....want to see plot wise in THE STARTER?" thread.

You can find that one here:

http://www.scottsigler.com/node/3484

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A life vacant of laughter is not worth exerting the effort it takes to live it.

mmm Ki women in sexy bi"KI"ni's

Molly McButters is my Homeboy!

Well, when you put it that way... Who can resist?

"Urban legends go well with parmesan and horror. In fact their name is conveniently one and the same: Stevie." {UNdead GirlCo Knight for Sigler}

I hope some of the cheerleaders have tentacles. That's hot...in a Cthulu kinda way.

what about heavy G human cheerleaders...or maybe there would be a problem with pom pom damage when their knuckles drag along the floor.

they'd be a great base at the bottom of the pyramid though, or at tossing the normal human cheerleaders up for aerial tricks

Interesting idea... would give a chance to have a few more female characters in the books. (Was there even 1 HM or MC female that wasn't sklorno in The Rookie?)

Cheerleader story -

My nephew was always scared of costumed characters, including Santa. At about age 5 he had never sat on Santa's lap and never would. When asked who was going to bring his Christmas presents he said, "Cheerleaders." I believe he later specified that the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders would be bringing his Christmas presents. What a kid!

No disagreements here!

"Urban legends go well with parmesan and horror. In fact their name is conveniently one and the same: Stevie." {UNdead GirlCo Knight for Sigler}

This never even crossed my mind before. Would love to see what the FDO could do to make them an interesting part of the series.

GFL cheerleaders are an interesting idea. There are players from several different species.  There are fans from even more species.  For the cheerleading squad to provide "eye candy" for as much of the fanbase as possible, as many species as possible would have to be represented on the cheerleading squad. Of course, since female Quyth don't leave their people's homeworlds, they're out of the picture. But who said the cheerleading squads had to be single-sex? The football teams aren't. Sadly, though, I don't think humans would accept male Quyth as cheerleaders in the same way that they accept female Sklorno as football players. It's a fascinating topic to consider.

-Amy Bowen, The Deadpan Ambassador

The Deadpan Podcast: music, humorous stories, discussions, fiction, and more.

www.jackmangan.com

Your comment actually leads to another interesting question, which is in the year that The Rookie takes place (2682) is the universe more accepting of gender.  We know that all but the Purist Nation are accepting of species and on a scale of acceptance I would imagine accepting a different species as an equal and contributing member of the galaxy is a lot harder than accepting a male versus a female.

We know from some of The Crypt episodes that the image of beauty for a woman may not necessarily include Heavy-G women but they do include the blue skinned women of Satirili-6.  On the flip side, we also know from some of The Crypt episodes that crimes against women, i.e. rape, are still common.

So where does that leave gender relations in the future?
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Gmork - Wiki Czar and Thwackacutioner

about everyone but the Purist Nation being accepting of other species. After all, it was interspecies war that led the Bats to take over. In most places in the galaxy I would imagine that it's less a matter of out-species acceptance and more a matter of the residents simply not have a choice but to be civil, least they get an Entropic rifle shoved in their faces.

**Conjunction Junction, what's your function? No seriously, I slept through grammar class, so I have no idea what you do.**

....for some good discourse on this subject

Very true regarding the intergalactic wars, but one would have to ask if the past wars were more a result of territoriality rather than an inherent dislike of another species.  It's also unclear, from what has been revealed about The Rookie Universe, how the Creterakians feel toward other species. All we know is that they conquered most of them quite decisively.

I definitely agree that the overarching Creterakian rule makes it difficult to blatantly promote hatred (without said entropic rifle making one very dead) but I wonder what the average citizen feels about other species...personally as they express their internal voice.  And moreover, has the universe really progressed when it comes to male/female relations?
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Gmork - Wiki Czar and Thwackacutioner

that the Creterakians don't particularly care one way or the other about the other species, they just wanted to them to cut the shit with all the wars and killing and whatnot. The territorial nature of past galactic wars seems to be an inevitable aspect, exacerbated by the factor of species-bias.  When you distill the reasons for conflict down to their purest motivators, we tend to find that most wars are fought over territory and / or resources anyway. Species-bias (and I'm basing this on research done on race-bias in armed conflit) plays a significant factor when it is used to motivate a population to accept the idea of armed conflict by envoking a "they're different from us, therefore a significant threat" attitude when, had species not been a factor in the consideration of using military force, the conflict could have been resolved through diplomatic means. I tend to think that this is a major factor in the Cretirakian takeover, that they wanted to basically force the other sentient species to grow up and act like adults (so to speak) when it comes to resolving conflicts, rather than just beating the hell out of each other like children fighting over a toy in the sandbox.

However, one also has to consider the cultural differences present in the multi-species mix, as well as alien psychologies that are quite differnt from humans. Consider the First Galactic War, in which the Sklorno attacked Withrit with seemingly no provocation or warning simply because they wanted to expand their territory to make room for an exponentially growing population. Okay, on the surface that makes sense. You need more land for your population, you just run the neighbors off and take over their parcel, getting both land and the resources with it. But the Sklorno saturation-bombed Withrit, making it unsuitable for population by anyone but the Quyth. That seems counterproductive to the goal of acquiring more land for a growing population, so there must have been some other behavioral motivator going on in the psyche of the Sklorno that is not understood from the human point-of-view. Either that or the Sklorno just really didn't like the Whitok and wanted to seriously jack their shit up. :)

Wow, I could totally write ten or fifteen more paragraphs on in-group / out-group bias, racial identity, and defense of culture, but that seems kinda silly seeing as that we're talking about a fictional future-history.

**Conjunction Junction, what's your function? No seriously, I slept through grammar class, so I have no idea what you do.**

Just wow.  I feel the need to rebut because this is an interesting conversation, but I obviously need to do my frigging homework first or you guys will squash me.

However, I will say that the very existence of the Purist Nation (driven seemingly by fanatical religious ideology) puts every other race automatically on the defensive, including the human factions that are sympathetic to other species.  I say 'seemingly' because, at the end of the day PDFD's point about territory and resources is still probably the HolyMen's motivator, with the race hatred being the outwardly visible 'excuse'.

At any rate, and regardless of the crazy Sklorno, I wonder how much more peaceful (from the surface anyway) the universe would be if the PN didn't have that religious axe to grind.

In regards to the skalorno, they always struck me as having an "If we can't have it, neither can you" mentality; which is where the sat bombs come into play. It's like their desire to win was so strong, that they were willing to use any means necessary. Let's not forget that the skalorno engage in cannibalism whenever their population gets too large. So if they can take over a planet, fine. If not, there's always the sat bomb.

That being said, I'm not sure how good their tech was compared to the other races. It could be that the sat bombs were used merely as a tactic to make the rest of the galaxy think twice before attacking them.

Bahahaha!  That made me happy. 

Who doesn't love epic violence, aliens, and brilliant profanity?