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The Old Hack

Story Monday July 9, 2018

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5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

While possible, I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't work "normally" and even with 75% fairy DNA you won't be elf unless you are first generation. Diane's ears are not any pointier than Susan's.

If (1) elves and fairies never mate, and (2) you aren't a first-generation elf, then you cannot get above 50% fairy DNA.

Elves are rare, so I suspect that both elf-fairy and elf-elf matings are even more rare.

Thing is: since (we  know) there is more than one fairy in the world, it's extremely likely that there is some mechanism for producing more fairies. If it possible to actually destroy (not just force-reset) a fairy, then it's nearly-certain that such a mechanism exists. And we don't know what it is.

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1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

If (1) elves and fairies never mate, and (2) you aren't a first-generation elf, then you cannot get above 50% fairy DNA.

Elves are rare, so I suspect that both elf-fairy and elf-elf matings are even more rare.

Not exactly.  For any given gene which is different between fairies and humans, each elf parent will have one Fairy copy and one human copy.  When those genes are passed on to offspring, they may pass on the fairy gene or the human gene, or perhaps some recombination of both.  So, just by random chance, it's possible for someone who is an elf-elf cross to happen to get the fairy gene more often than the human one from one parent, and again to get more fairy genes than human genes from the other parent.  The rule of large numbers means that they are most likely to get about an equal mix from each parent, but it is random, so outliers are possible.  So, if you get 60% fairy genes and 40% human genes from mom, and 60% fairy genes and 40% human genes from dad, you'll theoretically end up 60% fairy and 40% human.

It's even more complicated when dominant versus recessive genes come into play.  You get two copies of each gene, one from each parent, so some will be both copies human, some will be both copies fairy, and some will be one of each.  If, say, fairy genes are always dominant over human genes, then you could effectively get an even higher percent fairy in the gene expression.  And don't get me started on partial dominance and epigenetics and all the other complications....

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It's probably easier to envision it as being by chromosomes (and thus ignoring the recombination part). Any first-generation Elf will have one set of chromosomes from the Fairy parent and one set from the Human parent, and any of that Elf's children would randomly receive either the Fairy or the Human chromosome from each pair of chromosomes. Thus, the offspring generated from two first-generation Elves could have anywhere from zero to all chromosomes being Fairy ones (except for the Y chromosome, which would require strict male-line descent).

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14 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:
15 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

If (1) elves and fairies never mate, and (2) you aren't a first-generation elf, then you cannot get above 50% fairy DNA.

Elves are rare, so I suspect that both elf-fairy and elf-elf matings are even more rare.

Not exactly.  For any given gene which is different between fairies and humans, each elf parent will have one Fairy copy and one human copy.  When those genes are passed on to offspring, they may pass on the fairy gene or the human gene, or perhaps some recombination of both.  So, just by random chance, it's possible for someone who is an elf-elf cross to happen to get the fairy gene more often than the human one from one parent, and again to get more fairy genes than human genes from the other parent.  The rule of large numbers means that they are most likely to get about an equal mix from each parent, but it is random, so outliers are possible.  So, if you get 60% fairy genes and 40% human genes from mom, and 60% fairy genes and 40% human genes from dad, you'll theoretically end up 60% fairy and 40% human.

The law of big numbers also says that if there are enough elf-elf crosses, eventually someone with 75% fairy genes WILL appear.

Of course, we have no idea how many elf-elf crosses there was (I'm saying was, because we can be fairy certain that current number is very low).

14 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

It's even more complicated when dominant versus recessive genes come into play.  You get two copies of each gene, one from each parent, so some will be both copies human, some will be both copies fairy, and some will be one of each.  If, say, fairy genes are always dominant over human genes, then you could effectively get an even higher percent fairy in the gene expression.  And don't get me started on partial dominance and epigenetics and all the other complications....

Another complication comes from fact that humans share 96% of DNA with chimpanzees, and similarly it's possible that there is big overlap between fairy genes and human genes. This would be even more likely if fairies don't actually use DNA themselves except for reproduction.

Obviously, the shared genes don't count at all for any meaningful comparison ...

13 hours ago, ijuin said:

Thus, the offspring generated from two first-generation Elves could have anywhere from zero to all chromosomes being Fairy ones (except for the Y chromosome, which would require strict male-line descent).

There ARE male immortals. All Adrian's sons would get human Y chromosome but that's not true for all elves.

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We don't know if there are really any such thing as male or female immortals. We know that some have at least a strong tendency to appear as male and others have at least a strong tendency to appear as female; but is that truly something other than personal preference? No idea.

