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Cupid

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Re: Cupid
Post by cthia   » Fri Jul 29, 2022 4:08 pm

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tlb wrote:
tlb wrote:Go tell the Ballroom that it is "a crying shame and a travesty of Justice to condemn and murder without giving an opportunity to defend oneself", since that is their entire mode of operation in the fight against Mesa.

PS: we do not know what sort of slave that she was designed to be, just that she was murderously effective at whatever she decided to do.

cthia wrote:We do know what kind of slave she is. She is the worst type. A C-line sex slave.

tlb wrote:Please point me to that text; she did not escape, she bought her way out and made a profit on the deal.

cthia wrote:She escaped just like the other high percentage of C-line slaves, just by other means.

C-line is mentioned in her "wicked wiki" biography.

She was an extremely beautiful woman who men couldn't keep their paws off of. That sounds like a sex slave to me, especially in a galaxy of biosculpted women.

I suppose Pavel Young thought that her breeding was for his brand of sex, and a plus. If everything about C-lines was contained in her file.

That is not proof since the Wiki does not point to any of the books for that statement. Your supporting statement is nothing but your fallacious opinion without any weight. Pavel Young thought every one was plaything and if a woman was attractive that she was a sexual plaything.

So point me to text in the books, not fanboy fantasies.


Some things can be implied. She was a slave which means she came from one of the slave lines.

C-line is a sex slave.

D thru F lines are general utility lines. Hugh Arai and Donald X. Big creatures.

J-lines were slaves with mechanical ability as well as physical strength. Accounting and record keeping. She doesn't strike me as being muscular, or she could have pounded Young's ass like Honor had. "OH, I was bred to give as well as I get. You like that? 'Whack!'"

K-line Personal servants. Clowns jugglers. Entertainment. Jeremy X.

V-line Technical combat. Trained in martial arts. No to taking crap off Young.

And she is drop dead gorgeous. So which line do you think she was in?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Cupid
Post by tlb   » Fri Jul 29, 2022 4:22 pm

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tlb wrote:So point me to text in the books, not fanboy fantasies.

cthia wrote:Some things can be implied. She was a slave which means she came from one of the slave lines.

C-line is a sex slave.

D thru F lines are general utility lines. Hugh Arai and Donald X. Big creatures.

J-lines were slaves with mechanical ability as well as physical strength. Accounting and record keeping. She doesn't strike me as being muscular, or she could have pounded Young's ass like Honor had. "OH, I was bred to give as well as I get. You like that? 'Whack!'"

K-line Personal servants. Clowns jugglers. Entertainment. Jeremy X.

V-line Technical combat. Trained in martial arts. No to taking crap off Young.

And she is drop dead gorgeous. So which line do you think she was in?

Where did you get this list, Wiki or the books? What about the missing letters?

She did not pound Pavel ass, since he had information that could send her to prison. Information that she could delete once he was dead. But killing him or beating him up would also get her sent to prison. We have no idea how muscular she was; but she did have a criminal career, so she must have some abilities. For all we know she could have been a juggler and acrobat like Jeremy.

Show me some proof, not fanboy fantasies.
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Re: Cupid
Post by cthia   » Fri Jul 29, 2022 4:42 pm

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tlb wrote:
tlb wrote:So point me to text in the books, not fanboy fantasies.

cthia wrote:Some things can be implied. She was a slave which means she came from one of the slave lines.

C-line is a sex slave.

D thru F lines are general utility lines. Hugh Arai and Donald X. Big creatures.

J-lines were slaves with mechanical ability as well as physical strength. Accounting and record keeping. She doesn't strike me as being muscular, or she could have pounded Young's ass like Honor had. "OH, I was bred to give as well as I get. You like that? 'Whack!'"

K-line Personal servants. Clowns jugglers. Entertainment. Jeremy X.

V-line Technical combat. Trained in martial arts. No to taking crap off Young.

And she is drop dead gorgeous. So which line do you think she was in?

Where did you get this list, Wiki or the books? What about the missing letters?

She did not pound Pavel ass, since he had information that could send her to prison. Information that she could delete once he was dead. But killing him or beating him up would also get her sent to prison. We have no idea how muscular she was; but she did have a criminal career, so she must have some abilities. For all we know she could have been a juggler and acrobat like Jeremy.

