Commercial Break (Worm / Slut Life) (Borderline SFW)

[The Unicorn]

In other words, her gills will basically have to double as underwater jet engines just to keep her from suffocating.

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I hope this was hyperbole and you're actually aware of how wrong this statement is.

 

[edale]

This is why they have also, hopefully, increased her body's overall efficiency when it comes to oxygen use. Of course, we aren't going to find that out until they stick her in a tank for the first time.

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Or on her first deepthr[redacted for SFW reasons].

 

[TheEyes]

(...Come to think of it, I'm not sure how do fish manage with their gills. Do they just use that much less energy? Or do they run on something other than oxygen?)

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The former. The human brain uses a lot more energy than any equivalent aquatic animal brain (20% of total energy expenditure vs about 8%), plus when you're in water you can rely on buoyancy and not have to fight gravity entirely on your own.

How do you figure that? Normal air has ~21% oxygen or 210,000 PPM. granted given the lower concentration of the atmosphere vs. water that can't be compared directly to the concentration of oxygen in water.

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Again, using mg/L, since that's the relevant measure (well the most relevant measure is molecules/L, but this is an easier shortcut); your 21% is using mass fraction (g O2 / g air). After all, what's being discussed isn't the mass of air vs mass of water; it's the volume, and air is much less dense than water.

I hope this was hyperbole and you're actually aware of how wrong this statement is.

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Not quite as wrong as you're thinking. The point is that Taylor is going to have to move a lot of water over her gills to stay conscious. Humans breathe roughly half a liter per breath, and make twelve breaths per minute, so six liters of air per minute. Even assuming that the energy required to breathe is free, Taylor is going to have to move close to fifty liters of water over her gills per minute; in other words, roughly 1.75 CFM (cubic feet per minute).

This is what a 1.4 CFM pump looks like:

Spoiler

Now, obviously you're not going to have the bubbles because this is an aerator pump, but you can see what kind of volume we're dealing with.

 

[D'znn-Xy'lll MetaChthonia]

Why is everyone focusing on oxygen volume in water? That was a off hand comment.

What does it have to do with Spacewhale Sperm om-noming a bunch of batteries significantly smaller then it's mass, a unwilling Bully Bicycle finally being freed from her unwilling torment, or a bunch of adorable Introverts getting together and forced onto each other by an equally adorable Extrovert who may or may not be attracted to one them?

Personally I can't wait for Futanari Time (so cute!). I wonder if the fact that most if not all of her time will be spent mostly not Fucking will end up starting up an entirely new thing for Slut Life: Nonpornographic Porn, it's like Porn but without the Porn!
For some reason that made me imagine someone Masturbating to SL NPP and for some reason Dirty Talking the Video:
"Yeah, make that sandwich... You enjoy those pickles, don't you, you bad girl, eating a snack just before dinner~"
"Keep changing the channel, keep- News Report! Cooking Showing! Cartooooons!"
My mind has just gone to a new level of weird.

That sure is a lot of arbitrary restraints you're putting on the party invites. What if a slime wants to join?

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They're not really arbitrary restraints, it's more like I'm generalizing everything although I probably should have said "Sufficiently Human" not "Humanoid". Also That's classified under "sufficiently human" so are tentacle monsters and several others. Insects that want to breed with anything other then their own would count as we. Always love the Ovipositor. Although I have no clue how a spider could have one since they don't work that way or how any species that does use other species for breeding would do it without giving the recipient a slow death but that's what Hentai Logic is for! Fuck Biology (Literally)!

 

[The Unicorn]

Again, using mg/L, since that's the relevant measure (well the most relevant measure is molecules/L, but this is an easier shortcut); your 21% is using mass fraction (g O2 / g air). After all, what's being discussed isn't the mass of air vs mass of water; it's the volume, and air is much less dense than water.

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When talking about water you can generally treat mg/L, mg/kg and PPM as the same unit. You can't do that with other substances. PPM means Parts Per Million, not anything else. You can use it by mass or by volume but not one side by mass and the other by volume (which is what you're trying to do).

Not quite as wrong as you're thinking. The point is that Taylor is going to have to move a lot of water over her gills to stay conscious. Humans breathe roughly half a liter per breath, and make twelve breaths per minute, so six liters of air per minute. Even assuming that the energy required to breathe is free, Taylor is going to have to move close to fifty liters of water over her gills per minute; in other words, roughly 1.75 CFM (cubic feet per minute).

