Grrl Power #1021 – The family tree contains several mobius branches
I guess Sydney was excited to learn that she had a great-times-5 grandparent who was a native Maltan. She’s been keeping that one in her back pocket for years in case she needed to trump someone else’s genealogy tale. No offense to any Maltans out there, but I’m not sure it’s quite the slam dunk she seems to think it is.
Okay, I don’t know how the doppelganger pre-zygote thing gets haploid DNA from the second mother. The delivery system probably includes some sort of chemical chromosome scraper that integrates the DNA into the baby to be. It’s an important feature for their race so the birthing mother won’t give birth to something that doesn’t look to share at least half her heritable traits. That way the doppel baby can grow up with a relatively normal childhood and not be immediately persecuted by superstitious peasants.
Of course, when the tween doppelganger begins to start taking on characteristics of the family pet, things can start to spiral quickly
I decided to make this page available to everyone over at Patreon so you can see all the stupid thank you cards Dabbler is looking at in panel 6.
In a universe that includes more than just humans and binary sex reproduction, the possibilities in the Hallmark space would become exponentially complicated. Even so, most of those cards I drew are so stupid. There’s one for cordyceps zombies. “Thank you for inhaling my spores.” Who is the zombie buying the card for? The long braindead meatsack it’s currently piloting? Or the “Thank you for incubating me in your torso.” card for the Xenomorph?
I don’t know. Maybe if there were enough alien races that used a tertiary sapient maturation method, they would have some sort of collective Dia de los Muertos type holiday where they honor their incubation medium’s sacrifice? Given that both examples above are either mindless or… hive mindless I guess… Well, not ‘mindless’ in the case of the Xenomorphs, but you know what I mean. I don’t think they have any organized holiday schedule in the first place, but there are probably plenty of examples from sci-fi and fantasy that mortally parisitize a host in order to live. Generally they’re evil, but I can imagine some that actually feel bad about their lifecycle.
Still. The idea that a Hallmark type industry would spring up so those sorts of lifeforms could buy their dead hosts meaningless scraps of sentiment both makes me chuckle and also now that I think about it, would definitely exist.
But hey, there are other cards there too. Like if your father was a (god turned into a) waterfall. A narrow demographic, but if you’ve got the shelf space, then why not?
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: It’s done!
Seriously. It’s done! 210K words of weapon building, dinosaur fighting, harem satisfying, lumberjacking, moderate diplomacing, bad guy chopping action. Also some humor.
January’s vote incentive is going to hang in there just a few more days. Between getting TE:2 out and recovering from Covid, I’m a little behind this month. Admittedly, I usually am, but at least this time I can point to things and go “See!?”
Nude versions available over at Patreon. Along with a bonus comic page.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
“I guess Sydney was excited to learn that she had a great-times-5 grandparent who was a native Maltan.”
Oh. I thought it was a wise crack about her bangs/height, and dog breeds. Never mind.
I thought it was yet another cross-species relationship. Frix might not be a first in the family.
Could be a tiger breed comment rather than dog breed. She hasn’t been shown as furry or blue though. Her kids might be though.
It is very ‘Dave’s of you to spend a page off on this tangent like this. We love you for that, by the way…
I swear, the Dabbler Science Corner tangents are probably my favorite part of Grrlpower. Always have been. I love the clear amount of originality that goes into the lorebuilding.
Just here on Earth there’s enough weird reproduction methods that any sci-fi writer has to really stretch to come up with something weirder.
That’s… surprisingly kind and non-murdery of you there, Goro.
If your looking for a scifi race that uses parasite births that could be argued to have moral issues about it, I think your best bet would be the sub-faction of the Magog that follow the “wayist” religion. Specifically those born from the inhabitants of the planet Hajira, who had genetic memory from their host/parents.
All of our mammalian pregnancies are, in fact, parasitic in nature. The genes needed for keeping the eggs inside the uterus and implanting on its walls without an immune reaction killing were acquired from ancient retroviral genomes, and work very similarly to how parasites and cancers implant on tissues.