Show me some proof, not fanboy fantasies.

Common sense suffices for me.

The other lines had muscular attributes. I doubt Mesa would have included or wasted the drop dead gorgeous gene on utility lines. That would be a distraction, and a waste. And if she really was a sex slave, which I am pretty damn sure she was since RFC used her beauty and wantonness in storyline and highlighted it, then muscular genes would be inappropriate for her.

Think what you may. My vote is in.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Cupid
Post by Jonathan_S   » Fri Jul 29, 2022 5:09 pm

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tlb wrote:
tlb wrote:So point me to text in the books, not fanboy fantasies.

cthia wrote:Some things can be implied. She was a slave which means she came from one of the slave lines.

C-line is a sex slave.

D thru F lines are general utility lines. Hugh Arai and Donald X. Big creatures.

J-lines were slaves with mechanical ability as well as physical strength. Accounting and record keeping. She doesn't strike me as being muscular, or she could have pounded Young's ass like Honor had. "OH, I was bred to give as well as I get. You like that? 'Whack!'"

K-line Personal servants. Clowns jugglers. Entertainment. Jeremy X.

V-line Technical combat. Trained in martial arts. No to taking crap off Young.

And she is drop dead gorgeous. So which line do you think she was in?

Where did you get this list, Wiki or the books? What about the missing letters?

She did not pound Pavel ass, since he had information that could send her to prison. Information that she could delete once he was dead. But killing him or beating him up would also get her sent to prison. We have no idea how muscular she was; but she did have a criminal career, so she must have some abilities. For all we know she could have been a juggler and acrobat like Jeremy.

Show me some proof, not fanboy fantasies.

C-line I can find - (From the Highlands; re: Ginny Usher)

D, E, and F I can find
CoS does say
Crown of Slaves wrote:Going by his appearance, he was probably one of what Manpower called its "general utility lines," which they designated either D or E. That was a fancy way of saying that they hadn't bothered to do much in the way of genetic engineering.
It also says
Crown of Slaves wrote:Donald X had come into the universe in Manpower's slave-breeding vats, bearing only the name-breeding number, more precisely-of F-67d-8455-2/5. The "F" prefix indicated a slave bred for a life of heavy manual labor. Donald had decided otherwise, years later, but his adult body still bore the imprint of that original intention. He was not excessively tall, but thick and muscular in every dimension.
(Which means that F is not a general utility line; based on the same books description of that that term meant. The heavy labor line would require more genetic engineering that the not much used in the "general" lines)

J-line I can find - (Crown of Slaves; re: Du Havel)
Crown of Slaves wrote:Du Havel had been bred a J-line by Manpower. That was-supposedly; as usual, their claims fell wide of reality-a breed designed for technical work. Thus, an emphasis on mental capability, at least of a low and mechanical variety. But also, since J-lines were designed basically for engineering work, a breed which was physically quite sturdy. Web wasn't particularly tall, and his long years of sedentary intellectual activity had put thirty kilos of fat on his frame. But the frame beneath was still square and solid.


While it didn't use the terms "K-line" or "V-line" I can find those too:
Changer of Worlds wrote:Jeremy had come into the universe in one of Manpower Inc.'s breeding chambers on Mesa. K-86b/273-1/5, they had called him. The "K" referred to the basic genetic type-in Jeremy's case, someone bred to be a personal servant, just as Isaac's "V" denoted one of the technical combat breeds. The "-86b" referred to one of the multitude of slight variants within the general archetype. In Jeremy's case, the variant designed to provide clients with acrobatic entertainment-jugglers and the like. Court clowns, in essence. The number 273 referred to the "batch," and the 1/5 meant that Jeremy was the first of the quintuplets in that batch to be extracted from the breeding chamber.
(Isaac's number is V-44e-684-3/5)
Though I don't see anything saying the technical combat breeds are trained in martial arts. (Actually, depending on what they mean by "technical" they might well be geared towards base affinity for operating combat vehicles, or armed ships, or other high-tech weapons systems; rather than hand to hand)
But note that these descriptions say nothing about their frame or size (and none of them say what the female versions of the lines looked like)

