-Myers test). Yeah, the still waters run very deep for me. What a racket this world be, even more so than it already is if there were solely extroverts. It certainly was not easy being so introverted, quiet, lefthandy, right brained, pegged as “aloof, anti-social, awkwardly shy and not leader-like” just because I was not like the so-called majority.

I can’t understand why and how some humans can talk so darn much. I suppose that my inherent nature biases me to liken human chatty yacky tendencies as being “noise pollution”. Man, every single day at work, it is something to deal with. Hence the sonic escape via music. But of course, there has to be diversity, variety and balance. As long as I can find some hidey-hole escape pod of silence after the pummeling my brain takes from the daily gossip, high volume drag down conversations and stink talk… 🙂

01 said: “It appears reasonable that from a strictly evolutionary perspective, being perceived as sex object is vastly better than being perceived as a walking pile of protocadherins as far as encounters with Blampires are concerned.”

I agree with this. But of course, much better to save yourself from swift and certain death, (although I do not at the moment recall if Peter had stated just how Blindsight vampires kill their prey, as in quick kill, or is it something more painfully aware slashy like wht Siri was given a bit of), and most likely have to surrender or submit to Blampire reproductive strategies instead. However, some humans would fight to the death rather than be raped.

Also, the concept of “sex object” would most likely be different from the human concept, especially since this concept is influenced by today’s standards, and not what it may be like in the far speculative future and not at all what is , unknowable (until Peter does some illuminating) as to what exactly is the so-called sexuality of Blampires.

Alright, alright, I will say it clearly then, what is not being addressed is whether Blampires also have sexual intercourse for purely pleasure and not just reproductive strategies as in rut for progeny only. This could be a difference between humans and Blampires, therefore that would up the probability that human females would not have any sort of positive experience of bit piece out of such an act if male Blampires were not interested in even their own kind enjoying such an act.

So this then circles on back to that forcible copulation behavior. As well as the incredulous notion as to why then, would any female human find a Jukka Sarasti hot?

That social implications stuff I was alluding to with regard to female humans and stuff like this is somewhat of a no-no, but I have read articles recently in women’s magazine regarding this thing about women and that stuff. The stuff is controversial as well as said to be “normal”. So I will leave it there.

@01 who said: “I was referring to Siri, who is, or rather was, somewhat like a philosophical zombie…”
Alright, I read your sentence as a continuation of Jukka, but now I see you were referring to Siri. 🙂 I felt sorry for him too.

@01 & Jason Stackhouse re: echolocation. A few years ago there was a news report on people who did just this, and they were shown to click their way around inside their home as well as outside. The analogy to bat echolocation was made.

There is a group of people in Africa who communicate via clicks.

It is known that those who lose one sense seem to gain or acquire a greater capacity of any of the other human senses. Those born blind, I have found, seem to have quite accute hearing. It was rather eerie when a nude art model, in one of my college drawing classes, who was blind, would pretty much “look” at people based on her hearing, and it was not necessarily based upon someone talking to her. She was accurate almost all of the time. I volunteered to walk her to her ride across the campus and she did not need much help from me leading her along.

Sometimes I find it easier to close my eyes and navigate thusly in the dark rather than try to see in the dark and walk about. I also use my hands to feel my way around. Sometimes I experiment with walking about in areas I am familiar with in the very early morning, still dark like the night, with my eyes closed. Memory, of course plays a part, but trying to sense your surroundings is an interesting exercise in really connecting with other senses beyond vision. I also sometimes close my eyes in order to hear something better. I think the inherent distractions of vision are part of the reason.

@keanani
“There is a group of people in Africa who communicate via clicks.”

The Khosian languages, some Bantu… click consonants are almost unheard of outside South and East Africa, at least as a backbone of daily language.

IIRC, Jared Diamond makes a compelling argument (though tracing linguistic drift) for the earliest of human languages being click-intensive. He traced shared word forms across several languages and demonstrated that words lose, but never seem to gain, clicks.

All that aside, though? They sound *awesome*.

A sunny, breezy Hawai’i day…my afternoon reading was this:

Our Earliest Ancestors by Ann Gibbons
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Human-Familys-Earliest-Ancestors.html

Smithsonian Magazine, March 2010 Volume 40, No. 12 (pp. 34-41)
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issue/March_2010.html

Ardi is a real cutie 🙂

RandomJ said: “A shitton of humans do not care about their partner’s experience despite being fully aware and capable of experiencing sexual pleasure.”

But of course! Thanks, a new word for me to learn ~ “shitton”. 🙂

I was thinking more so of the life form on the receiving end of the advances as deciding what to do vased upon all of this, and that.

“Why would a Blampire care?” Indeed. 🙂

@RandomJ

“While I generally agree with the sentiment that “rape” in animals does not offer a perfect model of rape in humans (well, what that would be a silly thing to demand anyways), it seems to me that technically, you don’t need a capacity for legal consent to establish behavior as being “close enough” to rape. You don’t need a capacity for distinct eloquent will or self-awareness.”

I wanted to say as much, myself, but couldn’t quite get past the subjective human baggage “rape” carries. It seems that, especially with species practicing traumatic insemination or lacking courtship altogether, that ‘eloquent will or self-awareness’ are quite beside the point 🙂

Wait a minute. Shitton. You from Upstate NY?

RandomJ: I am fairly certain that, given the presence of a non-violent variant of mating behavior, the violent alternative can be called “rape like”, at the very least.

You’re projecting human concepts onto the ducks.

I think we need a different word from “rape” when volition cannot be established. For instance, there are animals where the standard mating procedure is to grab the female and, while she screams, inseminate her. In that case, are you going to claim that because the female is in a fear state and screams, that every instance of such a species mating is “rape”?

No, it’s just their pre-programmed procedure. Rape is a human legal and moral term. Some men and women enjoy being subdued, experiencing a fear response, and being penetrated while they are pinned, or so I hear, and yet it’s not rape, because they consented to it. From the outside, the act looks exactly the same as a rape. The crucial determinant is whether the person being subdued consented.

The moment you can ask the duck if she consents, and she can reply, we’ll talk.

Hljóðlegur said: “Some men and women enjoy being subdued, experiencing a fear response, and being penetrated while they are pinned, or so I hear, and yet it’s not rape, because they consented to it.”

This is the stuff I was referring to that I read about in recent woman’s magazines about female sexuality. It was likened to or even labeled “rape fantasy”, however, the notion was really one of surrendering or submitting in consent after the “struggle” and not being forced to engage in the act via force.

The books out there that women are eating up is chock full of this scenario and iterations thereof.

I think that crossing the line threshold from role-playing fantasy to nonconsensual forcible copulation or penetration in humans, is the giving or denying of consent.

The problem arises when the consent turns into nonconsent, as in one person changing their mind because perhaps she or he did not realize what they were getting themself into, or just plain old chickening out, which as humans, we do, and have the right to do. This then leads to what is actual consent and when was it given? Once consent is given is it too late to retract it?

When someone says “no” or “stop” at any point, that should be the end of the activity.

You really have to know and trust the person to engage in something of this nature, in order to be safe and secure, confident that “no” means no at whatever point it is chosen.

Fear response, some anticipatory thrill excitement or going out of one’s comfort zone are also reasons why people go to scary horror movies, ride rollercoasters, bungee jump or take a flying leap off of rocks into the ocean below.

Freedom, for humans at least, includes that consenting adults can do what they want in the privacy of their personal space and relationship.

P.S.: Why does everyone have a fancy avatar, and I seem to have something so faint it that it is barely even visible? Is there a way to change it?

Science news related to things vampiric:

“Blood groups can be converted”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6517137.stm

@RandomJ ~ My avatar, or what I was calling “identifier square” isn’t fancy. 🙂 However I do like mine cause it looks like a Hawaiian Maile Lei unspooling…

Some people seem to have their own personal avatars, the rest of us got what we got when we first posted here. Ask Peter if you can have another one. Sure it’s faint, but it is pretty. 🙂

One thing I learned, if your post is in mod, then YOU will see this on your computer on this blog, stating that your post is awaiting moderation. If you post and it seems like it bounced into no man’s land, then it may be lost. Hard to tell. One time I posted, and it seemed to be bounced perhaps like spam, then I later reposted, and lo and behold the original one posted so it was a double post.