Keeping this tidbit in my back pocket for when I need to explain to kids that they truly are life-sucking parasites.
I was just about to mention the M’Gog.
It’s a shame about Kevin Sorbo though.
Shame he survived, or shame he didn’t survive?
Shame that Sorbo turned out to be a conspiracy-believing idiot.
Which conspiracy is it this time?
Apperantly it’s a case of “take your pick” with him.
The one I found out about first is that he’s a Wakefield nutter.
What’s that?
“Wakefield nutter” as in Andrew Wakefield, as in alleged and discredited links between the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism?
Wakefield, as in Andrew Wakefield, the father of the modern antivax movement.
Somehow I think the executives at Hallmark are monitoring commercial space travel developments. if nothing else we will need thank you cards for people who contributed to boosting you to orbit.
Lorlara’s inflated sense of power is probably one of the reasons I adore her so much.
Mainly because I’ll probably sport a teak hardness level vengerection when she finally gets put on her ass by someone who doesn’t break a sweat doing so.
I am reasonably certain this already happened, if off camera.
Given how power hungry she is, and how she seems to embrace the notion of ‘I must kick you off the branch so I can climb on it’, there is no real way she could not have tried to intimidate Vale into submitting to her.
Vale of course would have been ever so slightly amused in a bored way (of: you are only very slightly harder to kill than a human) and when Lorlara pushed she must have shown quickly and painfully just how outclassed our favourite black-ash skinned firebrand is. Which of course Lorlara can only have interpreted as evidence just how awesome her lord Deus is, that he can keep such a powerful being as his servant and errant girl (the how of which actually is a fair question).
she gets freeboard, tv/streaming, plus extras?
at the expense of Deus asking her how to use excel and to bodyguard
Heh. That may have been a typo for errand girl, but who’s to say she isn’t also occasionally an errant girl? Time may indeed tell!
There’s a “the profit” episode that explains why not: Shelf space isn’t free.
In a similar vein, maybe it’s theoresably inevitable that things get stupid as the number of sexes goes up, so biology tends to stick to two as the best bet for species longevity. (Maybe the getting stupid is a symptom rather than a cause; search term “Universe 25”.)
Claiming you belong to another country for 1/nth part, and why stop at just one country, is an American thing. Personally, I think you can claim ancestry, but claiming to belong would need backing by some substance, like at least speaking the language and understanding the culture.
I always take it as claiming heritage/ancestry, not belonging. Like, I am 1/nth part X isn’t saying I am X, it’s a short hand for “I am descended from X, this is the fraction of me that comes from there”.
That implies that “to be X” is a statement that has value outside of belonging, which is a troubling statement since it implies there is a genetic factor that is important to you. Whenever you’re proud of your genetics you need to reflect on history and/or X-men. Magneto comes to mind for both reasons.
I don’t feel any particular pride in regard to my genetics, but genealogy is interesting, an loads of people like to know their family history, where they come from. I am American, but I am descended from Irish, Croatian, German, British, and French people, IIRC, I don’t know the precise fractions, and some of them would be weird since at least some of those heritages are on both sides (like Irish). I wouldn’t claim to be Irish, because I’ve never been there (but it’s at the top of the list of places I’d like to travel to), but I am descended from Irish people, and I enjoy the parts of the culture that have been brought here.
I am not entirely sure why it rankles you that people are interested in their ancestry, or that they feel they have a right to claim their heritage, but at least for me, my family, and all of the people I know who take an interest in their history, it has nothing to do with any feelings of superiority, and I find it strange that that is where you went when I said it was about ancestry/heritage rather than belonging.
The 1/nth thing was vitally important in days gone by, because racist bullshit laws in some parts of the world were often based on just how much non-white “blood’ you had in your ancestry. Very common to see people faking their family trees to avoid persecution, and not solely in the US (although much more common there than most). Some of those laws are probably still on the books through inertia and tacit bigotry, but they’re a hell of lot less funny than finding some statute about putting pants on a horse being a misdemeanor or something.
