Talk:Arilou Lalee'lay
The reference to "numbness" is not fanfic. Neither is the reference to "vibrations". Both of these are clearly in the Arilou dialogue.
- I wouldn't say that the reference to "numbness" is fanfic. Your interpretation that it applies to some evolutionary process is. When I removed the statements, I believe that I moved the mention of the numbness to the Falayalaralfali to avoid some article sprawl and since I believe that those comments more directly belong in a description about the planet and not the Arilou themselves. The references in the Arilou dialogue to numbness are:
- Perhaps, in the fullness of time we will let you visit the surface of our world. There are many beauties here unmatched anywhere... the Mountain Clouds of Thought... the Tangible Wish... the Dark. Unfortunately, you are not yet... acclimated. Premature exposure to these would render you... numb.
- Hello. We are pleased to see you again. Have you any numbness yet? Good. It should be too soon for that. Too soon by far.
- If the numbness comments are going to stay here, we need to tone down the evolution speculation part of the comment. Also, I couldn't find any reference to "vibrations" in the Arilou dialogue. Where do you see it? --Fyzixfighter 11:22, 2 Nov 2005 (CET)
I'm a murderer
I killed a lot of the content in "Theories" because, frankly, it was disorganized and kind of confusing, and I might be calling the kettle black here but I didn't see much support for it in canon. The idea of the Arilou being a far-future evolved version of humanity I can swallow and it's in fact quite elegant and compelling. Extrapolating from this that the Orz are some sort of far-future rival to the Arilou, or an alternate-universe version of a different humanity, or a far-future version of the Androsynth, or whatever the writer of "Theories" was trying to say is really unwarranted.
In general I'm not a fan of the idea of a "Theories" section. If a speculation is appropriate it goes at the end of the relevant section of the main article to flesh out the reader's understanding of the possibilities that surround that topic and the implications people are drawing from it. If it's not clearly appropriate for that reason -- if it's "Wouldn't it be cool" daydreaming -- then it belongs in a thread on the forums and will probably be more fun there, as there'll be a more structured way for people to discuss it and reply to it.
Since there's a *lot* of interesting and relevant speculation attached to the Arilou I've tried to integrate most of it into the article body. But a divorced "theories" section is unnecessary and, I think, destructive. If there's a whole topic that's primarily speculation then it should be "Theories about the Arilou/Human connection" or "Theories about the Androsynth disappearance" and go in the proper categorization.
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Great work on the first contact section. A few things with it didn't sit right with me, though.
"The Human governments searched their ancient archives and found the resemblance too close to be coincidental..."
- I don't remember this level of detail being given in the game. Correct me if I am wrong, but this sounds like a bit of extrapolation.
"It was on the moon's surface where Human and Chenjesu delegates met the Arilou La'leelay..."
- Another detail I'm not recalling. Sounds feasible, though.
- This is mentioned in the SC1 and SC2 manuals.
"No other race had made contact with the Arilou before the beginning of the First War..."
- Not so sure about the veritablilty of this statement. How about the Umgah, or even the Thraddash?
- True. Okay, no *Alliance* race had made contact with the Arilou before the First War.
-Fadookie 07:28, 25 Nov 2004 (CET)
The most annoying thing about many of these entries is that in a misguided attempt to be objective they present things as "up for debate" that aren't legitimately up for debate. "Arilou La'Leelay" is explicitly stated in the game to be a Celtic name, given to the Arilou by the "children of the Celts".
Be Bold!
Go ahead and make any changes you feel are appropriate. I haven't played through the game since over seven years ago; sometimes I can't remember what was stated as fact and what was conjecture.
I probably will soon enough when I've got time, but I want to note that this article needs a full rewrite; numerous things about it are factually wrong. The Arilou do *not* militarily defend the area around the natural QS portal; they act utterly pacifistic and refuse to engage you in combat even if you goad them repeatedly. They also don't seem to "jealously guard" this secret, since the Spathi, Melnorme et al. discover it without trouble -- just none of them have the guts to enter the Portal.
No evidence that the Arilou care at all about the Androsynth or the Syreen. The Arilou actually directly *abandon* the Syreen to be defeated after the slave-shielding of Earth -- they don't stick around at all to see what happens to the Syreen. And though they're fully aware of what happened to the Androsynth there's no evidence they intervened to help them, nor do they ever claim that they did so; they just use that as a reason to warn *you* not to mess with DF. They come off as incredibly Human-centric. (On the other hand, the game *does* mention that they tampered with the development of the Thraddash, although purely for fun.)
Leaving aside magic sci-fi technology, "crossbreeding the two species" would not guarantee that they would remain that genetically similar over time; parapatric speciation does occur and, in fact, is inevitable when you have a strong bottleneck like that between two separated groups of a main species. The only plausible non-magic explanation is that the two subspecies were separated in very recent evolutionary time (which makes sense, since the story only really needs to start with the dawn of Human history, about 10,000 years ago).
- Given the strong resemblance between humans and other Earth apes, it seems really unlikely that humans could be transplants from off Earth. However, there is conveniently no way to check that the Syreen are really native to Syra... 68.35.106.186 03:40, 20 March 2007 (CET)
Finally, I think I'm cutting out this stuff about Falayaliralfali looking like Earth, since in this screenshot:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/shots/p,2/gameId,179/gameShotId,1743/
the resemblance is very superficial. For one thing, Falayaliralfali's continents don't match Earth's continents' shape. For another, the continents are purple.
- The Arilou homeworld appears to be a water world, so perhaps the line in question could be changed to reflect that. Still though, it appears to be very earth-like, and even has what appears to be a small, gray moon. -Fadookie 05:52, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)
http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/stylesheets/images/arispace.png
- The moon is the most convincing part in real life -- such a moon is a lot less likely than one might think -- but in the SC2 universe we see plenty of worlds with moons, including water worlds IIRC. Other than that Falayalaralfali just being a water world isn't much of a coincidence. There are plenty of water worlds in the game, and water worlds are one of the few types of worlds on which one could reasonably expect to find life, especially enough diversity of life to allow a species to evolve to sentience (and look anything like a human being at all). If they'd wanted it to be eerily reminiscent of Earth, they probably would've at least drawn the continents in green and brown, and made them closer to Earth's continents in size and shape. The planet looks like Earthsea; it looks like Earthsea; large islands about the size of Australia but nothing like what we'd count a continent.
Where is the Arilou messing with the Thraddash for fun mentioned? I can't find it. -- SvdB 21:36, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)
- Ask Commander Hayes about other alien races who weren't in the War. He mentions the Pkunk and the Zoq-Fot-Pik: "The Chenjesu implied that they had met at least 2 other starfaring species: one near the Giclas constellation, and the other directly coreward from Procyon." He then mentions the Thraddash: "The Ariloulaleelay once mentioned having 'some fun' with an alien race in Draconis but like so much else with the Arilou, they never revealed the whole story."
What warrants the dubious tag
Val, since you placed the tag, would you mind identifying here on the talk page which parts look dubious? I know this article has been the focus of some editors' pet theories, so I don't doubt there are fanfic parts embedded. But every once in awhile I'm surprised be something that turns out to be canon. So give us a list of what you see, we can then either add to it, double-check the canon to see where the items may come from, and possibly allow the original editor to address it here without getting into an edit war. Thanks. --Fyzixfighter 20:40, 13 October 2007 (CEST)