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PrimordialSoul253

Story Friday October 13 2017

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1 hour ago, Scotty said:

it just doesn't make sense for Adrian to not remember Susan if she was his daughter, and not question if Diane was his as well.

I have a friend who had a daughter show up he didn't know he had. Adrian doesn't have to be a total villain not to know he's fathered a child or two if the mother(s) didn't want to tell him.

 

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

n regards to Dan's comment about it back then, he could still have been dropping hints, but not be entirely accurate about it, like the twist that Susan was related to Adrian would be true, but saying that Adrian's her father wouldn't necessarily be accurate.

I think I was careful to say that Adrian being Susan's father wasn't 100% certain, just that it was more likely than any other explanation.

Pandora wanting to consult Susan before marking her is totally believable, especially given the thoughtfulness she's recently displayed. And there's no evidence she knows that the vampire that attacked Diane was a mercenary. But Pandora does know there's another Immortal up to no good, so I'm still thinking she might have decided to mark now and talk later.

An alternative I've envisioned is Pandora appearing at the mall now to join Susan, Diane, and Adrian to talk things over. Giving Diane a mark might come up.

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4 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

An alternative I've envisioned is Pandora appearing at the mall now to join Susan, Diane, and Adrian to talk things over. Giving Diane a mark might come up.

Pandora made her intentions clear when she was talking to Sarah that she was going to tell Adrian about everything on Saturday, so it wouldn't make sense to suddenly appear at the mall now. That could very well change when crap hits the fan of course, but at the moment Pandora has no reason to alter her plan.

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52 minutes ago, Scotty said:

at the moment Pandora has no reason to alter her plan.

That we know of. But she didn't promise not to watch, and if she has been watching these past few minutes...

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15 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:
18 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Sigh ... Sherlock Holmes was expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman. While Mr. Raven already shown to be experienced swordman, he is quite limited in how can he utilize such abilities ; Holmes didn't shown such restrains as far as I remember.

Swordfighting skill is rare now, but in Holmes day, not so much, especially among Brits and Continentals. Duels were still being fought. And I don't believe the Holmes portrayed by Conan Doyle actually did much swordplay. I think that's more a product of all those Basil Rathbone portrayals of Holmes. Rathbone was one of the best swordsmen in the movies. HIs duels with Errol Flynn in Captain Blood and Tyrone Power in Zorro are maybe the best ever put on film.

The following sections of wiki describe exactly what short stories he did what in. He's only mentioned to practise fencing in them, but there IS mentions of hand-to-hand combat (boxing) with his adversaries (in "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist" and "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty").

15 hours ago, Drasvin said:
18 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Raven only has such ability in elf form, so probably not.

He has that ability in his human form, but it's much weaker or something along those lines. He had to focus on Ellen to get a good read on her while he was in his human form. Diane is focusing her attention on Susan and Mr. Raven right now, so it's not out of the question, but I think the vibes she's getting are less supernatural and more subconscious reading of body language.

I think the Ooh-ee-ooh is spell, not just focusing. Also, I DEFINITELY agree that what Diane is getting is reading of body language.

12 hours ago, Niranufoti said:

there are ways for sleeping people to start dreaming without a mark (or are you trying to tell me Nanase and Elliot were born dreaming?), so I wouldn't be too surprised if that happened during such things as a fight in the mall.

I would be less surprised if she would be MARKED during or after the fight. I mean, the whole point of the fight is to attract attention of Helena and Demetrius, who might already have enough power for that and it's exactly what they are known to do.

8 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

And, yes, I think there's a good chance Pandora has already marked Diane. She's had that little chat with Jerry 2.0 and would know from him that Diane has the same magical affinity as Susan but wasn't able to use it to defend herself. Given that Jerry 2.0 figured they were twin sisters on New Year's Eve, and was right there when Ellen and Nanase told Susan about Diane, and that Jerry was further investigating Susan and Diane between that and meeting Pandora, Pandora should know quite a lot about Susan and Diane by now.

... or, yes, the fight will attract attention of Pandora.

To clarify: I think Pandora is NOT present and didn't met Diane since her chat with Jerry, which might be only reason she didn't marked her.

6 hours ago, Scotty said:

In regards to marking Diane, I just don't think Pandora would do so in secret. Pandora wanted to talk to Adrian about it before she told anyone else, I would think she'd want to wait unto after she did that before she goes and introduces herself to Diane and Susan and that would be the best opportunity to offer to mark Diane. Pandora is trying to focus on not messing things up even further so marking relatives without their consent wouldn't be on her to do list.

