Gith Reproduction vs Logic

[pkd]

If the gith reproduce asexually, then why are there two sexes? Does not compute.

[harken23]

Publicado originalmente por seeker1:

Ed Greenwood's attitude toward this is one I really like. He hated "rules lawyers" and especially the "lore lawyers".

To go back to a recent discussion. OK, at one point Tolkien said elves never had beards. Then, BTW, later on changed his mind.

So fine there is a line in 5E PHB about elves not having beards.

I would say Ed's attitude is if the player says to the DM they want to have an elf with a beard, ... why the hell not? Lore is a guide, not a straightjacket.

BTW -- BG3 doesn't let elves in the character creator make beards, BUT there seems to be at least one male elf NPC character that does have one. In response to this, I still side with what Ed said, even if comes to making the NPC "scenery" for your campaign.

The bottom line is the lore says Githyanki were formerly human. It looks like the Ilithids mixed them with a bit of amphibian to make their race, which is why they now lay eggs, like amphibians. But because they were formerly human, while they are reproducing asexually, by laying eggs, they still have genitals, and feel sexual desire, even for humans and not just other Gith.

In part, Lae'Zel's "horniness" is quite understandable as apparently she definitely knows she CANNOT get pregnant by having unprotected sex with a male Tav, (And if STDs exist on Faerun, they are never discussed.)

All of this. A friend and I wrote and DMed a campaign set on the Sword Coast, that took two years to write and a year to play (playing 3-4 times a week, since housemates were the party). We approached WotC with it, but they said they won't even consider publishing anything that wasn't "canon" with the books. Not that we had a great chance of it happening, but dismissing anything not canon out of hand -- in a tabletop RPG that is supposed to reward creativity -- is just dumb. There can't just be a fun and interesting adventure, it has to fit into their very narrow set of timeline events and what NPCs are where at any given time. This insistence on "lore" and "canon" BS is ruining high fantasy. As good as they were, the LotR movies probably started this downfall.

[SlicerDicer]

Publicado originalmente por EricHVela:

While there has long been suspicion of separation of gender, sexuality, and identity, it's only recently getting attention to discern if it exists beyond speculation and how it all works if it does. More and more people accept the concept, but there are issues with many of those who do so just because someone else said it.

The problem comes back to people. Nobody fits in a box. Everyone's different. How do you have candidates when you can't have criteria that's universal?

So, we're stuck with a lot of trends and guesswork because people will be people and do as people do.

My limits are how it affects me. Does it affect me? I know who I am in gender, sexuality, and identity. So, no. These topics do not affect me. I can offer no aid in the discussion other than try to get people to find out for themselves if they're being affected by others or are affecting others. I see actions that appear more like the latter while claiming the former.

Live and let live. Wny can't we do that? People are people and do as people do. That's why.

no. gender differences have been studied for many years.
just recently (as in the last 5 - 10 years) has it been a thing with the media.

granted, there are many behavioral patterns that are suspect and loosely studied. Too many i have read are agenda driven.
but there are definitely traits tied to gender.

[pkd]

Thanks for filling in the blanks, guys. I learned a lot about Bae'zel's ancestry and her unsatiable thirst. In BG2, all I ever wanted to know about the Gith was how to get away with stealing their silver sword.

[seeker1]

Not "just in the last 5-10 years" has this been researched. (Let alone discussed in the media.) A lot of it has been driven by the "agenda" of wanting to know the truth about what humans are like.

Quoting Night Foxx from earlier,

There actually was a lot of research being done in Germany before a certain political party and its leader took over in the 1930s and 1940s and had the research destroyed as part of the party's sweeping book bans.

To make this concrete - and there has been recent attention to this because of a remark by JK Rowling, which I won't dwell on .... just what she was talking about:

https://www.advocate.com/transgender/jk-rowling-nazis-persecuted-transgender

[snip]

Famed German gender and sexuality researcher Magnus Hirschfeld was an advocate not only for the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people but for trans people as well. His Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin housed “an immense library on sexuality, gathered over many years and including rare books and diagrams and protocols for male-to-female (MTF) surgical transition,” according to a 2021 article in Scientific American.

Hirschfeld’s institute, founded in 1919, offered sex “education and health clinics, advice on contraception, and research on gender and sexuality, both anthropological and psychological,” the article notes. Hirschfeld also fought to repeal Germany’s law against homosexuality and helped trans people obtain “transvestite” ID cards, which allowed them to cross-dress in public without fear of arrest, an arrangement available under the pre-Nazi German government, known as the Weimar Republic. He hired a gynecologist and surgeon to perform gender-affirming surgeries for trans people.
[snip[[end]

Research on LGBT folks probably even goes back before 1919, but Hirschfeld's institute was one of the first to try and do some. Unfortunately, as stated, the Nazis shut it down in 1933, and burned most of its books and records.

