Fic help.

[Skydiver]

in the Cure, they mention that only a fraction of blendings worked....so my interpretation is:

Teal'c: "Prior to the process of incubating Goa'uld symbiotes using
Jaffa, the blending between Goa'uld and host had only a one-in-two
chance of success. The Jaffa were created for the very reason of
improving the ability of the symbiote to take human hosts."

Sam: "So the fact that this symbiote was raised in a tank could
explain the coma-like state?"

Teal'c: "To the best of my knowledge, a failed blending results in
death to both Goa'uld and host. This man is very much alive."

Dollen: "Our understanding is that this is a typical reaction to
contact with Goa'uld offspring."

Teal'c: "A Goa'uld offspring is born with the intellect and knowledge
of the queen who bore it. Normally, the fully developed personality
would emerge, allowing the symbiote to control the host immediately
upon blending. "

Jack: "Glowing eyes, cliché behavior, evilness, that kind of thing."

Yes, a queen can make goa'uld off spring. But if she doesn't make them 'programmed' for the right species, there will be, at best a 50/50 success rate. But if the has the 'code of life' from the host species she can tailor those off spring to be a perfect fit.

so she can do it 'fast and dirty' and know that about half her children will not blend, or she can take the time to tailor them and know they will be an almost 100% success rate.

I think goa'uld population control is their battles. Jaffa are cannon fodder, they die by the hundreds, and the offspring with them.

we also see in SUmmit/Last Stand that mature goa'uld practice ritual cannibalism, presumably killing off mature symbiotes.

as to apophis and Klorel, what if Pops made the queen that made Klorel? (Most likely, the writers just didn't think about it as they made up the show's mythology. They did that a lot, contradicted themselves)

[fems]

But if Apophis made the Queen, he would still have to "father" her. And then technically, Klorel would be his grandson.

The whole asexual reproduction for Queens doesn't make any sense unless they can also reproduce sexually. Otherwise there would be no such thing as genetic memory, if the Queens are the only ones who can pass it on and there is no input from another ("male") Goa'uld.

[SF_and_Coffee]

My thinking with regard to the sensing of other symbiotes and the use of Goa'uld/Tok'ra technology is that it is tied to having naquadah in one's system. Remember, Cassie was able to sense Jolinar in Sam, and Cassie has never been host to a symbiote. She does, however, possess naquadah in her system. As has been mentioned, if Kanan wasn't in Jack long enough to secrete naquadah (or enough naquadah) into him, then that could be used to explain his lack of the ability to sense other symbiotes.

Mind you, I'm biased, since this is more or less the explanation I plan to use in my own fic involving Tok'ra, their hosts, and in some cases, their former hosts. I find myself writing about Tok'ra and their relationship with humans a lot lately.

[fems]

It would be interesting to know if Cassie could use Goa'uld devices too because of the naquadah Nirrti introduced into her system.

Other than that, while I like the whole naquadah-thing, it doesn't make any sense that it stays in their bloodstream after the symbiote is gone. It should be secreted with time as there is nothing to produce it.

[SF_and_Coffee]

It would be interesting to know if Cassie could use Goa'uld devices too because of the naquadah Nirrti introduced into her system.

I wouldn't be surprised if she could.

Other than that, while I like the whole naquadah-thing, it doesn't make any sense that it stays in their bloodstream after the symbiote is gone. It should be secreted with time as there is nothing to produce it.

Not really. It may not be in the bloodstream at all, or not only there. The human body is capable of absorbing any number of substances and elements into its tissues that then remain there for life, or at least for many years. My guess is that naquadah is one such element; once it's been secreted into the host's tissues in a great enough amount by the symbiote (or absorbed by the host from a dead symbiote), it remains. It's even possible that the naquadah somehow binds to the cellular machinery of the host -- perhaps in the mitochondria or even in the nuclear DNA -- in such a way as to become permanently incorporated into the body's systems.

[Skydiver]

the naqahdah being the reason behind using goa'uld stuff is either canon or accepted fanon. I thought daniel said something somewhere about naqahdah in sam's blood. The naqahdah is what gives the goauld hte power to run the toys and sense each other, the protein marker is what would give her resistance to drugs (they mention this several times, in Foothold and Desperate Measures)

and like you said, stuff like that builds up in your muscles and organs. It's like Lead poisoning, it can take years for it to leech from your body, if it ever does.

[SF_and_Coffee]

I was always under the impression that the naquadah conferred, or also conferred, drug resistance... according to the transcript for Foothold, it's just chalked up to Carter's having hosted a symbiote at some point; neither the protein marker nor the naquadah is specifically mentioned. And in Desperate Measures, both are mentioned but neither is specifically named as being the source of her drug resistance.

[fems]

Naquadah is also an essential element of Goa'uld physiology, and the Goa'uld and former hosts retain traces of naquadah in their blood which can be detected by others with naquadah in their systems. Certain Goa'uld devices such as the ribbon device or healing device require the presence of naquadah in the blood for activation.

So, it's in their blood, which makes sense if the naquadah also attributes to the healing powers of a symbiote or affects the immune system. Considering the lifespan of blood cells it doesn't make sense for the naquadah to remain in their system for years*. Especially for Sam, if all the naquadah she got from Jolinar was what was present in the symbiote at the time since she was only a host for a day or so. Although I'm not sure how much naquadah remained in Cassie's system.


* Perhaps with the exception of lymphocytes, but then the amount of naquadah would still diminish over time.