... or that.

12 hours ago, Niranufoti said:
20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Maybe Susan will offer sword to Mr. Raven as well, just to find out he doesn't need one?

She already knows he knows how to fight, so I'd say that's a really big "maybe".

She likely doesn't know details so she may not know how well is he ready to fight specifically aberrations.

8 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

That doesn't quite seal the deal that Adrian is Susan and Diane's father because Pandora didn't say his what. Children? Grandkids? Descendents? But probability favors the first choice, children.

IMHO descendants. Or rather some synonym which would fit more ... offspring, brood, progeny ... or possibly children in MEANING of descendant, I think I saw such usage somewhere, might be archaic but so is Pandora.

(Or scion. Never heard that word before but the meaning would fit.)

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17 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

And then there's Dan himself referring back to the first hint that Adrian was really Susan's father he dropped more than a thousand comics ago in the commentary for this comic. Think he's just being cute with us?

I think it's definitely a hint they might be related, but I find it a lot more likely that Adrian had children at some point(s) in the past, and Susan and Diane are his descendants.  The hint fits that just as well, and it avoids all the out-of-character actions needed by so many to make Adrian the girls' father.  Whether their father is Adrian's son, or grandson, or even further down, I suspect there will turn out to be a strong family resemblance between Raven and their father, just as there is between Susan and Diane, and between Susan and Adrian.

Heck, if we want to get into Wild Mass Guessing territory, maybe Tedd's mom is also a descendant of Adrian Raven!  ;-)

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23 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Heck, if we want to get into Wild Mass Guessing territory, maybe Tedd's mom is also a descendant of Adrian Raven!  ;-)

She came from a line of powerful mages and wizards. That would perhaps fit with the descendants of an elf.

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1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

Heck, if we want to get into Wild Mass Guessing territory, maybe Tedd's mom is also a descendant of Adrian Raven!  ;-)

 

54 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

She came from a line of powerful mages and wizards. That would perhaps fit with the descendants of an elf.

Hmm, that "long line" might be problematic, actually.  Everyone who can use magic is descended from fairies, so I would expect the closer to that link, the more powerful, and the more dilute, the weaker.  Selective breeding, so to speak, could keep individual lines stronger over time.  Although I suppose he could have hooked up with someone who was already part of a long line of powerful magic-users, and just contributed to their staying that way.  Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket....

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6 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

 Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket....

I wonder how many of this forum’s readers know what that means and saw it it in first run, or "live"...

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1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

Selective breeding, so to speak, could keep individual lines stronger over time.  Although I suppose he could have hooked up with someone who was already part of a long line of powerful magic-users, and just contributed to their staying that way.  Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket....

That's pretty much why Noriko and Edward hooked up, they were so certain that Tedd was guaranteed to be a wizard, that must have been the case throughout the generations of Noriko's family. It does make me wonder if Mr Kitsune is a wizard. If so, then it's probably guaranteed that Akiko has a strong potential to become a magic user (if there's no interference from immortals) but if he's not, then the chance that Akiko would be a wizard is probably 50/50 just like Nanase's was.

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6 hours ago, The Old Hack said:
6 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Heck, if we want to get into Wild Mass Guessing territory, maybe Tedd's mom is also a descendant of Adrian Raven!  ;-)

She came from a line of powerful mages and wizards. That would perhaps fit with the descendants of an elf.

Or elvES.

5 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Everyone who can use magic is descended from fairies, so I would expect the closer to that link, the more powerful, and the more dilute, the weaker.  Selective breeding, so to speak, could keep individual lines stronger over time.  Although I suppose he could have hooked up with someone who was already part of a long line of powerful magic-users, and just contributed to their staying that way.

I would assume that magic from different fairies will combine, and the non-specific but royal talent Nanase has seems more like result of multiple elves between ancestors. On the other hand, even if Adrian Raven is only elf alive, there definitely were much more elves in past ; Nanase may lack not only Adrian Raven, but even Pandora's genes and still be this powerful.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:
5 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Selective breeding, so to speak, could keep individual lines stronger over time.  Although I suppose he could have hooked up with someone who was already part of a long line of powerful magic-users, and just contributed to their staying that way.  Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket....

