#enjoy /

[aimseytv]

[ghoulfuckersincorporated]

You've written on pregnancy with a ghoul but do you have any opinions on the possibility of synth pregnancy or pregnancy with a synth as the sperm wizard

(Mild warnings for brief discussion of pregnancy loss and maternal death.)

I had to sit on this question for a while and do a bit of synth research to re-familiarize myself with how they're made (because Nick Valentine is the only synth I care all that much about). Unfortunately for y'all, all that rumination means I'm about to sound like I've thought way too much about this, which I absolutely have.

Bear with me.

I've heard stories of people passing away and their sperm that had been previously stored (typically in advance of the person having a vasectomy/consenting to something that would limit future sperm production) being used by their spouse or partner to have children afterwards. Similarly, but a little more ghoulishly (no pun intended and also this is a personal opinion), postmortem sperm retrieval IS a thing, if you didn't know. Live sperm can be harvested from the testes if the procedure is performed quickly enough after death, or on a living person who is brain dead.

For obvious reasons, the ethics of it are hotly contested, as are the ethics of using the harvested sperm for impregnation, but let's not pretend that morality ever stopped the Institute. PSR has been used in the past by the spouses of recently deceased or brain dead men in order to have biologically related children they wouldn't be able to otherwise have.

With that little bit of background, I'll say that I imagine having a baby with a "swapped" synth, someone intended to replace a person who already exists, could be much the same sort of thing...but, you know, without you really knowing about it. They yoink your partner, harvest their sperm before they disappear them, and implant the harvested sperm into the Gen 3 replacement's lab-grown body. Bang. Boom. Baby.

However, I think whether or not synths can reproduce at all is pretty up in the air. True, the most recent generation of synth is constructed entirely of tissues grown in their labs; the human body is comprised of much more complex cells than gametes (sperm and egg cells) that would have to be produced to have a functional body, so it's feasible to assume that they have the technology to lab-create those simpler cells, too.

However, I ask this: why would they bother?

We know that the Gen 3's have organic bodies and that they're literally constructed from actual muscles/bones/organs, but who's to say some of the organs they install aren't basically "for show"? Most claim the Gen 3's don't have to eat or sleep, so are the organs that manage these functions (namely the digestive organs and possibly the reproductive organs) truly "functional"?

Obviously they can be used if needed, since Gen 3 synths can eat if they choose, but your GI tract taking stuff in at one end and spitting it out at the other doesn't mean it "works". If they truly functioned as human organs do, they'd need regular access to nutrients, rest to recuperate. A synth brain, for example, can't function the exact same way a human brain does if a synth doesn't have to eat to stay alive; the human brain requires glucose, AKA sugar obtained from eating, to function. That's why low blood sugar often gives people brain fog and puts them into a bad mood, and why it can be a medical emergency if it drops low enough. You wouldn't want that vulnerability still included in the design of your synthetic human, even if you wanted your lab-grown brain to match a real one as closely as possible.

They're supposed to be indistinguishable from humans, inside and out, but if you did an autopsy of a dead person (or synth), and their organs looked normal upon inspection, there are things about their body you still wouldn't see. You wouldn't have any idea if they actually had sperm or eggs inside their reproductive organs just by looking with the naked eye, and if they didn't have those cells, it wouldn't necessarily mean anything. Failing to include those cells wouldn't expose their design any more than including the brain chip (you know, the one you have to kill the person to access) does. Not every single detail has to be covered. If you've gotta literally dissect someone to figure out if they're a synth or not, synths and humans are about as close to one another as they're gonna get.

BUT: if I'm quite honest, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that all synths are just sterile across the board, and that the Institute didn't bother including reproductive capability when they were deciding how they would craft the Gen 3 synths. Simply not allowing them to reproduce would be the simplest choice. After all, I imagine allowing your remote-controlled minions to start having their own children can make them prone to disobeying you if what you want isn't in the best interest of those children. It's a massive variable to add into the equation when you're making devious plans.

The infertility would be easy enough to write off, too, in a world filled with radiation exposure and malnutrition; sometimes people just can't have babies and that's their lot. Even if someone's had children before, that doesn't mean that their fertility will be intact forever. Say your spouse and the parent of your child was swapped with a synth, and you went on to try and have another child, but failed. Would you automatically assume it's because your partner was swapped with someone built in a lab? Or would you just write it off as bad luck/declining health/some environmental factor? Stress can also contribute to infertility, and the Fallout universe is all stress, all the time. I imagine lots of people who want children struggle to have them. Doesn't mean their partner is a synth.