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That sounds impressive, however
1)That's about the flow rate you'd get from a 50ft long 1/2" garden hose (and that's not going to move a person through the water much)
2)The more area we're talking about the slower the water can move to get the same flow rate. That pump you referenced uses tubing of 0.5" diameter, or about 0.2 square inches. Taylor's gills would have a cross section of more like 20 square inches, i.e 100 times greater and thus able to move the same volume at 1% the speed.
3)50 liters per minute means moving ~0.83kg of water per second, assuming Taylor's gills have a cross section of 100cm^2 (about 15.5 sq. inch but a convenient number to calculate) she'd need to move that water at an amazing speed of 0.0833m/s providing it the kinetic energy of 625J. That's less kinetic energy than you have hitting you in a 30mph wind (assuming a 0.5m^2 cross section). If the cross section of her gills is larger the energy required will drop even further.


One thing a bit more related to the story that occured to me, Jonakhensu given that you have Taylor breathing in through her mouth/nose and out through her gills rather than breathing in and out, taylor would just be breathing in continuously. Is she going to have any issues (psychologically) with that?

 

[Jonakhensu]

One thing a bit more related to the story that occured to me, Jonakhensu given that you have Taylor breathing in through her mouth/nose and out through her gills rather than breathing in and out, taylor would just be breathing in continuously. Is she going to have any issues (psychologically) with that?

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I'll leave off the bits about gill mechanics, as I'm trying for "remotely biologically possible" over "entirely realistic", so I haven't done any of the research beyond what I remember from high school bio. Luckily, that includes some small amount of the structure of gills, so... at least I know how you need to set up the blood flow for maximum efficiency.

As for breathing in continuously... that's not what happens. Taylor takes in a 'lungful' of air into her gill-lungs then forces the water out the sides. They repurposed her diaphragm, so she still has an inhalation/exhalation cycle. It just leaves her lungs out of it when she's in the water. Of course, whether this has the same psychological effect will need to be explored.

Thanks for the idea, I honestly hadn't considered that aspect enough.

 

[Fencer]

this is a setting where the human digestive system can be streamlined to the point people no longer produce physical waiste and ageing is a nonfactor... why then does it matter how much air can be extracted from water? If they can pull off that kind of bullshit then really being able to draw enough air out of water to function normally should surprise absolutely no one regardless of how much air there actually is in water to be drawn out.

 

[The Unicorn]

this is a setting where the human digestive system can be streamlined to the point people no longer produce physical waiste and ageing is a nonfactor... why then does it matter how much air can be extracted from water? If they can pull off that kind of bullshit then really being able to draw enough air out of water to function normally should surprise absolutely no one regardless of how much air there actually is in water to be drawn out.

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"The Wizard cast a lightning bold at the troll" is fine and no one will object to it. "The wizard cas't his spell creating a point of high electrical potential over the Troll's head..." will get you nitpicked to death.

 

[Komrade Comrade]

Of course not. Two of the pedestals were empty.

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"Oh god, not the bees! Not the bees! They're… wearing little dresses? And they're in my eyes!"

This is another amusing mental image.

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They also sting on a conceptual level.

But you don't care about that, you care about how the romance dynamics work when nearly the entire hive is female. The love polyhedrons are insane!

 

[Sartek]

One thing to note. After having corrective eye surgery, you get used to not wearing glasses very quickly.

The first day was similar to Taylor's, but a few days and I forgot I ever had them

 

[Jonakhensu]

One thing to note. After having corrective eye surgery, you get used to not wearing glasses very quickly.

The first day was similar to Taylor's, but a few days and I forgot I ever had them

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Oh, I know that. But does Taylor? If she gets glasses soon enough, it might take her a while to figure it out.

 

[Sartek]

yeah, sounds like Taylor. Out if mind once....never to think about it again

 

[ItsComplicated]

Will this stay borderline SFW? Or will there be lewd chapters and then non-lzwd ones as the plot advances?

[I am willing to bet almost anything that there will be a plot even after the setup and all, and this is good]

 

[Jonakhensu]

Will this stay borderline SFW? Or will there be lewd chapters and then non-lzwd ones as the plot advances?

[I am willing to bet almost anything that there will be a plot even after the setup and all, and this is good]

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Things can, of course, change, but I am currently planning on keeping everything borderline SFW. If I do decide to write up some actual smut, I'll try to keep it optional, where it doesn't particularly impact plot or character development without being summarized (probably before hand) in this thread. That smut would be put into a separate thread.

Alternatively, if people start writing random smut scenes for this that they want to share, I'll start a NSFW thread for that as well.

 

[Fencer]

Alternatively, if people start writing random smut scenes for this that they want to share, I'll start a NSFW thread for that as well.

