HOME | DD
AlfaFilly — The Selection FAQ
Published: 2009-04-23 06:14:33 +0000 UTC; Views: 8301; Favourites: 42; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
EDIT 7/2/18: So I just realized today that I haven't updated this thing in 4 years and a lot of stuff was inaccurate sooo update! I also removed some questions that either were not helpful or were answered within the comic itself.Now I have some big gaps on the comic/character side so if anyone has a question for that side in particular, but also ANY sections, lemme know! :END EDIT
* * *
This FAQ sheet is primarily meant to answer questions that would not come up in the comic itself, or else do but need refreshers. If a question will be answered in the comic eventually, I probably won't include it.
In regards to Ambivian antennae:
I give Ayemae big thanks with helping me figure this out! Here is the basics of how antennae work:
- In early developmental history for the species, some males developed a "masking gene" in their chromosomes that caused a lacking of antenna. These males have this mutation on their "Y" chromosome, which means it is transferred only to males. So every son of an Ambivian male that lacks antennae will also lack antennae. Here is a chart to explain further: Handy-Dandy Antennae Gene Chart
---
If you have more questions to ask feel free to ask them here!
Also, if you spy any misspellings, feel free to let me know.
Related content
Comments: 206
thanks for posting this! it had alot of the question i had! thanks again!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
YAY my question was added... JUST IN TIME FOR ANOTHER.
Okay then... So.. if the Selectors choose thier mates when they're born, then they grow up, and they with with thier selected partners...so then.. if all of the elder Ambivians are already taken, who Selects THEM? Or do they have sort of a turn system? Like not ALL the older ones get to choose every year or...?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
OH TEH NOES! You sneaky devil!
but uh... Sorry, I don't really understand what you asked :'D
But I think you might be getting confused. The Selection event only happened once (first Q/A up there) and not every Ambivian Royal was able to participate. Only 200 of them in each area worldwide. So there would be plenty of people left to eventually find mates, but The Selection event wouldn't be involved because it doesn't happen anymore.
Sorry if that's far from being what you asked. xDD
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Ah i should have seen that nn lol that answers my question
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Wait, I thought the Lanians were from Nimboltak. What gives?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The Lanians were from Nimboltak. After CP, however, Lanians live on Duganist. The Lordess ordered the race to leave the planet long ago when her senile behavior kicked in and she saw the planet as "drenched in sin".
That's pretty much the reason behind the whole Lanian War in CP. The Lordess wanted to defeat the Ambivians so they could use one of the Mystic World planets as their own. 
LOLS PLOT DEVICE
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Oh, that reminds me: are there any other races in the Mystic World other than the ones you mentioned?
I might have to do one of these myself...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Well, there's Ambivians, Lanians, Tillanix, Swivel, all the different types of actual Mystics, plus there's two races I'm currently working on that have no name on my Storm-Artist's account. There's tons more but they are still in the concept stage. Most of them don't actually live near the Mystic World, though. Just in another system in the galaxy.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This is very interesting. It answers many questions that I didn't know I had.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Gah. Late genetics commentary I mentioned before. 
Don't worry, if you don't want to change the design of your characters, don't. That is something very much up to the artist. Unless the character design is utterly misleading and not meant to be, character designs are rarely significant storytelling flaws. On the other hand, when people try to attach scientific reasons for character designs that simply look appealing to the artist, without doing research on the subject, it’s going to show to the people who know up from down on the subject. In your case, you have the benefit of characters that aren't Earth-based, so I don't see why any genetics as we understand them have to apply at all, and might be best left to the imagination, or even a ‘because I drew them that way.’ XP But anyway, here’s the commentary as promised.
Okay. First thing I have to say is that there are always exceptions. Genetics and all the processes involved are incredibly complex and nothing I'm going to say is an absolute law, since there are so many other factors that I won’t be able to account for, etc. I’ll only be touching upon the guidelines. In any case, things occurring differently from the guidelines are different degrees of ‘very unlikely’.
You first mention genetics when you talk about Tanner's eye markings being non-existent because his father is albino. Genetically, you're either albino or you're not. There are different types and degrees of albinism, but it's a standalone allele that doesn't affect other genes that would be passed on. The rest of the person’s genotype would be intact, coloration and all, so such a mutation that is not albinism in the offspring shouldn't have anything to do with albinism.
The male genetics. This is really confusing. Since both male and female Ambivians have antennae, I find it bizarre that only males have dominant or recessive antennae as far as any genetics I know of. Seeing as both genders have them, if the antennae gene is sex-linked at all, it would have to be on the gene that both genders have, which in mammals would be the X gene. It would be strange, biologically needlessly complicated, and implausible for the species to develop the same albeit differently functioning gene for both sex chromosomes.