But hey, it's not an entirely unrealistic idea. Who's to say that the Institute wouldn't also have considered planning something more complex and long-term, like creating a number of synth men capable of impregnating people, of starting families and helping to build communities, synth men who could still be programmed to be very useful? A plan like that could be set up to go on even in the event that the bulk of their personnel were killed, their facilities destroyed. If you program these men to do what you want them to do (and let them think it's their own idea to be the way they are), give them the ability to father children, and send them out into the world, you could still have your desired impact in the future even if you weren't around to direct or see it.

Conclusion: I would call the likelihood of penis-having synths being able to knock anyone up "scientifically possible but not probable".

In terms of synth pregnancy, I think that could be both simpler and much more complicated, depending on which angle we're approaching the situation from.

As I mentioned above, I'm not sure what the purpose would be to allowing a synth with ovaries to go off and reproduce unless you were planning to use that reproduction to control people over a great amount of time. Even then, it's kind of a questionable plan, but the Institute loves a questionable plan! However, designing a synthetic human that can grow and birth a baby while making it seem natural would be a big ask.

It also doesn't have nearly as much theoretical "use" as a concept if Gen 3's being able to reproduce was desirable (which I don't believe it is, at least from the perspective of those who created them). Even if the children of synths were susceptible to the same control their parents are under somehow, so synths having babies just means more controllable pawns you didn't have to manufacture or program yourself, one synth could still only have so many babies at a human pace if they're the one carrying them all. A single woman has the maximum capability of one full-term pregnancy per calendar year, and that pregnancy usually only results in one baby. A guy can get a different woman pregnant every day, in theory. Multiple women. If they were gonna put resources into perfecting synth reproduction, I don't think it would be on this end of the deal.

Sure, if their scientists wanted to grow a real fetus (the product of combining a sperm and an egg, not a meat sculpture you made in the lab) in a literal tube or chamber, I'm willing to bet they could. Artificial womb technology seems easier to master than "growing whole bones and organs from scratch" technology. But the point is the realism, and building a female-presenting synth who doubles as an artificial womb and building a synth who passes as a pregnant or postpartum woman are different ballgames.

The synths aren't designed to change. They don't age, they don't get sick or tired. Hell, they don't even gain weight even though they can eat, which implies they don't digest what they take in. A body that requires little to run has little to give...how does one deliver nutrients to a fetus if you don't require them yourself, if you don't actually get anything from eating?

All that is to say nothing about the pure change in physical size that can occur during gestation, how your organs are quite literally shifted around as the fetus takes up more and more room in your torso. The Mayor McDonough replacement synth was quite literally "built" fat because he wouldn't have been capable of gaining enough weight to look like the original if they'd made him smaller. If the synth body isn't intended to change, even in body mass, how would a growing fetus fit past a certain point? I don't think it would, frankly, at least not in a way that wouldn't spell disaster for all involved. A pregnancy like that either wouldn't make it to term, would be incredibly negatively impacted by the lack of room to grow, or would kill the mother. Maybe all of the above.

Overall, their type of physiology doesn't scream "capable of withstanding the immense changes caused by pregnancy". Having a baby is literally the biggest change you could ever make to your body on all fronts; even your internal chemistry changes when you become pregnant in order to support the fetus. Your body is irreparably altered when you carry a baby to term, and it has to go through a series of changes to even get to that point to begin with.

It's not like when your "sperm wizard" gives a few pumps and their work is done; moving sperm from point A to point B isn't complicated or difficult from a scientific perspective. Pregnancy is incredibly complex and involves multiple intense processes directed by the brain and reproductive organs in order to come to fruition. You have to ovulate, have proper implantation, allow for all the change that occurs in the body over the course of gestation, and account for the trauma of labor and birth, even if by cesarean. The human body is also intended to support the infant in the postpartum stage...imagine a synth capable of breastfeeding.

The hormones of it all are by far the biggest consideration. Successfully getting pregnant would involve creating synths with wombs whose bodies also follow the 28-day hormone cycle, or whose endocrine system at the very least produces all the necessary hormones that allow successful reproduction. Even the previously mentioned breastfeeding ability is a product of hormonal changes that occur in pregnancy. Frankly, endocrinology (the study of hormones and the organs that produce them) is incredibly complicated for modern scientists to even wrap their heads around, so I think the folks at the Institute would have a big order on their plates if they wanted to theoretically make something like this happen. All these complex processes would have to be nailed perfectly in order to create a synth capable of a real pregnancy, and a synth that real is just a person who cost a lot more to create.