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That could be fun, but I think we're a bit early for that yet. I mean generic character a fucked character b is about all anyone could write until we get a bit more characterization and character interactions to work off of.

 

[january1may]

Oh and just as a note, given the way Taylor's gills are arranged, when breathing water she'd be breathing close to 12 times the volume of water, as normal people breath (she'd be exchanging the full ~6 liter volume of her lungs each 'breath' rather than just the ~0.5 liter you can exchange in a breath), which since gills work in atmosphere just fine (as long as they're kept wet) means some interesting things on Taylor's ability to handle low oxygen conditions.

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...come to think of it, between this and the sheer inefficiency of air-based breathing, the otherwise ludicrously low oxygen content in water would actually come out to something close to what she'd be getting from air.

(Though it would require pretty strong muscles in the right area, and might not work properly in a closed aquarium because she'd run out of oxygen far too quickly...)

When talking about water you can generally treat mg/L, mg/kg and PPM as the same unit. You can't do that with other substances. PPM means Parts Per Million, not anything else. You can use it by mass or by volume but not one side by mass and the other by volume (which is what you're trying to do).

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Exactly - this was my main problem with the description. I could tell what they did mean, they just used the wrong units for that.

(Actually, technically, mg/kg and ppm are the same thing, though they usually show up in different contexts. I agree, however, that mg/l [or g/m3​ or whatever] is very much not.)

 

[Jonakhensu]

That could be fun, but I think we're a bit early for that yet. I mean generic character a fucked character b is about all anyone could write until we get a bit more characterization and character interactions to work off of.

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Oh, I don't expect anything like that any time soon. As you said, it's far too early for anything like that. About the only thing I can think of right now is writing Taylor's first time getting aroused and what that'd do to her sensitivity.

 

[edale]

For all the people nitpicking over terminology, when using the metric system and dealing with water, measurements are interchangeable.

1 ml water = 1 g water.
1 l water = 1 kg water.

Everything in the metric system is built around measuring water. 1 ml is 1 cm3​ of water which weighs 1 g (and 1 calorie (not Calorie, which is 1000 calories) is the amount of energy needed to raise that 1 ml of water 1 degree kelvin/celsius). If you have 1 unit of measurement for water, you instantly have pretty much all the others.

[I am willing to bet almost anything that there will be a plot even after the setup and all, and this is good]

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IIRC, the current story plan has roughly 3 arcs. We're in the first arc, which is the setup for the show; 2nd arc is the show itself; and the 3rd arc will be Taylor back on Earth Bet working as a SL recruiter while wowing everyone with her flashy new skills and powers.

That said, I only know things for certain to as far as Jona has gotten in his buffer (and anything not posted here yet is still up for change, so even that's not completely certain).

 

[january1may]

1 ml water = 1 g water.

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1 ml is 1 cm3​ of water which weighs 1 g

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FTFY

EDIT: fun fact - for a while, the liter was defined as however much water weighed 1 kg [at a particular temperature and pressure], which meant that, e.g., 1 ml and 1 cm3​ were subtly different (in the 5th decimal place or so), because whoever measured the density of water way back in the 18th century wasn't quite accurate enough.
At some point in the mid-20th century someone realized that this was stupid and redefined the liter as exactly one cubic decimeter, which meant that 1 liter of water no longer weighed exactly 1 kg (or, rather, it only did at a different temperature and/or pressure).

 

[Jonakhensu]

IIRC, the current story plan has roughly 3 arcs. We're in the first arc, which is the setup for the show; 2nd arc is the show itself; and the 3rd arc will be Taylor back on Earth Bet working as a SL recruiter while wowing everyone with her flashy new skills and powers.

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It's four arcs at minimum, actually. We're currently in the second arc. The arcs, as planned, are:
1. Filling out the contract.
2. Setting up for the show.
3. The Show itself (This may become more than one arc, depending on length and tone).
4. After the Show, including the return to Brockton Bay (This will probably become multiple arcs).

Obviously, there can easily be more arcs added as we go along, depending on number of words and how the writing progresses.

 

[Ack]

FTFY

EDIT: fun fact - for a while, the liter was defined as however much water weighed 1 kg [at a particular temperature and pressure], which meant that, e.g., 1 ml and 1 cm3​ were subtly different (in the 5th decimal place or so), because whoever measured the density of water way back in the 18th century wasn't quite accurate enough.
At some point in the mid-20th century someone realized that this was stupid and redefined the liter as exactly one cubic decimeter, which meant that 1 liter of water no longer weighed exactly 1 kg (or, rather, it only did at a different temperature and/or pressure).