That's pretty much why Noriko and Edward hooked up, they were so certain that Tedd was guaranteed to be a wizard, that must have been the case throughout the generations of Noriko's family. It does make me wonder if Mr Kitsune is a wizard. If so, then it's probably guaranteed that Akiko has a strong potential to become a magic user (if there's no interference from immortals) but if he's not, then the chance that Akiko would be a wizard is probably 50/50 just like Nanase's was.

1) Magic is unlikely to be carried by single gene - in fact, if it WOULD be single gene it would be boringly predictable.

2) There may be some magic influence on inheritance, raising the chance of any specific gene to be propagated.

3) Even if Mr Kitsune is not magic user himself, he may have magic users (and elves, going sufficiently far back) between ancestors.

Together, I would say chance of Akiko having SOME magic talent is way over 50%. There might be 50% chance she's specifically wizard, but note that Nanase doesn't seem to be one. Of course, IF there will be interference from immortals the chance of her becoming magic user will rise; it doesn't seem interference of immortals could LOWER the chance ...

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4 hours ago, Scotty said:

That's pretty much why Noriko and Edward hooked up, they were so certain that Tedd was guaranteed to be a wizard, that must have been the case throughout the generations of Noriko's family. It does make me wonder if Mr Kitsune is a wizard. If so, then it's probably guaranteed that Akiko has a strong potential to become a magic user (if there's no interference from immortals) but if he's not, then the chance that Akiko would be a wizard is probably 50/50 just like Nanase's was.

Technically Nanase is not a wizard because she can't learn other people's spells. But by the rules Dan has laid down, since Noriko and Edward are both wizards, then Noriko's still-unnamed sister has to be a wizard too.

There's something that's been bothering me for a long time. Why are both Nanase and Noriko have the same family name, Kitsune? The only tradition I know of where the husband takes the wife's family name is Japan, and that was really limited to the nobility where there was no son to inherit. In that case, the head of the family would choose a suitable heir, adopt him, and if he had an available daughter, marry her to his heir. That's more or less the story behind the family name of one of the few Japanese names recognized around the world: Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. He was actually born Isoroku Takano, the youngest son of a schoolteacher. (His first name means "56", the age of his father when the future admiral was born.) He was adopted by a noble family with no male heir as an adult. However, he didn't marry into his new family; he married the daughter of a dairy owner.

But was 101 years ago.

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4 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Technically Nanase is not a wizard because she can't learn other people's spells.

Technically, we just didn't saw her learn one yet. It's possible she will learn some later, but yes, it seems she's not wizard.

4 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

and that was really limited to the nobility

Andrea and Tara would tell you it's logical to apply this to Nanase then.

4 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

where there was no son

We don't know about any male Kitsunes.

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1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

We don't know about any male Kitsunes.

The traditional Japanese fox-spirit can appear as a woman. However, kitsune also means just a fox, and there are plenty of families  around the world named Fox, or Fuchs, or whatever, so it can also be a family name. Besides, fox-spirits are supposed to be shape-changers, and we've seen no sign of Nanase transforming with the single exception of her guardian spell, and then she changes into an enhanced version of her normal appearance.

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16 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

The traditional Japanese fox-spirit can appear as a woman. However, kitsune also means just a fox, and there are plenty of families  around the world named Fox, or Fuchs, or whatever, so it can also be a family name.

I was speaking about male members of that family. Besides Tedd, who is Verres, of course.

However, since you mentioned it ... that Japanese fox-spirit is extremely likely to be fairy who started that family.

17 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Besides, fox-spirits are supposed to be shape-changers, and we've seen no sign of Nanase transforming with the single exception of her guardian spell, and then she changes into an enhanced version of her normal appearance.

Also her disguise spell, although currently it's more limited than Rhoda's one so sure she still looks like herself.

And there is of course Tedd ... I mean as source of transformations, although ... maybe THAT's where he's got his interest in transformations from?

 

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10 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:
11 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

She came from a line of powerful mages and wizards. That would perhaps fit with the descendants of an elf.

Hmm, that "long line" might be problematic, actually.  Everyone who can use magic is descended from fairies, so I would expect the closer to that link, the more powerful, and the more dilute, the weaker.  Selective breeding, so to speak, could keep individual lines stronger over time.  Although I suppose he could have hooked up with someone who was already part of a long line of powerful magic-users, and just contributed to their staying that way.  Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket....