[SF_and_Coffee]

I'll be honest, it seems to me like another one of those instances where the show's writers didn't really think something all the way through from a logical and/or scientific standpoint. Which leaves those of us in the fanwork community to pick up their slack, and offer an explanation that builds upon their own flawed canon. I do know that even as the body breaks down cells, some of the materials in those cells can be recycled by the body rather than being excreted, so that's one option. Another is that the naquadah could be in both the bloodstream and the host's other tissues, although as has been said elsewhere by one of our number, freely circulating heavy metal in the bloodstream would likely cause the host more problems than benefits, so obviously the naquadah must be bound somehow to the cells... which to my mind increases the odds that it isn't only present in blood cells. There is also the fact that the "it's in the bodily tissues" theory and the "it's in the blood cells but the body recycles it" theory aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

[Skydiver]

They never touch the fact that, even with jolinar tweaking sam's immune system, it'd take a very long time for her body to reabsorb several ounces of alien flesh. It would like have abscessed or turned into a horribly painful lump of scar tissue. (usually what happens when there's a foreign substance in the body, the body cocoons it with flesh, kinda like an oyster does to a grain of sand, it covers it in a layer of 'friendly' cells to lock it away from the body)

yes, people to live for years, decades, with shrapnel in their bodies....but that's little bits. Not 6-12 ounces of goa'uld.

as soon as jols was dead, janet should have removed it....because if symbiote blood is poisonous to the jaffa, it must be the same to a goa'uld host, so how can sam's body have absorbed it without also being poisoned?

[SF_and_Coffee]

Naquadah = handwavium. Seriously.

Although, again, I'll chalk that up to the show's writers not really thinking things through. That's why canon is full of so many contradictions, and in cases like this where there is more attention paid in canon to symbiotes being able to die within the host and be absorbed than there is to the idea that mixing symbiote blood with human blood is lethal or dangerous, I give credence to the former and jettison the latter.

[Skydiver]

I wrote it off as:

if a host is blended long enough they have some immunity/tolerance and the body's breaking down of the symbiote has with it some chemical changes that allows them to just be sick or ill as opposed to dying.

and, in my world, you can remove a deceased symbiote, but it's kinda like preparing fugu (pufferfish) one nick of the body/poison sac, and you're gonna get sick or die. So it's safer and easier to let nature take its course.

The writers really didn't do enough research, they just wrote and played the 'hey, it's an alien' card. their prerogative. And honestly any author's prerogative. Because sometimes you need to just 'go with the flow' and suspend your disbelief (and heck, they walk through a stable wormhole and emerge on the other side intact...that in itself is the biggest suspension out there.

[SF_and_Coffee]

Your last paragraph says it all. Brava!

[SaraBahama]

That's not so much asexual as hermaphroditic.

Sorry -I mixed up my terms (but I did look up tapeworms and they used 'asexual' as the description -I guess in the having both traits sense.)

I was just thinking... we know Vala used to be a host to Qetesh, that the Tok'ra removed the symbiote from her and that Qetesh is dead. Vala, however, can still use Goa'uld healing devices etc (although I'm not sure if she can sense naquadah/symbiotes too). As far as I know it's never been explained whether Qetesh was already dead/dying and leaking toxins into Vala when the Tok'ra removed her (since she was tortured).
What I'm trying to say is that the difference between Jack/Kanan and Sam/Jolinar & Vala/Qetesh could be that in the latter two the symbiote died in the host, leaving them with naquadah and a protein marker in their blood. Kanan, however, left Jack's body and was then killed.
I believe Thor's Hammer also killed the symbiote (in the host/Jaffa) instead of simply beaming it out, which could explain why Kendra was also capable of using Goa'uld devices.

My thinking with regard to the sensing of other symbiotes and the use of Goa'uld/Tok'ra technology is that it is tied to having naquadah in one's system. Remember, Cassie was able to sense Jolinar in Sam, and Cassie has never been host to a symbiote. She does, however, possess naquadah in her system. As has been mentioned, if Kanan wasn't in Jack long enough to secrete naquadah (or enough naquadah) into him, then that could be used to explain his lack of the ability to sense other symbiotes.
Mind you, I'm biased, since this is more or less the explanation I plan to use in my own fic involving Tok'ra, their hosts, and in some cases, their former hosts. I find myself writing about Tok'ra and their relationship with humans a lot lately.

fems...I was going to reply, but SF beat me to it.

SF...do we know how long Kanan was in Jack...was it not at least as long as Jolinar was in Sam? Perhaps longer? The time period seems to cover at least a few days ('Night Walkers' is between 'Frozen' and 'Abyss' and seems to leave a period of time of at least a few days). It still seems to me that he should have the same naquadah in his blood as Sam.

Naquadah = handwavium. Seriously.
Although, again, I'll chalk that up to the show's writers not really thinking things through. That's why canon is full of so many contradictions, and in cases like this where there is more attention paid in canon to symbiotes being able to die within the host and be absorbed than there is to the idea that mixing symbiote blood with human blood is lethal or dangerous, I give credence to the former and jettison the latter.

I wrote it off as:
if a host is blended long enough they have some immunity/tolerance and the body's breaking down of the symbiote has with it some chemical changes that allows them to just be sick or ill as opposed to dying.
and, in my world, you can remove a deceased symbiote, but it's kinda like preparing fugu (pufferfish) one nick of the body/poison sac, and you're gonna get sick or die. So it's safer and easier to let nature take its course.
The writers really didn't do enough research, they just wrote and played the 'hey, it's an alien' card. their prerogative. And honestly any author's prerogative. Because sometimes you need to just 'go with the flow' and suspend your disbelief (and heck, they walk through a stable wormhole and emerge on the other side intact...that in itself is the biggest suspension out there.

LOL. Point well taken. Thanks for the great discussions! I get great ideas, info, and pooled research, and the reminders that sometimes it's best to just get on with it and write without overthinking EVERYTHING.

[SF_and_Coffee]

I don't know how long Kanan was in Jack, but Jolinar died in Sam and her body was absorbed, so physically she never left. Kanan did leave Jack.