#but the image of them suffering our presumptive stupidity as much as we've suffered all the weird shit that's come of this feels cathartic

[rabidpomeranians]

An unorthodox approach to troll reproduction

It’s blood.

Its always been blood, and we’ve all been fooled by our own preconceived notions of how reproduction works. We were given a fill in the blank riddle and got it so wrong that the thousands of fanfics that reference it stand now as a monument to our presumptuousness.

It’s the easiest bodily fluid to get a literal bucket full of quickly. It contains DNA that can be recombined with a partners and utilized by the mother grub. It keeps pairs of any sex/gender viable. And it weirdly explains why rainbowdrinkers are a thing...

First debunking the other possibilities:

From a human perspective the answers to troll reproduction that immediately come would be A) Two sexes with matched-set gemetes, B) All genetically male, or C) Hermaphrodites. Which all come with contradictions.

A) If individuals only produce sperm or eggs, than a statistically significant number of all pairs would be non productive. Given trolls have no concern over the viability of same sex quadrants, there must be a different mechanic in use.

B) If all trolls produce only sperm cells than there would be no mechanism for genetic mixing between individuals. In fact there would be no point in pairing/quadrants at all. Their social system would match ants or bees which forgo reproductive activity outside of one to one interactions with their queen.

Since its been stated that the viability of offspring is effected by the strength of a pair, we know that pairing is a crucial element. Also if trolls are all genetically male, than binary gender has little to no reason to exist (unless sex and gender are also conceptually divorced, which is another theory).

C) The hardest one to knock and the most popular for it. I guess I would pose the question why, in a strongly individualist society, would people form pairs to do what they could technically do all on their own? Or at least why would ‘self-pairing’ not be more common. Sure, pairing allows for more variety but if the gametes paired randomly, half of the resulting mix would still be self fertilized anyways. 

Ok but what does blood have to do with anything like this?

The fundamental flaw that lies over all three answers and probably several more is that we’ve applied human physiology to an alien species. Yes they look similar but their quadrants and mother grubs are vastly different from our monogamy and individually assigned reproductive organs.

Blood mixing negates sex pairing issues, allowing any two individuals to produce offspring. It allows for genetic recombination, given it contains plenty of dna and possibly beneficial hormones produced from the emotional virility of a pair. Lastly, it necessitates pairing. Mixed and unmixed blood have some kind of fundamental difference, which disallows an individual from self-pairing.

I’d chalk it up to something with the immune system. It’s like how in humans certain blood types mixing causes an immune response. Which inside of a body is horrible because it bursts the blood cells, but in an external mix, bursting cells leave exposed dna, allowing for easier recombination. The ‘dominant’ blood type (immunologically, not caste related) dismantles and assimilates the ‘recessive’ producing a viable ‘genetic slurry’ to be hauled off to the mother grub.

And there is plenty of room for the social taboo behavior exhibited by trolls throughout the comic. Trolls live on a hell planet where everything, and everyone, everywhere is looking for an opportunity to kill them, all the time. Thus advertising that you’ve recently lost a half gallon of blood and are vulnerable because of it, would be really stupid. It makes sense then, to keep talk down and hide away any evidence. This evolves pretty seamlessly into a close enough match to the typical cagey/secretive behavior humans tend to show around their own reproductive activities. Hence why we perceive a parallel even though the reasoning is different.

tldr: We all assume that trolls connect sex with reproduction because that’s what we do, but they’re aliens, they do weird alien things. If their biology worked exactly like ours, they wouldn’t have a big weird moth laying eggs for them. Also you’re welcome.