As you probably know, the ‘X’ and 'y' chromosomes determine gender in mammals. While the 'X' gene is big and complicated, the ‘y’ gene is minuscule by comparison and pretty much all of the information it carries is for cellular activity, male parts, and sperm production, so something like antennae being linked there seems strange. However, there are 'X' linked traits, which become much more common phenotypes in males, since males only have one 'X' gene and whatever is attached to the 'X' gene shows. Since females have two 'X's, the other 'X' will serve as dominant and mask the mutation.
Anyway, let's take a look at your Ambivians. If they are like mammals and have something like an X,y relationship, then any important sex-linked genetic information is probably on the X gene, not the male determining y gene. Let’s say a female Ambivian has the genes XA (with antennae, dominant) and Xa (no antennae, recessive), making her XA,Xa. Let’s say she married a male whose genes are XA,y… So, he has antennae. If they have a son, that son must have inherited the father’s neutral y chromosome to be male, so whether he has antennae or no depends on whether he inherits the XA gene or the Xa gene from the mother. In short, it wouldn’t be isolated, poorly breed male genetics. The female would have to be the carrier. A son wouldn’t be able to inherit a no-antennae gene from his father.
However, this also means that females could have no antennae if the father has no antennae and the mother is a carrier, but the percentage is less likely by the square of the percentage of males who have it. So, if 1 in every 2 males doesn’t have antennae, then 1 in every 4 females wouldn’t either. =/
'X' and 'y' isn't how it works for everything, of course. For example, a bird's gender determining chromosomes are 'Z' and 'W', 'ZZ' being a male bird and 'ZW' being a female bird, but I suspect that sex-linked genes still works in the same way, except females are the ones more likely to show the sex-linked traits than the males.
It doesn’t really make sense that only males would take the antennae as dominant or recessive. After all, the males have to inherit one gene from their father and one gene from their mother, and if their mother only has the antennae-having gene, then the male must inherit it. Where would the extra recessive gene for no antennae come from?
Males having ‘ poorly bred genes’ that result in physical, non-male-important differences is strange to me. After all, males must breed with ‘genetically superior’ females to produce offspring, so though it may not show physically in the child, their genotype is half that of both the parents, so they must have half ‘inferior’ and half ‘superior’ genes. It is possible in real life for a male to have poor genetics, of course, but due to the fact that male genes only handle things very male-important, the only thing it results in is fertility problems, inadequate territory marking, or other very male-specific issues… If you put any variation of “ poor male genetics” into a google search and read the descriptions that pop up you might see what I mean.
Also, Garin’s character design. The fact that he has two different eyes is puzzling. It is possible that someone isn’t completely symmetrical in real life if the someone in question is a mosaic or a chimera. To be brief, mosaic is a multicellular organism that has some cells with slightly different genetic information. Then there are chimeras, which are essentially two fraternal twins that fused during development, so they have at least two sets of cells with completely different genetic information. Mind you, a chimera isn’t the same thing as a Siamese twin. They generally look normal, but with nonsymmetrical anatomy.
That said, for that to work for Garin, one of the parents would have to have a recessive gene for the other specie’s eye type. Seeing as they developed on two completely different planets, this doesn’t seem possible…
…Actually, they shouldn’t be able to breed at all if the two parents are from completely different planets. In all likelihood, the two parents would have completely different biochemistry, let alone compatible genetics. Most things on our own planet don’t have compatible genetics, so the idea that two species from completely different planets would be able to reproduce… well, it’s pretty much impossible, if anything is.
In fact, part of the biological definition of a species is that two members of different species cannot create successful/fertile offspring. Sometimes biologist are lazy and ignore this rule – for example, it took quite a while for canis familiaris (the domestic dog) to be acknowledged in name as canis lupus familiaris (a subspeicies of gray wolf). The False Killer Whale, which can apparently produce fertile offspring with the Bottlenosed Dolphin, is even still registered under a different genus from the latter. That said, in the grand scheme of things it takes very little genetic difference for a two species to become completely incompatible on one planet… The idea that two subspecies of the same species developed on two different planets is extremely shifty.
Of course, most science fiction completely ignores this. You actually have the added benefit of having an involved god, so if there’s no evolution and/or the life in your universe is a very new phenomena (like only a few thousand years), perhaps this can be hand waved by saying The Creator made all/most intelligent life from the same mold.
Also, there’s the sheer number of mutations among your Ambivian characters? Unless these are all common, old mutations for the species that could be explained as easily by using the word ‘variation’, this kind of looks suspicious considering what kind of circumstances allow for so many mutations to occur… Coupled with the fact that Royals are so specifically ‘designed’ and that you used the term ‘selective breeding’, it, er, kind of feels like a lot of inbreeding has been going on. 