Two is enough for genetic mixing, if you don’t do gene trading some other way. three or more is just extra trouble for marginal gain. I could see intelligent races opting for 3, though, because why use mechanical artificial wombs when you can engineer a non-intelligent third gender to take care of the tedious gestational work?
1/64th Maltan ain’t nothing. My family tree is Yggdrasil.
I dunno if this trumps Yggdrasil, or not, but my family tree is recursive. Between reincarnation, time travel, clone BS, genderbent multiversal counterparts, mortal avatars of conceptual entities from beyond etc. my family tree starts to fractal out once you go back like 30 generations or so. There are *some* deities in there, too, but I don’t think any from the Norse pantheon, although I do *share* a common ancestor with the Jotunn, but that goes back waaaaay further than anything that would qualify as my family tree branching out to Yggdrasil.
I have a feeling Dabbler would consider this (as well as Orphan Black) a perfectly feasible docudrama of succubus culture.
In Xuriel’s case, there was a bit of Chemical X aswell
If humans had a parasitoid breeding cycle, we’d probably perceive the host species as a specialized type of food animal, regardless of its level of intelligence, in order to stave off cognitive dissonance. Of course there would be factions trying to design more ethical substitutes or even discouraging breeding in general, and we’d probably have a few domesticated breeds and the wild ancestor species (if it is limited to a single species) might even be extinct. Some cultures probably would offer prayers to dead incubators but others would probably just dispose of the carcass and try not to think about it too hard. Of course there’s a lot of room for differences in alien species, but the closer to human their psychology is, the closer to this model I’d expect.
Also I forgot to mention that teenage science trollop Xuriel looks kind of adorable.
So the big question there is: Is she still in the stage where she doesn’t know she’s being lavacious, or does she know?
Because if she were a little older, that line would be the most obvious come-on for being ganged by the whole population of that bar.
This was her second choice after the Navy kicked her off the docks for ‘unfair competition’ looking for volunteering sea men
I have to wonder if Daddy is ever going to show up, or if he really was just a random donor. I would like to think that doppelgangers bent on progeny would be a bit selective in regards to both of the other parties that is going to contribute to their offspring. In which case her father might be impressive. Or disturbing. this system could allow for some very uncomfortable possibilities. At least for those with earth biased morality.
They never did reveal who Spike’s mother was in MLP, a big lack in my mind. But they did have the obligatory scum-bag who showed up claiming to be his father in order to milk the benefits for all he was worth.
Jerry Springer: “It’s time for the reveal. TNA analysis has revealed that the father is… Max’s symbiote! Congrats Max, you’re legally Xuriel’s step-mom / sister!”
Wouldn’t Dabbles be just a bit… shinier… if that were the case?
no its Sidney from the future
Random Shokhan cameo is random.
Am I the only one who noticed a certain physical similarity between Dabbler and that bouncer?
Aside the 4 arms I don’t see it, but everyone in that panel has 4 arms, that’s the joke.
If the male doppleganger is merely a middleman that passes off the genetic material to another female, then would it be possible for that to be a doppleganger as well? Like some kind of relay race?
I have no idea why my thoughts went there either.
It sound like the intermediate parent does contribute DNA, which binds along one side to the father’s DNA before being transferred and binding on the other side with the 2nd mother’s DNA.
…suddenly the term ‘egg sack’ has some new, squicky connotations.
Where’s that EGS comic about the Uronym with 18 parents?
The Uryuom in question has 12 parents, only 9 of which are Uryuom.
To save time for those with only a passing interest: Uryuoms reproduce externally, a pair (or more) getting together to build an ‘egg’ with ‘stuff’ they excrete, and then the couple(or more!) inject their DNA (technically, the couple who made the egg can opt to NOT inject their DNA) into the egg and let it incubate. The resulting child will be a hybrid of their donor parents, and will inherit the Uryuom ability to shapeshift, even if the only Uryuom contribution to the child’s gestation was the ‘stuff’ that made the ‘egg’.