However, just because Eric Flint (note these are all from his books) happened to mention just 7 lines (and 1 slight variant) does not mean that these are the only lines. In fact the way they're spread from C - V very strongly implies that there are at least 20 main genetic lines.
There might be more than one pleasure / sex / courtesan line; there might be beautiful women in a number of the lines. (And, as pointed out above, we don't even know if Georgia was beautiful before she visited the biosculptor who removed her number from her tongue). As it's described we can probably rule out F-line heavy labor for her, but nothing precludes her coming from a general or technical line, or from a not yet described line elsewhere in the alphabet.
Last edited by Jonathan_S on Fri Jul 29, 2022 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cupid
Post by tlb   » Fri Jul 29, 2022 5:10 pm

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cthia wrote:Common sense suffices for me.

The other lines had muscular attributes. I doubt Mesa would have included or wasted the drop dead gorgeous gene on utility lines. That would be a distraction, and a waste. And if she really was a sex slave, which I am pretty damn sure she was since RFC used her beauty and wantonness in storyline and highlighted it, then muscular genes would be inappropriate for her.

Think what you may. My vote is in.

Please point out this wantonness of which you speak. Is it being blackmailed into having sex or is it having sex with the man you marry in order to become Lady Georgia Young? Or is the badger game when she was a criminal (which is more about blackmail than sex)? However that was only a small part of her reputed criminal activities, most having nothing to do with sex.
Crown of Slaves, chapter 14:
"Elaine Komandorski, in her heyday, was one of the most notorious criminals in Landing City—among the police, at any rate, even if her name wouldn't have meant anything to most Manticoran citizens. She was no crude armed robber, you understand. She specialized in things like industrial espionage, swindling; financial crimes, essentially. Except that the police are sure she was responsible for the murder of at least two people, and had something to do with the 'suicide' of yet another, in order to cover her tracks."
War of Honor, chapter 50:
"My dear Lady Young," Montaigne cooed, "I very much doubt that the Prime Minister would be at all happy to hear about Elaine Komandorski's career before she went to work for the late, unlamented Dmitri Young. Such sordid stuff! And, you know, that little affair of yours with the badger game and the industrial intelligence you extorted from that unfortunate gentleman. You remember—the one who committed suicide?" She shook her head. "I'm positive the Prime Minister's delicate sensibilities and exquisite sense of justice would be completely shocked by that one."

Is there some other wanton example I missed, because what I found does not seem to justify the term. However considering the slander you applied to Theodosia Kuzak, for having sex with a married man, I am not surprised.
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Re: Cupid
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Fri Jul 29, 2022 8:02 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:There might be more than one pleasure / sex / courtesan line; there might be beautiful women in a number of the lines. (And, as pointed out above, we don't even know if Georgia was beautiful before she visited the biosculptor who removed her number from her tongue). As it's described we can probably rule out F-line heavy labor for her, but nothing precludes her coming from a general or technical line, or from a not yet described line elsewhere in the alphabet.


Making the office worker (accounting, record keeping) line above-average beautiful would also be a very simple way of showcasing Manpower's capabilities, without overtly saying they were in the business everyone knew they were. It would also please bosses to have eye candy. But they need not be bred for sex, since that would cannibalise the most profitable lines. Make them beautiful, intelligent, but have no libido and you've got a good office worker.

And we know that she underwent at least one biosculpt. I'd venture she must have done this at least twice: once she became Elaine, and once she became Georgia. Further, once she became the North Hollow head of security, and starting getting more funds, she may have done even more.

And do note we know she was highly intelligent, and likely physically capable too. You don't get to become head of security to the Earl of North Hollow otherwise.
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Re: Cupid
Post by cthia   » Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:28 am

cthia
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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:There might be more than one pleasure / sex / courtesan line; there might be beautiful women in a number of the lines. (And, as pointed out above, we don't even know if Georgia was beautiful before she visited the biosculptor who removed her number from her tongue). As it's described we can probably rule out F-line heavy labor for her, but nothing precludes her coming from a general or technical line, or from a not yet described line elsewhere in the alphabet.


