Yinglets tend to get over things pretty quickly.
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Out-of-Placers
A story of inconvenient changes
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One of us who couldn’t have a cry and move on? You mean every person in de enclave who has PTSD from being talked into submission by Vislet herself, brought to tears, zhen only released after weeping in zhe utter unfairness of zhe universe zhat de lecture was bound to be repeated?
Seriously, Vislet must have sampled de clams a bit too often. If it was dat easy to get over issues, we’d not have exiles in de first place.
As much as Vislet’s uniquely domineering personality has brought low some members of her enclave from time to time, I can’t think of a single instance where those moments have had a truly lasting effects on them. The most significant example supporting chronic trauma at Vislet’s hand would clearly be Lippie, but really she just suffers from an overly timid sensibility by default, which Vislet has shown to be more than aware of and made concerted efforts to help her overcome. Her discomfort is a general one, and only heightened to unfortunate levels when Vislet is in a ‘mood’. If the general populace is even a quarter less timid as Lippie, and a quarter less vapid as those door guards from Kass’ inaugural visit, then they are literally Built for processing traumatic events with minimal (comparatively) lasting effects.
And as a piece of internally consistent lore building, I couldn’t be more pleased.
I’d start wizh Zally. Her overcharged libido and physical strength would make her easily Vislet’s bane. She would end Vislet in a physical altercation in moments. However, she sticks to Vislet’s breeding schedule like a good girl. Zally’s conditioning is deep enough zhat de temptation of hordes of boys don’t compare to de respect she has for Vislet.
If we simply were unable to process trauma, forethought would be unecessary. Perhaps we feel it differently, and utterly lack de humani sense of entitlement, seeing we have never had much to lose, beside friends. But we do feel zhings, like how Brakka’s threat of eating Lopin’s eyes causes trauma to him still.
is their age like… an equivalent to their human age? or is that a taboo now that their equipment has changed?
Determining Kassen’s exact physical age is likely not possible, but they appear to be an adult yinglet in good health.
Assuming Kassen has been reset to sexual maturity, he would be the equivalent of two years old. Assuming then, a standard yinglet life, Kassen would live around 18 more years, dying near 20.
That said, we have seen yinglets who are much older than this. Figgins, in this case.
Apologies, I have been corrected, average age of yinglet death via old age is a arpund 30. Consider my original post a low ball estimate.
Seeing the average intelligence of yinglets, I have to question whether this “old age around 30” is actually death from old age or (lack of) wisdom of their activities affects this number. Many will die of causes other than old age (getting flung/booted over walls, pranks on each other, poking around where they shouldn’t, etc.).
I might speculate it’s the opposite. Why is it that even adult yinglets have the apparent maturity of a seven-year-old? Because they *are* seven years old: They may mature faster than humans, but they still have fewer years of experience behind them. By the time a yinglet has accrued as much practical experience of life as an adult human they are already entering old age – and these mature yinglets, such as Vislet and the patriarchs, are visibly more controlled and possessed of greater attention span and apparent intelligence than the younger ones. There’s only a brief period of smart-ying before senility.
This is a crippling flaw in the species. And on any other species, it might well doom them to an eternal existence as primitive savages or a servant class working beneath other species. But these are yinglets: They know their weaknesses, and they know eugenics. Another century or two of selective breeding and they may be able to increase their usable lifespan.
Huh… I wonder if the Baxxid sometimes regard humans in a similar way. “How can you expect a human to learn the whole math curriculum? It took me ten years to wrap my head around hyper-dimensional geometry alone. By the time most humans finished studying they’d be ready to drop dead. They’re useful workers, but they’ll never live long enough for a full Baxxid education.”
Oh dear, that is a whole ‘nother problem right there, better go hug Elim.
Oh, Gods. Matriarch = Mother Figure.
Does that mean that Lopin sees Kass as his MOMMY?