Anyway, if you have any further comments or questions I’ll do my best to answer them.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Aaahhh!
So informative!
So knowledgeable!
I totally love this!!
Thank you very very much for finally posting this! I have been patiently waiting!
This has certainly brought a lot of ideas into my head. Though I won't change my designs, I certainly will take all this into mind! It might take forever to come up with a reasonable explanation for all these things, but it certainly will be more worth it than saying "It is cause I made it so!"
Let's hope my new biology class will help me. >x3
Many many thanks!!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I'm just glad if I can help.
(Also, when I said a couple thousand years, I meant a couple million. Oops. XD; To be more specific, I wouldn't go over anymore than one, maaaaaybe two million years and I probably wouldn't go any lower than five thousand, so civilizations can build and such.)
Also, if I made it sound that way, I don't think there's anything really wrong with people tossing up their character designs to the way the characters were drawn, since in most stories the characters' genetics and biology isn't important to the story. I think it's fun to try to add scientific explanations to things sometimes, and I'm guessing you do also, but it's not necessary.
Oh, I was thinking more about the antennae situation... Again, I'm no expert on biology, so I don't know if there's anything like this in real life or if it would work in view of what typical male chromosomes can carry, but the heck with it.
Going with the idea that Ambivian gender has something like an Xy chromosome relationship, it might be possible that somewhere down the line, one Ambivian male developed an antennae 'masking' gene mutation the male chromosome. Given what we've seen in the comic, males that lack antennae seem common, but a mutation like this wouldn't occur several times by itself. If only the Royals have a situation where the males lack antennae, this would be like the other deformities and indicate that the Royals have a particularly tangled family tree. If all Ambivians have this problem, it indicates that at some point in the very distant past, most of the Ambivian race was wiped out, and all the modern Ambivians are descended from the few survivors, of which one at least one of them had the masking gene (this situation is called a "population bottleneck").
This, however, means that all sons of an Ambivian male with no antennae would also have no antennae, virtually no exceptions. Likewise, all sons of a male with antennae must have antennae. Since it would only be a masking gene, however, like with albinism, all the genetic information for antennae would still exist in both parents, so the parents would still pass on the antennae to their daughters. So, if a female's born of a father with no antennae has children with a male with antennae, all of her children will still have antennae.
Blah, I'm not sure I'm explaining this right so I made some Punnett Squares. Yay, visuals?
Punnett Squares are actually really helpful when figuring out how genes would interpret themselves when inherited, so they might be something that can help you with other things, too.
Again, if you have any questions feel free to ask.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
(Hmm, well, my planets are around 12,000 years old. Would that be fitting you think?)
Most definitely. Though it may not matter, I also like to have things make sense. Makes me feel like I have everything all fitting together.
Actually, there was a situation in the early history of Ambivians where the vast majority of males were killed of. Would that create more of a steady foundation for this case then?
Wow Punnett Squares! I haven't done one of those in ages. I almost forgot how they worked!
Thank you so much for getting so into this. It's becoming incredibly helpful for me. I really appreciate it! You've been so helpful lately.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yeah, life on the planets being 12,000 years old should work excellently.
Since the mutation would only be on the male chromosome, most of the males being killed off would definitely line up perfectly in that situation.
And you're welcome! Figuring out stuff like this is kind of fun, like problem solving.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
FALCON PUNCH!!!!!!
OW i just punched the screen DX
heres a question, is the antennas lighting up a sign or respect? (all their antennas did when the Queen showed up)
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
xDD Oh u!
That's a good question, I'll be sure to add it in
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
OMG I INSPIRED A QUESTION!!!!!!!!!!
sry extreme fangirl moment
anyway...
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Eeei so much information oOo After reading this you have inspired me to write a non-furry-origional speicies-comedy-mystery-fantasy-comic! lol x3
But i has two questions owo
Did you first write out the story, then start making the comic? And do you have any tips on making comics? I know they dont really have anything to do with the whole story and everything but... yea... Amazing comic, i can't wait to read more 83
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Awesome <33 Good luck!
Umm, well at first when i was working on the Prologue all I had in mind was the basic plot of the selection (the event in the comic) and the characters. But after I started working the deeper plotline starting forming gradually. I'm still thinking up things. I have it thought out a good deal now, up to around chapter 4 fully scripted and the ending (though it may change, who knows) as well as the climatic and essential parts, but I'm still brainstorming ideas for what happens inbetween. Though I suggest at least writing a script up for the first few chapters if you do. That'll give you something to work with until you come up with the rest.
