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Out-Of-Placers #197, Kass' Journal IV

🕑 Added 2022-09-01 00:21:24 +0000 UTC

Comments

Wing Dancer

Reading? In MY comics?! UNACCEPTABLEEEEEEE!!

Thorin N. Tatge

One- or two-shots about those aspects of transformation sound like they would make great Patreon-exclusive content!

Flora P-Stylianides

A lore bible/(auto)biographical explanation of yingletness from the perspective of the transformed? I would read the *hecc* outta that As it stands tho these little journal segments are a wonderful addition to your incredible comic. Thank you

Val Salia

That's a good way of looking at it! That small cut of expensive filet mignon? Absolutely huge now. (On the other hand, you now like teeth with which to chew it)

Val Salia

Ohhhh there's a lot of them! Seriously I could write about the stuff all day, but this is a webcomic, not a novel : D

Val Salia

And there was that guy who had a rail spike blown through his skull; by all accounts he should have died, but he just developed a more impulsive personality after that

Val Salia

Isher has an excess-of-molecules issue

Val Salia

You say that, but I'm convinced that the cows are just waiting for their moment to strike

Val Salia

And to be fair, there are some really dumb elephants

Val Salia

Yeah that happens sometimes! : D

Val Salia

For some, more than others

Val Salia

I'm really glad to hear that! I could write entire short stories about individual aspects of this, but I also don't want to scare off the people reading for the regular comic content : D

Val Salia

And to Isher, the curse of big

Thorin N. Tatge

Being small means more world to enjoy! Well, yeah, there are three dimensions to feel diminished in. Poor Kass. And that last question is a doozy, all right. Maybe you don't even remember ever having known what you lost. Or maybe yinglet brains are just more compactly organized, or more connected, on top of not having as many e.g. nerve endings to connect to.

Flora P-Stylianides

I adore these little snippets so much. It's utterly fascinating getting a snapshot glance at the thoughts and experiences behind being a yinglet. I hope they hug when Kass goes to see Elim <3

Teh_phoENIX

We learn throw perception. We learn throw thinking. We learn to discover more.

kurogetsui

Wow, didn't realize a throwaway comment about headcanon would have this much interest, lol

Teh_phoENIX

Limit of space is significant part of what brain can do. All parts of it are significant. Consciousness and intelligence are one of the least important functions of brain if we consider individual survivability. But if yinglets where "designed" or they had "a space age civilization that was lost to the collapse". P.S. Or yinglet brain could be "more dense" than human brain is. Or they are just dummer.

ArcadeDragon

There was a man who had almost no funtional brain matter, and they did not discover until he was 45 because he lead a completely normal life. https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/08/18/the-incredible-case-of-the-man-who-lived-normally-with-almost-no-brain/ His head was filled with water. His IQ was low, but it is unclear if this is strictly dues to the size.

SpecialSpoon

Just dont ever show this to Isher. Poor big beautiful girl has enough self image issues.

Caerdwyn

Brainpower is about surface area far moreso than volume. That whole bit about wrinkles and such, and why "smooth-brain" is an insult in some circles. It's about efficiency and the number of interconnections between neurons more than about he raw count of neurons. Examples: Cows have larger brains than humans. Humans are... usually... smarter than cows. Crows/magpies/ravens/parrots are considered to be about as smart as a dog yet have far smaller brains. Scholarly articles about this are pretty easy to find for those who have a wrinkly-brain.

Varyon

As others have noted, we use 100% of our brains - ounce for ounce, I believe the brain is by far the most energy-hungry part of the human body, so having one 10x the size necessary would be a tremendous waste of resources. I believe the 10% figure was actually how much we use of our brain at any given time. As for Kass having retained his knowledge - and yinglets like Vizlet having human-level intelligence - one possibility is that the yinglet brain is designed similarly to that of the Bowman's Wolf's (genetically enhanced, uplifted red wolves from the webcomic Freefall) - a sizable portion of the grey matter is actually contained within the spinal column.

Vet

Never underestimate brain power…small doesn’t always mean less smarts. I had a parakeet who learned words then began to assemble them into simple sentences.

Richard Weir

That business of "we only use 10% of our brains" has been disproved - we use it all. The error came about because of poor sensing technology that made it *seem* like just 10%. Which, of course, makes Kass' situation even more bizarre!

Golnor

Kass has the opposite problem.

Crushogre

We don't use 10% of our brain. We use 100%. Only using 10% of our brain would be such a stupidly huge waste of resources that no animal would ever evolve to work that way.

kurogetsui

Kass probably just lost some of the 90% of the brain we don't utilize or something. At least that's my headcanon going forward until more lore/story developments say otherwise.

Knaxia

It's a small world after all.....

NervousNessie

Just read the whole thing during my break at work and was just wide eyed the whole time. I absolutely love this kind of research stuff from fantasy worlds and this is amazing. The way Kass explains in detail feels so realistic. It's obvious you put a lot of time and effort into thinking about Kass's experience with their transformation. Thanks for putting so much care into the worlds you create and the characters in them.