Geez that’s earlier in the comic than I expected.
It sounds like the Doppelganger here operates like the Succubus/Incubus of lore,
female form collect sperm from a man.
then assume a male form, mix human sperm with demon essence *modernize you could say genes*
then while in male form impregnate a woman *genetically its her eggs so she is also a parent*
thus three parents.
as opposed to what you may be mistaken in, which is what the page is having Lorlara be confused about, the fetish scene aliens that implant eggs in other species to use as hosts.
I got as much as that (though the ‘infuse the sperm with demon essence’ is a neat take to describe how the doppleganger TNA is mixed in), but I was wondering what happened if that altered sperm was injected into a second doppleganger. This second doppleganger would not be able to become pregnant, so does this second doppleganger pass on the genetic material further to a fourth creature, or did it get destroyed by an overload of demon essence, or something else?
It amuses me that doppelganger reproduction is very similar to cubi reproduction in some mythology mythology. Collect “seed” as a succubus, corrupt it, become an incubus, and impregnate some poor mother with it.
Half Maltese here. Kind of funny for Sydney to be proud of her being 1/64.
Interesting, but, aren’t they sharing this info with a potential enemy (then again, it’s probably common knowledge to Non-terrans)The timing of this lesson in alien biology seems a little odd.
If it was really a problem, I’m sure that Max would tell them to save it for later. Focus on the Mission People.
Oh, and wouldn’t the four arms likely come from the father? Or maybe the horns on her head? Or her stripes?
There needs to be an intergalactic/interplanetary DNA register.
The horns are a succubi thing – all succubi shown so far have at least two horns.
The website version is actually cleaner than the Patreon version, at least on my end.
You have to zoom in on Patreon popups; it’s full-rez but initially shrunk to fit the screen, so it’s being downsampled at first.
I like how Lorlara interjects…Also who wants to see Dabbler meeting with Spinnerette and comparing arms!?
OOOOOOO!!!! Memememememememememememememe!!!! That would be hilarious!! And when Dabs finds out how Spins GOT all those arms…
So what is a Maltese or Native Maltan? All my Google-fu is getting me is dog breeds. I don’t think Syd would brag about bestiality.
Malta is on an archipelago south of Sicily.
Maltese – Sydney got it right, DaveB didn’t! Someone from Malta, a small island between Italy and Africa. It’s really well positioned as a midpoint on a lot of trading routes and has one of the best natural harbours in that part of the Mediterranean, so it’s been a strategic location for thousands of years, with all the population mixing associated with that.
Home to some kind of rare endangered falcon as well, I believe.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who was confused at how Sydney got Maltese right but Dave didn’t.
We can at least be thankful that neither of them went for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltesers" title="QI 'OBVIOUS WRONG ANSWER' KLAXON!!!"very-wrong option.
Ahem.
We can at least be thankful that neither of them went for the very-wrong option.
I am remined of the “I’m my own Grandpa” novelty song right about now.
Was expecting to see this referenced – here’s a version with a flowchart to help follow the logic.
But wait, doesn’t it screw up the fractions if doppelgangers also have a triple helix?
The doppel-mom would be providing 2.5 strands (2 doppelganger, and half of the father’s) with the succu-mom providing two more (1 normal, 1 special third helix).
So assuming the doppel-tna hybridizes all of the succubus stuff, it’d be 2 doppelganger helixes and 1 hybrid succubus/father helix?
If it only hybridizes the normal succubus helix, and not the third one, she’d be a quad-helix freak of nature (2 doppelganger helixes, 1 succubus helix, and 1 hybrid succubus/father helix).
The only way she could be half succubus, 1/3 doppelganger, and 1/6 whatever the father was is if the latter happened but one doppelganger helix just… disappeared?