I don't think everyone that can use magic is descended from fairies. Just wizards and people with inherent affinities (like Susan and Sarah). A common thread that gets reiterated by multiple sources is how anyone can gain magic (And it's the reason why the DGB tried to keep magic secret in the first place). The Emissary of Magic even mentioned "magic power [...] gained beyond heredity". All they have to do is train hard enough or luck into one of the many easy(-ish) routes to power. If magic was restricted to those descended from fairies, then you could track it along genealogical lines. Even if you don't know why certain bloodlines get magic, it would be noticeable that magic use is concentrated around different lines with decent. Anyone with good statistical knowledge and descent genealogical records would find a pattern, like how they know about inherent affinities being passed down through families (One of the details that led to theories, both in-setting and in real life, that Susan and Diane are related). That might still work if all humans were descended from fairies, but then Heka listing off different groups, wouldn't make sense, as he didn't lead up to "and all humans" or "and everyone that uses magic."

Also hereditary magic would presumably be a lot more reliable if it was based on strength of fairy blood. Again, they wouldn't need to know that the quality derives from fairies to figure out that breeding together magical lines leads to strengthened magic, but this page states that strong magic being reliably inherited in Noriko's family is the exception, rather than the rule.

49 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Besides, fox-spirits are supposed to be shape-changers, and we've seen no sign of Nanase transforming with the single exception of her guardian spell, and then she changes into an enhanced version of her normal appearance.

While shapeshifting is one of the most famous abilities of the kitsune, there are many other supernatural abilities attributed to them, including, but not limited to, possession (not something we've seen Nanase do, unless we count 'possessing' her fairy dolls, though that would be tenuous at best), flight (something she used to do casually and can also do with her fairy doll), the ability to generate fire or lightning from their mouths or tails(again not something we've seen Nanase do, outside of the tenuous example of her fairy punch), and creation of illusions elaborate enough to be almost indistinguishable from reality (which she's also done many times, like when tricking Melissa at the comic shop, along with her color-shifted duplicate spell)

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54 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

And there is of course Tedd ... I mean as source of transformations, although ... maybe THAT's where he's got his interest in transformations from?

So it really is in his blood.

For a very long time,

I've been secretly (and probably vainly) hoping Noriko to show up as a nine-tailed fox.

13 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

like when tricking Melissa at the comic shop, along with her color-shifted duplicate spell)

Her color-shifted duplicates are illusions and they still look like her except for the color shift. And the magic comic shop has kind of slipped out of canon, especially the part about showing her fairy to the kids. For that matter, Melissa is hardly the same character she was back in MCS.

However, none of this means Nanase won't get transformation spells eventually.

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6 hours ago, Drasvin said:

I don't think everyone that can use magic is descended from fairies. Just wizards and people with inherent affinities (like Susan and Sarah). A common thread that gets reiterated by multiple sources is how anyone can gain magic (And it's the reason why the DGB tried to keep magic secret in the first place). The Emissary of Magic even mentioned "magic power [...] gained beyond heredity". All they have to do is train hard enough or luck into one of the many easy(-ish) routes to power. If magic was restricted to those descended from fairies, then you could track it along genealogical lines. Even if you don't know why certain bloodlines get magic, it would be noticeable that magic use is concentrated around different lines with decent. Anyone with good statistical knowledge and descent genealogical records would find a pattern, like how they know about inherent affinities being passed down through families (One of the details that led to theories, both in-setting and in real life, that Susan and Diane are related). That might still work if all humans were descended from fairies, but then Heka listing off different groups, wouldn't make sense, as he didn't lead up to "and all humans" or "and everyone that uses magic."

Also hereditary magic would presumably be a lot more reliable if it was based on strength of fairy blood. Again, they wouldn't need to know that the quality derives from fairies to figure out that breeding together magical lines leads to strengthened magic, but this page states that strong magic being reliably inherited in Noriko's family is the exception, rather than the rule.

Yes and no.

It's true that not everyone who can use magic is descended from fairies ; just the ones who's magic is hereditary - like Nanase, Tedd or Sarah. Non-hereditary magic users - like Elliot, Ellen and Justin - may not have any fairy ancestors.

However, magic users are very secretive and number of non-hereditary magic users is kept high enough to dilute the picture, so only SOME bloodlines noticed their hereditary magic - like the Noriko ones - and they kept it to themselves.

6 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

And the magic comic shop has kind of slipped out of canon, especially the part about showing her fairy to the kids. For that matter, Melissa is hardly the same character she was back in MCS.

