Why do Sylvari have breasts?
The Pale Tree created Sylvari in imitation of humans. Thus, the spare “parts.” Consider Sylvari a sapient plant’s impression of what “people” should look like. Hope that clears things up.
Malegryne (Sylvari Mesmer), Lannka (Asura Thief) – Ferguson’s Crossing: [PRD/BRB/OMFG]
Other 80s: Any but Warrior
Other 80s: Any but Warrior
As the person above me said the Sylvari were made as an imitation to humans. Also the wiki states that “while sylvari can and do have sex, it is not for reproduction as sylvari can only be born from the Pale Tree.” http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sylvari
Yep, while the aesthetic appeal (shall we say) is usually the main if not only reason in games, it is actually justified with the sylvari. It’s the same reason that sylvari males can have facial features that look like beards – they’re made to imitate human forms. The Pale Tree saw enough humans passing by in her lifetime to get the gist of the different genders, and although sylvari don’t have a reproductive system in their bodies they are each created to resemble one of the human sexes, at least on the outside.
Actually Malyck, the Sylvari who wasn’t born from the Pale Tree shows that all Sylvari look humanoid, with or without the influence of men. Now it’s possible that the place Malyck comes from also has humans, but where would that be and why have we never heard from them?
You don’t win friends with salad! Sorry I just got caught up in the rhythm.
It could be that Malyck’s pale tree was also planted by a human. We just don’t have enough information to know precisely why they were made that way.
From a non-lore standpoint, it’s because with them looking so human, a lack of breasts would also make them look pre-pubescent, and that just doesn’t fly for Anet with all those skimpy armours about. Anet wanted to make sexy Elf-like plant people, clearly.
Asura can get away with it because they don’t look nearly as human, they’re not designed to be attractive (at least not conventionally), and their armor isn’t as sexualized.
although sylvari don’t have a reproductive system in their bodies
It’s been confirmed that they do have “fun parts,” they just can’t actually make more Sylvari with them. Usually, sexual dimorphism is an evolutionary tactic to draw a mate to reproduce, and while Sylvari do mate, they can’t continue their species that way, so.. I don’t know. As far as evolution goes, they don’t even have a reason to form intimate relationships. So I would say that the pale tree is mimicking humans, not just in appearance, but somewhat in behavior. Relationships would keep Sylvari happiness up, at least, what with all these dragons around.
However, as pointed out above, Malyck also looks human. Acts pretty human, too. It’s a pretty big coincidence that his tree also saw humans and decided to base the Sylvari on them, rather than, say, Charr, or Asura, or any other race or random creature wandering through its territory at the time.
Is the pale tree lying about deliberately basing Sylvari on humans? Is there something here we don’t know about that might be revealed later? Is it just a case of wobbly writing?
As much as Ventari is admired and loved, you’d think Sylvari would have come out taur-formed, actually. But realistically, making a centaur-bodied player race would have been a nightmare.
Sorry, rambled a bit off topic, but those things have been gnawing at my mind for a while.
(edited by Egon Vidar.9125)
It’s been confirmed that they do have “fun parts,” they just can’t actually make more Sylvari with them.
Don’t even get me started on this, haha – once my thesis is done, I am planning to write a blog post about how it doesn’t make sense to claim that sylvari don’t have “internal organs” only to then say that they have the parts required for sexual intercourse. I liked it better when the routine answer was what you see if what you get (that is, the ‘underwear’ leaves on a sylvari are all that’s there). Even eating is problematic when you start thinking…
Anyway, those issues aside, I simply meant that they don’t have the internal organs required for reproduction, like a womb for example.
It’s been confirmed that they do have “fun parts,” they just can’t actually make more Sylvari with them.
Don’t even get me started on this, haha – once my thesis is done, I am planning to write a blog post about how it doesn’t make sense to claim that sylvari don’t have “internal organs” only to then say that they have the parts required for sexual intercourse. I liked it better when the routine answer was what you see if what you get (that is, the ‘underwear’ leaves on a sylvari are all that’s there). Even eating is problematic when you start thinking…
Anyway, those issues aside, I simply meant that they don’t have the internal organs required for reproduction, like a womb for example.