Best thing to do is to copy and paste your potential posting and save it elsewhere, just in case.

Here is something I posted many hours ago and it has not surfaced:

More fun Stuff!

New early human species announced
http://humanorigins.si.edu/resources/whats-hot/new-early-human-species-announced

Smithsonian Human Origins Program
http://humanorigins.si.edu/

@01 who said: While risking to come off as a dim and insensitive person, I have to inquire as to why would a person who happens to be on the receiving end of a vampire’s “advances” care about whether said vampire is capable of experiencing subjective pleasure / engaging in purely recreational sex?”

No, not at all. 🙂 I was not clear perhaps as to what I was trying to say. It is the “person who happens to be on the receiving end of a vampire’s ‘advances'” of whom I was speaking, and not the vampire, as to “experiencing subjective pleasure / engaging in purely recreational sex” in regard to deciding whether to submit or fight to the death.

Therefore the choice as what to do or not to do is upon the one being “attacked”.

The choice as whether to comply, enduring pain, or not to do so and possibly die.

I was factoring in the idea that if male vampires did not care or give female vampires any sort of pleasure or other physical positive in the mating act, then would this not factor into what female humans would choose to do?

The confusion as to what I was trying to analogize regarding vampire mating, was whether female humans are treated the same way as a female vampire would be. My questioning was thusly premised upon the issue that if a female vampire was forced to copulate, and the experience was not favorable for her, then what options does a female human really have? I then factored in the thorny question of whether vampire sexual relations had any positive benefits, other than possible reproduction of offspring?

Bluntly put, as my questioning mind has not seen anything definitively stated by Peter that Blindsight vampire sexual relations are anything but a painful and violent affair, is there the possibility that since it is quite obvious both male humans and male vampires by possession of that sperm shooter, and their sex drive is partly driven by their needs (as in sexual pleasure and tension release) that females, vampire or human would also experience some physical pleasure? Why? Well would not males not want to keep females around who endured sex and bore offspring for them to have some sort of bond with them?

If the bond for a female human is not going to be anything warm and fuzzy with a vampire suitor, then what is it going to be? Fear? Life or death? Some sort of physical bonding? Is wanting to stay alive, period, more powerful than having to repeatedly endure fear, pain, being attacked and living like a brood mare?

However, you did bring up another angle perhaps, and that being whether a human female would cause something akin to bonding in her submission and compliance with her aggressive “suitor”.

if I have missed something about Blindsight reproductive strategies that has clearly leveled my questioning on this issue, please point that out. I do not recall seeing anything of that sort.

Perhaps in light of this, even though the evidence thus far seemingly proves Blindsight vampires, males particularly, since we really only had Jukka to “get to know”, are most likely not feeling sorts of fellas, there has been no depiction whatsoever as to whether the sex-drive being similar or different from the hunger-drive. That is why I am questioning this. Just curious.

Only Peter knows the answer to this question. Any one of us can come to our own conclusions or assumptions, but since I am female, I will take the side of the girls, both human and vampire, and give voice to their sexual rights. 🙂

Hmmm, apparently I misunderstood what “infodump” means. If it is a negative connotation, then that is not what I mean, sorry. 🙂

What, exactly does it mean? To dump a lot of information?

I am still learning the terminology.

@ RandomJ

regarding

http://i718.photobucket.com/albums/ww190/VR1/motivatore7f13db8916fcedd8809f76519.jpg

I bow a deep bow.

Question: would that work better as a t-shirt or a mug? I want that image in my life.

Reading this thread had me musing. And I’m sure all of this has been said in multiple places before, but just to reiterate: Why do people like vampires? Well, why do they like cat girls? Why do they like FPSes with chicks in tight leather? It’s all about sex and violence. (Admittedly my second two examples are very male, but there seem to be enough more feminine chicks on this thread to give their own examples).

Because we are vampires, in a very real way, and that seems to be a concept at the core of “Blindsight”. It seems fitting that they would show up in the work of a man so fascinated with the parts of our brains that are not us, the parts of brains which are invulnerable to us-ness.

So if Blampires are violently atavistic in terms of violence, why should we expect anything different in the sex department? Part of the interplay between Siri’s memories and what we see of Jukka seems to reinforce that on some level sex is ultimately about power. It isn’t just that, and Mr. Watts allows for that because he understands gray areas.

But seriously, why else do you think rape and molestation happen? Because men (or women) who feel like alphas and want to keep their position, or omegas who want to gain one, express their desire for or ownership of power through sexual violence. Not just violence, sexual violence. Because even more than just plain violence, sexual violence gives you shame as a weapon. How else can you hurt and invade someone so badly that it is as if they were enchanted by one of those evil spells that keeps them from being able to speak about what has occurred? That’s one of the reasons you see so much violence in situations where people feel powerless, or feel the need to express their power. Prisons, border crossings, courtrooms, families, churches, schools, barracks . . . show me anywhere humans live within a hierarchy, and I’ll show you a place where sexual violence happens.

And why ultimately do we want vampires? Because we want power over the parts of ourselves that resembles them, even as we give into those parts of ourselves by wanting them. It is positively Escherian. We love vampires because they are flawless and smooth and sure of themselves, and because they remind us why we want to be human. Sometimes, as with Twilight I suspect, people forget the value of humanity.

A world ruled by Blampires is definitely one in which a woman raised adhering to a rigid church would encourage young girls to go get pregnant by and marry alpha male monsters.
Sex can be human and loving, but perhaps one reason sexual impulses end up in the “evil” bin in some cultures is that it can be hideous and self-serving and atavistic as well. Just like humans, it can be monstrous or sublime.

Well, then we’d better start the terminological purge with terms like “fear” and “pain” and “hunger”.

Because we can’t ascertain whether an animal’s “fear”, “pain” and “hunger” are equivalent to human fear, pain, and hunger

We can’t ascertain that, I agree. We can also refrain from imputing it to them if you prefer, for safety’s sake. Strictly speaking, I agree with that.

I would note that fear, pain, and hunger are basic brain states, not actions, as rape is. If I were guessing, I would guess we are more likely to share these states with other animals with limbic systems than we are to share the idea of rape, which is a complex legal,moral, and sociological action. Dogs have no juris prudence that we have evidence of, for instance.

a third party might attempt to unravel the situation by observing post-incident behavior.

Sure, but, again, in the case of people, you can ask them. In the case of ducks, we are only inferring. Observation after the fact does nothing to establish the fact that the mallards “decided” to “rape” a female duck.

I think where we may be getting messed up here is in bringing our experience of sex and overlaying that on the ducks? We decide to engage in sexual activities – masturbation, for instance. You have learned there are specific times and places where this is allowed. and you exercise volitional control over when and where you do it.

If you don’t, you will be beaten, shunned, arrested, etc. So you refrain.

Dogs, ducks, et cetera are just not that flexible, and it’s not a matter of not having fingers, It’s that their sexuality is much more hardwired to speciific stimulus and hormonal conditions, and, given their lesser neocortex, we should probably assume a dog doesn’t have the capacity to interpose the idea that “it’s impolite to hump RandomJ’s leg if I haven’t asked him first” between the drive and the action. You do, however, being way more complex and your sexuality having a much higher learned component.

whimsical hypothetical duck BDSM aside, it boils down to whether there can be some consent-equivalent and “volition”-equivalent in a non self-aware entity.

Fair enough. What consent-equivalent do you suggest for a non self-aware entity?

Assuming horses are NOT self-aware, would a particular horse that only lets you ride it after being fed some sugar be “giving consent” for being employed in the role of transport vehicle (and denying consent for being used as transport should man fail to yield sugar)?

If so, why?

I have to say, “no.” If we assume the horse is not self-aware, he cannot give consent to be a transport vehicle. Neither can he deny consent. The horse has no “natural rights” in re this.

V wants to know: How do we gauge the morality of actions done to beings which cannot give consent? How is riding an unconsenting horse different from using spurs on it or turning it into glue?

Excellent question. What is the difference? Anything to do with degree of estimated harm to the horse? I’m asking, not telling, mind you.

