Live Blogs The Great Nitpicky Live Blog of El Goonish Shive

MrAHR

How did they collect the blood if she did in a car accident? And enough to power a human being?

'How did they'...

...You're kidding, right?

Please tell me you're kidding.

IGNORING the fact it could've been a sample from who KNOWS when, fatal Car accidents are MESSY, and if she got taken to the hospital, there'd've been even MORE opportunities to get clean samples!

As for 'enough to power a human being', they didn't need to. When you have sex, you don't exactly...deposit enough to build a human. They "fertilized" the egg with the DNA sample from dead-human-Grace Egg hatched. She grew.

Actually, Miss Kurai, if you read the comment, his exact words are that he used "her blood." Now that raises a vast amount of questions. How the hell did he do that? He just obtained some of her blood and jammed it in there? Babies don't come from blood. If he USED her blood, he would need enough to sufficiently power an organism to the extent that it could reproduce more blood on its own.

And besides. I know that car crashes are messy. THAT IS MY POINT. You can't use blood that has been exposed to the air. So he would need to go to the hospital and fill up a couple of pints with her blood, which he would never be allowed to do, as she would need all the blood she could get at that point. And you aren't allowed to use dead blood either. The arteries begin to harden soon after death, and the blood becomes contaminated. So there is no point at which the process would work.

I don't recall seeing anything that says a Uyroum (Whatever) egg needs reproductive DNA...

To quote from the explanation strip...

"On it's own, the shell that results is nothing; it needs enough DNA from at least two different sources in order to develop an offspring."

Bizarre Alien Biology is all I've got, but it sounds to me like there's at least a vague cloning thing going on.

Way I see it, Two non-Uryuom DNA sources would result in a (more or less) 50% combination (Suggesting that Uryoum DNA acts as a 'wild card' and a, for example, Tedd/Uryuom mix would give us, basically, a clone of Tedd with the ability to change his shape between Tedd, Uryuom, and any forms added later on. Since Grace only had one human DNA source, plus Uryuom and Lespuko (Two 'wildcards') and a squirrel, this resulted in a squirrelized copy of the deceased Grace.

It takes a little bit of mental contortionism, but unless Shive gives us one of those exposition textblocks y'all seem to hate so much...

And as for the blood, easy enough. A simple blood sample that was put on ice from before the accident, before she died at the hospital, whatever. What does it matter where he got it? Or maybe Shive just meant something else? Science Marches On and everything. The writing was still pretty bad seven years ago.

But do you see what you are doing now? You are proving my point entirely. Dan Shive is the writer. It is his job to make sure his story makes sense. Not yours. The very fact that you have to say "Well maybe they had a blood sample from before." means that Shive did not plan well enough. You're filling in plot holes for him and making up your own canon.

And even disregarding the idea that you're covering for Shive's sloppy writing, your explanation makes no sense. They had no idea of knowing that his daughter was going to get into a car crash. Why would they have a DNA sample of one of the employee's daughters, who had nothing to do with the project, on file? Blood is quite temperamental- it needs to be either fresh or refrigerated under specific conditions. So he didn't just have an extra vial of blood lying around the house. It would have needed proper care, which, because she had not gotten into a car accident yet, there was no need for.

And as for the swipe at the expostion textblocks? Yes, we hate them. We hate them because it shows lazy writing. Rather than having the character explain it naturally, and allow our minds to focus on each individual point, textwalling makes the explanation seem wordy, dull, and skippable.

Perhaps he got the blood from her not long after she died, as Kirai suggested? And, personally, I love reading textbooks... So perhaps, just perhaps, not everyone shares your opinions? Maybe? The same reasons why you hate Dan Shive are why I love him... In most cases...