While it looks weird considering how everyone is trying to be quiet about magic now, Dan specifically said that it IS still canon - he mentioned Justin but Nanase was using illusion on Melisa is next page, not in the NP story which is sort of canon.

It is also canon that Nanase hasn't always been discreet with magic.

Also, yes, some characters changed since their first appearance. Like Susan for example. But her bare midriff is still canon.

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22 hours ago, Drasvin said:

I don't think everyone that can use magic is descended from fairies. Just wizards and people with inherent affinities (like Susan and Sarah)

But that's a rather large group of people. Unless fairies mating with humans is a rather new thing.

According to this article, any and every person who lived in Europe any time between 800 and 900 AD either (a.) has no living descendants, or (b.) is an ancestor of pretty much everyone alive today who has European ancestry.

Another site I read pushed that commonality back to about 2000 years ago, mostly in order to connect Italians with everyone else in Europe.

Either way, it wasn't really all that long ago.

So if Edward Verres is descended from a fairy-human mating that occurred more than 1000 years ago, then probably his next door neighbor (whom we've never seen in the comic) is too.

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3 hours ago, Don Edwards said:
On 10/15/2017 at 6:52 AM, Drasvin said:

I don't think everyone that can use magic is descended from fairies. Just wizards and people with inherent affinities (like Susan and Sarah)

But that's a rather large group of people. Unless fairies mating with humans is a rather new thing.

I would say that NOT mating with humans is a rather new thing.

3 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

According to this article, any and every person who lived in Europe any time between 800 and 900 AD either (a.) has no living descendants, or (b.) is an ancestor of pretty much everyone alive today who has European ancestry.

Another site I read pushed that commonality back to about 2000 years ago, mostly in order to connect Italians with everyone else in Europe.

Either way, it wasn't really all that long ago.

I'm pretty sure Dan didn't read this article. We should wait when he makes a big reveal and then send it to him. Note that even the "global" equivalent is not THAT far back ... and people with magic might have more descendants, and more widely distributed, than average.

3 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

So if Edward Verres is descended from a fairy-human mating that occurred more than 1000 years ago, then probably his next door neighbor (whom we've never seen in the comic) is too.

Unless his next door neighbor are Dunkels. I mean, just because noone was confirmed to be his neighbor doesn't mean we didn't saw him.

Note that while Edward Verres is likely from Europe, Kitsunes are from Japan ... which is an island. Rather small one. And they like to claim to be unrelated to Chinese (which is not entirely true of course). Most common ancestor of all Japanese is likely MUCH more recent.

 

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45 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

And they like to claim to be unrelated to Chinese (which is not entirely true of course). Most common ancestor of all Japanese is likely MUCH more recent.

A study which disturbed the powers that be in Japan very much found that Ainu haplogroups were more common in samurai families than in families with humbler lineages. Theory is that Oda Nobunaga, the commoner who started uniting Japan in the 1500s, wasn't adverse to turning hairy Ainu into soldiers.

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10 hours ago, Don Edwards said:
On ‎10‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 11:52 PM, Drasvin said:

I don't think everyone that can use magic is descended from fairies. Just wizards and people with inherent affinities (like Susan and Sarah)

But that's a rather large group of people. Unless fairies mating with humans is a rather new thing.

According to this article, any and every person who lived in Europe any time between 800 and 900 AD either (a.) has no living descendants, or (b.) is an ancestor of pretty much everyone alive today who has European ancestry.

Another site I read pushed that commonality back to about 2000 years ago, mostly in order to connect Italians with everyone else in Europe.

Either way, it wasn't really all that long ago.

So if Edward Verres is descended from a fairy-human mating that occurred more than 1000 years ago, then probably his next door neighbor (whom we've never seen in the comic) is too.

With realistic genealogy, fairy decent would be very widespread, though likely highly diluted. But it's been mentioned that inherent affinities are rare. I don't think there's been any mention to how common wizards are, but they are a small enough sub-set of magic users to warrant their own terminology, instead of having special terminology for the non-wizard magic users. Likely Dan either doesn't know about such studies, or is ignoring them for story crafting purposes (or maybe the dilution of fairy blood leads to the wizardry and affinities eventually falling out of the bloodline).