Is that before or after we deal with the issue of lining up with an arbitrary chromosome count, and whether doppelgangers and succubi solved the problem differently?
Dabbler’s smile in that last panel puts the Mona Lisa to shame
Was anyone else expecting the answer to panel one to be “I was concieved during group sex and am actually a chimera”?
I was expecting a “Thank you for going back in time to have sex with your ancestor and becoming my own grandfather”
AKA, The Futurama Fry Special.
Not going to reference David Lister for the “I am my own parent due to time loop shenanigans”?
I’m ashamed of your taste in TV shows now.
If you’re going for that one, you’d have to go back to Douglas Adams. Contraceptives and time machines, indeed.
Further than that is Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” where an intersex girl gets pregnant and they had to remove her female organs after the birth, and the male organs no longer had hormonal competition making her him, then he was recruited into the Time Corps, with his first mission going back to get his previous self pregnant.
Fair point.
Seems a bit recursive, doesn’t it? Looking for examples of time-travelling ancestry, we’re stepping back to earlier and earlier examples that may have influenced each other…
:D
I love how Lorlara has absolutely no concept of personal space asking her question in panel 5.
I like Dabbler’s grin in that panel – appreciation for the straightforward, up-close physical approach, with a sprinkle of amusement at Sydney’s awkward position.
Alari Mindset:
Personal space is a concept required by lesser beings who are insecure about taking the space they want, rather than settling for the space they are given!
I have a ton of positive things to say about DaveB’s stories), the main positive thing is the complete and utter creativity of his writing.
A lot of people think along the lines of ‘there are no new ideas in fiction, just re-hashes of old ideas.’ And this is even more often said when it comes to superheroes, superhero powers, superhero back lore, etc.
Annnnd then DaveB comes around with stuff that is EXTREMELY original and I can’t find another example of any of it in any other fiction. Yes, there are some powersets that have been done before (Anvil, Heatwave, Jiggawatt, Maxima, Mr Amorphous)
But then there’s a ton of stuff which I’ve never seen ANYWHERE before.
Harem (I have never seen anything remotely like Harem’s complete powerset – she’s not like Multiple Man, she’s not like a teleporter. The whole combination of how her powers work are not somtehing that anyone just mashing powers together would come up with, without being INCREDIBLE original).
Sydney (her orbs are the most original thing I’ve ever read about, next to Harem’s powerset)
Dabbler (and a ton of stuff Dabbler talks about)
Krona (specifically her particular reality programming ability)
Sciona
Vale
Honestly everything about succubi is incredibly innovative and new to me, in how DaveB came up with all this stuff. I don’t think people realize how difficult it is to be genuinely original, and DaveB seems to do it on a regular basis in this story. I’m just astounded at how deep and somehow consistently well thought out the lore is in Grrlpower Comic.
If you think this is funny, you must see this; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw&t=25s
Seen in the motion picture ‘The Stupids’
https://youtu.be/0VxLQZPqI2M
I liked the first panel where Maxima whispers to Anvil, “Quickly?” There has never been a Dabbler explanation that has ever been quick. And, DaveB must have really enjoyed the name of that bar.
Forget Halmark cards, think of the Halmark *movies”
” Thanks for removing your space helmet just because there’s air.”
#&$*ing Prometheus. They were all a bunch of IDIOTS who deserved to die.
All of the Alien franchise post Aliens really.
Yes but in Prometheus, they’re PARTICULARLY dumb.
yet not as dumb as the ones in Alien Covenant…
Prometheus had plot induced stupidity,
Covenant had stupidity induced plot.
the different, with plot induced stupidity, the plot causes characters that had previously shown some competence to suddenly act very stupid to progress the plot *especially in killing off said characters*
with stupidity induced plot, the entire plot could not occur at any stage at all without every character involved in it displaying incredible lack of intelligence, self or situational awareness, common sense, or basic survival skills for their situation.
Fair enough. I never watched Alien Covenant so I can’t judge on that. I’ve heard of plot-induced stupidity, and yes, Prometheus is built on it.