They do have internal organs, just not necessarily exactly the same – something, made of plant or organic material, that circulates the sap that is effectively their blood, for example…a heart of sorts, but it might not work the exact same way or even be in the same spot in the body. Another organ for processing food and drink (they need both to survive, and use a stomach-like area that decomposes food that is then used to fuel the body).
So it’s not far fetched for them to have a physiology that responds to external stimuli (plants can and will do this in real life, and Tyria is a world where some plant organisms get up, walk toward you, and try to smash your face in), including sexual stimulation – which happens to be based at least in part (externally, for the most part) on that of humans. What happens on the inside is anyone’s guess – they are plants, through and through, so stimulation for them could result in any number of internal reactions they find pleasurable.
The ability to be stimulated is independent of their appearance, of course, which only happens to look human externally because of the race that influenced the Pale Tree regarding her design for the Sylvari.
@Curuniel re: eating, I’m sure they have some sort of system for digesting food, just like they do for respiring. Carnivorous plants get nutrients from insects through their leaves, easy enough to assume they have some internal parts to digest stuff a bit like that.
I still don’t think the pale tree had anything to do with the design of the sylvari. If there’s more than one tree, I think it means that the form of the sylvari is simply an aspect of the species, rather than a conscious decision from the tree. I like to think that in Tyria, there is a seperate biological classification for plants that can move freely like animals.
Regnum Ascalon [RegA] ~~ Dragonbrand
It’s been confirmed that they do have “fun parts,” they just can’t actually make more Sylvari with them.
Don’t even get me started on this, haha – once my thesis is done, I am planning to write a blog post about how it doesn’t make sense to claim that sylvari don’t have “internal organs” only to then say that they have the parts required for sexual intercourse. I liked it better when the routine answer was what you see if what you get (that is, the ‘underwear’ leaves on a sylvari are all that’s there). Even eating is problematic when you start thinking…
Anyway, those issues aside, I simply meant that they don’t have the internal organs required for reproduction, like a womb for example.
Ahaha, yeah, I was unsure if you meant a womb or what.
And to be honest, I never bought into the “no internal organs” comment whooey when I saw it on the wiki, thankfully some other dev responded at some point that they do have some form of innards. Because the poor things just wouldn’t be able to eat if they didn’t, even if it’s as simple as a pitcher plant stomach and they absorb everything they eat rather than producing waste material.
But no, I’m not entirely convinced that the Pale Tree intentionally based their design on humans (or used human corpses as a base design) due to Malyk and whatever tree he came from. The existence of that character opens up some pretty sizable plot holes vs. what you’re actually told in the game/wiki.
I wonder if they’re related to treants and similar plant-beasts. At least that would somewhat explain a humanoid design without making the Pale Tree responsible. Sort of the way that humans irl are related to chimps and other great apes. We’re not directly descended from them, but we share a common ancestor. Treants even appear to walk like non-human great apes, haha. Analogous convergent evolution with humans+other apes, sylvari+treants? Goodness knows it happens enough in real life (look at pictures of cats and fossa sometime, or the skulls of the grey wolf and the thylacine) but I might be falling a bit into conspiracy theory-type thinking, here.
disclaimer: no offense to those of you who don’t believe in evolution, I’m most definitely not trying to start a debate regarding that.
Regarding Malyk’s appearance. It’s interesting to think that the other Pale tree also used a human template for its Sylvari. Also strange is that humans are not native to Tyria(planet). So why would Pale Trees base their offspring on them?
Analogous convergent evolution with humans+other apes, sylvari+treants? Goodness knows it happens enough in real life (look at pictures of cats and fossa sometime, or the skulls of the grey wolf and the thylacine) but I might be falling a bit into conspiracy theory-type thinking, here.
The main difference there would be that humans and apes have been around for a while, contrasted with the very new creation of the Sylvari compared to the much longer existence of plant-type creatures such as treants. Evolution really doesn’t apply to the Sylvari – they haven’t even had time to age, much less have their race evolve in any meaningful way.