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Not quite.

The metre was defined as 1/10,000 of the distance from the equator to the North Pole through Paris.
The centimetre was defined as 1% of a metre.
The litre was defined as 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm.
The kilogram was defined as the mass of 1 litre of water, measured at the point of freezing (but not after it becomes ice). Since the late 18th century, they've used a platinum-iridium cylinder instead.

So the kg was defined as a function of the mass of water, not the other way around.

 

[selonianth]

Not quite.

The metre was defined as 1/10,000 of the distance from the equator to the North Pole through Paris.
The centimetre was defined as 1% of a metre.
The litre was defined as 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm.
The kilogram was defined as the mass of 1 litre of water, measured at the point of freezing (but not after it becomes ice). Since the late 18th century, they've used a platinum-iridium cylinder instead.

So the kg was defined as a function of the mass of water, not the other way around.

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... So... I understand that metric is theoretically easier to use. Everything being in base 10 and all... but how the actual hell is 1/10,000'th of the distance between the North Pole and Paris ANY less arbitrary than some king deciding his foot would be the standard measurement for length?

 

[Ack]

... So... I understand that metric is theoretically easier to use. Everything being in base 10 and all... but how the actual hell is 1/10,000'th of the distance between the North Pole and Paris ANY less arbitrary than some king deciding his foot would be the standard measurement for length?

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Because that is something that can be resurveyed in later generations.
And it's North Pole to Equator. One quarter of the circumference of the Earth. The line passes through Paris.

 

[january1may]

... So... I understand that metric is theoretically easier to use. Everything being in base 10 and all... but how the actual hell is 1/10,000'th of the distance between the North Pole and Paris ANY less arbitrary than some king deciding his foot would be the standard measurement for length?

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It's a little less arbitrary because "through Paris" doesn't actually matter in the first few digits - you could take the distance through Greenwich or Washington or Saint-Petersburg or whatever and come up with pretty much the same number up to (nearly) the limits of 18th century measurement ability. In fact, IIRC, the actual result they came up with was further off than those differences would have been anyway (which is why the circumference of the Earth is slightly off from 40,000 km - the modern value is apparently 40,007.86, though I'm not sure what it is for the Paris meridian specifically).

Also, there was a pre-existing 17th century proposal defining the meter as the length of a second pendulum (that is to say, a pendulum that takes a second for each swing, i.e. has a period of 2 seconds). This turned out to depend on local gravity and thus on latitude, which made it unusable (at least, as stated) for a worldwide standard, but in modern units it comes out to 99 cm and change, so there's some suspicion (don't recall whether it's conclusively stated either way) that the exact formula to the meter was chosen to make it close to this 17th century standard.

The kilogram was defined as the mass of 1 litre of water, measured at the point of freezing (but not after it becomes ice). Since the late 18th century, they've used a platinum-iridium cylinder instead.

So the kg was defined as a function of the mass of water, not the other way around.

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The way I recall it, they redefined the kilogram as the platinum-iridium cylinder, but forgot to clarify the "kilogram is the mass of 1 litre of water" part, and when someone worked out the dependencies, the litre ended up being technically defined from the kilogram.

As I've mentioned, at some later point some other guy realized that this was stupid, and that hardly anybody ever used litres that way (as distinct from cubic decimeters) in the first place, and redefined the litre as 1 cubic decimeter.

(Wikipedia says the two redefinitions happened in 1901 and 1964 respectively.)

 

[Czlyydwr Llrngwl]

... So... I understand that metric is theoretically easier to use. Everything being in base 10 and all... but how the actual hell is 1/10,000'th of the distance between the North Pole and Paris ANY less arbitrary than some king deciding his foot would be the standard measurement for length?

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It's not, but so far all the people using them live on the same bacwater planet out on the unfashionable end of the Orion spiral arm of the Milky Way that it's based on, so it's not too inconvenient to be getting on with. I suppose eventually we'll move on to something a little more universal, like the wavelength of the 1420 MHz hydrogen line as on the Voyager discs. (About 21cm.)

 

[The Unicorn]

For all the people nitpicking over terminology, when using the metric system and dealing with water, measurements are interchangeable.

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Emphasis added.
No one is arguing that. The problem comes when people try and treat them as interchangeable for air.

 

[TheEyes]

Emphasis added.
No one is arguing that. The problem comes when people try and treat them as interchangeable for air.