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32 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

We don't know if there are really any such thing as male or female immortals. We know that some have at least a strong tendency to appear as male and others have at least a strong tendency to appear as female; but is that truly something other than personal preference? No idea.

Personal preference would still count.

Also, in all three cases of reset we saw, immortal had same sex and gender before and after reset.

We don't know if all immortals have similarly strong opinion on their gender, but the immortals we saw seem pretty decided.

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26 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Also, in all three cases of reset we saw, immortal had same sex and gender before and after reset.

We don't know if all immortals have similarly strong opinion on their gender, but the immortals we saw seem pretty decided.

Hmmm....do we really, 100% know that Les Immortals didn't swap?  We saw an elderly male and an elderly female, and then we saw a young male and a young female, but we didn't see which one turned into which one!   ;-)  :-D

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44 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Personal preference would still count.

Also, in all three cases of reset we saw, immortal had same sex and gender before and after reset.

We don't know if all immortals have similarly strong opinion on their gender, but the immortals we saw seem pretty decided.

Jerry talked about his "basic nature", "Who I am now, my basic nature mixed with 200 plus years of experience, will die. I will be replaced by my basic nature, yadda yadda yadda." The only real evidence that suggested that an Immortals basic nature has a set sex/gender is the fact that Jerry returned as Zeus.

Pandora is going to skew things though by the fact that she's made sure that she's not returning to her basic nature and it also sounds like the forced reset isn't going to scramble her like it did to Helena and Demetrius and in their case, the forced reset might have scrambled their basic natures as well which as was suggested, might have caused them to switch sexes.

Of course that's all speculation.

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21 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Jerry talked about his "basic nature", "Who I am now, my basic nature mixed with 200 plus years of experience, will die. I will be replaced by my basic nature, yadda yadda yadda." The only real evidence that suggested that an Immortals basic nature has a set sex/gender is the fact that Jerry returned as Zeus.

I think I am really tired still. I almost read that last sentence as "Jerry returned as Jesus." Ow.

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Just now, The Old Hack said:

I think I am really tired still. I almost read that last sentence as "Jerry returned as Jesus." Ow.

And now I'm wondering if Jesus' resurrection could be attributed to an Immortal resetting in front of witnesses...

Of course the whole "came back after 3 days" bit seems pretty fast for a reset to complete given what Jerry and Pandora described.

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18 hours ago, Scotty said:
18 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

I think I am really tired still. I almost read that last sentence as "Jerry returned as Jesus." Ow.

And now I'm wondering if Jesus' resurrection could be attributed to an Immortal resetting in front of witnesses...

Of course the whole "came back after 3 days" bit seems pretty fast for a reset to complete given what Jerry and Pandora described.

Jesus didn't reset. He was crucified. Which is unlikely to cause reset or any long-term problems for immortal.

12 hours ago, Southern Cross said:

Could Merlin in the EGS universe have been an elf?

Could he NOT be? I mean, what else would he be?

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12 hours ago, Southern Cross said:

Could Merlin in the EGS universe have been an elf?

 

11 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Could he NOT be? I mean, what else would he be?

Personally, I am intrigued by the idea that Merlin was a kind of split personality for Arthur.  An elaborate imaginary friend who had the wisdom to guide Young Wart through the trials of his early reign, because the abused foster son of a minor knight would not have the knowledge or confidence to become King of the Britons.

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Just now, hkmaly said:

Could he NOT be? I mean, what else would he be?

A sufficiently powerful wizard could still do it without being an elf.

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1 minute ago, The Old Hack said:

A sufficiently powerful wizard is indistinguishable from Merlin.

Or possibly Gandalf.

Or Dumbledore.

Or Tommy...

 

 

The Pinball Wizard

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10 hours ago, Scotty said:
10 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

A sufficiently powerful wizard is indistinguishable from Merlin.

Or possibly Gandalf.

Or Dumbledore.

Or Tommy...

 

 

The Pinball Wizard

A Merlin/Gandalf/Dumbledore also needs to be wise, or good at faking it. (Ideally they should have a long white beard, too, but for many with a masculine body type that doesn't even require magic.)

To be The Pinball Wizard on the other hand requires that you're deaf, dumb, and blind (at least according to the song).

...Incidentally, when Scotty said "Tommy" my first thought was "What? Tommy may be the coolest of the Power Rangers, but last I knew he was no wizard."

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5 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

To be The Pinball Wizard on the other hand requires that you're deaf, dumb, and blind (at least according to the song).

Magic could probably be used to see, hear, and communicate in other ways though.

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