Grrl Power #1020 - I dream of genealogy

Evil Midnight Lurker

Towelie, you're the worst character ever.

Tristan N Milner

"T & A you can ride all night?" Well, Sidney, there's one sure way for you to test that out.

eddi_TBH

May I offer you some mental floss to scrub the images out of your brain?

eddi_TBH

Kenya Cassidy aka Anvil. Kinetic Brick. Absorbs energy from physical attacks and returns them with interest.

Dave Barrack

I always assumed doppels wouldn't have their own nation, but live as opportunistic individuals looking for safety and security. I do like the idea of them sharing copied lives among themselves as some sort of entertainment.

MGH

So, here's a thought for your dopplegangers. Dopplegangers get a bad rap. Most of them aren't murderous sociopaths; on their homeworld they were just a physically adaptive species with a bifurcated brain. Their Soul Brain houses their individuality and personality, while their Race Brain acts as a node in their Race Mind. But they're not full telepaths--they "upload" their experiences into the Race Mind by sharing through their ear-things (you really need to give it a name). Doppleganger's core personalities/memories always remain intact, unless they suffer from a mental illness where they lose the ability to distinguish between their personal memories and shared memories. In their natural society, Dopplegangers are constantly sharing memories as a way of expanding the knowledge base and as entertainment. Imagine a "concert" where the "performing" doppleganger links their ear-tentacles to dops on their right and left, each linked dop linking to another dop, creating a huge daisy chain. One-ear links don't allow for "full download" but rather memory-replays kind of like full-sensory movies. Obviously their limits mean that doppleganger's don't have a literal Race Mind; instead each doppleganger community shares a Community Mind of pooled experience/memory. Wandering dopplegangers link up the communities by physically delivering "updates." Naturally when they encountered other races . . . the Others freaked the shit out. Creatures that can copy you physically and mentally? Completely replace you with nobody knowing? Maybe there were a few bad dopplegangers who made a splash as serial killers or got caught doing the whole kill-and-replace-the-monarch thing, and next thing you know it's genocide time. Today there is no doppleganger homeland. Rather, doppleganger communities hide in plain sight, masquerading as tight-nit communities of other species. Gypsy caravans. Monasteries/nunneries. Small rural towns. In space, merchant freighter crews. Etc.

Stephen Gilberg

"You wouldn't download a brain...."

RobedFrog

Tits'n'ass

Dave Barrack

Yeah, but the linky ladder rung thingies (which I didn't draw, admittedly) are 3-pronged and fancy, and possibly a little bit magic, so it's... fine? BTW, I knew "haploid strand" was probably not a scientifically accurate term, but it's hard to find the actual name of fictional things. To my knowledge, there isn't any naturally occurring triple helix DNA, and certainly not like this where it's a normal di-helix with one "foreign" helix used for parts.

This is, I think, the ideal scenario for the prospective shapechanger. You find an administratively competent advisor/duke/random noble with aspirations towards greater power, and offer then a convenient puppet king situation. The noble gets to maneuver national policy to their advantage, the shapeshifter gets to enjoy wealth and luxury, and as long as both parties are clever about things there won't even be anything illegal going on (aside from initial regicide obviously) Just a very trusted advisor and the king leaving matters in their hands (also reminds me of https://www.oglaf.com/kingshaped )

Evgeny Sandu

Non-native english there. Had to google what T&A is ;(

"T&A" stands for "Tits and @$$", and is pronounced the same as "TNA" would be.

strfan

Here comes the point where being a non-native English speaker (or maybe just not living in the US of A) is a pain in the ***: the T&A/TNA joke is obvious but I have zero chance to understand it. Can somebody please explain to me? :) (I know I could look it up on Google, but I find better if someone who actually knows it sums it up. Human interaction FTW!)

Martin Pollard

Slightly frustrated mad genome scientist here. Just for ref, you're mixing up chromosomes and strands. Haploid still means a double stranded piece of DNA but a single chromosomal copy of it (sperm and eggs). When something just has one strand we just call it single stranded (most RNA is this). A haploid copy of paternal DNA held captive in a secondary nucleus would be a plausible way for this to work btw. More plausible than the horrible chemistry abomination that 3 stranded DNA would make anyway.

Rens

At least Maxima and whatshername can bond over how deeply they wish they were not part and witness of this conversation.

Ian Brown

I'm reading this on mobile, so I can only see about one frame at a time. The moment Dabbler said TNA, I immediately knew that this would derail the rest of the page. Glad to see I wasn't disappointed!!

Michael Obert

Has anyone ever called Dabbler a towel (oh, Wait, Towelie's TNA stands for something different :) )

Nutjob

If there's a bunch trying to look tough are they doppelgangbangers?

Andrew

I bet she’s working extra hard now to distract from that little slip up.

Aclys

To be fair, being the king is only hard work if you have to worry about Continuing to be a king of a country or care about whatever legacy you leave behind. If all you want to do is party it up and chill it should not be hard for a dopple-come-king to set himself up as a puppet for ambitious viziers and nobility so they can run things while the dopple-king lives the sweet life for a good long time. And then you can just bugger off and replace someone else when someone or something inevitably pulls the plug on the party time.

Wyrmhand

I thought that someone would ask how Sidney know what languages they spoke.

Michael Obert

Giggity, lol