2008-03-26 There's a reason for that

[mindstalk]

Sarine's already grumbled about the winning side, and was clearly anti-GENOCIDE!: http://www.errantstory.com/comic.php?date=2006-06-19

[Slamlander]

This implies that the half-elf == Errant faction is in control of Praenubilis Astu?

Of course they are. Wasn't that obvious from --

• The fact that Sarine bugged out ASAP?
• The way Misa described Sarine (approvingly) as "sneaking around the others' backs"?
• The behavior of the council when Sarine confronted them before?

Somehow, I wasn't quite paying attention at the time.

However, I don't take Poe's comment as necessarily saying Sarine was on "the wrong side" from the standpoint of elven society; she's "on the wrong side" from her "relations'" point of view. In many regards, Sarine is an elven hippie, having tuned in, turned on and dropped out of elven society (albeit via a totally different mechanism than the hippies did). Some hippies had passively supportive families; some were completely disowned; many were in between. But a very common theme among those families was social conservatism, which is what their kids were rebelling against.

The interesting thing is that Misa sounds like an elven-hippie-wannabe. Wonder what her relations think of her?...

Back in the late-70's, they were called tweenies or tweeners, that generation between Gen X and the hippies. A lot of them became Yuppies.

Incidentally, something that bugs me about this story, as about so many others in the genre (and in fiction in general), is its seeming inability to identify any notable figures, whether heroes or villains, whose relationships with their families aren't screwed up something awful. The one thing I appreciate about the fiction of Tom Clancy, who otherwise IMO went from writer of moderately interesting techno-thrillers to torch-and-pitchfork-bearing Neanderthal as he got famous, was that his heroic figures tended to include happily married men (and occasionally women) who loved their wives and kids, hadn't been raised in dysfunctional families, and never lost sight of family while they were off being heroic. One need not be raised, or continue to live, in a dysfunctional family to be worth writing about.

I can actually relate to this from the other side; a daughter that had no interesting tales to tell. She always thought that there was something wrong somehow.

[SkArcher]

The interesting thing is that Misa sounds like an elven-hippie-wannabe. Wonder what her relations think of her?...

Wasn't she complaining at one point that whatever she does, people still treat her as a child. Must be very frustrating to have an opinion or viewpoint and be eternally dismissed as too young to understand the whole context.

[Viking-Sensei]

The interesting thing is that Misa sounds like an elven-hippie-wannabe. Wonder what her relations think of her?...

Wasn't she complaining at one point that whatever she does, people still treat her as a child. Must be very frustrating to have an opinion or viewpoint and be eternally dismissed as too young to understand the whole context.

I wonder how old Sarine really is, not on an age itself term, but on a percentage basis in comparison to the rest of the elves? I mean, she was obviously around during the golden age of human fucking, so she can't be too young, but then again she also had no knowledge of the terrible secret of Nookie and Kawaii, so she probably isn't one of the old-old elves either.

If she was on the younger end of the spectrum, it would certainly explain her stance on humans (and all the other things she's done "on" humans) and errants, being that she's still potentially in the rebellious throws of a misbegotten youth (relatively speaking, anyway). It also might explain Misa's devotion to her... if Sarine was still one of the relatively younger elves, Misa's attachment to her might be more than just based on thinking Sarine is cool.

[Graybeard]

I wonder how old Sarine really is, not on an age itself term, but on a percentage basis in comparison to the rest of the elves? I mean, she was obviously around during the golden age of human fucking, so she can't be too young, but then again she also had no knowledge of the terrible secret of Nookie and Kawaii, so she probably isn't one of the old-old elves either.

If she was on the younger end of the spectrum, it would certainly explain her stance on humans (and all the other things she's done "on" humans) and errants, being that she's still potentially in the rebellious throws of a misbegotten youth (relatively speaking, anyway). It also might explain Misa's devotion to her... if Sarine was still one of the relatively younger elves, Misa's attachment to her might be more than just based on thinking Sarine is cool.

