Cupid

Jonathan_S wrote:

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.

Mea culpa - there is a statement in FoD.
It's just far enough away from any names to be easy to miss; and to take some careful reading to double-check that Georgia was the woman being described.

Field of Dishonor wrote:The door opened again within minutes to admit Osmond and another, younger man. They were accompanied by an elegantly groomed red-haired woman of stunning beauty

So we know that, at least at that point in time, Georgia Sakristos was described as having red hair, blue eyes, sleek legs and being "of stunning beauty".

(Sorry I missed that earlier)

Still doesn't tell us anything definitive about whether that was due to genetics or biosculpt; and certainly not about what genetic line she might have been from. But it does confirm that she was called beautiful. (oops)

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.

jonathan_S wrote: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.

Another excellent post! BTW! I meant to mention this ...

I have always assumed that the missing lines represent entire "culled lines."

.

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

Jonathan_S wrote:Mea culpa - there is a statement in FoD.
It's just far enough away from any names to be easy to miss; and to take some careful reading to double-check that Georgia was the woman being described.

Field of Dishonor wrote:The door opened again within minutes to admit Osmond and another, younger man. They were accompanied by an elegantly groomed red-haired woman of stunning beauty

So we know that, at least at that point in time, Georgia Sakristos was described as having red hair, blue eyes, sleek legs and being "of stunning beauty".

(Sorry I missed that earlier)

Still doesn't tell us anything definitive about whether that was due to genetics or biosculpt; and certainly not about what genetic line she might have been from. But it does confirm that she was called beautiful. (oops)

Thank you for the additional work, it is important that we get these things correct.

With regards to "wanton", that usually means "sexually unrestrained", but my impression of her is being very results oriented; unless coerced, she has a goal in mind, such as: blackmail or becoming Lady Georgia Young.

Meanwhile the attitude of any member of the Young family upon meeting a woman is "Now wasn't that a dainty dish to set before a king?".

cthia wrote:I have always assumed that the missing lines represent entire "culled lines.".

But wouldn't the letters represent a classification, rather than a specific line? For example "K" is personal servant and we know that juggler is a variant within that class. For all we know there may be sub-variants. It is only when when the class and variant is specified that we get to the point of specific genetic lines. Even if a genetic line gets culled; there would be no reason to delete the class, except as a marketing decision and not a genetic one.

Let's examine a slave number that we have been given in "From the Highlands":

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.

There is nothing specific in here to indicate a genetic line, that I can see. In fact if "K-86b/273" indicates a genetic line, then there is only 5 members in it; so I am assuming that to get the genetic line you will have to use that to look it up. This numbering system seems very sparse. if every batch is limited to five members, then there only have been 1360 "K-86b" type servants in the several hundred years that Manpower has been operating, prior to Jeremy.

cthia wrote:Another excellent post! BTW! I meant to mention this ...

I have always assumed that the missing lines represent entire "culled lines."

.

To me, that seems unlikely. First I tend to doubt they'd cull an entire line like that. "Oops, our latest improvements on F-line heavy labor models didn't turn out as expected; guess we better cull the whole line including the previous versions that were still adequate for sale" -- Yeah, I just don't see that.

But the primary reason I think it's extremely unlikely that the rest of the alphabet would (all) represent culled lines is that Eric Flint never represented the ones we have as anything like a comprehensive list. It wasn't presented as a list at all -- simply we've met, spread mostly through Eric's stories and books (those a couple in David's) a bare handful of former slaves where their line has happened to be mentioned.

Seriously, the only reason we can compile a list is because of 7 people:
Virginia 'Ginny' Usher (C-17a/65-4/5) - C-line
Timothy Zeiger (D-17d-2547-2/5) - D-line
(E-line was mentioned as another general purpose line when we met Zeiger)
Donald X (F-67d-8455-2/5) and Hugh Arai (F-23xb-74421-4/5) - F-line
W.E.B. Du Havel (J-16b-79-2/3) - J-line
Jeremy X (K-86b/273-1/5) - K-line
Isaac Douglass (V-44e-684-3/5) - V-line

It seems insane to me to assume that an almost random sampling of 7 people just happened to present us with every active genetic line Manpower has.



To me that seems kind of like saying, "well, we know the Nazis killed entire families of resistant fighters. And this 1946 pamphlet of famous resistant fighters covers 7; so I guess those are the only family lines that survived. The Nazi's must have culled all the others".