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Right; it was a silly terminology problem on my part, where I should have used mg/L instead of PPM. The real meat of the discussion though is that, since the concentration of oxygen in air is roughly 25 times that of water, even though gills are 80-90% efficient as opposed to lungs' ~30% efficiency Taylor is still going to need to run about eight times as much water through her gills as she normally breathes in air to maintain oxygenation, and that's assuming that the act of breathing is "free" in terms of energy cost.

That's going to make for a fun "orientation session" in the pool, where Taylor is going to find herself "inhaling/gulping" through her mouth almost continuously while underwater, and maybe finding herself drifting around just on the strength of her breathing action, especially if she's not holding on to anything.

 

[Czlyydwr Llrngwl]

It does sound like the part where she still "inhales" for the gills through her mouth is the problematic thing if any - but one that could be simply fixed by just planning to have the water flow be two-way past the gills. Get rid of most of the messing around in her throat and above (just add a little set of muscles to pinch her nostrils closed to keep water out of her sinuses, which was presumably already included for comfort but might be a tweak in the development process) so when she wants to dive, she exhales, conveniently also reducing her buoyancy to make it easier to stay under, closes her mouth and nostrils, opens the gills, and "breathes" with her diaphragm normally. Instead of the currently-closed off lungs, the new water pumping sac inflates and draws in past the gills, then deflates and flows out. Net impulse, however much or little it may be, from the flowing water is zero, and as previously noted shouldn't be too high across a reasonably sized opening for the gills anyway. Perversion potential also rises, a not inconsiderable benefit in a pornworld production.

If there's a system to let her slowly reinflate her lungs with scavenged blood gases (or I guess digestion byproducts, but ew) while underwater if desired to achieve neutral buoyancy across a wider range like a fish's flotation bladder, better still. Tapping into the less-biotech side of mods for a small implanted compressor and storage tank that get filled when she's in air might be a better way to go for that, depending on performance, though the temperature changes while compressing or expanding the contents would certainly feel very strange at first, and would need to be considered in the context of keeping her core temperature in a healthy range before going all-out on performance, though that could also be a minor benefit to leverage for health and comfort too.

Since it is an experimental procedure, it would not be surprising if they sent her back to the mod tanks to tweak it once or twice during the run - indeed, it would be more surprising if they did not. One other modification that might make sense for later is to divide the pump sac so each gill is served by its own smaller one, to improve the flow efficiency (less swirling around mixing fresh water with the water from the previous "breath" if it's entering or exiting only on one side) and to restore the natural durability of having redundant copies of the organs left and right in case of injury or illness.

Perhaps being able to comfortably handle both fresh and salt water, and then not-so-fresh water without getting affected by higher levels of contaminants? If it's supposed to be useful in the field, only being able to tolerate laboratory conditions for water purity would not be too helpful but you can be sure it's what they'd be starting her off in, just to minimize external variables for the initial trials.

Not a direct concern for the experimental trials but possibly relevant in her job as a magical girl is that gills are, obviously, a high-blood-flow area, so getting wounded there is going to bleed a lot and quickly present a problem in that way. Adding a hard gill-case over them is one option, but best made a layer under the skin and surface fat for aesthetic purposes. An autonomous reaction restricting the blood flow to levels just enough to keep the tissue healthy if she's not breathing with the gills could also help there a lot. Both might already be part of the package, of course, but are good candidates for refinements to add later after the basic functions are solid as well.

 

[The Unicorn]

That's going to make for a fun "orientation session" in the pool, where Taylor is going to find herself "inhaling/gulping" through her mouth almost continuously while underwater, and maybe finding herself drifting around just on the strength of her breathing action, especially if she's not holding on to anything.

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No, she won't. While she will need to move a lot more water than air to get the same amount of oxygen the system described will allow her to move 12 times as much volume in each "breath" so there's no need for her to breath/gulp more rapidly than she's used to.

It does sound like the part where she still "inhales" for the gills through her mouth is the problematic thing if any

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Quite the opposite, it's what eliminates the problem. Having her breath in the water through her mounth/nose and breath out through the gills on her sides means that instead of each breath only exchanging ~0.5 a liter volume as it does when we breath it will exchange the full volume of her lungs or ~6 liters.

 

[Czlyydwr Llrngwl]

Having her breath in the water through her mounth/nose and breath out through the gills on her sides means that instead of each breath only exchanging ~0.5 a liter volume as it does when we breath it will exchange the full volume of her lungs or ~6 liters.

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That would be true, except how long does it take a person to chug a single liter, let alone six at one go? The throat is, in a very literal way, the bottleneck to getting the kind of volume you're talking about through in a reasonable time frame without extremely uncomfortable and exhausting effort.