From: "Roy C. Lackey" 
Subject: Re: (urth) DOORS: Tina
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 01:16:30 -0600

mantis wrote:
>As for a previous owner being a girl, I've always had the suspicion that
>Tina was Lara's doll, somehow, other than being modeled on Lara "the
>goddess at 16" (which is another paradox to roll over).

Paradox indeed. I don't see how Tina could ever have been Lara's doll. The
timetable for technological development aside, and ignoring effect preceding
cause, the girl Tina belonged to was elementary school age. The Goddess
dates back, at least, to Captain Billy. She seems not to age. Unless the
Goddess is periodically reborn (for which there is no evidence in the text;
who was her daddy and did he die?), she could not possibly have been a child
at a time when dolls like Tina existed.

>I'm leaning more towards a time-tide between the worlds: this way there
>would be periods of greatest difference and periods of catch-up in between.
>So the O-time ratio would come down from 8.25 to 1 (time synchronization)
>and then into negative territory (the distortion would be reversed: 4 days
>on Earth would become 33 days on Otherworld).

The time difference was even greater for those four months Green was gone
from the Otherworld; more like 14 to 1.

>Adam Stephanides quoted Roy and wrote:
>>> Orgasm seems to be fatal. How
>>> many would die from having a wet dream?
>>
>>We seem compelled to conclude that males in Otherworld don't have wet
>>dreams, regardless of the stimulus.
>
>To the contrary!  We know that they can have such dreams and survive, since
>W.F. thinks that Green has had such a dream when Green claims to have seen
>Lara at United.  IIRC, W.F. tells Green not to worry, these things happen.

I'm not convinced that W.F. thought Green had had a wet dream.

>The "death trigger" is not ejaculation/orgasm, I suppose, but a biochemical
>agent released by the female when the zygotes have been successfully
>received in her holding tank.  Then the male's body starts to self
destruct.

I disagree. If the "death trigger" mechanism were something that simple,
some smart cookie would have made a fortune selling condoms and other
barrier methods of birth control. Males in the Otherworld must have an
innately weak libido for any such insectile biological reproductive system
to work. And if that's the case, then they aren't men like us, and North's
sexual revolution would never even have gotten off the ground.

BTW, pursuant to your theory of names and initials, what does W.F. stand
for?

-Roy


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