It's making, what seem to me, way, way, too broad a conclusion from a miniscule number of data points.

tlb wrote:There is nothing specific in here to indicate a genetic line, that I can see. In fact if "K-86b/273" indicates a genetic line, then there is only 5 members in it; so I am assuming that to get the genetic line you will have to use that to look it up. This numbering system seems very sparse. if every batch is limited to five members, then there only have been 1360 "K-86b" type servants in the several hundred years that Manpower has been operating, prior to Jeremy.

Which has always struck me as a very low number. Again, the economics of the HV leave a lot to be desired.

A slave needs to be cheap enough that it's competitive in the market, compared to a regular worker. You wouldn't pay 20 million for an individual whose productive lifetime may be 40 years, if you can hire a free person for half a million a year (including overhead). This is just a simplistic break-even point, because with slaves you have to feed them, house them, treat them, and also secure them, instead of the individual paying for food, housing and healthcare out of their salary.

Contrast that with the fact that Manpower was the biggest company in the Mesa system, a system that was known for having shady companies. It was wealthy enough to have a controlling interest in Jessyk. And it produced enough cash flow that it could fund those exhorbitant MAlign projects.

What this tells me that Manpower had to have been selling slaves by the millions or tens of millions a year. We know that Jessyk and others shipped slaves by the thousands in slaver ships too. So the numbering scheme that we've been told is simply too short to account for all possibilities.

Like Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 01.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Contrast that with the fact that Manpower was the biggest company in the Mesa system, a system that was known for having shady companies. It was wealthy enough to have a controlling interest in Jessyk. And it produced enough cash flow that it could fund those exhorbitant MAlign projects.

What this tells me that Manpower had to have been selling slaves by the millions or tens of millions a year. We know that Jessyk and others shipped slaves by the thousands in slaver ships too. So the numbering scheme that we've been told is simply too short to account for all possibilities.

Like Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 01.

Yep. And yet we're also told that that tongue code is never reused. (There's a whole subplot on Torch that occurs entirely because an agent was slipped in with the tongue code of someone Manpower thought was dead; but wasn't. So the duplicate was noticed when the actual ex-slave emigrated -- leading to the exposure of the agent.

But while an alphanumeric 8 character string can encode a lot of unique values (2.8 trillion); the code we're given is so constrained that it can't. Really the only part that looks unconstrained is the 2-4 digit (in the examples we've seen) batch number -- since that could presumably just keep getting longer as they make more batches of the same line/variant. But if they'd been making millions of slaves a year for a few centuries some of those batch numbers should be way more than 10 digits long now.

Though, given how often they tweak the genetics, I'd also expect the variant field to be way larger too. It almost looks like it might just be a 3 digit hex number, in which case they can only encode 4095 different (non-zero) values into it.

If it's 2 digits + 1 letter then it's even worse; that's only 2,314 possible combinations.

Though if it's fully alphanumeric then those (up to) 3 characters could encode 46,656 combinations. (If exactly 3 then that drops to 45,324 combinations)



This would all make a lot more sense if one of those 7 had had a code like D-3xa2-2547346-2/5
the 2.5 millionth(ish) batch of the 6,591,528th variation (3xa2 in base 36) of the D-line.

tlb wrote:
Meanwhile the attitude of any member of the Young family upon meeting a woman is "Now wasn't that a dainty dish to set before a king?".

That observation is made in Pavel's interior dialogue both about the Marine guarding him before his conviction by Court-Martial, and the Sergeant who is is escort at the dueling grounds in Landing when he meets Honor.

Jonathan,

Thanks for the passage describing her beauty. Constantly searching text must be a beast, and I appreciate your efforts. It must be easy to miss something, and I was under the impression that every book does not come in a searchable format.

Sometimes even I question whether I recall certain things correctly. I was almost sure about Elaine because I am prejudiced in favor of redheads.

When it comes to redheads, my brain makes a certain intimate connection, even in a book. There have been a number of redheads mentioned throughout the series. I think one of the earliest redheads is Raghnild Pavletic. Her bio says honey blonde with freckles. My prejudiced brain parses redhead. The color of her hair is in no small part responsible for my affection for her.

But! Get a load of the babe in Elaine's bio. I was beginning to worry if I had been catfished. LOL

Anyway, I am mighty partial to redheads and I'm aware I need to get it in check. I often fall in love with charges. But storyline is not without blame. Sometimes my brain -- and the morsels of data consumed in the entire series -- all conspire to make subtle connections. These connections are made... behind the scenes in my brain. Subconsciously, as it were.