V :

Good thought. What if we have the someone overestimate the harm, to give us a buffer? Or have more than one someone, to prevent outliers from causing harm due to gross underestimation of harm?

Are there more concrete, biological measures of harm?

*lightbulb*

Can someone who considers a being unworthy of having rights

Is this a moral chide? Don’t mistake me, friend. I was not declaring my personal moral assessment there on horse autonomy or equine rights. What I am saying is that under the current legal system, horses don’t have rights, and that, scientifically, we have to be careful what we assume about their mental states.

But I am not in favor of abusing our animal friends, morally speaking. I’m not a total monster, you know. 🙂

@keanani –
I agree, making a horse into glue is quite morally different from inducing it to let you ride it.

Also, we and the horse are not totally mismatched in the later, power-wise, even if the legal system affords them no rights: you are much smarter than he is, so you can sell the horse on the idea of being transportation, but the horse is so much stronger than you that he can physically refuse the transportation role.

Well, hello there everyone!

I’m the girlfriend 01 was referring to.I guess I am thereby expected to comment on the entire “Blampire sex” thing… And so I will.

First and foremost, I don’t really know why I think Jukka is sexually attractive, so V’s theory is as sound as any, though it seems like something a psychoanalyst and/or a literature critic might have said (no offense, just a typical outlook. BTW, V, do you happen to be any of those? ;))
I just happen to find him…well…okay, as far as descriptions from the book go, I find Jukka S. very attractive (by the way, is there any “official” Jukka Sarasti art over there?). That definitely has to do with him being smart, badass and tall (also likely has to do with him being a rational sociopath, and yes, I agree that it is not very wise to have a preference for such people)

Also, the degree of self-control he exhibits – I mean, he is a being evolved “for
killing and eating humans. For the story’s entire duration, he’s locked with humans, and he doesn’t murder and eat a single one, and instead works hard to solve the Scrambler issue. Oh, okay, he has beaten up Siri, but as 01 has already informed you, I have little sympathy for the creepy bugger, he had it coming. And it served Siri well, by the way 😉

Now, speaking of self control, we know that a vampire can have enough not to murder the juicy crew of Theseus, going beyond his evolved feeding behaviors.
So why wouldn’t a Blampire go beyond his allegedly brutal evolved reproductive behavior, if that serves some kind of long term goal?

P.S.: and, since I am already posting my silly comments on Mr. Watts’s blog…
As a Balmpire aficionado 😉 I would like to use this opportunity to express hope that Mr. Watts doesn’t kill them off in the sequel 🙂

Haha, my stereotypes, they work (cue mad scientist laughter) 😀

Seriously though, I didn’t expect my random guess to land anywhere near that close.
I wonder if I’ll be able to make any other good guesses from reading people’s opinions (RandomJ and 01 are not fair game because I happen to know both of them IRL)

That’s one of the things I loved about the kudzu6 drop: wasn’t immediately obvious what it’s function was, IIRC. Stay with #2… it’s what makes them worth reading the second time as noted by Mike in a previous thread (who read Blindsight four times!).

Now, the game Eclipse Phase: some of the absolute coolest ideas ever put in a PnP RPG ever, but the rules are going to make play slow as, well, explaining how an electron microscope works. They need a faster version at least for combat. At least that’s my recollection those not-so-many months ago that seem-like-years. Needs vampires, though. 🙂

**
Hljóðlegur said:
“Do me! Do me!”
**

[La Femme Provocateur] oh, I’d love too, but I’m probably way too far away 😉 [/La Femme Provocateur]

Well, it seems to me you have a fondness for so-called “soft sciences” and appear to harbor a personal dislike reductionism.
My guess is that you might be either some kind of sociologist, a reporter/journalist, or a worker in adjacent fields. It’s not impossible that you’re an academic psychologist, but IMO you aren’t weird enough for that.

How close am I?

**
Peter Watts said:
“Sweet Smoking Jesus. Turn my back for a couple of days and this thread doubles in length. ”
**

Mr. Watts, may I exercise a bit of inappropriate curiosity and ask, on an almost unrelated tangent, does the system have you read all the comments flagged for moderation? Just curious…

I recall seeing some speculations on whether Neolithic biologists bred a race of slaves (us) on Usenet a few years ago. That would fit some of the speculations on this thread.

Oh what a lovely thread we have woven
Vampire ducks rape lovers struggling to recall the safe word.
Contemplate the divine aspects of positron emission tomography. Surely the Lord knows the if it’s _real_rape_ or if the duck is faking; all else is hubris.

But really… Where are we going with all this? The quest for operational definitions can take one to such strange places. Is it time to unarchive that dusty copy of “A slave girl of Gor”?

Now I don’t want to impose; just making a suggestion. All very humble. But wouldn’t it be fun to wrap this thing up with a musical number?
so with thanks to Gilda Radner

A rooster says Good Morning
With a “Cock-a-doodle-doo” – Good Morning!
A horse’s neigh is just his way
Of saying, “How are you”.
A lion growls “Hello”
And owls ask “Why” and “Where” and “Who”.
May I suggest you get undressed
And show them your wazoo – Oh,

The animals, the animals,
Let’s talk dirty to the animals
From birds in the treetops
To snakes in the grass – But,
Never tell an alligator, “Bite my…” No!
Never tell an alligator, “Bite my…” Yes!
Never tell an alligator, “Bite my snatch!”

I’m a bit short on time, so for now, I’ll just point out that term “traumatic insemination” can not be used to describe duck shenanigans.

It’s a very specific term that is reserved for situations when females lack a proper orifice that can be used for insemination (usually, there is an orifice, but due to some quirk, it fails at facilitating rendezvous of gametes), and males use sharp pointy body parts (usually, but not always, integrated into the copulatory organ. In some species of exotic bugs male just gnaws a new hole in the female, IIRC) to literally cut/stab a new one, usually (but not always) in the general projection of internal genitalia.

Fun spider fact: there is a species of spiders (Harpactea sadistica) in which males inject sperm right into the female’s ovaries. Traumatically.
This virtually guarantees successful insemination, making for very effective sex. Caveat? There are cases when the female doesn’t survive, because having eight holes in your abdomen is no small deal, even for a spider. Still, losses are rather negligible and it’s not like a male spider can’t go find and stab more females just to make sure…
Effective spiders are effective.

P.S.:
No, I don’t talk to the roomba. But I like to watch it go about its chores, it kinda…fantastic, in a way.

And this talk about roomba gives me a…curious idea:
one could study evolutionary dynamics of “rapelike” behaviors and related assumptions by modeling them in self replicating robots/software constructs (the latter would be more efficient, the former would make for a better Discovery channel feature).

More later…

Just read an interesting bit on whether or not animals “lie”, which could be important to the topic. Here’s Lewis Hyde (Trickster Makes This World) on that question:

{ …Do animals lie?

The answer is both yes and no. Animals of course communicate with one another. Birds call from trees, whales sing in the oceans, the deer gives its hoarse warning cry, or—to take the famous example—the honeybee dances to tell the hive how far away the flowers are, and in what direction. Moreover, in most cases these animals are telling the “truth” when they communicate with one another. Honeybees do not lie. Their “language” is constrained by instinct; no bee ever comes to the hive and says “The flowers are due west” when in fact they are northeast. The deer does not cry wolf when there is no wolf at hand.

Having granted all that, however, it is not hard to think of complications and exceptions. Surely there are deceptive animals. There are insects evolved to look as if they are twigs or dead leaves; there are flowers that eat insects by luring them with false advertising. In the Louisiana swamps, one finds the remarkable alligator snapping turtle, one of whose features is a “lure tongue,” a stubby white appendage which it sticks out until an unsuspecting fish checks to see if it’s edible. The frightened possum pretends to be dead, as does the pangolin. In the classic case, when the fox threatens the mother grouse, she pretends to have a broken wing so as to lead the fox away from her nest. … }

He goes on to say that in each of these cases, it’s still instinct and that leaves these species vulnerable to any predator that gets “wise” to the ruse.