 

5 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Oda Nobunaga, the commoner who started uniting Japan in the 1500s

Oda Nobunaga wasn't a commoner. He was the second son of a shugo(military governor). The famous commoner that helped unify Japan in the Sengoku period was Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

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8 hours ago, Drasvin said:

With realistic genealogy, fairy decent would be very widespread, though likely highly diluted.

With realistic genealogy, people without fairy descent will go the same way as Neanderthals. How many Neanderthals did you see outside politics recently?

8 hours ago, Drasvin said:

Likely Dan either doesn't know about such studies, or is ignoring them for story crafting purposes

Yes. He's not alone: ANY fantasy story with genetic trait is underestimating how it will spread. I'm still waiting for some which would go like "There is prediction that the descendant of Big Bad will cause End of World thousand years later - we must find all descendants and kill them - I found two hundreds so far ... in this city alone". I mean, thousand years could easily mean 2^50 descendants if that wouldn't be much more than population of given world.

8 hours ago, Drasvin said:

or maybe the dilution of fairy blood leads to the wizardry and affinities eventually falling out of the bloodline

It seems reliable in Kitsune's case.

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17 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Yes. He's not alone: ANY fantasy story with genetic trait is underestimating how it will spread.

Depends on the writer. In Star Wars: the Old Republic, a rather deranged ex-Jedi at one point took a look at the Sith Empire and decided that actual Sith blood (from the Sith race, as opposed to those who merely followed Sith teachings) was the problem. He then created a bunch of doomsday robots with the purpose of killing all who had detectable Sith genes in their DNA.

After some six to eight centuries of intermingling, this worked out to 98% of the population of the Sith Empire.

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27 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Yes. He's not alone: ANY fantasy story with genetic trait is underestimating how it will spread. I'm still waiting for some which would go like "There is prediction that the descendant of Big Bad will cause End of World thousand years later - we must find all descendants and kill them - I found two hundreds so far ... in this city alone". I mean, thousand years could easily mean 2^50 descendants if that wouldn't be much more than population of given world.

Still, better score than horror writers. According to rules of some vampire horrors, you can get whole earth population converted in little over month.

6 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Depends on the writer. In Star Wars: the Old Republic, a rather deranged ex-Jedi at one point took a look at the Sith Empire and decided that actual Sith blood (from the Sith race, as opposed to those who merely followed Sith teachings) was the problem. He then created a bunch of doomsday robots with the purpose of killing all who had detectable Sith genes in their DNA.

After some six to eight centuries of intermingling, this worked out to 98% of the population of the Sith Empire.

Maybe it was sci-fi writer? :)

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21 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Still, better score than horror writers. According to rules of some vampire horrors, you can get whole earth population converted in little over month.

Maybe it was sci-fi writer? :)

Well, the problem with the above vampire horror stories is that they sometimes follow the same rules as zombie apocalypses. If it is some sort of virus triggering the transformation and said virus develops an airborne vector, it might be all over bar the shouting. Of course this leaves the problem of what to feed on once it is over.

Though as Satireknight pointed out, even ordinary badly written vampire stories can screw this up. The vampires of the execrable Twilight series need to feed some four times a month. According to the often self-contradictory rules Meyer made for them, whenever they fed on humans they either kill the victims or turn them into vampires. Take even a small population of vampires like the one in Forks. A dozen or so. This means either fifty corpses that need to be disposed of every month or fifty new vampires. Sure, they claim they can use animals instead and these don't turn into vampires, but presumably they would need large animals at least the size of dogs or better and that would be noticeable too -- not to mention impossible in the long run. Leaving only humans.

And the world is full of covens of vampires like the Cullens, not all of them willing to settle for animal blood. Let's say there is one in Spoons, Missourippi. Spoons has ten thousand inhabitants. After just one year there has been more than half a thousand vampire-related deaths. How long do you think that can go on without people starting to wonder? Oh yes, and let's say that they screw up so just one in ten victims become a new vampire. That means the vampire population doubles every two months, if not faster. All of a sudden Spoons seems a lot less desirable place to live in.

The Vampire: the Masquerade roleplaying game used a bit more care than that. It still screwed up but the basic mechanics were workable. A vampire did not need to kill its victims and could sustain itself for one night on each pint of stolen blood. What is more, accidental creation of vampires was impossible. Only deliberate complete exsanguination of a victim and then feeding them vampire blood would cause the transformation. And the older vampires brutally enforced population control to keep the whole situation manageable.

And yeah, it could have been a sci fi writer, though Star Wars is arguably science fantasy ^_^

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