caffeinatedstarship:

Star Trek AU where Quark and Guinan switch places

(via tinsnip)

lala-sara:

ladyyatexel:

londo-mollari:

starforgedsteel

replied to your post

“Someone explain Narn pregnancy to me”

I’m pretty sure the females carry the baby to term and then the males carry them around in their pouches?? Apparently the Babylon 5 magazine that came out way back when has more info? I think??

But no species would actually evolve like that, that’s ridiculously impractical.

I think of it like some kind of fucked up hybrid of kangaroos and seahorses.

oh, I didn’t know (or forgot?). So Narns and Tenctonese are the same species after all. Tenctonese are from “Alien Nation” and I can’t recommend it enough especially if you like Narns. So Tenctonese have exactly the same thing. It’s ironic that Tenctonese also have the cogenitors whom you can remember from one of Star Trek Enterprise episode. The universe of sci-fi scriptwriters are very small place :)

Dude, I immediately thought of the Tenctonese when G’Kar started going on about pouches! Though I feel like the Tenctonese had kind of two deliveries? George straight up gives birth from the pouch after Susan gives a weird kind of birth to the mess of strings and stuff that wasn’t even person-shaped yet that she passes on to him. I thought it was a little odd that he had to go through some kind of labor when it was a pouch? Like I was just trying to figure out what muscles were even involved? I know ‘aliens’, but I’m always like ‘this makes no evolutionary sense? Help me with this?’ Because then he never uses said pouch again, rather than holding onto a developing or nursing child with it which was the impression I got about Narns. We get a lot more information about Tenctonese reproduction, though. Maybe they are largely the same, but I imagined Narn more marsupial, with babies that can spend time inside and outside pouches for a while after they’ve finished being little fetal rat monsters. Mostly because that’s a use of a pouch that makes sense to me, I guess.

I think I’d like to get all the hints and mentions of Narn reproduction from the show together and see what can be pieced together. I know there’s stuff I’ve forgotten from the earlier seasons.

(via lala-sara)

haldora:

ladyyatexel:

londo-mollari:

starforgedsteel

replied to your post

“Someone explain Narn pregnancy to me”

I’m pretty sure the females carry the baby to term and then the males carry them around in their pouches?? Apparently the Babylon 5 magazine that came out way back when has more info? I think??

But no species would actually evolve like that, that’s ridiculously impractical.

I think of it like some kind of fucked up hybrid of kangaroos and seahorses.

I’m no evolutionary biologist, but it’s always made a sort of sense to me? Splitting the reproductive burden between the pregnant parent and the nursing parent frees up a lot of time for both parties to attend to other needs of the group/clan/family unit and to their own wellbeing.

Theoretically, a shorter pregnancy with smaller babies would reduce the energy expenditure of the pregnant parent and make for safer deliveries. It also ensures that when the baby (or number of babies — it’s never stated how many kids Narns typically have at one time) is born, there’s no need for the inseminating parent to still be in the picture as long as the pregnant parent is part of a group containing members with functioning pouches who could take on the responsibility for nursing. (G’Kar and other Narns use the term ‘pouchbrother’ sometimes, which leads me to believe that infants from different parents could still have shared a pouch, and that this is regarded as a common and acceptable practice).

That actually seems like a decent strategy for fostering great social dynamics and ensuring that the entire group has a stake in the welfare of the young, rather than leaving the responsibility of childrearing exclusively to individuals or sets of couples.

You know, I had actually thought of this system as kind of fucked for a long time because I wasn’t imagining them living in groups! I kept thinking, ‘great, one Narn gives birth but no longer has the other parent with her for any number of reasons. That kid is fucked.’ But in a group, they’d have somewhere to go and thus shit makes much more sense. Which again makes me think it’s more like this system than the Tenctonese from Alien Nation, who would actually be fucked if they did not have two people at the right moment (or three to start with! ). The Narn seem very ‘this man is my brother’about people who are not blood family, so that mentality gels with that reproductive system being a cultural norm. I think especially that works well because of
how preoccupied with family names and bloodlines the Centauri are - it’s a nice duality.

(Also, weirdly, this may contribute to G’Kar’s habit of happily sleeping with every species but his own? He doesn’t have a group on B5, so it might be sort of irresponsible. Not that I think he’s really concerned with what is irresponsible in the early days of the show. It just might have some background in informing that decision or preference for him? Something like that.)

(via haldora)

Fuck me, I forgot I’m on mobile and they’ll reblog as links

I’m gonna pry myself out of bed and do them properly

Wow, tumblr mobile, thank you for reblogging that post a month later, that’s great of you.

londo-mollari:

starforgedsteel replied to your post “Someone explain Narn pregnancy to me”

I’m pretty sure the females carry the baby to term and then the males carry them around in their pouches?? Apparently the Babylon 5 magazine that came out way back when has more info? I think??

But no species would actually evolve like that, that’s ridiculously impractical.

I think of it like some kind of fucked up hybrid of kangaroos and seahorses.