To switch back (and this rather supports the sexist position, doesn’t it?) when it comes to any sort of forced insemination, the male must have some sort of advantage over the female if a species is going to propogate. Perhaps conversely, the opposite may be true if the male is not able|willing to use rape as a tactic where the female is in “control” of the situation (though obviously sometimes—certain bird species for example—the male is the attractor or at least until she gets close enough to pounce on).

But maybe that’s in part what consciousness is good for: to learn, to evolve without having to rely on the weeding out process alone. Species who spend longer periods with their parents tend to use more learned and less instinctual behaviors (besides humans, certain canine species are known for this). I think consciousness probably also serves a buffer between reality and the vast ocean of the unconscious, but that’s just a wild ass guess. 🙂

Jason Stackhouse: After awhile, it becomes more of a stretch to hold on to this null hypothesis than to grant a creature internal states. If a non-human female demonstrates behavior which resembles escape, struggle to avoid copulation, and pain response, why isn’t she trying to escape, not wanting to have sex, or hurt? Humans don’t have a monopoly over internal states, ours are just more complex and hardware-intensive.

Earlier, I said that projecting human moral judgements onto other species was meaningless. That is not the same as denying non-human animals have meaningful internal states.

We agree that projecting human moral judgements on animals is fruitless.

I’m not sure you take my full meaning; I am not saying that animals don’t have meaningful internal states – I assume they do. I am nervous about using descriptors of those states that are so cram-packed with meanings that are parochial. It’s more respectful to the animal, to my eye, to look at the animal for what it is than to project complicated human motivations and desires on him/her.

I get really really nervous when we start doing this for scientific purposes.

Heck, forget dogs, how about mute humans? Remember how researchers were so excited that disabled people with severe muscle-control problems were able to communicate via keyboard if an assistant steadied their hands for them? OMG (they kindly projected onto these poor bastards) they were locked inside bodies with almost no muscle control! And now they can be free to communicate!

Only .. it turns out the assistants were unconsciously guiding their hands. The assistants were so moved by their plight, and wanted to help so much, they imagined what these disabled people were thinking, and helped them type what they imagined. LIke Clever Hans, the disabled person was unable to answer any questions about events that occurred outside the view of the assistant.

How about “non-cooperative copulation”?

If you are raped, the event occurs between you and your attacker, but you acted in observable ways that did not further the event. That way, we are not replying any either parties’ motivation in the description. Leaves the internal states as more black box.

@Hljóðlegur

“”Fair enough. What consent-equivalent do you suggest for a non self-aware entity?””

Well, I would suggest using behavioral clues, as long as those are applicable.

If the creature in question is demonstrating the same responses in generic trauma (like poking with sharp things, or electrocution) and coitus, and demonstrates consistent avoidant behaviors both before and after both types of events, we can conclude that the process is as close to “nonconsent” as it could be in a non self-aware entity.

Sex is not the only thing that could be assessed this way – any behavior where the animal appears to struggle and show responses known to be associated with “pain” and “fear” can be reasonably deemed not-quite consensual.

Off course, there will be a degree of difference between an mouse struggling to fight its way out of a cat’s grasp and a man struggling to get out of a tiger’s grasp,.but I think that there is also a degree of similarity to the processes going on in the mouse’s CNS and in the man’s CNS.
You see, there is a widely recognized correlation between form and function. Function of pain responses, is pretty blatantly obvious -damage avoidance. It would be somewhat unusual if the “implementation” of this function on the neurological level did not have a degree of cross-species similarity (esp. in related species).

Off course, it would be nice to have separate, less loaded terms for animal behaviors, but currently, to my best knowledge, we simply call animal pain responses pain (even despite the fact that we don’t know whether pain is “experienced” by the animal in a humanlike fashion or if it is merely a “robotic” response not unlike how the roomba “flees” from the barrier things) and any explicitly combative/forced copulation “rape”.

“”Got another variation that would work? _______ insemination?””
No, at least nothing that would be in widespread use in relevant fields

your “noncooperative insemination” could work, if only people actually researching animal behaviors would adopt it.

Also, I would like to point out that while in modern human context, the definition of “rape” carries a lot of lawyerspeak baggage, the core of the phenomenon is mostly of non legal nature.
“Rape” as we know it would most certainly exist even in societies that do not legally recognize it.

@Peter Watts
“” I did not know that. Thanks for the link I’ve downloaded the pdf, and look forward to reading this. (Man, think of all the sexual assault cases we could throw out of court…) “”

you’re welcome, glad to be of use.

I doubt, however, that potential for existence of inherited CNS features that make one more likely to engage in sexual violence, and evolutionary soundness of rape as a reproductive strategy, can have any bearing on legal and/or normative status of sexual violence.
Having CNS features that make one more likely to engage in “vanilla” violence don’t fly as defense as long as the perpetrator is below the legal insanity threshold. Also, no judge or jury would buy the “but it was a very effective strategy back in Pleistocene!” defense.

“”There’s a bit near the end of Blindsight where Sarasti asks for forgiveness because “I don’t know what I’m doing.” This is 1) on the heels of Siri’s realization that Sarasti may not be conscious; and 2) a deliberate inversion of Christ’s (alleged) words on the cross (“Forgive them— they don’t know what they’re doing”), which also puns off the whole Crucifix glitch thing. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is a case of a vampire making a joke. It may not be funny, but I maintain it’s at least clever.””
*takes notes*
So Blampires prefer complicated, intertextual puns as far as humor is concerned.

Hmmm…that’s interesting, thank you very much!

Do we know for certain that there are vampire women, or rather, that vampire women are necessarily like vampire men?

Well, Val the Vampire from the fiblet in the “In progress” section seems much, much meaner than good old Jukka…

*RandomJ’s wanton speculation*
Perhaps typical Blampire sex roles are reversed?
I am inclined to predict that such turn of events would likely increase the popularity of Blampires 😉 (but from evolutionary perspective, that makes them kind of bizarre, methinks)…

By the way, as far as Blampire reproductive behavior is concerned, it seems to me that given their mean temper and “hate-ons” they get when encounter each others, the most sane approach to cospecific mating for a Blampire male would be to present the female with valuable human prey as a gift, and copulate right after she has consumed the protocadherin rich treat, or perhaps while she is still busy gorging herself on the human present.
Such behaviors are not unknown in species where female presents immediate danger for the male, and given that Blampires are superintelligent, could be devised by a Blampire male/recognized and accepted by a Blampire female without the need to evolve such “gift giving” instincts for millions of years.
Need to come up with such smartass tricks to succeed at Blampire-Blampire copulation would place a nice additional intelligence-favoring selective pressure on Blampires.

P.S.:
Also, I happen to have some anecdotal evidence that women with sub-clinical ASPD respond extremely well to such approaches (too bad no journal would accept such a paper 😉 )…
*/ RandomJ’s wanton speculation*

@fembot17

Ummm…
errrrr….
*cough*
…
Uh…

okay, I’ll only comment on this bit (because the rest is…uhhh…okay):

“” but the vampires of mister Peter seem to have no other choice but to rape humans of the opposite sex in order to create new vampires and not let their kind extinguish again. since no human would go willingly to mate with any of those vampires of Peter’s universe since according to the description they are as ugly as the vampires from the Nosferatu’s clan from the masquerade game. and beside ugly they are also scary in behavior too. “”

Well, as far as appearance is concerned, they seem to be uncanny, not ugly per se.
I think there was an “approved” Jukka sketch somewhere on Peter’s old blog (long time lurker here)…
Ah, here: http://www.rifters.com/real/gallery/sarastisketch.jpg
Doesn’t strike me as ugly, as far as my standards of male appearances go (though being a straight male, I am very limited in my ability to comment on “male beauty”)

Also, this thread contains at least two posters who think that Blampires are sexy :D…

@RandomJ
Perhaps typical Blampire sex roles are reversed?
I am inclined to predict that such turn of events would likely increase the popularity of Blampires 😉

Yes, indeed 😀

but from evolutionary perspective, that makes them kind of bizarre, methinks

I’m curious… How so?

