davebarrack
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Grrl Power #1021 - The family tree contains several mobius branches
🕑 Added 2022-02-07 11:00:06 +0000 UTCThanks so much for your support! For serious!
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?
Comments
Jerard
"Thank you for being a friend (with benefits)"?
akrasia
...is that how you think making a baby happens? 'Cause all those cards were in the context of reproduction.
Jerard
Sad that none of them said "Thank you for being a friend"
Xinunar
Wouldn't she be only 1/6 succubus? She said that the father and the host mother each would only contribute half the genes on the third helix.
Martin Croft
Some of those cards ar so Ewwww Eww Ewwwwwww..
Chase the Dragon
A greetings card industry in a space faring society that is multi-species is probably going to head for a printing making and you customize a card for whomever your target is.
DonnieRamesJio
Dave was singing "I'm my own grandpa" the entire time he was writing this, I can assure you.
Matt Sims
I love it when someone understands genetics
NakedSunFlower
This all sounds pretty confusing, but it's so interesting... And a special thanks for making this page accessible!
Opus the Poet
That sounds like the Heinlein story "All You Zombies", where the protagonist was AFAB, got pregnant, gave birth and was so damaged that they "had" to do a sex change/get rid of the female parts, finished growing up and was recruited by the Time Corps, went back and impregnated his female self with himself.
Eric Loken
Better than the movie Predestination where the main character was their own mother AND father. There was time travel involved, among other things.
Those cards are great. You should throw together a solo image of them like you did for the Vehemence spell.
Erin Palette
"1/64th Maltese" Y'know, not ONCE did I think of the island of Malta. No, I thought of the cute tiny dog breed, and went "Yeah, something that random and nonsensical is absolutely something Sydney might say, because they're both smol and cute."
BJ
Get it cuz the Maltese Falcon, eh? Eh? Eh, I'll show myself out.
BJ
Hm, so Sydney's part bird. Neat.
Miyaa
I can imagine her furry boyfriend asking if Sydney was 1/64th Maltese Dog and adding “Now I see why we’re attracted to each other.”
Ian Birchenough
Like the cute ears on the gender Icons!
JasonAW3
Just thank goodness that time travel isn't involved... I hope...
Nicholas A Wagner
Sounds like the makings for a funny Succubus Sitcom.
Demian Buckle
When is having children not complicated.
JasonAW3
So... As with all things succubus sex related... It's complicated...
James Cooper
As for the gene transfer, bacteria are known to have lateral gene transfer between each other, which is how they get around the whole non sexual gene swap thing. Plus if the doppelganger offspring absorbed or acted like a virus and invaded the second mother's egg, then that can account for the other haploid nucleic acid chain introduction.
Michael Obert
And M.C. Escher did her family geneaology chart