De Yinglet mezhod of raising younglings is wizhout a “Mother” minus for zhe males who care for and educate de kids. De matriarch would be more like a dutchess, in humani terms. So by Lopin saying Kass is his matriarch, Lopin becomes a knight, and if she chooses to make him a patriarch, a Duke in his own right, only under de Yinglet council if dey choose to recognize Kass as a Matriarch (unlikely) or under de Trademaster (Currently de status quo) alone.
More “head female.” A yinglet Matriarch’s primary official duty is in regulating breeding: She keeps the records, she assesses traits, and she decides which males are up for breeding which females. The long-term future of the enclave is in her hands. This does give the Matriarch a certain amount of political power, of course – she isn’t /technically/ on the council of Patriarchs who make decisions for the enclave, but her input is listened to and usually obeyed. She’s also in charge of overseeing the females, ensuring they are happy and any needs they have are met.
She’s not so much the mother of the enclave as “That aunt who keeps saying she knows this very nice girl and maybe you should meet her.”
Kass is a poor matriarch, having no females beneath her! And kass is going to need a long, long time to adjust mentally before they can even consider mating.
A long, long time indeed.
I’m guessing at something like five times the normal Yinglet lifespan.
That final “Oho!” , big red flag. “Danger, Will Robinson!”
Actually, that was “Oho?” 😉 🙂
one of things i really enjoy reading this comic is how the ears are used as extra facial features. panel 3 is a banger and it works perfectly.
You’re gonna die of old age before your friends even start going grey. Yay!
Huh… you know what, the thought had never occurred to me, how old is kass now anyway? I mean in human terms he’s..well to be honest I don’t actually know but I’d assume he’s around that time periods equivalent to mid-to-late 20’s early thirties give or take..(maybe more I’ve never been a good judge of these things in fiction) I wonder how that compares to his yinglet age? from vizlets comment he seems to be younger than her at least physically…. and from what I understand she’s getting on in years, a lot of questions arise here…
guess we’ll save that for the next existential crisis or two…or three…
Zhat zhing does seem to have been nice enough to have shaved off a few years before (presumably) running the clock twice as fast.
At least it didn’t make him go through Yinglet puberty (we hope.)
Maybe Kass will get lucky and find some healthy healthy juice. Or maybe that legend stems from transformed yinglets living longer than their natural counterparts.
And now we have Vizlet probing for cracks and trying to find boundaries to get around. She’s smarter than she lets on.
It’s second nature to her by now. She’s always manipulating people, even when she does it for their own good.
I’m still trying to get a handle on yinglet aging. I think the consensus is that their typical life span is around 30 years, and maybe Figgins is over 30 by several years. What I don’t have any grasp of is how long their childhood lasts. if Kass currently looks to be about 7 years old, nobody would expect the “sosopretty Lady” to be any more mature or educated than a 7-year old human. If Vizlet is currently around 25 years old, nobody would expect her to be any more mature or educated than a 25-year old human. If Figgins is over 30, well, that’s still only 30 years to get old and wise, while humans aren’t past their physical prime until closer to 40, with decades left before they really get “old.” How much of Kass’s attractiveness to yinglets is the amazing maturity they all see in such a young lady? Could they enjoy a much longer life expectancy, maybe closer to 50 years, if they could improve their civilization beyond the relatively squalid conditions we see, even in a relatively well educated enclave? If they achieve that, will their reputation for simple-minded immaturity diminish with a relatively older general population? How much longer do domesticated humans live, compared to wild ones? Who can say? I certainly can’t, and it’s bothering me. Come on, Vizlet, give us more than an “Oho?” to this facet of Kass’s identity crisis. I know you’re not going to get anywhere right now, but file it away and come back to it as soon as you can!