[SlicerDicer]

Seeker1

you misread my statement. i stated it had been studied for many years. I was scientist. my specialty was physiological basis of behavior. gender difference and behaviors in animals significantly affect genetic continuance and survival roles.

but recently gender differences has a been a big thing in the media. Bigger then the past 40 years anyway. the benefit is more research (yay for funding) but it has been agenda drive (boo for poor scientific research).

my favorite so far was paper showing that juvenile female behavior was very similar to great ape (that chimpanzee, orangutan & gorilla) adult female behavior. Not just the study but the women's groups that attacked the research team, whose lead was female. I lost the link years ago. but the fall out was definitely amusing and telling.

[GrandMajora]

Publicado originalmente por EricHVela:

A pair of editors dumped all over my family's history to paint the victors of the Mexican War of Reform as kind-hearted and didn't start executing the losing party regardless if they participated in the war or not. My family entered the USA as post-war refugees, but you won't see that in Wikipedia anymore. Any edits and contests are smacked down with inhuman response times—a tell-tale of watchdog bots. They use a few very specific original research sources (which is supposed to be a no-no in Wikipedia).

Well, you know what they say: "History is written by the victors."

[GrandMajora]

Publicado originalmente por Bray of Cats (Neut | Masc):

That wiki mushroom thing goes:
Science
Science
Science
Can you eat it?
Science
Word thing.

Looked up how many genders Mushrooms have, and they apparently have thousands of different sexes.

Mushrooms are also neither identified as a plant or an animal, but some new type of life form.

Myconids are probably the most woke culture in the game.

[Brian_the_Brute]

To clarify, there are 2 sexes with Githyanki: Neuter and Female. There are no males. Also no monks (Githerai their mortal enemies have a lot of monks) and all Githyanki are supposed to be somewhere on the spectrum of evil alignment. Gith become female when undergoing gestation and revert back to neuter after.

BG3 doesn't follow cannon at all with the Gith and the whole Bae'zel thing doesn't make sense unless you twist it and assume she wants sex all the time because she's never had it before. It would explain why she thinks practicing it is a great idea. She wouldn't have female characteristics at all unless she was gestating had an egg developing already, but that doesn't appear to be the case in BG3.

[anachoret]

Baldur's Gate 3 touches on and realizes the most Gith canon I have ever seen in a video game, going back to at least 2E, and makes fine sense. It is amazing it is even in a popular video game at all.

[Scheneighnay]

Giving them soft eggs like skates would've made a hell of a lot more sense than the ostrich eggs they have.

[Adam__86]

Publicado originalmente por Metallicus:

The fact remains that Gith are still represented by Male and Female sexes even if their reproduction has become ‘magically’ asexual. They are clearly not a deviant species of myconid.

I mean they're animals that have two sexes that also reproduce asexually

[GrandMajora]

Publicado originalmente por Brian_the_Brute:

To clarify, there are 2 sexes with Githyanki: Neuter and Female. There are no males. Also no monks (Githerai their mortal enemies have a lot of monks) and all Githyanki are supposed to be somewhere on the spectrum of evil alignment. Gith become female when undergoing gestation and revert back to neuter after.

BG3 doesn't follow cannon at all with the Gith and the whole Bae'zel thing doesn't make sense unless you twist it and assume she wants sex all the time because she's never had it before. It would explain why she thinks practicing it is a great idea. She wouldn't have female characteristics at all unless she was gestating had an egg developing already, but that doesn't appear to be the case in BG3.

Yeah, BG3 got some lore wrong, or explicitly changed it for whatever reason.

For example, vampire spawns can also become true vampires if they outlive their masters. Meaning that Astarion didn't need the ritual to become a true vampire, he just needed to kill Cazador.

Of course, that would also result in all 7,000 of his imprisoned spawn also becoming true vampires at the moment of his death, and that would have been catastrophic if they were released upon the Underdark.

[SlicerDicer]

Publicado originalmente por Scheneighnay:

Giving them soft eggs like skates would've made a hell of a lot more sense than the ostrich eggs they have.

maybe the egg is formed from budding?

also it is really weird that they have to turn female to do asexual reproduction.

[seeker1]

Publicado originalmente por Brian_the_Brute:

To clarify, there are 2 sexes with Githyanki: Neuter and Female.

Not according to 5E/FR current lore.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Githyanki

Notice in the box to the right, it gives an average height and weight for Githyanki males and females, which would imply, they have males and females.

(It sure looks like to me Kithrak Voss looks male and Lae'Zel looks female. Orpheus looks male, and the commander in the Creche - what was her name again? - anyway she looks female. So does the Ghustil. They sure look to me to be sexually dimorphic. This could be possible as a kind of vestigial trait from earlier in their evolution, even IF they are asexually reproducing NOW due to mindflayer manipulation.)

In fact, I'm pretty darn sure Orpheus is referred to as Gith's SON, which means of course, he is male.

[GrandMajora]

Publicado originalmente por SlicerDicer:

also it is really weird that they have to turn female to do asexual reproduction.

Do you expect them to crap the egg out?