…as far as Blampire reproductive behavior is concerned, it seems to me that given their mean temper and “hate-ons” they get when encounter each others, the most sane approach to cospecific mating for a Blampire male would be to present the female with valuable human prey as a gift, and copulate right after she has consumed the protocadherin rich treat, or perhaps while she is still busy gorging herself on the human present.
Such behaviors are not unknown in species where female presents immediate danger for the male, and given that Blampires are superintelligent, could be devised by a Blampire male/recognized and accepted by a Blampire female without the need to evolve such “gift giving” instincts for millions of years.
Need to come up with such smartass tricks to succeed at Blampire-Blampire copulation would place a nice additional intelligence-favoring selective pressure on Blampires.

1) nitpick:
You already mentioned the “copulative bribe behavior”

2) your post has inspired me to cobble together a Blindsight vampire motivator of my own. All I need now is a pic of some woman who might resemble one… that, or a terrified Mexican…

Here, as promised, inspired by Random’s speculations…
http://brontopixel.com/upload_image/639b68869211edd19468c61b7907310b.jpg
Unfortunately, didn’t find a scared Mexican or a sufficiently creepy woman, so decided to go with a happy (so far 😉 ) Mexican kid instead

Here’s an additional twist for the chimps…Are they aware that they are lying to the other chimps, or are they convincing themselves (eg, are they in denial?) when they pretend the stuff they’re gorging themselves with does not exist or tastes bad? Seems like that might dampen the enjoyment of the
meal, since in order to conceive of the ruse, the mind must consider the possibility that the lie is true.

Kind of like Hollywood brats who get nosejobs. A horrible idea because they will now never know if that other person loves them for them, or their phony nose (which was probably just fine in the first place pre-op).

RE: Peter Watts

(wow, I’ve fallen behind on reading this thread)

>>. . . wither the vampire women? The more I look at the model, the more I wonder what role vampire females would have,
>>since the costs of reproduction are not on their side.

>Do we know for certain that there are vampire women, or rather, that vampire women are necessarily like vampire men?

I know there are females based on you mentioning Siri seeing one near the beginning of “Blindsight”. Of course he may not have seen what he tought he saw, but I for one think it would be a pretty low trick, writerly speaking, to say he only saw a puddy cat. : > I’m not being literal here of course, but you get what I mean.

>>Actually do vampires really need humans, or in fact other vampires, to reproduce in a technologically sophisticated era?
>>Neolithic — not so much. But in an era where Theseus exists?
>>Yeah, you need to get samples, you need a way to mature some of them based on how you get them — but mechanical >>wombs?

>I’ve actually sketched out a scene where this issue is raised, and it is revealed that in fact modern vamps can not reproduce >naturally and have to be cobbled together at human behest, because they’ve been genetically tweaked for sterility as a
>failsafe measure. I still haven’t decided whether to go with that, though — it may be a bit too reminiscent of the female-
>dinosaurs-only trick in Jurassic Park.

It is very much reminiscent of that trick. : P Now, admittedly I don’t know if you’ve decided where Little Vampires Come From in the first place; for some reason I assumed Jukka was tweaked as a kid. That they just went and rounded up the same folks they got from juvie and institutions, perhaps with some false hope rehab program, and turned them into vampires owned by the government. I know they couldn’t depend on a steady supply of serial killers since they are so very rare, but given the state of the juvenile justice system in the US, let alone bootcamp programs parents fed up with their kids send them off to, let alone all the abandoned and abused street kids. Do I really need to finish this paragraph?
That said, even if you did take the JP approach, I can see vamps using cloning to reproduce in some fashion albeit a handwaving one, since the Theseus technology does seem to be from an era that would have that, especially based on how far we’ve gotten already in our days. This may be a fail on my part, but I’m just musing here.

Also, on a thing you’ve said to another person, I forget who now:

>I did not know that. Thanks for the link I’ve downloaded the pdf, and look forward to reading this. (Man, think of all the sexual >assault cases we could throw out of court…)

This smells very bad due to a certain amount of historical precedent. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are being facetious. Actually, based on your comments below vis a vis defining rape, I KNOW you are being facetious, and you scored some points with me there.

But for the interest of others reading this thread . . .
So in the middle ages and after, well up until the modern era, rapists would use conception as an argument
Check out “Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe”, by Merry E. Weisner. I can’t find the bit I’m looking for (doing this at speed) but you’ll note on page 61 (accessible on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521778220/artbiz2000-20, if you have an account — my copy isn’t to hand at the moment)
“As noted above, her pregnancy might be used as a disproof that rape had occurred, but not all jurists accepted the notion that conception proved consent.” That people are doing studies on this alarms me; it suggests not scientific interest so much as a sociopolitical axe to grind which has been reforged from some very old metal.
I should also note an article in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html discussing research that physical arousal in women does not always signify consent but is instead a self-protective measure based on biophysics. Given other studies which I can’t remember the authors or titles of at the moment (I am sure someone else will oblige) that the mechanisms of arousal seem to increase the likelihood of conception . . . I think you can fill in the rest of the blanks.

/begin conservative baiting/ If anyone uses the word feminist or a variant thereof as a slur in a response to me, he or she can eat something inedible for their next meal. Perhaps Glenn Beck, or if they’re feeling ambitious, Rush Limbaugh. I may not have read up all my gender theory, but dammit, I AM A FEMINIST. And that goes hand in hand with being a thinking person. They are not mutually exclusive things. /end conservative baiting/

Re Jason Stackhouse
Some of the things you said definitely explain a nightmare I had several nights
after this thread began.

Also, re his comment “If a non-human female demonstrates behavior which resembles escape, struggle to avoid copulation, and pain response, why isn’t she trying to escape, not wanting to have sex, or hurt? Humans don’t have a monopoly over internal states, ours are just more complex and hardware-intensive.”

Don’t forget, sex is a dominance tool (see my comments above) as much as it is a reproductive one. Males can do this to other males, too. In fact, I wonder why vamps wouldn’t use it that way. I hope that Mr. Watts will tell me differently.

Re Mr. Watts again: One of my pet peeves is when people write imaginary civilizations into the dawn of human history that left no traces behind (not just fossil record, byt anything else) and had advanced technology. I know you won’t commit that last sin, but if you do Bronze Age people . . . I trust you’ll do them right, but please, do them right. I want to give this book to my mom without her rolling her eyes too much at archaeologically unfounded silliness.

I should note that it should be clear (other people argue for me dammit . . . if I have to I will) that roughness between consenting partners is a different animal (pun intended) than sexual aggression because it doesn’t seem to be tasked as a dominance display, and that distinction should be kept in mind.

And whoever mentioned the “copulative bribe behavior”, I likes the concept. It would ring true for me if it were used.

Although I did not appreciate the end of 01’s response to the last person talking about that, it came across as slur, which was probably not intentional.

I’m not going to dignify fembot17 with a reply.

@01

re: motivator

lol, poor choice of bribe, man ;).
Children have small(er) brain mass (less juicy protocadherins).

@03

“” his thread also contains at least one person who would probably have sex with a Blampire as long as he would get to publish the resultant findings in some kind of peer reviewed journal “”

YEAH!

FOR! SCIENCE!
Seriously, that would be a paper to die for…
*crickets*

P.S.: I’m a bit surprised you didn’t comment on the Jukka sketch…

@V:
“” That people are doing studies on this alarms me; it suggests not scientific interest so much as a sociopolitical axe to grind which has been reforged from some very old metal.
I should also note an article in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html discussing research that physical arousal in women does not always signify consent but is instead a self-protective measure based on biophysics. “”

Well, I see nothing alarming about carrying out such research per se – after all, even if human physiology does have quirks that increase the probability of conception from rape, that can hardly be used as grounds for changing our normative stance on such activities.

And thanks for the NY article, intriguing stuff.

It should be noted, however, that erectile response in males is technically involuntary, too, thus triggering and sustaining a nonconsensual erection in a healthy human male is not a big problem (this fact was discovered when scientists turned their attention to cases of female-on-male rape)

“” Don’t forget, sex is a dominance tool (see my comments above) as much as it is a reproductive one. Males can do this to other males, too. In fact, I wonder why vamps wouldn’t use it that way. “”

It seems to me that “dominant” and “submissive” behaviors would be fairly vestigial in blindsight vampires, due to them being strongly antisocial creatures.

However, I think that upon learning about humans interpreting sexual intercourse in such terms, they would likely use it in such manner when this course of action is likely to give the blampire some kind of “edge”.