Making the office worker (accounting, record keeping) line above-average beautiful would also be a very simple way of showcasing Manpower's capabilities, without overtly saying they were in the business everyone knew they were. It would also please bosses to have eye candy. But they need not be bred for sex, since that would cannibalise the most profitable lines. Make them beautiful, intelligent, but have no libido and you've got a good office worker.

And we know that she underwent at least one biosculpt. I'd venture she must have done this at least twice: once she became Elaine, and once she became Georgia. Further, once she became the North Hollow head of security, and starting getting more funds, she may have done even more.

And do note we know she was highly intelligent, and likely physically capable too. You don't get to become head of security to the Earl of North Hollow otherwise.

Unless anyone can suggest to me some other line that is appropriate for her attributes, then my participation in this discussion has ended. When losing the argument causes tlb to bring out the dictionary because he has no decent argument, is where I draw the line. It has gotten silly.

But this post is worth responding to. But beforehand, since I am here, let me clear this wantonness remark up. Technically I used it incorrectly as an adjective to describe her. That is in error. I meant it to describe the effect she seems to engender in men. Pavel Young. Stefan. And Dmitry, who also wanted to get his hands on her but couldn't. The author seems to go out of his way to stamp that a fact. This is another time context is required, but that has never worked for tlb and since I technically did apply the term to Elaine and not others around her, I shouldn't expect too much out of him. But still.

Moving on.

Now, unless the two of you, tlb and jonathan are willing to suggest a line that makes sense and is appropriate for her extreme beauty to be highlighted by the author - as I have requested and have been ignored -- then I am done.

ThinksMarkedly makes a good attempt, but falls short IMO.

Making an office worker Elaine's level of beauty would be a way for Manpower to showcase their skill, yes. But they don't need to go around tossing the extreme beauty gene around to office workers to do that. The product should satisfy the requirementss of the position first. Options second. It would be nice if an office worker isn't unattractive, or downright repulsive, but too attractive and the job suffers. Every man is going to try and get into her pants. She will spend more time under the desk or in the coat closet, than at her desk. I am speaking from personal experience. A lot of it!

Another reason I don't think she is an office worker is that she isn't just eye candy, she exceeds that "limit" of beauty. Again, distracting for an office worker. End result, coat closet. But logically, it tells me no for another reason. The genetic modification for ALL extremes, IMO, comes at the expense of something else. Biosculpting could be used but I don't think that is where she acquired her beauty. And I don't think biosculpting supplants naturally encoded beauty.

Now for security, she could fit in the V-line -- proficient in the martial arts, which would also make her compatible for the Ballroom and Jeremy -- but too much beauty isn't where I think Manpower would waste that gene, either. So no. I think she just lied on her resume and used her feminine charms to get the job.

Any other good suggestions?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Cupid
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sat Jul 30, 2022 2:52 am

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tlb wrote:Is there some other wanton example I missed, because what I found does not seem to justify the term. However considering the slander you applied to Theodosia Kuzak, for having sex with a married man, I am not surprised.

Forget wanton -- I'm now trying to figure out where the wiki writer(s) got the info that she was necessarily beautiful.

Sure, in WoH she admires how her expensive Gryphon water silk "clung to every curve"; and FoD says "[Georgia Sakristos] leaned back in her chair, crossing sleek legs, and her blue eyes gleamed with a certain detached amusement" But in terms of description of her appearance that's all I found.

No mention of her height, build, hair color, attractiveness; Just those eyes, legs, and "every curve" quote. Are they the type of curves people find beautiful? Who's to say; the text certainly doesn't seem to...


Okay, she's probably not hideous or ugly, but the narrator doesn't describe her (that I was able to find), nobody comments on her appearance (that I was able to find). For all I can show she might be an fairly average looking woman. (And of course since we know she's visited at least one biosculptor as a free, and rich, woman even if we did know her current appearance it would hardly tell us anything about her original genetic engineered appearance)
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Re: Cupid
Post by tlb   » Sat Jul 30, 2022 7:39 am

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cthia wrote:But this post is worth responding to. But beforehand, since I am here, let me clear this wantonness remark up. Technically I used it incorrectly as an adjective to describe her. That is in error. I meant it to describe the effect she seems to engender in men. Pavel Young. Stefan. And Dmitry, who also wanted to get his hands on her but couldn't. The author seems to go out of his way to stamp that a fact.