That suggests that their appearance and physical construction was influenced by other factors – the Pale Tree being influenced by the human form, for example, even if it wasn’t an intentional choice.
The appearance of one other type of Sylvari from one other tree also doesn’t necessarily create as many problems or plot holes as one might think. The gestation and growth of a Pale Tree type entity, from what we currently know, takes a long time. A couple centuries ago, humans were the dominant species on Tyria. Another Pale Tree being close enough to humans to decide to mimic them is certainly not out of the question.
Unfortunately, it’s also possible that his appearance is nothing more than a gameplay or story-telling compromise, designed in such a way due to limitations technically or because the plot of that particular story required that the PC Sylvari mistake him for one of their own. I would certainly hesitate to base judgment or theories of Sylvari biology or the influence of their physical appearance on the appearance of one character. We just don’t know enough about the other Pale Tree for its existence to contradict the information we do have regarding the Pale Tree in the Grove.
Analogous convergent evolution with humans+other apes, sylvari+treants? Goodness knows it happens enough in real life (look at pictures of cats and fossa sometime, or the skulls of the grey wolf and the thylacine) but I might be falling a bit into conspiracy theory-type thinking, here.
The main difference there would be that humans and apes have been around for a while, contrasted with the very new creation of the Sylvari compared to the much longer existence of plant-type creatures such as treants. Evolution really doesn’t apply to the Sylvari – they haven’t even had time to age, much less have their race evolve in any meaningful way.
That suggests that their appearance and physical construction was influenced by other factors – the Pale Tree being influenced by the human form, for example, even if it wasn’t an intentional choice.
The appearance of one other type of Sylvari from one other tree also doesn’t necessarily create as many problems or plot holes as one might think. The gestation and growth of a Pale Tree type entity, from what we currently know, takes a long time. A couple centuries ago, humans were the dominant species on Tyria. Another Pale Tree being close enough to humans to decide to mimic them is certainly not out of the question.
Unfortunately, it’s also possible that his appearance is nothing more than a gameplay or story-telling compromise, designed in such a way due to limitations technically or because the plot of that particular story required that the PC Sylvari mistake him for one of their own. I would certainly hesitate to base judgment or theories of Sylvari biology or the influence of their physical appearance on the appearance of one character. We just don’t know enough about the other Pale Tree for its existence to contradict the information we do have regarding the Pale Tree in the Grove.
The Pale Tree seeds themselves been around since the time-setting of Guild Wars 1 at the very least. Who knows their history prior to that?
As I said, I was just tossing out some conspiracy-theory type thought and speculating, and “evolution” itself was a poor choice of wording. Adaptation is perhaps better (though almost a synonym), but “convergent evolution” (spontaneous, rather than over myriad generations) better covers what I was thinking of. There’s no other term that really covers it. Non-human apes, especially gorillas, have a successful body-plan for a large animal that needs very dexterous hands, and you see the exact same plan in treants. If the bipedal, tail-less, flat-faced body-plan is successful, why not get in on some of that success? Rather than “oh, humans were nice to me, so I decided to make my sapient fruit look like humans.”
Many other races in the game share that basic body plan, and not just Sylvari and Humans. Heck, even Largos, and they come from an environment those bodies are absolutely not suited for.
I very sincerely doubt, however, that spontaneous adaptation is even remotely similar to how they actually came to be, lore-wise, and it would be very anti-climactic if that were the case, in a land so full of magic, but it makes quite a bit more sense to me than the Pale Tree just up and deciding to make them look human. It seems to me that she would be more inclined to give them centaur bodies, if she was going to base them on someone who inspired her.
However, as I stated before, making a player character centaur-bodied would be a nightmare – and that’s precisely why Sylvari look as human as they do, I’m sure. They are the way they are because it’s far easier to recycle their rigging and a number of their animations from the human player character models. I am fully aware of that, but I’m having fun rambling about (not so) potential lore and background.