What to Expect When You're Expecting

[Paradox01]

Or, "Did Victor Steele Fuck a Platypus?"

Is Captain Steele some sort of monotreme? How can someone who's at least half (if not full) mammal lay eggs?

Discuss.


EDIT: This thread is an attempt to port over a discussion started here.

 

[Preacher]

I'm guessing it's part of the microsurgeon's features, biological compatibility protocols.

If it were only a tad more realistic then only if steele TFs or has an egg-producing womb or gets oviposited would they lay eggs, otherwise a member of a species that usually lays eggs will be introduced to a live birth version of their biology if Steele has a mammalian womb.

 

[sumgai]

NANOMACHINES, SON!

The times that Fem Steele gives birth to eggs are Rahn and Raskvel I believe. And Frosty right? And Nyrea too.

Nyrea and Rahn use their ovipostors to 'seed' the fertilized egg into an incubator host. The Raskvel and Frosty... I dunno. Their DNA makes the 'egg' ovum become a literal egg. :x

 

[sumgai]

Rahn lay eggs in Steele, but she gives birth to little cutie jello babbehs.

That's right, they hatch in utero. And like milk!

 

[sumgai]

They're described as eggs in the codex. And for the Rahn preg stuff, there is an event where Steele thinks their water broke, but it was just the outer layer of the egg.

And I try not to think about how the Rahn are a literally a single cell race. Human woman giving birth to an egg? Tank Cannon having HUGE dick that's bigger then his body and doesn't pass out when he gets a stiffy? Those aren't deal breakers.

Rahn being a literal single cell? Suspension of disbelief breaks right in half.

 

[Preacher]

Huge amoebas are a thing. Problem is that at the size they are in the game they'd be likely to just collapse in on themselves so they'd need a really strong plasmic skeleton of some sorts. Galotians too, but they're a bit more believable than rahn.

I wonder if rahn could egg a person with an especially large cock/balls and have them still grow and "birth" them later on. I know balls don't work like that, but that hasn't stopped an absolute plethora of artists that have drawn testicular pregnancies.

 

[sumgai]

I'd ask you about testicular pregnanices, then I remember regretting investigating what someone said was bad, looking at it, at coming to the conclusion that I'm worse person for reading it then I was before, so I'll take your word for it. Be careful what you wish for and all that.

 

[Preacher]

Some of them can be pretty hot...

Spoiler: ouch

But then you run into ones that put facehuggers on dicks... you can pretty much imagine what that leads to

 

[TheShepard256]

My guess is, much like with base pregnancy duration, that it depends on the child's biology rather than the mother's, with being born in an egg as a genetically dominant trait to being born live.

I'm guessing it's part of the microsurgeon's features, biological compatibility protocols.

If this were the case, that would imply that due to biological incompatibility, natural reproduction between live-birthers and egg-layers would either have a lot of problems or be impossible, and if THAT were the case, I'd think it would be brought up somewhere in-game, at least in one of the Codex entries or tooltips for starter races. As it stands, the only interspecies pregnancies explicitly stated to be naturally difficult or impossible are leithans x non-vildarii, toves x anyone (though that's because toves reproduce like plants and are thus irrelevant to this discussion) and raskvel x sydians. It's also noted that gryvain-suula hybrids - which are an example of egg-layer-live-birther hybrids - are a common occurrence, which would likely not be the case if the above implication was true.

Curiously, if Renvra (a nyrea-myr hybrid and thus an egg-layer) impregnates Steele conventionally, the resulting children are born live. The only reason I can think of is that the kids inherited more human genes than either nyrea or myr, which somehow gets past my 'egg-laying is dominant to live birth' guess above, though I also think this reason is kind of a stretch.

