[Headcanon] Ectobiology

[tungstenTinkerer]

This too will likely be posted somewhere by TT. but in the meantime I will drop the headcanon here and let you guys discuss it.

zephyrice said:

Ectobiology: Making the stork look like a reasonable way to be born since forever.

(zephyrIce)

So. Ectobiology. You gotta love the awkward moment when you realize your father is also your brother and your friend is also your sister, that there's one of the players that sort-of-is everyone's father, and that there were meteors involved.

Ectobiology is a delicate process everybody is familiar with right now. My headcanon is about the number involved.

I think Ectobiology is possible only with one person or an even number of babies. The "one person" option wouldn't even be supposed to be there, it's a remnant of the first ectobiology beta-testing and is kind of... Simplified. No mixing of slimes, no guardians involved (since there's not enough genetic diversity for that), just select a baby, copy it, ship it. It's also funny because the one that ends up doing it is always the one that gets EB'ed. TT can confirm.

Standard ectobiology happens like in the comics, with the guardians being copied and subsequently mixed to create the players. It's something only a few players are familiar with since only a few of them got to do it: veteran sessions are usually devoid of ectobiology duties.

What can be possibly going on if you apparently have an odd-numbered session? There's three possibilities, mostly.

• The game will include a Nondoomed Nonplayer in ectobiology, who will then make his way to the medium. The N.N. is a tragic figure I will talk about in more detail at a later moment. This is the most common solution.
  
• One (or three, or five) of the players is a veteran. In that case, they won't be included in ectobiology, thus restoring parity.
  
• The session is not odd-numbered at all. Mobius Double Reach Around shenanigans are going on. After the chains link there will be an even number of players.

Most sessions happen to be even-numbered, though. Even the Nondoomed Nonplayer is something that appears only rarely. The appearance of veterans in newb sessions is even more rare.

When this happens, it's of course a sign that the session can be expected to be weird and glitchy. Then again, that is hardly big news.

[zephyrIce]

I'm in full agreeance with this headcanon. I like the Nondoomed Nonplayer possibility, it makes for a lot of intresting potential situations, and I can't wait to hear more on it.

For the veteran in a new session, I'm thinking that would happen due to deleted player glitches. Things like people getting erased from existance for various reasons, and paradox space has this random singular person that needs a place to go intead of 4+, so they shove them in a new session. WHen you delete a player, paradox space gets confused. It's used to dying, then it has a body. When you just poof out of existance it gets flips out. Paradox space flipping out = bad things happening.

...I'm willing to bed verteran-in-new-session situations lead to some very freaked out new players.

[tungstenTinkerer]

TT was the glitch himself. His first session had him as the only first-timer and 5 veterans (some of which, like genesisArtificer, ventricularPipefitter and specificNihilism, active around here).

Of course he ended up leading. Stupid naturally high Pepleader.

He spent most of the following months around a crazy santa-shaped-nuke-wielding guy with a girl title (seer) from an alternate earth where he also happened to be the nephew of rule 63 Stalin, and he wasn't even the weirdest of the bunch.

I wish I still had that log piece where he partly explodes into [Reverberata] for the first time and the AG and VP just say "psch, it's normal" and pun him into oblivion while he scuttles around the floor looking for pieces of his jaw.

In other words, yes, that must kind of freak you out.

[ventricularPipefitter]

That was basically the greatest log and I am kicking myself for not using a chat client that auto-saved at the time we were dong that.

[genesisArtificer]

I havea headcanon, that tT has to only make hiself and another person, that happened to be his legal guardian or maybe dead grandparent? It would make sense.

Also, if you want this log, I can put it on the wave for your pleasure

[tungstenTinkerer]

that would be awesome. Or pm it to me and I'll post it on the fora.

The point is... There is only one genoma around in our one-person alchemy session, which is, TT. So his hypothetical guardian would be himself.

[genesisArtificer]

His genderbent clone? That would only require swap of one chromosome, weirder things happened with ectobiology, look at dryingTracksuit, man is a bird.

Also, the raw log is on wave. It was 5 pages worth of text, I dunno if forum would stomach it

[tungstenTinkerer]

I think that he is a bird because he was supposed to, not because of EB mishaps

[genesisArtificer]

Ok. So the older ectoclone of tT will raise him up as identical son (grandson?). Oh man, that is so Misty, that it was not possible for tT to NOT turn as a Mist Player. Headcanoned.