For reasons I cannot recall, I got to recollecting stuff about the LSH over the weekend. And the weirdest question started nagging me concerning Triplicate Girl / Duo Damsel.
Let’s say she splits into her three (or two) selves, and one of them has sex. Then that self became pregnant before re-merging with her normal self. At this point, I am going to presume that her nornal self would be pregnant. But if she split up into her three (two) selves later on, would all three (both) of them be pregnant, or just the one who initially got pregnant?
Or to make things even more sticky, let’s say she splits up into three (two), and ALL OF THEM have sex and get pregnant by different guys. What are the ramifications when she re-merges? Is she pregnant with triplets?
When pondering this, I made the assumption that strains of V.D. such as herpes or AIDS have been eradicated in the future - so wondering about that would be mute.
I believe there will be three children(triplicates, if only one body is used), and each child will have the same power as their mother. There will be an added bonus, however-when they come of age, the three children will be able to combine all six bodies together to become…Captain Planet!
Disclaimer: I haven’t read LSH since before the original reboot - what was that, the late 80s?
I think that the core of this question is how physical changes to one body are or are not incorporated when she merges together again. Unfortunately, I can’t recall any instances of injuries, haircuts, etc. other than her death.
I believe that when the three bodies merged all of their memories were incorporated into the single body. So if you assume that any brain changes when those memories are stored are incorporated into that singular brain, then we can extrapolate that into meaning that any other physical changes would also be incorporated without overwriting the others’ equivilent body part. I can’t quite picture how that would work if, say, an arm was cut off one body, but when a piece is added it seems straightforward enough to assume that it will survive intact during the merge. Therefore, I think that any pregnancies would be incorporated into the singular body, whether we’re talking about a single fetus or two or three.
Where this gets interesting is when they split apart again. Since they’re technically supposed to be physically, mentally, etc. identical, then it follows that all three would need to be pregnant while separated.
If the three fetuses were duplicated during the split and then added to the womb on the remerge, it would rapidly kill the mother as child after child is added into her body. Therefore it makes sense to assume that the child is splitting into their natural identical three bodies, and remerge together once Triplicate Girl remerges. (Remember, this is a trait of her species, not a mutation, so the child will also be a triplicate.)
What Risha said, regarding the first part. And it holds even if the father isn’t Carggite - the one time we’ve seen a half Carggite pregnancy in canon it was Apparition, whose Bgztlian mother got knocked up by a Carggite man, and had a triplicating child (2/3 of whom ended up taken away - one became Phase of LEGION, after being sent to the 20th century…I can’t remember what happened to the last).
Regarding the second part of the post, a miscarriage as the three genetically different portions attempt to merge, seems very likely.
It’s also entirely possible a Carggite can’t get pregnant while separated, or separate while pregnant, rendering the whole situation moot. (But there’s no canon on the matter, and the latter would be surprising, given the evolutionary pressures that created the power pre-ZH version - it’s not as inconsistent with post-ZH, and the Waid/Kitson version is very different indeed.)
Well, all Carggites have the ability to split into multiple bodies (although the question of whether this is a racial ability or because they’re all the same person depends on which continuity you’re looking at). In either case, the simplest answer would probably be that she’s only fertile in her merged form.
If it’s a racial ability, Carggite physiology would presumably have some mechanism for dealing with this situation. However, the fact that Carggite society stigmatized non-identical duplicates (Triplicate Girl was institutionalized because her three forms had divergent personalities) suggests an alternative. It could be that the split/merge process breaks down when dealing with split-form pregnancies. A single-form pregnancy might produce a child incapable of splitting, or who produces near-mindless duplicates, for example. A diverse multiform pregnancy (different fathers with each duplicate) could result in a severely deformed child (due to genetic conflicts) who could split into normal–but distinctly different–forms. A stigma might be expected to attach to such children, similar to that associated with bastardy or incest. That stigma might grow to mark any child that demonstrates similar “symptoms”.
In the other “all Carggites are Luornu Durgo” scenario, we have less to go on. The ability could be unique to Triplicate Girl, so we can’t assume that it’s in any way adapted to support reproduction. A solo pregnancy could simply be “overwritten” on merge with the two non-pregnant duplicates, for example–a sort of instant abortion. Alternatively, the merged form could become pregnant, with the fetus later being split into duplicates when the mother does. If the offspring doesn’t share her power, maybe only the original pregnant form would be pregnant after splitting–or worse, the fetus could be split anyway, with gruesome results. A multiple pregnancy could leave the merged form pregnant with non-identical triplets…or with a genetic chimera that might quickly be killed by its own conflicted immune system.