 

[ShySquare]

I can't believe that everyone in this thread just straight up forgot that ovoviviparity is a thing in nature (aka, the youngs develop in an egg inside the mother's body, then hatch in her womb, wait for a bit, then have live births)
Like, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to imagine that a sentient species in a porn game developed parasitic ovoviviparity as a method of reproduction, guys

 

[TheShepard256]

I can't believe that everyone in this thread just straight up forgot that ovoviviparity is a thing in nature (aka, the youngs develop in an egg inside the mother's body, then hatch in her womb, wait for a bit, then have live births)
Like, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to imagine that a sentient species in a porn game developed parasitic ovoviviparity as a method of reproduction, guys

While parasitic ovoviviparity explains rahn (and possibly Queen of the Deep) pregnancies, it's also kind of the opposite of what this thread was made to speculate upon: non-parasitic pregnancies (or at least, as close to non-parasitic as they can get) that end in eggs being laid when the mother's species doesn't naturally lay eggs.

 

[Paradox01]

...ovoviviparity...

Good point well-made, but...

...it's also kind of the opposite of what this thread was made to speculate upon...

Exactly.

 

[Preacher]

None of us are discussing the validity of mammals laying eggs or ovoviviparity or even the parasitic sort(I mean there are a bunch of insects that inject their young or eggs into other things), at least I don't think, just whether it would make sense for a mammal that we know gives live birth and is in no way involved with egg-laying to develop shelled eggs in the womb after a non-parasitic fertilization by a completely different species that doesn't do live birth and lays eggs instead.

If, and this is a big if, the merge of offspring delivery leans toward the egg layers, then it'll probably be ovoviviparitous for simplicity's sake. BUT if it's not and is 50/50 or leans toward the live birth side, then I'd assume it to be a normal live birth or a weird hybrid process where a semi-trasparent egg develops in the womb that is then also connected to the mother via an umbilical cord that is not connected to the offspring but rather to the fleshy egg that surrounds the developing organism and will be laid like a egg but will still need umbilical separation afterwards. Lord only knows if they would simply come out of these sacks like a particularly tough afterbirth sort of thing, or still require some sort of incubation period after separation before the flesh eggs still hatch in a similar manner to xenomorph eggs.

 

[ShySquare]

While parasitic ovoviviparity explains rahn (and possibly Queen of the Deep) pregnancies, it's also kind of the opposite of what this thread was made to speculate upon: non-parasitic pregnancies (or at least, as close to non-parasitic as they can get) that end in eggs being laid when the mother's species doesn't naturally lay eggs.

I know, I was answering to the post above mine - should've clarified

For the rest, biology nerd theory incoming:

The main differences between egg-laying and non egg-laying species are:

• whether the embryo's placenta attaches to the uterin wall
• where the embryo gets the nutrients necessary for its survival/development (the mother's blood, the egg's yolk, or something in between, like substances secreted by the uterus)

Essentially, the placenta is everything, bc it's the organ that manages ALL the exchanges between the embryo and its environment. The umbilical cord connects to the mother indirectly through the placenta.
And since the placenta is a structure that's made from the embryo's cells, what it does is determined entirely by the embryo's genes

For hard-shelled eggs, a non-egg-laying mother species would need to get themselves wholeass new organs (because a hard shell isn't gonna make itself)
But then microsurgeons are space magic, so i don't see why they couldn't modify the pregnant individual to have the new necessary organs, or even build the egg's shell themselves, if they also monitor the embryo's genes to ensure that the pregnancy carries to term
There's also the issue of whether the contractions would break the eggs duting birth/laying, but since the PC's vagina can gape wider than most TV screens are large, I don't think there's gonna be a problem there

For soft-shelled eggs, I don't think the mother's species would require that many alterations - the placenta would simply never attach to the mother's uterin wall, instead sustaining the embryo on uterin secretions or the egg yolk (which is essentially an overgrown ovule with carbs and lipids inside it)


TBH, the fact that so many alien species are compatible and use the same molecules to store genetic information at all breaks my suspension of disbelief way more than a mammal laying eggs
(but then if all life in the universe was born from horny precursors, that explains everything lol)

 

[sumgai]

The precursors are coming to claim those asses!

 

[Preacher]

If at the end of it all they were a thing and Vic's secret stash contains the only surviving precursor couple together in a stasis pod then I wonder what they'd actually look like.

 

[sumgai]

If at the end of it all they were a thing and Vic's secret stash contains the only surviving precursor couple together in a stasis pod then I wonder what they'd actually look like.

Probably like the Greys. With big dicks.

 

[Preacher]

Probably like the Greys. With big dicks.

TBH I was thinking the same.