Sounds like a lot of goddamn work just so your literal slaves can have babies who will inevitably motivate them against you.

Conclusion: synth pregnancy where the synth is the one carrying would be much, much harder to pull off (so hard it wouldn't be an endeavor worth pursuing) and would likely end very poorly for both mother and fetus.

[enjoywhatnatureshows]

Moet je zien

[angelofdumpsterfires]

presented without comment

[hansoeii]

butch wolverine, anyone?

[evanezco]

very sketchy Caitvi piece

[chongoblog]

at first gromit afraid

gromit petrified

[ilikeit-art]

Enjoy your day..

[sorrelsticks]

Can't wait to replay peak today 🔥🔥🔥

[cordspaghetti]

i have once again been compelled to draw Alpharetta Gerard In The Workplace in Numerous situations

[facelessmime]

I think Uzi would give away her feelings with her tail a lot despite her edgy persona. And I wonder what that means for Cyn sometimes 🤣

I genuinely think Cyn would probably enjoy this, yelling "wee!" Even haha-- but it was too funny not to visualize this way.

Anyway--

Bonus Below!

[teapachi]

Aventurine is practicing his poker face with a cat cake ♥

Also- gonna start flooding my tumblr with all my churin drawings over the week :3 beware

[enjoywhatnatureshows]

Moet je zien

[yuukirita]

[goryhorroor]

masterpost of horror lists

here are all my horror lists in one place to make it easier to find! enjoy!

sub-genres

action horror

analog horror

animal horror

animated horror

anthology horror

aquatic horror

apocalyptic horror

backwoods horror

bubblegum horror

campy horror

cannibal horror

children’s horror

comedy horror

coming-of-age horror

corporate/work place horror

cult horror

dance horror

dark comedy horror

daylight horror

death games

domestic horror

ecological horror

erotic horror

experimental horror

fairytale horror

fantasy horror

folk horror

found footage horror

giallo horror

gothic horror

grief horror

historical horror

holiday horror

home invasion horror

house horror

indie horror

isolation horror

insect horror

lgbtqia+ horror

lovecraftian/cosmic horror

medical horror

meta horror

monster horror

musical horror

mystery horror

mythological horror

neo-monster horror

new french extremity horror

paranormal horror

political horror

psychedelic horror

psychological horror

religious horror

revenge horror

romantic horror

dramatic horror

science fiction horror

slasher

southern gothic horror

sov horror (shot-on-video)

splatter/body horror

survival horror

techno-horror

vampire horror

virus horror

werewolf horror

western horror

witch horror

zombie horror

horror plots/settings

road trip horror

summer camp horror

cave horror

doll horror

cinema horror

cabin horror

clown horror

wilderness horror

asylum horror

small town horror

college horror

plot devices

storm horror

from a child’s perspective

final girl/guy (this is slasher horror trope)

last guy/girl (this is different than final girl/guy)

reality-bending horror

slow burn horror

possession

pregnancy horror

foreign horror or non-american horror

african horror

spanish horror

middle eastern horror

korean horror

japanese horror

british horror

german horror

indian horror

thai horror

irish horror

scottish horror

slavic horror (kinda combined a bunch of countries for this)

chinese horror

french horror

australian horror

canadian horror

decades

silent era

30s horror

40s horror

50s horror

60s horror

70s horror

80s horror

90s horror

2000s horror

2010s horror

2020s horror

companies/services

blumhouse horror

a24 horror

ghosthouse horror

shudder horror

other lists

horror literature to movies

techno-color horror movies

video game to horror movie adaption

video nasties

female directed horror

my 130 favorite horror movies

horror movies critics hated because they’re stupid

horror remakes/sequels that weren’t bad

female villains in horror

horror movies so bad they’re good

non-horror movies that feel like horror movies

directors + their favorite horror movies + directors in the notes

tumblr’s favorite horror movie (based off my poll)

horror movie plot twists

cult classic horror movies

essential underrated horror films

worst horror movie husbands

religious horror that isn’t christianity 

black horror movies

extreme horror (maybe use this as an avoid list)

horror shorts