@V

It wasn’t a racial slur (pardon to any Mexicans in range), more of a joke based around popularity of Mexican food

@01

Well, looks like I’m not the kind of person who could succeed at dating a vampire 😉 …

PW: And what more do you need for “rape” than “the sexual violation of a victim you know is suffering as a result of your actions”?

I need a table or a chart, because this trying to explain a multi-layer’d concept via a linear pipe like language is killing me. Definitely need something more spatial. Or maybe you wouldn’t agree with me even if you did see what I was saying, idk. Hm.

It looks like the software is hating me once again 🙁
If it ate my comment, here’s an approximate repost. If it didn’t and it’s just still waiting for approval, then pardon my double post please

@01

“” lol. copypasted my own nick instead of Random’s… “”

Welcome to the hivemind ! We have cookies here!

@Hljóðlegur

“” Rape is an extreme expression of non-cooperative copulation, so it needs its own word to get across the true event. It’s analogous to killing – animals and plants kill each other for food, people kill each other with cars, babies kill their mothers by being born. Deliberate unlawful depriving of another of his life, however, is “murder.” Can we agree to disagree on this one? “”

Perhaps we should.

However, keeping this short (in case this will end up as a double post), how would we call experience of a woman who was…well, forced into intercourse in a society which does not recognize rape (all successful penetrations are voluntary by definition, because this hypothetical country is that mustache-twirlingly evil)?

@V

“” Does what the society thinks really matter?

An act of violence is an act of violence whether some misogynist society recognizes it or not.””

It seems to me that you misinterpret my position in the discussion.

My opinion is that, while legal structures are important for defining rape in modern society, the core of this phenomenon is not of legislative nature, and thus “rape” would exist even in an environment where no legal institution recognizes it as such (whether due to plain absence or due to extreme misogyny is irrelevant for the discussion, but extreme misogyny version makes for a better thought experiment, IMO).

“” I find it interesting that we’re also assuming only women are raped. “”

Oh, that’s a kind of silly cognitive automatism on my part 🙂
pardone moi.

Uh…
I am pretty sure I hit the “submit” button, but the usual “waiting for moderation” thingus didn’t appear. here comes repost…

@ V

my position is that what society thinks is not crucial for the phenomenon of rape to exist.

The whole point of the hypothetical “super-misogynist” society was to illustrate that, even when the legal framework does not recognize the phenomenon of rape (at all, by design), the phenomenon doesn’t just vanish.

As for only females being raped… auto-assumption of victim’s sex is just a silly mental quirk on my part, probably due to such cases having a higher statistical presence (AFAIK)

hey 03, i’m a woman that is also staring to find also Jukka attractive too. he he he.

Okay, not that much, apparently. I tried. Good thing I didn’t bother with the entire table, then.

This is coming in from the outfield, but I realized something last night which may have some bearing on the sorts of things we’re thinking about here.

Last night I realized that folk dancing teaches you to think (well, not “think” . . . . neurologically process) like a Blampire, specifically modern western square dancing, devised, I am told, by Perl programmers, and popular with engineers.

So I’ve been taking a weekylish square dancing class since last September. You’re supposed to learn up through Plus level in 13 lessons. I flunked the first time so this spring I’m in the process of taking it again, and I think I’ll get my club badge this time. I had wondered for months why, every evening after class, if I turned one way I had the instinct to turn a corner and turn the other way as soon as possible. I realized that square dancing was doing something analogous to the Tetris effect, but it wasn’t until last night that I understood why it had that effect to the extent it did. It took me that long to engage the intellectual side of my brain with what my motor cortex had been screaming at it for months.

You can turn on your pattern recognition circuitry and turn off your brains, and suddenly it just works. The motor cortex does the driving. It becomes nothing more than a pattern of alternating motion, and once I was in the “zone” that was all I was aware of — not the other people I turned with or past, not myself, just the pattern. When you really get it, when you turn complex thinking into instinct — if you think you suddenly can’t do it. Ever come to yourself in the middle of playing your memorized piece at a piano recital? It’s gone, as soon as you remember that you exist and there are people watching you.

“. . .You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool.” –The Stones of Venice, John Ruskin

This thread is a gift that keeps on giving.

Hljóðlegur, perhaps you could make that table in an image format, upload it onto one of the free image hosting services, and then just post a link here?

http://brontopixel.com/

Very easy, requires no registration.

@1 – This thread is a gift that keeps on giving.
Hljóðlegur, perhaps you could make that table in an image format, upload it onto one of the free image hosting services, and then just post a link here?

Okay, I have taken a swing at this:
http://brontopixel.com/upload_image/fdb05ccd96d1276c075672767f471394.png

Alls I’m saying is that when groups of intelligent people absolutely butt heads on a topic, especially when the definition is part of the problem? We might be looking at a complex problem in which layers of parallel analyses exist simultaneously; this allows the debate participants to howl and twist and be sure they they are Right, and they are, from within their analysis mode. The problem exists 3, 4, 5, n dimensions that way, but the use of English obscures this, being largely linear. Not absolutely linear, because words change with context and and have connotations existing in parallel to denotation, but you read it linearly, and it gets you thinking that way.

Hljóðlegur said: “…when we start projecting human subjective states onto non-humans or at least, non-primates?” In response to what Peter had said: (“…we see the rudiments of politics, morality, and even religion in other species, and every new study seems to reinforce the sense that the differences between them and us are more of degree than of kind.”)

All the non-humans that I have known in my life thus far had been quite attuned to human behaviours and emotions, from my perspective. The aforementioned female dog who loved her stuffed bear would oftentimes pick up cues from the humans in her family. She was particularly sensitive to family members’ anger, laughter, silence and sadness. Oftentimes she would follow the crying human and try to get their attention by grabbing the clothing and yank on it so you would have to address her, then she would try to climb up on you until you picked her up, then she would get at your face to look at and lick it.

Whether they exhibited “human subjective states”, is open to interpretation. I remember another dog, a male dobie that we adopted, who had apparently been abused, because anytime someone raised their arm, or brought a rake up to rake the yard, etc. he cowered. But he was the sweetest dog. What I noticed was that whenever any one of us would talk to a neighbor or a stranger, he would watch our face intently for some reason. Looking for visual cues as a dog would in a pack?

As for the concept of rape~ as I know that many non-human animals mate, have sex, engage in reproductive copulation usually because of the female being in heat. Humans engage in sex anytime. No need for being in heat. Maybe the mood and not having a headache, but otherwise humans have sex for all kinds of reasons, and not just reproduction like so many other animals. So is being in heat, for non-humans a form of, a signal of consent to copulate? I suppose that one could argue that certain domesticated animals are indeed being raped, but at the direction of humans, as in a mare being hackled and the stud stallion is able to mount her without her being able to reject him via her kicking hooves. This would not be a natural mating.

RandomJ said: “Also, this thread contains at least two posters who think that Blampires are sexy”.
Alright, everyone fess up. There is definitely more than two. Hmm, 03, fembot, possibly 01…anyone else? I raise my paw thusly.

“Erotic rape”? Another way to state consensual rough & tumble S&M-type aggressive sexual activity?

I’m baffled by the eroticism of Jukka Sarasti.

I remember reading Blindsight and thinking, “uh oh,” when I realized it included vampires in a hard sci fi milieu. In literature, vampires have become lazy writer shorthand for forbidden sexuality, or sometimes addiction, so it boded poorly, I thought.

The saving grace for this daring move was that the vampires seemed to me not eroticized. The description of this creature was that he was fear-inducing, not alluring. The other characters didn’t seem attracted to him, they seemed to react with cold fear and a desire to flee. That didn’t strike me as being about sexual fascination, but about instinctive predator/prey interactions.

The vampire stood for the superior evolutionary track of no consciousness, not forbidden desire. They were heading in that direction, after all. Poor old conscious mankind managed to win in the novel, but at the end we see intimations that it was a battle won, not a war, and that non-conscious intelligence will eventually triumph, because it is a more adaptive trait. It struck me that this Watts fellow had cleverly decided to forego Anne Rice’s cheap trick, and subverting a literary cliche by using it in a new way.

