2018-12-13 7:18:33 ¶ ● ⬈

dingodad:

> a lot of back and forth has been had over the years about the science behind troll sex and reproduction. the use of the mother grub as a third party to intercourse and the mechanics of the slurry have been particular points of contention.

> a piece printed in New Scientist weekly earlier this week (8th December 2018 No3207) I think may finally put the nail in the coffin of a few long-running talking points.

> ## Some bees can have four parents

> > In bees, unfertilised eggs develop into males, or drones, who seek out queens to mate with. Fertilised eggs usually become female workers.

> > However, queens mate with at least 10 males to produce new colony members, and more than one sperm enters each egg. In a few rare instances, a bee can end up with some tissue derived from the fertilised egg, which is female, and some from extra sperm, which is male. The resulting animals are known as gynandromorphs, and have both male and female tissue throughout the body.

> > Sarah Aamidor and colleagues at the University of Sydney, Australia studied 11 gynandromorph honeybees from a single colony to learn more about how these individuals develop. Five had normal worker ovaries, and three had “queen-like” ovaries. One had normal male reproductive organs, and two had partial male organs.

> > Genetic tests revealed the unusual family history of 10 of these bees. Nine had two or three fathers and one mother. One had no mother and two fathers, resulting from the fusion of two sperm (Biology Letters, doi.org/cxjh).

> to make a long story short:

> - instances of two organisms (in this situation: two trolls) having a biological child within the womb of a third organism (the queen bee, or a mother grub in this case) are not only entirely possible, but actually happen
> - in the presence of an egg (such as one from the mother grub herself) the number of parents is not limited to two: a troll having a descendant with the genetic material of both their kismesis and their matesprit is also entirely within the realms of biological probability

2018-12-20 2:09:38 ¶ ● ⬀ ⬈

dingodad:

> dingodad:

> > i havent played fozzer’s friendsim route yet so i assume it hasn’t got anything of canonical importance but i remember fozzer’s original troll call said they were an “orthodox decompositionalist” so in our headcanons group chat we kind of reached the conclusion that they were part of some religious group that bury their dead

> the idea that troll religious movements concern themselves less with what happens to your soul after you die and more with what happens to your BODY after you die is about the funniest thing i can think of anyway

2018-12-20 2:10:18 ¶ ● ⬀ ⬈

dingodad:

> dingodad:

> > trolls KNOW that the soul hangs around as a disembodied spirit postmortem so there isn’t really any need for them to speculate about an afterlife but what they CAN speculate about is stuff like “should i eat dead people”

> on a more serious note i guess things like “what should i do with a troll’s dead body to appease their ghost” are important spiritual questions in the troll mind. which is probably why the burning of the sufferer’s corpse to ashes was such an important part of his execution and his subsequent history

2018-12-20 2:11:08 ¶ ● ⬈

dingodad:

> probable main alternian cadaver religions:

> corpse agnosticism / apathy: most common. “i dont think the ghost cares what happens to its corpse”. corpses are left outside to be eaten or stolen or whatever according to the traditional alternian method

> decompositionism: still common, but a minority belief. “i believe ghosts prefer to have their corpses return to the soil / Alternia”. might have some complications throughout the galaxy: maybe orthodox decompositionists ONLY want their body to be buried on alternia, whereas “reform” decompositionists will have their body buried on any planet?

> cremationism: uncommon; practiced mostly by members of the christian sufferer cult and their descendants. “i believe the ghost cannot properly manifest until the body is destroyed.” might also have a reincarnation aspect to it; since followers of the signless believe he will be reborn one day, maybe the ghost cannot return into a new body until the old body is gone?

2018-12-20 2:30:12 ¶ ● ⬀ ⬈

dingodad:

> dingodad:

> > in this way the subjugglators have more of a “true” religion in the human sense, in that they believe in a promised land for them after the destruction of the current world. that being said, they also worship a messiah who embodies death, has the ability to kill ghosts, and flies around in a coffin. so it’s probably safe to say they have a complicated relationship with the concept of death.

> actually subjugglator beliefs might be the exception that proves the rule with the context that “trolls don’t believe in an afterlife, just a bunch of ghosts hanging around in the physical plane”

> while most religious traditions on alternia are concerned with the permanence and permeance of alternia and the fact that ghosts are just going to hang around forever, lord english’s ghost killing nature serves as a symbol of the fact that subjugglator’s reject this notion: anything in this world, even a ghost, is capable of being destroyed: this whole empire is just temporary, and the subjugglators are just waiting for it all to fall apart so they can get to the REAL afterlife all these infidels are rejecting.

> their wanton violence and general disregard for life reflect this viewpoint. why should anyone give a shit about LIFE on alternia if even the AFTERLIFE doesn’t mean anything? living or ghost, you’ll be destroyed when the vast honk arrives and ushers in the paradise planet of wicked minstrels and mirthful messiahs.