So you are using the Young family and their attitude toward ALL women to show that she must be a former sex slave; most of which is in one paragraph in one book? If there are not any other men that you can point to, then you should see how your view lacks evidence. Basically the Wiki has filled her post with imaginings: Jonathan_S can find no mention of her being beautiful or a former sex slave and Thinksmarkedly can point to her bio-sculpts. Note that Helen thinks that Paulo d'Arezzo was biosculpted, which means that its effects can equal that of genetic planning.
Helen's experience with people who approached d'Arezzo's level of physical beauty (she didn't think she'd ever met anyone who actually surpassed it) had been less than happy. The kind of biosculpt it took to produce those looks was expensive, and the people who were willing to fork over the cash for it were either very spoiled, very rich, or both. Not exactly the sort of people a Gryphon Highlander was likely to find congenial.


PS: Out of interest I checked all the text that I had, up the Mission of Honor, and the only time a woman is described as ugly is when Honor is thinking about her self-image. The worst that is said otherwise, seems to be plain (a short story by another party does have a woman who is "not quite ugly"). There are only a few times when a man is described as ugly, these are the few I found: In Enemy Hands, chapter 30:
He beckoned, and Sanko and Halburton turned their plasma rifle back to the undamaged lift while Anson Lethridge dashed across the deck towards it with a grenade launcher. But then the lift stopped, the doors opened, and Lethridge froze. He stared into it, ugly face blanching, and then he hurled away his launcher and charged into it. McKeon followed on his heels, and the captain gasped in horror at what he saw.

Echoes of Honor, chapter 3:
PO Smith looked up in astonishment as someone shouted his nickname, and then he grinned widely as a familiar face blended out of the crowd. The short, hairy, apelike, amazingly ugly man looked as if he ought to walk on his knuckles. He also wore undress coveralls like Smith's own, with the same three chevrons on his sleeve, and the name patch above his breast pocket said "Maxwell, Richard."

chapter 10:
"We don't know, Ma'am," Anson Lethridge replied. The ugly, almost brutish-looking Erewhon officer who had been Honor's staff astrogator sat with Jasper Mayhew and Tremaine, all three of them facing aft from the shuttle's tactical section hatch to where their superiors sat in the front row of passenger seats

War of Honor, chapter 6:
"With the commercial side of things under control for the moment, Your Grace," Maxwell went on, his pleasantly ugly face thoughtful, "what I'd like to do next would be to spend some time setting up the Harrington judiciary."

Torch of Freedom, chapter 21:
"Not all customs officials are male, you know. Or, even if they are, necessarily heterosexual. If you want to create this little diversion—which I admit isn't a bad idea—then you really need a male equivalent for Sarah. Which"—he glanced at Andrew Artlett, and spread his hands apologetically—"I'm afraid Andrew is not."
Uncle Andrew grinned. "I'm ugly. Not that it gets in my way, much."

Mission of Honor, chapter 13:
Now, as she touched the acceptance key, the image of a man sprang into life in the holo display above her desk, and she frowned. Baltasar Juppé was scarcely one of her muckraking colleagues. He was nine or ten T-years older than she was, and influential, in his own way, as a financial analyst and reporter. It was a specialist's beat—in many ways, as specialized a niche as O'Hanrahan's, if larger—and it was just as well Juppé's audience was so focused. Human prejudice was still human prejudice, which meant people automatically extended more respect and benefit of the doubt to those fortunate souls who were physically attractive, especially when they had intelligence and charisma to go with that attractiveness And where O'Hanrahan was auburn-haired, with crystal-blue eyes, elegant bone structure, a graceful carriage, and an understated but rich figure, Juppé's brown hair always hovered on the edge of going out of control, his brown eyes were muddy, and he was (at best) pleasantly ugly.
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Re: Cupid
Post by cthia   » Sat Jul 30, 2022 12:43 pm

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Excellent post! Excellence! And that opening.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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