Umm, as far as tips, I can currently give you some of my biggest ones. Would you like me to send you a note? It's rather lengthy...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks ^^
Aah i see! Thanks this will help me a lot 8D
Sure! That would be fine ^^
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
OOO OOO I HAS A QUESTIIOON
How come the ambivian that chose the other one is probably much older than the chosen one, and they both look about the same age? Do they age slowly, therefore looking the same age or something?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
ooh, good question, I'll be sure to add that one. C:
But I'll answer you now too. It's true, they age very slowly. They don't start to look old until they get around 150-200. At that time they only look like, I dunno, a 30 year old. Like Finnie, she's around 300-400 years old and she doesn't look very old at all. xD
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Come on. SOMEBODY had to do it
Now, with that out of the way, a question about your style I've always pondered about but never dared to ask - what's with the whiskers the vast majority of your characters seem to have in side view?
Oh and....*points at your Livejournal announcement*
Remember while doing the symbols what our survival instructor said - in nature, practically noting is repeated three times. No three identical rocks, three identical trees or something along those lines.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
I was actually asking myself that same question not too long ago xD
The answer is: because I caaan.
That or their whiskers stick out in front of them.
But you also must question, why are they floating in the air? Aha!
.... lol wait, wut? What does that have to.. do with... er.. uh... *explodes*
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Darth Vader "Noooooooooooooo"
Darnit, ze link is dead.
OK, attempt nr. 2
SOMEBODY had to do it
I was wondering why it didn't work when I previewed the comment. And I though it had something to do with the Greasemonkey script...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
xDDDDDDDDDD
I just died of random laughter inside!
I just had to open my big mouth
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Alright, I've got a question. If Federico's from another planet, how come he's royalty on a different one?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
That's a good one X3
When he came to Ambivia he worked designing ships, security systems, and weaponry and then eventually helped to develop better school systems and prisons. All together he aided in advancing part of Ambivian civilization as well as helping them win several large wars, including the Lanian War (in Calestine Princess) so the elders "rewarded" him by giving him Royal status.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
O I C. XDD that makes snese :0
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Oh, dear I inspired a couple FAQ's!
Interesting how genetics plays a big part in the social makeup of the race. Musing about such things in the real word brings up a lot of very bad images from the past...
This could start an interesting discussion on what keeps the genetically superior "in check" so to speak and not create a huge tyranny. Although we have only seen a small sliver of this world, what will the rest of it hold?
Thanks for the FAQ, keep up the good work, you have a fertile imagination! =^^=
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Haha, I like how you're thinking hard into the race. Glad it makes you think like that. Makes my hard work seem to pay off
Why thank you! And I shall. :3
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
You're welcome! =^^=
Here's a random factoid from the past:
In Europe, it actually once was believed that the nobility were in fact genetically superior. They were called "blue bloods" because the uneducated peasantry were told that one could tell a noble by the fact that they bled blue! Commoners bled red, of course, and if someone turned out to be exceptionally bright they were purple, because they were probably the product of a tryst between some poor common girl and a noble prince, resulting in a mixed-blood offspring! =^^=
Now in warfare, one generally didn't see too much noble blood spilled, as these guys were the only ones wealthy enough to afford armor. Plus the code of chivaly generally frowned upon the common man taking down the mounted knight. Additionally, knights were a valuable commodity. Taken alive, they could be ransomed back to their homelands for cash! The battle at Agincourt changed all that, but that's a tale for another day! =^^=
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Whoooah :0
The information is power!
I do recall reading something about the blue bloods though. How very strange! Times back then must have been interesting ones.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Aw that so mean xDDD Poor tanner was droppe don his head *Hugs him*
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
;~; i love tanner...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
OMFG YAY XD
THATS THE BEST PLZ ACCOUNT EVER! *Glomps Tanner*
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
LOL I KNOW RITE?! xDD
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
NFJFRBI YEAH! TANNER IS AWESOME SAUCE OK? OK!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I don't think I've met the Tillanix. Do you have a journal about them, or something?
Dream ideas. Very good value.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Not yet. The closest thing I've ever posted would be the silhouette of my character Xar on this deviation: [link]
There's also a pic of his brother, G-Dawg, somewhere on my website. And they're both Tillanix. Neither of them will appear in TS, however, I do have another Tillanix character who will be a significant character later on, planning to appear in chapter 4. I might get a concept up of her sooner or later.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
"That's what she said" -
Anyway...This did help me fill in some holes, thank you.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
xDDDD Had to throw that in there.
No prob C: Glad it helped!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Lul...if I had the patience to read this, then I would, but I don't, so I will say that the words are pretty, and I'm sure that the Selection FAQ is very epic o3o. I DID see the part about Charles Dickens, and I'm sorry if you're a fan, but I can't stand his writings xD''....He's like an English teacher's half nightmares with his run-on sentences. -sniped-
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
<= Prev | | Next =>