And huge crongabongalungas, don't forget the cookabookachimichongas.

Spoiler

 

[TheShepard256]

For hard-shelled eggs, a non-egg-laying mother species would need to get themselves wholeass new organs (because a hard shell isn't gonna make itself)

For soft-shelled eggs, I don't think the mother's species would require that many alterations - the placenta would simply never attach to the mother's uterin wall, instead sustaining the embryo on uterin secretions or the egg yolk (which is essentially an overgrown ovule with carbs and lipids inside it)

I figure there's no way a live-birther could naturally produce a yolky egg prior to fertilisation, so it would need to be formed afterwards. My head-canon was that if the mother is a live-birther, the pregnancy starts normally (which allows the embryos to obtain nutrients before the yolk is formed) but in preparation for giving birth, the amniotic fluid forms a yolk inside it and the placenta becomes the eggshell (with some mechanism to prevent multiple kids in one egg, since that's not viable). I guess getting nutrients from uterine secretions would make the 'starts normally' part unnecessary, as well as explain how children from parasitic pregnancies can grow quite a bit bigger during those pregnancies*. As for making hard shells, I assumed that since the embryos can form hard structures like bone and cartilage, they would also be able to form a hard shell (preferably one that's easier to break from the inside than from the outside).
*If they weren't getting nutrients from some external source (e.g. uterine/intestinal secretions), their growth would be fueled entirely by their yolk, which would prevent them from growing much larger than their initial size + initial yolk size.

But then microsurgeons are space magic, so i don't see why they couldn't modify the pregnant individual to have the new necessary organs, or even build the egg's shell themselves, if they also monitor the embryo's genes to ensure that the pregnancy carries to term

I should make a clarification of my own: when I made my original post in this thread, I was talking generally, not about Steele specifically i.e. about people who don't have access to top-of-the-line microsurgeons or medical treatments. While I could understand the microsurgeons having this function if egg-layer-live-birther hybrids were naturally difficult across the board, my argument was that, in known cases where it's possible at all, they're not naturally difficult, with the implication that no artificial intervention is needed for those hybrids to be carried to term and born healthy.​

BUT if it's not and is 50/50 or leans toward the live birth side, then I'd assume it to be a normal live birth or a weird hybrid process where a semi-trasparent egg develops in the womb that is then also connected to the mother via an umbilical cord that is not connected to the offspring but rather to the fleshy egg that surrounds the developing organism and will be laid like a egg but will still need umbilical separation afterwards. Lord only knows if they would simply come out of these sacks like a particularly tough afterbirth sort of thing, or still require some sort of incubation period after separation before the flesh eggs still hatch in a similar manner to xenomorph eggs.

While that is an interesting idea, and it does make sense (at least at the lay-person level), no currently in-game pregnancy works like that - the only possible exception would be Steele & Briha's kids, who have semi-transparent eggshells (though that might just be a natural trait of red myr eggs), but we don't know the details of their birth, so we can't say for sure.

TBH, the fact that so many alien species are compatible and use the same molecules to store genetic information at all breaks my suspension of disbelief way more than a mammal laying eggs
(but then if all life in the universe was born from horny precursors, that explains everything lol)

In the absence of horny precursors (which so far seems to be the case in TiTS), I like to think of it as an extreme form of convergent evolution. Either way, I also like it from a storytelling perspective, since that's one less difference between humans and aliens, and I prefer it when 'different' races are not so different after all.

 

[TheShepard256]

The main differences between egg-laying and non egg-laying species are:

• whether the embryo's placenta attaches to the uterin wall
• where the embryo gets the nutrients necessary for its survival/development (the mother's blood, the egg's yolk, or something in between, like substances secreted by the uterus)

Essentially, the placenta is everything, bc it's the organ that manages ALL the exchanges between the embryo and its environment. The umbilical cord connects to the mother indirectly through the placenta.
And since the placenta is a structure that's made from the embryo's cells, what it does is determined entirely by the embryo's genes

Which provides a mechanism behind my previous assertion:

it depends on the child's biology rather than the mother's

(I originally put this at the top of my previous post, but it got cut off because the formatting got screwed up and I couldn't fix it in the edits.)