Well, we have the following data:

• She's "almost" 3000 years old.
• She was "around" by the time humans began to be trained as proto-Ensigerum, and had been "around" for long enough to train them. However, since she specifically called out being "around" to play the training role, she probably was not around for the earliest stages of interactions between elves and humans, since she didn't imply that she was.
• Most elven history pre-dated that, and during that history, the elves were doing pretty well -- no sign of decline, with enough elf-birth going on to replace the elves who were being killed in duels, etc.
• By this point any new elves were being born, not made, because the gods had gone away.
• Elven childbirth was a "rare, once in a century event," yet enough of it had gone on to produce (or at least maintain) a viable elf population.
• Elves don't reach (social) maturity until about 500 years old.

So the implication is that Sarine is still young by elven standards (since most of the elf-birth was happening before she showed up), but definitely not so young as to be in the "rebellious throws" stage (btw, I appreciate the spelling goof), which would be the phase that ends around age 500, if the elves go through teenage rebellion at all.

This young age could indeed be a factor in why Misa thinks Sarine is to be emulated, but there's something much more powerful at work there: Sarine is, as far as we can tell, the only elf that treats Misa like a grown-up. That would cause Misa (who, remember, is way beyond that 500-year-old phase) to follow her around like a puppy dog whether she was teen-"cool" or not.

[Boss Out of Town]

So the implication is that Sarine is still young by elven standards (since most of the elf-birth was happening before she showed up), but definitely not so young as to be in the "rebellious throws" stage (btw, I appreciate the spelling goof), which would be the phase that ends around age 500, if the elves go through teenage rebellion at all.

I'm glad someone mentioned that. "Teenage rebellion" is a Western cultural trope, not a biological characteristic of humans. Misa (and possibly Sarine) are burdened with being "young," but at this point it is more along the lines of being a junior partner in a law firm where you are in your forties and the old fossils running the place are in their seventies.

[mindstalk]

Sarine kind of treats Misa like a grown-up.

It wasn't at all clear whether "once a century" was per elven couple or in a city or in the species as a whole... I think the latter would require most elves to be original godly handcrafts or else for the elves to have been around for geological time.

[BloodHenge]

Sarine kind of treats Misa like a grown-up.

It wasn't at all clear whether "once a century" was per elven couple or in a city or in the species as a whole... I think the latter would require most elves to be original godly handcrafts or else for the elves to have been around for geological time.

It would explain why the birth rate has dropped to almost nil-- only one in fifteen centuries-- now that there are so few Elves that they only have one city left. It would also explain why so many Elves, rather than waiting for full-blooded Elven children, settled for "the next best thing".

[RubberBandMan]

You know, Sarine, really, is one of the youngest elves around. Bear with me.

We know that the elf population is in the thousands. That means X000*100 years, just for the population around NOW. So, even if it is just a thousand in the city, that is 100,0000 years of elf-making, just for whats around RIGHT NOW.

We also know there were four nations, all with many cities and towns. If the elves were even a little bit like our world in the sense of cities/town life, then at least, we have another 100,000 just for what would fill up the space they have now, that isn't a city. To say nothing that from Sarine's off hand comment about deserted sections of the city, could most likely fit in the city proper anyways. So thats 200,000 years of elf-fucking for just one city/area.

Times four... for the four elven areas/races. That is 800,000 years. And I'm thinking that 8,000 elves, alive, ever, at one time, is a horribly low number. So even low balling it, you're looking at the elves being around and making babies for at least a million even years.

Of course, this all does depend a little bit on how many elves the gods made, and how long ago. But somehow, I think that Sarine is one of the youngest fucking elves around, hell, may even be the 2ed youngest, with the errant war killing a Mega-death amount of elves.

And if we work it from the other way, there are, at best, only 29 other elves younger then Sarine, besides Misa. and if Misa IS the youngest, that drops down to something like 15 or 14, if we go by the 'once in 100 years thing'.

To say nothing that Sarine was alive and kicking just when the Half-Elf babies thing started kicking off, when it was noticed most Elves that want children just find a human/Half-elf to screw, instead of fooling around with their own kind. So pure-Elf birth rates also went down, or at least, is the implication.

So Sarine is Mega-Young, most likely compared to everyone else in the damn room. Sarine likes to say "A thousand years ago this never would of happened", but thats like a 25 year old saying to an 100 year old "Four years ago our army was so much better", when the 100 year old has SEEN the army in five different wars, and was even active enough to be in every single one.