On the whole, maybe Bouncing Boy should just use a rubber.
I recall a back-up feature in which Llornu and Chuck were attacked by a gang of surprisingly low-tech thugs whom Chuck had sent to prison years before. The thugs were released after Chuck lost his powers, so they set upon the Taines in a deserted park, only to have their asses royally kicked by Llornu (who had clearly paid closer attention in their combat training classes than her husband). During the battle, one of the thugs injected one of Llornu’s selves with a slow-acting knock-out drug. Feeling the effect of the drug after re-uniting, Llornu split again so that her undrugged half would be free to act. The drugged self passed out, and the thugs attacked again, whereupon she kicked their asses again.
So I’d say that, if one of Llornu’s selves got knocked up while separated, then only that self would be pregnant. The united Llornu would likely seem pregnant, but once she split, there would be a pregnant Llornu and a non-pregnant one.
This leads me to two more questions:
What would happen if the two halves got pregnant at different times–one 3 months ahead of the other, say?
and
How often do you think Chuck had sex with his wife while she was split? Because apparently that’s the fantasy of every guy on Earth but me.
Wait, wait … I’m WAAAY out of date on my Legion lore, but I thought Phase was a time-displaced version of Phantom Girl. Are you saying Tinya Wazzo was the daughter of a Carggite man? When did that idea get introduced?
And where is CMKeller when we really need some expertise?
The L.E.G.I.O.N. era persisted through several LSH reboots, so it kinda changed during that time.
Originally, the intent seems to have been that Phase was time-lost Tinya, thus explaining her absence in the Five Years Later era.
Later on in the 5YL period, Jo learns (from RJ Brande, IIRC) of Phase’s existence in the past, and finds his way back in time to meet her, to learn she is… Tinya’s cousin. Not Tinya.
Then came Zero Hour, and the LSH was rebooted. Making that PG a different Tinya, and undoing any tentative grasp on continuity that Phase might have had. Thus, it would seem, the discovery that Tinya was half Cargggite, and one of a triplicate. I don’t recall that it was ever firmly established that Phase was another of the triplicate, although it was definitely implied.
Now, of course, there’s an entirely different continuity of the LSH, so Phase is probably off in continuity limbo once more. Presumably, she’ll have company in the person of the Durlan from L.E.G.I.O.N., who needn’t have disappeared into the future to be RJ Brande anymore.
… finally, I’m of the opinion that questions of Luornu’s pregnancy are moot, since she’d be a fool to conceive Chuck’s child, lest he inherit the Bouncing. “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” would be messy enough with only a half-kryptonian baby. Imagine three babies suddenly inflating to bouncing-ness while in utero. shudder
The only logical scenario is that Carggite women can only get pregnant when they are one, and they remain pregnant when they split. So having sex while split would be the perfect birth control.
On the other hand, Carggite men can knock you up while single or combined, so use birth control every time.
I don’t remember Triplicate Girl being institutionalized for that - in fact it wasn’t until the post-Mordru-verse soft-boot that it was ever suggested that pre-ZH Lu’s dupes weren’t identical in all ways, IIRC. (At which point her few appearances were mostly dealing with her present, aside from one dealing with the non-death of her third self.)
Triad, the post-ZH version, was, but it was later revealed - by Brande, IIRC - that she’s NOT an aberration, but the natural state for Carggites - they didn’t develop the splitting ability to deal with physical threats, but rather as a psychological coping mechanism. Which would argue against it coming from separate pregnancies in each body.
My grasp of Legion canon is somewhat shaky, so I had to go look up the details. Apparently the version of her past that involved the asylum was in the Zero Hour continuity, which ran (as I understand it) from 1994 to 2005. That would be her “Triad” incarnation, as you said. I don’t recall the revelation by Brande, but I could easily have missed it. I checked the Wikipedia article on her, and it had this to say on Triad’s background:
Interestingly, this suggests that Carggites are capable of splitting as newborns, or that Carggite women sometimes give birth in split form, or both. A split-form birth might be a safety measure against complications, or as a mechanism for coping with the birthing trauma.
The last two words render that statement as nonsensical and cannot be placed there.