Hljóðlegur said: “…non-conscious intelligence will eventually triumph, because it is a more adaptive trait.”

Is this not yet another catalyst for in-depth and meaningful discussion? Apart from the eroticism and seemingly illogical fetishism of Jukka Sarasti?

This particular crawl thread could go on into infinity discussing and dissecting the allure of the predatory Blampires and any offshoots from that in relation to sex ~ perhaps everyone who wishes to do so had better bookmark it as it will soon slip into the realm of old posting, to be unseen and unvisited.

Otherwise, there will surely be many opportunities for anyone to ressurrect this discussion elsewhere, as we have seen Allister effectively do with the junk sociobiology piece in order to breathe life into his “Peacock Theory”.

Perhaps the sociopathic behavior is part of the allure?

Hljóðlegur asked: “Please explain to me what is erotic about sociopathy?” I would not know myself for it is not my personal stance. I am merely just asking the question if indeed it is something to consider for some humans. At least we have seen how some females find murderers and serial killers attractive, so much so that they seek love and marriage with that man who is in prison for his crimes.

I would go so far as to nakedly posit that for some females, it is the allure of the dangerous coupled with the adrenaline fueled fear that causes excitement tantamount to a sexual thrill or tittilation that would propel such a female to beyond logic, reason and personal safety seek to put herself in harms way with a sociopath.

To be clear, I am simply stating that human beings can find all sorts of things or life forms erotic, stimulating, attractive or interesting, whether it is rightful, logical, absurd or beyond belief. I am not stating that I am speaking about myself per se.

I merely felt that is was better to be real and honest in order to engage in this discussion by admitting that like some other females on here, I did feel attraction for something that was not depicted as such. I really don’t know what explantion would be for it and am not sure I want to stumble along in some semblance of speculative articulation. I do, however, believe that perhaps some of my own personal attractants to male humans may reside in that particular character, but it does not thusly conclude that I find sociopaths attractive or have a weird death wish fetish of some sort.

Hljóðlegur asked: “Do you agree that the descriptions of the vampire are not specifically erotic?” Of course!

and then asked: “Not in the way twilight or the Anne Rice’s vampires are presented?” Certainly. The usual vampire mythology has been one of a male vampire who had the powers of seduction to gain control over weak-willed females. The whole staring into the females eye-thing and then neck biting is so obviously “erotic” that it has unwittingly made female humans all swoony and in love with unreal, nonexisting life forms that is played out in the realm of fantasy that diffuses into their real life worlds. The fang skin penetration is so obviously a metaphor for sexual penetration. Why else do the females in the movies and books get all practically orgasmic over being bitten?

I personally do not find Rice and Twilight Vampires attractive in that sense. They are definitely enshrouded within the whiff and allure of eroticism such that if they were not, then the author would have a bit of a hard time selling his/her books to the target audience. Which gender is it that is the primary target for and most likely to “love vampires” audience?

Speaking of disturbing, sex, conscious, predatory, instinct, depravity, human foibles, what is alive, reanimated dead, and sociopathic behaviors:

Have you seen the movies “Splinter” (2008), “Strangeland” (1998) and “Red Road” (2006)?

I accidently saw that notorius Japanese Movie “Realm of the Senses”, at a too young age to view such “adult stuff”, but this movie has been a cult classic for it’s themes and depictions…

@ keanani

“”What is the difference between “humanlike pain” and “robotic response pain”? Robotic response to “pain stimuli” is like a robotic vacuum cleaner coming up against a barrier, say a couch, and therefore makes a turn to get away from the barrier~ so non-humans respond robotically to pain and not because of some sensory loaded “fear” or “feeling” of pain because it hurts?””

Roomba has those things called “Virtual Barriers”. They are used to mark “no go” zones for the robot – you place them in its path, and it will actively avoid coming into their vicinity.
For someone who knows nothing about roombas, or, for that matter, any robots, a hypothesis that Virtual Barriers hurt the little noisy thing would be a perfectly plausible one.
An animal that lacks a humanlike “self”, the “I AM” thing, pain responses wouldn’t amount to much more than that – avoidance routines triggered by a set of stimuli.

Interestingly, no matter how we cut it (I wonder if this pun would qualify as Blampire humor 🙂 ), everything with a nervous system has pain response (some things without neurons have responses one could call pain as well).
Meanwhile, not everything that has a nervous system can be assumed to have a “self”.

And while I generally understand that for someone of highly empathetic character, imagining other beings of flesh and bones as mere automatons in problematic and unpleasant, it’s still a worthy thought to entertain – after all, at some point, the self is definitely no longer to be found in a living being.

“”Pain as felt by non-humans~ how does any one really know what it is that they feel?””

IMO, the whole salt of the issue is that no one knows that (and it will take an immensely comprehensive understanding of neuroscience and cognition in general to take a stab at this issue)

“”I am of the belief that there are behaviors in non-human animals that are akin to our “humanly feelings and emotions” that cannot be explained away as not being of value just because these life forms are not human.””

That is possible. In some cases quite likely even.

@Hljóðlegur

First, thanks for the table. I think it’s mostly accurate, except for the dog’s humping, legally that would be frotteurism if both participants were humans, which is usually qualified as sexual assault.

“”I’m baffled by the eroticism of Jukka Sarasti.

I remember reading Blindsight and thinking, “uh oh,” when I realized it included vampires in a hard sci fi milieu. In literature, vampires have become lazy writer shorthand for forbidden sexuality, or sometimes addiction, so it boded poorly, I thought. “”

I suspect that the whole “vamps as silly sexual metaphor” issue is somewhat interesting in that before the “erotic vampires” of Dracula, mythology already had like, a shitton of critters that were specifically dealing with this whole “forbidden sexuality” issue.
Like the mancubi and succubi, things which are now almost utterly forgotten and were pretty obscure to begin with.

One has to wonder why exactly a fanged, blood-drinking “forbidden seducer/seductress” kind of managed to “get stuck” in the cultural mainstream while mythological creatures with exactly the same behavior profile, but lacking fangs and weird mannerisms, float at the threshold of oblivion.

“”The description of this creature was that he was fear-inducing, not alluring. The other characters didn’t seem attracted to him, they seemed to react with cold fear and a desire to flee. That didn’t strike me as being about sexual fascination, but about instinctive predator/prey interactions.””

A few things I believe might be relevant to eroticism of J.S.

1) Humans tend to eroticize power. Blampires are pretty powerfull (in more than one sense)
2) Some humans do tend to eroticize fear. It’s sorta complicated, even paradoxical, but human sexuality rarely makes sense.
3) Blampires have a rather peculiar cranial profile characterized by massive jaws and appropriately large supporting structures. http://www.contactmusic.com/pics/lb/guillaume_depardieu_131008/gerard_depardieu_647084.jpg need I say more ;)?
4) Blampires are tall. Which is often considered attractive.
5) Blampires are badass. Whatever that means. Being “badass” allegedly increases your sex appeal
6) Tendency to eroticize sociopathic behavior is a known phenomenon, the whole “bad boy/bad girl” shebang is a rather mild case of it. From the top of my head, I can’t recall if there was a dedicated term for this sexual preference though…
7) They. Are. Vampires. Hard scifi ones, but vampires nonetheless. Vampiresex cultural phenomenon has long since gained a life of its own (actually very weird, see above).
8) Unlike many other vampires, Blampires don’t cry. And don’t whine and bitch about how horrible it is to have superpowers. I can certainly see appeal in this.

From the above, one could possible gleam how some people manage to eroticize Jukka.

That, or there was a selective pressure for choosing vampirelike partners in the past 😉

“”Do you agree that the descriptions of the vampire are not specifically erotic? Not in the way twilight or the Anne Rice’s vampires are presented?””

They were not written to be mainstream erotic and most likely not intentionally erotic. But given the above, it’s perfectly understandable how they ended up being eroticized by some demographic
(what we have now in terms of Blampire lovers in this thread, one male and two females? One male and three females?).

Also, human sexuality makes no sense. It’s an obvious fact. 😀

P.S.:
Me personally? Hmmm… female ones – I I like tall women, several of my friends with benefits are in the sociopathic range anyways (one intentionally subclinical ASPD), so it strongly depends on whether the unusual cranial features would be too off-putting or not.