I couldn't quite recall that "stunning beauty" is the particular phrase used to describe her beauty. I only remembered that -- whatever the phrase used -- it passed my personal litmus test for off the scale.


Suffer me the following passage. In order for fellow Cupists to more intimately get to know me. After all, this is the Cupid thread.

I dated a redhead in grade school. For some heretofore unexplained mystery, she didn't think she was beautiful (as is the plight of many redheads. Beats me.)

To make a long personal story short ...

"Do you think I am beautiful."

"It is not a yes or no answer." She was notorious for demanding a yes or no answer.

"YES OR NO!"

"No." It stung her. TEARS.

"You are not even pretty." Hysterical tears. I continued on and shared my personal litmus test.

The Litmus test: Descriptives

Pretty "women are a dime a dozen. We have classrooms full of them."

Beautiful "women are more rare. But not too uncommon. Yes, I think Julie Weiss is beautiful. She is also a conceited witch."

Drop dead gorgeous "women are very rare. Oftentimes found only once in a million. Or lifetime. You, honey, are drop dead gorgeous."

Since the MA has isolated the gene responsible for beauty, this gene can be none other than the gene for divine beauty; that which God intended.

Divine beauty. There is a concept known as divine beauty. Descriptives such as stunning beauty, drop dead gorgeous and insanely beautiful are divine descriptions.

Note that stunning beauty and drop dead gorgeous is related. If the beauty is set on high enough stun, the result to a weak heart could be death.

A phrase like stunning beauty will be parsed by my brain along with other morsels of information as stunning redhead beauty.

If I were the client, that might be my order. I would probably be quoted a higher price because redhead pleasure slaves might be offered as a premium. Pleasure slaves strike me as being stereotypically as fast as sports cars, and the red cars usually cost the most. They also tend to come with the most accoutrements.


Note: Biosculpting is no more than an aftermarket tuner. It is limited to working with what is already there, hence the phrase, "Give me something to work with." It is also limited by the tools and techniques. Inherently it falls prey to the fact that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, it is beholden in the eye of the biosculptor.


Applying the litmus test.

Another reason that I think Elaine Kormondorski is a sex slave is because there are so many beautiful women in the Galaxy. In the Honorverse, beauty is the norm. As tlb pointed out, ugliness is extinct. Man has won his bought with vanity on one front.

In a sea of beautiful women, Georgia Sakristos must have stood out, since she so easily became Lady Young (a prestigious title) by obviously outshining so many other women who were most likely biosculptedly beautiful "applicants." The Youngs commanded a lot of money, power and prestige. Many socialites would jump at the opportunity to climb the social ladder with the Youngs. My brain makes a lot of specific connections because of the social circles I am accustomed to. Beauty attracts money. Extreme beauty attracts money and power. Drop dead gorgeous attracts a beautiful colored gemstone. A marriage. A divorce.

"And a coffin!" Ok, ok Pavel and Dimitry!

Georgia must have been responsible for a lot of jealous women in society. Her beauty had to stand out to do so. The Youngs had access to many commonly beautiful women.

cthia wrote:Note: Biosculpting is no more than an aftermarket tuner. It is limited to working with what is already there, hence the phrase, "Give me something to work with." It is also limited by the tools and techniques. Inherently it falls prey to the fact that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, it is beholden in the eye of the biosculptor.


Applying the litmus test.

Another reason that I think Elaine Kormondorski is a sex slave is because there are so many beautiful women in the Galaxy. In the Honorverse, beauty is the norm. As tlb pointed out, ugliness is extinct. Man has won his bought with vanity on one front.

Although we only see it applied to men, ugly is not extinct. The passage with Helen and Paulo points to the fact that bio-sculpting can do anything than gene editing can do. Specifically you have no evidence that bio-sculpting is as limited as you say it is.

So you believe that Elaine Kormondorski was a sex slave, because "there are so many beautiful women in the Galaxy" and yet she is described as stunning. Even though beauty can be bought and she had both money and opportunity (indeed necessity) to do it.

If you want to criticize present day plastic surgeons, I will be in full agreement; all too often people with too much surgery end up looking the same, as if the surgeons only knew how make certain standard changes. But there is no reason for that to be true in the Honorverse. So imagine if she were originally somewhat plain, how perfect a change it would be to become "stunning" to satisfy both her vanity and her need to change her appearance.

Nevertheless it is possible that she was created as a sex-slave; I am not arguing that she CANNOT have been, only that we have no evidence that she MUST have been.