Never heard of stupidity-induced plot, but the actions in Prometheus was just so incredibly stupid. If you’re saying Covenant is worse, I will never be able to adequately respond to your post because I will NEVER watch Covenant now. My brain can only take so much.
Just check out the honest trailers for alien covenant for the cliff notes. Stupidity induced plot is extremely rare to see outside of low budget shlocky horror movies, so a big budget sci fi was beyond weird.
Honest Trailers, Alien Covenant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njlXBc8Q7o4
I googled and preferred this one. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGEvvqWt-Us
Yeah Pitch Meeting did it more recently so post Disney buy out of Fox entertainment so less focus on Ridley Scott rumors and plot instead. Forgot they did one actually.
The guy is genuinely hilarious.
Doesn’t the facehugger-serpent go through his helmet to eat him?
Yes, but the card is talking about Prometheus, where the idiots voluntarily removed their helmets. Keeping them one might not have saved them from the proto-huggers, but we don’t know if they had the same acids that melted through the faceplate in the original movie.
And then covenant where even a gas mask might have helped rather than walking around an alien planet dressed like yuppie hickers on holiday
Yeah, That one makes a lot more sense.
Alien: *good space suit, no idea eggs were eggs, facehugger somehow burned perfect hole through.
http://assets.sciencefictionarchives.com/images/uploads/objectitemPicture/890/picture/95-Alien_845x485p.jpg
*skipping movies where its not a first contact on alien world situation*
Prometheus: they took their helmets off, but hey, it was really the buggy android and plot induced stupidity and because the plot says so alien hostility…why did they leave Earth a map to their weapon’s facility…whatever I doubt the writer thought that through. Lost writers don’t consider actually answering questions they think confusing the audience makes it look smart.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e5/94/64/e59464c4bb0a4756d61bc91e885a03d1.jpg
and then we have Covenant…stupidity induced plot the whole way down starting with…well starting with a pod not having an oxygen shut off valve, clamp, emergency eject, or anything…and…I will stop there its a long rant…but really look at their first contact outfits…it looks less like they are exploring an alien planet and more like they are looking for Bigfoot.
https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59260ddb33833058cff1374b/master/pass/Beauman-Craig-Green-Alien.jpg
If Young Xuriel gets on the wrong side of that bouncer, she can’t really say she wasn’t 4-warned.
And yet the bar’s entire target demographic already should’ve been, those qualities go hand in hand.
… in hand, in hand…
tldr. The biggest problem with world building is the author’s compulsion to include it all.
Not sure if intentional or not on DaveB’s part but there is some interesting irony going on here, because what you just described as the Doppelganger method of reproduction matches the real world folklore version of the Succbus/Incubus.
the demon takes on a human woman’s form and collects sperm from a man, this sperm is mixed with their demonic essence *to modernize we can say mixes/adds their own genes* and then takes on the form of a man and impregnates a woman. The offspring then has three parents, although the supernatural parent’s essence/genes are dominant and will express at some point.
on that same note surprised no Earth animal operates like that…some microbes might though *take this genetic material, mix with own, then implant in a third that mixes again; I think there may be some microbes that do this but nothing multi-cellular I know of*
funny enough what Lorlara thought she meant while it has no Earthly counterpart (as in I don’t know of any parasitic life form that implants eggs or larva into another species without causing harm to that species), in sci-fi….especially the fetish corners of the internet; a species that uses an ovipositor like a penis to implant eggs into a host that carries them till their shells harden, ready to be left in a new environment, or give birth; especially as an alien is fairly popular (enough that bad dragon made a toy of this),
heck I made an alien like this, Sojora, long short, three sexes, one that produces sperm, one eggs, and one that carries; eggs go into third via penis like ovipositor, then the male fertilizes these eggs, and the third carries them till they enter tadpole phase to be left in a pond *some soft tissue gene transfer can also occur where the third’s genes are also added to some of the eggs*, same species can alternatively do this threesome to another compatible species whose genes won’t/can’t be added, but may volunteer anyway in the polyamorous relationships *Sojora are also mid-tier shapeshifters so it helps*,
that said, you can go one step further, a parasite that uses horizontal gene transfer to disguise its young. Take the Cuckoo dragon (wrote a book on this, might polish up and publish at some point), any who, the Cuckoo dragon is the succubus of its dragon centric setting; where they implant a small soft shell egg via a short ovipositor into a human woman; the soft shell collects some genes from the host mother so the baby looks and acts human until their early twenties when the transformation begins into their dragon form. (the soft shell also expands and dissolves so the human mother gives a normal birth).