Yinglets are considered adult or teen by age 2/3 and after that their aging slows down a LOT relative to humans. So a constant dog years multiplier doesn’t work. Comic 79 had their life cycle spelled out to something like…
Hatched= 1 year old
3 months= 2 year old
4 months= 8
1 year= 12
2 years= 16
3 years= 18
I think kass is a little younger as a yinglet than they were as a human in terms of relative ages, unless he got drafted at 16 made his way south after his first battle picked up Isher and then the comic started all in the same week.
Then again Kass has some interesting weeks…
If the field guide is accurate, then the kids in the nursery who peppered Kass with a barrage of questions (OOPs 78) were only a few months old and already starting to speak in whole sentences. Maybe the upside of having a hyperactive, chaotic yinglet brain is extreme early-onset language acquisition? Maybe their literacy rate is so low because it hasn’t occurred to anyone to start teaching them to read before they’re a year old? I wonder if that has actually occurred to Ran or Vizlet?
Give 8 one year old yinglets a book. 7 of them will try to eat it and 8 will succeed.
But imagine “Story Time with Pekkit,” where she gathers the younglets around her and reads the book about the magic moon prince. To set expectations, she can tell them the book is very fragile, so if anybody damages it, the magic moon prince will be gone forever, and the only thing left for story time will be Lord Inleck’s Personal Memoirs. And then she offers to teach them how to read. And you don’t need paper to learn to read and write; kids used to do it with slates and chalk, which is much less expensive, even if the chalk gets eaten.
Oh, now I HAVE to know what’s been fekking with Kass’ mind lately!
Like… is there some sort of attraction thing between Kass and Vislet? Is Kass feeling things that confuse them? I GOTTA KNOW!!
I’m willing to bet it has something to do with the fact that a human male is now trapped in a nubile female body of another species, and is still coming to terms with the instincts and hormones and all that.
I could be wrong, but I think what Kass is referring to in the last panel is the extreme loss of life expectancy. Instead of being a 20-something human with 40 or more years of life left to live, Kass is now a young yinglet with 20 or so years of life left to live. Imagine being young, healthy, and ambitious, and then suddenly learning that your life expectancy has been cut in half for such an unreasonable reason!
Now I’m wondering if being transformed from a human will affect that life expectancy, and extend it some.
Wondering if there’s any lingering DNA evidence of that human man or all that’s left is mental. Will we ever learn whether it was magic, science or both?
Are yinglets made of magic, science, or both? Hmm…
Yinglets are, as previously established, made of Yinglet (and are, as such, entirely ridiculous)
head cannon is greater yinglets are descendants of humans polymorphed into lesser yinglets or AKA yinglets. So kass would have detectable human DNA but so would most other yinglets.
Good that Kass stood up for his human side. He’s only been a female yinglet for a week or two tops?
Get caught up at Vizlet’s pace and she will put him on the breeding schedule.
Somewhere between a couple of weeks and a couple of months, I think, and intentionally left vague by the author, I think? You’re right, though, that Vizlet always seems to be pushing Kassen to embrace the yinglet side.
Yess, the Yinglet side of the force is seductive…and we have clams!
I did a quick dive of the archives, and there seems to be a fairly clear transition from one day to the other. Here’s a brief overview of the notable events.
Day 1: Zhat zhing GET, Wabbajack’d, sleepover at Isher’s
Day 2: Detained by Ivenmoth, make a deal, spend the night in the new digs
Day 3: Officer uniform GET, first enclave visit, Lopin GET
Day 4: Baxxid scream, interrogate Lopin, Kass’ breakdown, oyster binge
Day 5: Kass discovers his neck is made of yinglet (and is therefore ridiculous), trademaster debates the finer points of the value of the citizenry, Brakka on the hunt, Kass visits the eggs, Elim gets shanked and yings get crushed, Yannit stuck in murder-mode
Day 6: Ran fixes Yannit, Elim awakens, Isher does a yingtoss for SCIENCE, Isher the she-beast bargirl
Day 7: Vizlet visits, Kass decides to become productive, Narklet narrowly avoids Kattajak’s wrath, Vizlet meets up with Kass (You are here)