Jukka specifically…I can hardly eroticize, not in small part due to lack of capacity for eroticizing males… And yet…
…
…Come to think of it, Blampires are graceful creatures, strong, decisive and endowed with a purity of cause, “unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality” (c).

To distance the human term of “rape” with all of it’s requisite human-centered attendant ramifications of “morality”, “legality”, “intent” and “perception”, etc., we have~

“traumatic insemination” (Hljóðlegur) & “It literally describes stabbing a female in the guts with one’s penis and spraying sperm into the wound. Trauma. Cracked exoskeletons, blood, and sometimes death (either from immune response or, especially in crowded conditions, being stabbed to death. With penises).” And “If a non-human female demonstrates behavior which resembles escape, struggle to avoid copulation, and pain response, why isn’t she trying to escape, not wanting to have sex, or hurt?”(Jason Stackhouse)

And Chris in MN said: “…when it comes to any sort of forced insemination, the male must have some sort of advantage over the female if a species is going to propogate. Perhaps conversely, the opposite may be true if the male is not able|willing to use rape as a tactic where the female is in “control” of the situation (though obviously sometimes—certain bird species for example—the male is the attractor or at least until she gets close enough to pounce on).”

Well, perhaps it is apparent that at least in humans, sex does not have to be traumatic or forced, involve raping and forcible insemination because we evolved to have the experience of “sexual pleasure” as an incentive to have sex in the first place. Does anyone know for certain if any non-humans experience sexual pleasure and orgasms? So what exactly is the reason for the male penis head, and it’s equivalent in the female’s clitoris, being a nerve-ending concentration existing exactly for that very purpose of pleasure when engaging in any activity that does not necessarily have to even involve copulation, penetration and intercourse?

Human beings are “sexual beings”. Are non-humans also? Other primates? Why do dolphins sometimes direct their sexuality towards human swimmers? Why does a parrot “get jealous” over his mistress’ boyfriend, who is “seen” as a rival? Dogs I do know associate sex and pleasure. Anyone who has ever had a male dog that you shared your affection with probably experienced doggy behavior that would lead you to conclude this.

Peter said: “…pretty much the only reason people can summon to sneer about anthropomorphism in these cases amounts to “they can’t be like us. We’re different.” Agreed, but it would be that “some people” ascribe to this. So many humans have “pets” that are not treated like non-humans at all but very much a valued, loved and essential member of the family.

Peter also said: “If you’re telling me that one of the smarter mammals can’t form an intent to use an individual for his own ends while knowing that he’s hurting her, and doing it anyway, then I’d guess you just haven’t been following the news. And what more do you need for “rape” than “the sexual violation of a victim you know is suffering as a result of your actions”? Exactly.

And said: “For that matter, if you insist that rape doesn’t exist without some kind of “moral awareness”, one could counter that human sociopaths are incapable of rape.” Logical conclusion certainly.

And: “Don’t know how far we want to go down that road.” Ah yes, the long and winding road that may lead right back to us. Or a mirror forcing us to stare at our own face.

RandomJ! 🙂 Forgive me for not responding to your post just yet. I need to read it and think in order to respond meaningfully. Soon. As you are aware, this thread just keeps on giving, and I went back up the collumn to catch what I could somewhere after April 16th or so.

Further illumination on the concept of “badass”, of which I have known to connote something along the lines of someone being able to do what needs to be done, taking care of things, with confidence, intent and purpose without fear, without worrying thoughts or being hindered by what others may think, or any standards of laws, morality, religion, codes, social or cultural norms in order to do it ~ the end result may be bad, but the reason would justify the means.

An example of “badass” characters in pop-cult movies would be Charles Bronson’s “Vigilante”, Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan in “Dirty Harry”, Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Conner in T2 or Sigourney Weaver’s Lt. Ellen Ripley in “Alien” and “Aliens”. (Wannabe badassers would be Steven Segal and Jean Claude Van Damme building their real persona upon far-eastern martial arts fakery, as opposed to say Bruce “Enter the Dragon” Lee or Jackie Chan’s comedic badassery)

Badass is not necessarily a bad thing per se. If at all. Many human beings go to movies to have that vicarious experience of identifying with a badass character. Whether it is about being a badass or a strong character people would like to identify with, apparently many humans think badass kicks ass in the cool-factor stratosphere.

@keanani
Human-Vampire sex is certainly a cultural phenomenon, in and of itself, BUT, it still does not explain why female humans desire it. Culture certainly influences humans as to their way of living, choices and identity, among other things, BUT no way can it be said to be that much of an influence as to cause female humans to want “vampiresex”. I suspect that it is female humans who want sex with vampiric beings that has spawned the pop-cult vampire industry

I don’t think the vampiresex phenomenon is specific to females. There’s plenty of female vampire characters pandering to a male audience.

But yes, I agree that it’s more likely that the reader’s attitudes are driving this phenomenon, not the other way around (though some feedback likely does exist)

01 said: “There’s plenty of female vampire characters pandering to a male audience.” But of course! Those old Christopher Lee movies had some of them… 🙂

Regarding the “cultural practice” of “marriage by capture”, and after reading the article by Ms. Jennifer Ann Young, one could only conclude that the American Legal System sees “Hmong females” as “Hmong” first, and not as human beings and/or Americans first. I find it quite ludicrous just how warped the pc-police and the too open-ended concept of “diversity” and “all cultures can do what they want” are still defended when it results in the direct denial of any human beings’ rights whomever they are.

There has to be a balance and compromise. A two-way street that alows for cultural freedom AND respects, defends and protects the rights of individuals. Human being first, nationality second and ethnocultural identity third.

I believe that no culture, tradition, religion, ideology, etc. is above any human right. The same American Judicial System that allows the excuse of “it’s my cultural practice defense” for the abuse of another’s rights within a country that is supposed to stand up for the rights of individuals first, and not a “whole culture” as trumping basic human freedoms and dignities, also has to grapple with “honor killings”, “female genital mutilations” and “sexual enslavement of girls”.

What I find most interesting and telling, is the fact that so much of the “cultural diversity defense” and “allowance of plurality” to show others that anyone and everyone from anywhere can continue their “cultural practices”, even if it is wrongful, seems to be most impacting upon females.

What I find most troubling is that anyone would defend some “cultural right” above a “females’ individual right”. Other U.S. States can perhaps learn a lot from how Hawai’i has managed to unite its’ diverse people without infringing upon any individual’s rights with a cultural-trump defense. Of course the fact that it is indigenous Hawai’i culture that has infused the local culture and united the diversity of cultures and ethnicities should be noted.

I am so glad I am a human-mutt. I identify as a human being first and of the human race. Fluidity, openess, adaptability and balanced tolerance. No color, race, ethnicity, religion, culture or tradition comes before or trumps that.

See, that’s another kink that I cannot get my brain around. I can see what’s erotic about a cephalopod – the weirdness, the fluid balletic grace, the strength, and the idea of so many arms, arms that can taste as well as touch.

When I first discovered the Japanese tradition of tentacle porn, I thought, “How odd that they envision the octopus as diabolical, hurting a woman, forcing tentacles into her orifices. ”

I had never even considered that when looking at these strange beasties and finding them suggestive, and it hadn’t occured to me that others would either. I’d been utterly blind to that part of it; my immediate thought was of what the octopus would feel like to touch? What would the suckers feel like to the fingertip, suckers and fingertips being slightly analogous structures.

Not that they mightn’t be dangerous, because I knew they had beaks, but I was also imagining what it would be like to be one. Experientally, what is it like to be that soft and flexible? What is it to have so many arms with no prioperceptive feedback about location, but to be able to grasp and taste with your “fingers”?

To meet The Other is thrilling and I can see the tinge of eroticized danger in the discovery of Otherness, but to be the Other sounds just ecstatic. What does he see, with those weird w-shaped pupils, what is salient to him? Those were the erotic features to me, not the idea of cross-species rape, so you can imagine how surprised I was (rule 34?) to find out that I wasn’t the only freako that thought cephalopods a little sexy, and that other people found them sexy for completely different reasons.