Question Are non-twin siblings of first-gen mutants, mutating more than expected?

Are non-twin siblings of first-gen mutants, mutating more than expected?

First-gen as in "First Generation of family", not G1.

Nalleys, Franks...

Le Floc'hs of Gen 2?

Wait, we dunno a lot about who has sibs, whose parents are actually mutants, etc...

Hmm.

Uh, what did trigger this particular line of inquiry?
I mean, I could get "Are children of first-gen mutants more likely to manifest?'
But I'm not seeing what being twin or non-twin, or having any sibling for that matter, has to do with rates of mutation, in principle.
I suppose you noticed what appears to be a statistical anomaly. Could you clarify on your data sample?

As a general answer, however, keep in mind that the smallest the sample, the least reliable are your conclusions. If you happened to notice an anomaly regarding two or three families... well, it could be just a statistical spike. We don't know much about all the hundreds of other mutant families out there.

I don't know what expectations are here. It's been stated by the authors that the probability that a child will be a mutant goes way up if one of their parents is a mutant, and is almost assured if both of them are.

Since the underlying code is a stable, heritable, chunk of DNA, I'd think it's not so much a matter of any of them being mutants as it is a matter of whether the siblings are manifesting at a higher rate than the general population.

For all we know, the original mutation may have been being born with an incomplete or missing MGC.

Someone, who isn't me, should go wake up Gaea and ask about that.

^^^ - Recent Wiki Edits adding the Floc'hs, brought "Sibling mutant chances" into my mind.

We know, from Anomaly's Origin, that being the twin of a mutant means basically guaranteed mutant chance.

^^ - And I knew that already, so I needed to specify first-gens for gathering any new info.

Malady wrote: We know, from Anomaly's Origin, that being the twin of a mutant means basically guaranteed mutant chance.

I think there is a key missing piece here: what Anomaly was considering mostly were the odds of identical twins (like Ryan/Sandra and Matthew/Monica) manifesting, which could be different from fraternal twins.

'Small Mercies' by Joe Gunnarson wrote: Matt had been living in fear since the day Ryan’s eyes had changed. He knew the numbers, knew the score. Ryan’s change had prompted him to do some research. Twin changes were almost never one-offs when it came to mutant manifestations. In the last fifty years, only two sets of identical twins showed one manifesting while the other did not. Nine times out of ten the second child manifested within a year. Usually they manifested together.

Since identical twins have, well, identical genetics, they have roughly the same base likelihood of something triggering their MGC, at least from a genetic standpoint.

Now, part of that quote could be read as indicating that fraternal twins were also more likely to both manifest than non-twin siblings, but it's ambiguous. Also, since it isn't clear what other factors play a role in MGC activation, we have no way to know how much that very specific similarity between identical twins has to do with it, but the quoted chances Monica (well, technically they were still Matthew, but bear with me) mentioned do imply that there is strong relationship between the specific genetic makeup and the activation potential.

How similar does it have to be? That doesn't seem clear. It does seem that non-identical siblings do have somewhat higher rates of multiple activations compared to non-relatives, but how much of that is genes and how much is common environment, similar experiences, etc. is hard to say (at least without being told by the CC directly). The record seems inconsistent; there was some surprise on Ayla's part that all three of the Wilson kids manifested, for example, but given that we've seen a lot of cases where two or more siblings manifested. It seems that this could be a misperception Ayla had about it (it wouldn't be the first time, even for someone supposedly well informed about mutant genetics he seems to have had a lot of wrong info before coming to WA even aside from prejudices), or it could reflect the fact that activation was simply less common before and that the assumed rarity is simply outdated information.

(Or maybe the CC initially meant to have it be uncommon but that plan drifted over time. Just a thought.)

If mutant emergent events are completely random, the odds of having two in the same family are miniscule. That means that stories about several mutants in the same family would be talking about extremely rare events. Campus organizations like the Bad Seeds wouldn't exist - there most likely wouldn't be any candidates in a given year. Situations like STAR League, where you have 7 parents and 4 children who are all mutants would be so rare as to be an object of WTF?

So the existence of one mutant in the family has to raise the odds of there being another, and gives lots of grist for the story mill. It also reduces the odds of singletons.

^^ - Those are second-gen, though. as in. Second Generation of Family.

Not G1. Whoops!

^ - Cool~!

...

I had thoughts of, like, Palantir, having one of her 4 other siblings, mutating...

But IIRC, she's the youngest, so if any of the others are mutants, they would've already, since they hit the age?

Hmm.

Nope, Next Youngest, so, the Youngest could mutate

Malady wrote: I had thoughts of, like, Palantir, having one of her 4 other siblings, mutating...

But IIRC, she's the youngest, so if any of the others are mutants, they would've already, since they hit the age?

Most people wouldn't notice an EX-1 manifesting unless they suddenly got weaker, and that goes for most of the (non-wizard) powers.

PK-1: "iron shirt" training
TK-1: Uri Geller, side-show magicians
Empath-1: humans (without
Telepath/Clairvoyance-1: Moms
EN-1: that accountant on the third floor whose terminal will go down on anyone
MAN-1: kids (Explains a lot about family laundry woes, doesn't it?)

null0trooper wrote:

Malady wrote: I had thoughts of, like, Palantir, having one of her 4 other siblings, mutating...

But IIRC, she's the youngest, so if any of the others are mutants, they would've already, since they hit the age?

Most people wouldn't notice an EX-1 manifesting unless they suddenly got weaker, and that goes for most of the (non-wizard) powers.

PK-1: "iron shirt" training
TK-1: Uri Geller, side-show magicians
Empath-1: humans (without
Telepath/Clairvoyance-1: Moms
EN-1: that accountant on the third floor whose terminal will go down on anyone
MAN-1: kids (Explains a lot about family laundry woes, doesn't it?)

Don't forget the TMNT RPG-spin-off where you had the equivalent of Devisors, who would repair vehicles, but the vehicle would only work when the repairer was present.

This was partially based on a mechanic who used to work on the car belonging to one of the game designers...