My response to these asides that should be in the notes text under the comic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXE8LdXzeHM
Dabbler is an intelligent and proud individual, such individuals in real life act like this; Any opportunity to talk in length about a subject they enjoy even if the people around them had asked a yes or no question. It adds a bit of personality realism you don’t often get in fiction that is just trying to progress the story.
Dabbler does have a favorite subject that she loves to talk about. I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t been writing all of that down, with the intent of publishing a book.
Yes, Max, quickly. Anything longer than an elevator ride will have to be presented to Sydney as a comic book.
Those catgirls are incredibly adorable.
Hah! I mis-read the cowbird as being a ‘blood parasite’ and was disappointed by reality.
It’s ok though, I found out only the other day that there’s a species of bird here in Oz who (sometimes) kidnap a juvenile bird from a rival family, to raise as their own (The White-winged Chough/Chuff)!
That’s weird. An animal that actually spends time and energy to raise a chick that’s not it’s own offspring? Wouldn’t that have NO evolutionary value?
Not if it’s a bigger stronger species that imprints and protects like if a sheep raised a dog. As opposed to real Cuckoo that will.kill the bird and it’s young if they don’t raise the chick
I guess they’re accidentally broadening the gene pool? Same species, after all is said and done.
“Or the “Thank you for incubating me in your torso.” card for the Xenomorph?”
I always thought the chestbursting thing looked like it was potentially survivable if you knew it was coming and were in a really good ultra-tech medical facility. Might not even do that much damage if they did some surgery beforehand and had your ribs spread so they wouldn’t get in the way. So maybe there could be a market for xenomorph-host cards if you could get the damn aliens to remember Incubator’s Day (second Sunday in July, of course).
Just removing the egg/larva before hatching would be safer and easier, but maybe there’s a plausible reason you’d want to let things happen according to the natural schedule. The docs need an intact and active chestburster for research or something?
Apparently the Aliens consider digesting the host and generating their own cells kind of tedious, so they just genetically subvert the host cells to construct their offspring. And those face hugger storage egg things, too.
So even if the larva is removed, you’re genetically corrupted, and probably not long for this world. That’s why in the sequel to the original Ripley had to be genetically reconstructed to create a viable clone, and even then the clone wasn’t strictly human.
It was also weird how much memory was still there, given the incredibly destructive finale of 3.
Be weird for a clone to retain any memories at all from the original, human memory doesn’t work that way.
Given that ending, they couldn’t even claim to have uploaded memories from a scan of the corpse’ brain. Uploaded highly realistic deep fake memories, maybe.
Is that Salaak the Green Lantern? Never struck me as a clubber, but then, I stopped reading GL comics around 1990.
I think there’s also a Green Martian (from the John Carter stories, not J’onn J’onzz’ buddies), a guy from More Dull Combat and the guy in front is from Star Wars? Anybody know where the guy on the right is from?
The one on the right is a Nali from the original Unreal game. https://unreal.fandom.com/wiki/Nali
Salaak always struck me as far too uptight to indulge in nightclubbing. Although maybe that just means that he needs it the most?
While not clubbing I saw a documentary interview with a dominatrix once who revealed many of her more intense session clients were high end business men, the types who have to be uptight and professional all the time even off the clock for appearances.